A copy of Ikarie XB 1 was recently put in my hands along with an enthusiastic recommendation. “It’s a game-changer,” my friend said. “Its influence on Kubrick is obvious.” As most people know, the seed for 2001: A Space Odyssey came in the form of a short story by Arthur C. Clark written in 1948 [...]

A few weeks ago the Consulate-General of Japan at Denver sent me a stack of titles by Yasuzo Masumura (1924 – 1986), a director largely unknown to American audiences despite a prodigious body of work and plaudits by film critics who have placed him within the same pantheon as Kenji Mizoguchi (with whom Masumura worked [...]

A library in Colorado Springs recently purged its collection of short 16mm children’s films. Thanks to the alert eye of a librarian on my campus these have been rescued and I plan to screen some of them tonight. It will be part of a family-friendly 4th of July weekend screening that I’m putting on in [...]

Last Mother’s Day I wrote a piece titled Modern Movie-Going Punishments. It got a big response. Clearly, a lot of people have had to deal with negative experiences when going out to see movies on the big screen. Readers also added to the list of rude behaviors, two of which we felt obliged to add [...]

I’m in the process of assembling a spreadsheet of films that I’d like to bring to my fall calendar program. As an exhibitor, I wish I could give all (or, at least, most or many) of these films a home. But as the market place keeps shrinking the theatrical windows, and as V.O.D. becomes more [...]

I spent this morning watching a compilation DVD that was sent to me by filmmaker/artist/musician Cory McAbee. It was titled “TnT” (which stands for Titles and Trailers), and it was the focus of a presentation he did a few months ago for the UnionDocs Collaborative in Brooklyn in conjunction with Rooftop Films (whose byline is: [...]

Today is the second Sunday in May. Mother’s Day. As I’ve had the Sunday shift for several years now I’ve already been able to write on the ways my mom contributed to my passion for cinema during my early years. (For further Mother’s Day homages look no further than R.H. Smith’s recent post.) Mother’s Day [...]

The film series I program celebrated its 70th year anniversary last night with a concert film matinee from 1988, followed by a musician-studded film that was retooled last year, all of which was capped off with two live concerts in a building that was once an 800-seat film theater smack in the middle of downtown. [...]

In my last post I wrapped up my interview with Alex Cox by talking a bit about John Carpenter’s They Live (1988). Alex said: “They Live holds up for the first 45 minutes, and then there’s this long wrestling match between Roddy Piper and Keith David, and it never recovers. But those first 45 minutes [...]