Alex Cox was born in Liverpool and later moved to the U.S. and went on to direct some of the most iconoclastic arthouse films of my youth with titles like Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell, and Walker. That was the eighties. Then came the nineties and I was still being amazed by [...]

Today marks the 83rd Academy Awards Show. Last year some 42 million viewers tuned in to watch the hoopla. While this is far behind the 111 million mark achieved here in the U.S. by those watching the Super Bowl, it’s  still a staggering number. (The global numbers for the television audience to both events shoot [...]

Orson Welles once said “I don’t think that I will be remembered one day. I find it as vulgar to work for posterity as for money.” He’s right about that, on both counts, but that still didn’t stop him from hawking wine for Paul Masson, or from getting a serendipitous and unplanned double-tribute here on [...]

Last week I saw 20 films in five days at Sundance. With just over 200 films listed in the index, that means I barely covered 10% of the slate. Documentaries are a Sundance forté, so it’s not surprising that almost half of the films I screened fall into this category. Similarly, as most docs these [...]

In my last post I explained the reasoning behind my programming choices for the first half of my Spring arthouse film calendar, today I finish the job. I accept the fact that anyone looking at my program will inevitably point to one (or more, perhaps even many) titles here and, in essence, ask the following [...]

I celebrated the new year by proofing a final mock-up of my Spring arthouse calendar film series program. It will screen about 50 films. Some new. Some old. The selection usually nets an equal amount of praise and criticism. I put out a sneak preview of coming attractions on my FaceBook page the other day [...]

Amelia Earhart is making headlines again. Scientists recently discovered some bone fragments on Nikumaroro, a deserted South Pacific island, along with additional artifacts (aircraft bearings, a potential flight-suit zipper pull, improvised tools, and more). DNA tests are pending. Earhart’s disappearance on July 2, 1937, while she was trying to become the first woman to fly [...]

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Three months ago we lost a major talent in the world of animation. Satoshi Kon was only 46-years-old when he died of pancreatic cancer. He was the Japanese anime director behind Perfect Blue (1998), Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), Paranoia Agent (2004), and Paprika (2006). He was on pre-production for The Dreaming Machine when [...]