Four cousins who have never met are invited by their Great-Grandmother Christophe to visit her mansion outside of Atlanta. When they arrive, they learn she has just died. They stay to hear the reading of her will and soon are being killed off one-by-one with voodoo magic. The survivors try to find the killer before he finishes them all off.Read More »
Synopsis:
Brutus is convinced by a scheming band of Roman senators, led by Caius Cassius, that his dear friend Julius Caesar intends to dissolve the republic and install himself as monarch, and he joins a conspiracy to assassinate him. Brutus stirringly defends his actions, but when Mark Antony responds with a speech that plays upon the crowd’s love for their fallen leader, a battle between the two factions is assured.Read More »
In Painter, McCarthy, decked out in a blonde wig, a bulbous drinker’s nose, and giant latex hands, staggers around a small, wood-paneled studio with an immense paint brush, yammering things like, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” and, “DeKooning, DeKooning, DeKooning.” He punctures the sides of gigantesque tubes of paint (one is labeled “Shit”), mixes the paint, then slashes and hacks big crude Expressionist swaths onto canvases with crazy electric blue and orange grounds. During the course of the video, he meanders between adjoining rooms ranting against his dealer, sitting in on an absurd conversation with pretentious, bulbous-nosed scholars, has a sycophantic collector sniff his asshole, and chops off his own fingers with a cleaver. Painter is a hilarious satire of inflated Abstract Expressionists and the art world in general, but it is not only that. When McCarthy obsessively mixes his gallons of shit-brown paint, loads up his brush, and, grunting and waving, goes to his canvas, he is pointing towards something important: that paint is the same as shit and dirt—just unruly filth that flows and stains. That finally, the hopeless drive to make art is drunken, humiliated, violent, sexual and infantile, perhaps tragic as well. (Brooklyn Rail)Read More »
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‘Boxcar’ Bertha Thompson, a transient woman in Arkansas during the violence-filled Depression of the early ‘30s, meets up with rabble-rousing union man ’Big’ Bill Shelly and the two team up to fight the corrupt railroad establishment. Based on “Sister of the Road,” the 1937 pseudo-autobiography of fictional character Bertha Thompson, written by anarchist physician Dr. Ben L. Reitman.Read More »
Plot Synopsis:
A late ’50s upgrade of the 1931 film by the same title, this version of trouble on death row by Howard Koch is more violent than its predecessor — a hint of the trend toward shock for its own sake that would one day dominate action films and thrillers. The setting is a cell block of nine inmates scheduled for execution and the first half of the drama focuses on the horror of that last walk. A grim death in the electric chair is in no way glossed over. All nine prisoners are more appealing than any single guard, giving rise to the question of whether or not the men should exchange places. Then “Killer” John Mears (Mickey Rooney) comes along. His vicious attitude infects the environment and his plans to break out of prison are the catalyst for tragedy. by Eleanor MannikkaRead More »
Synopsis
Single frame exposures of words, color.(imdb)
Cinema of the signifier
When we watch films we see and hear representations of things, sights and sounds not present at the moment of viewing. However, we choose to take part in the illusion of cinema limited by its rules and technical deficiencies. Word Movie is just a little joke of a film that makes us aware of this.
On the screen you see words, another type of signifier, flashing and on the soundtrack you hear those same words read out loud. The only point this film makes is that there really is no difference between the photographic signifier, or in other words the image on the screen, and words flashing.(imdb)Read More »
Margaret Wyndham Chase wants to run for governor and approaches Eddie Ace, local political kingmaker/fringe gangster, to get his support. Ace’s belief is that “beautiful women and politics do not mix” and he declines to help. She decides to play the game rough-and-tough without him, but he shows he is even rougher-and-tougher, and she gives up and withdraws from the race. But Ace has fallen in love with her at about the 45-minute mark and, with his new-found ardor for clean politics, he makes some (unclean) manipulations behind the scenes, and she is picked to run on an independent good-government ticket.Read More »
Based on actual events. Brandon Teena is the popular new guy in a tiny Nebraska town. He hangs out with the guys, drinking, cussing, and bumper surfing, and he charms the young women, who’ve never met a more sensitive and considerate young man. Life is good for Brandon, now that he’s one of the guys and dating hometown beauty Lana. However, he’s forgotten to mention one important detail. It’s not that he’s wanted in another town for GTA and other assorted crimes, but that Brandon Teena was actually born a woman named Teena Brandon. When his best friends make this discovery, Brandon’s life is ripped apart by betrayal, humiliation, rape, and murder.Read More »
Gambler John Merrick (Frank Lovejoy) is the head of a bookie syndicate and the newspaper is crusading against him and the rackets, primarily because Merrick is in love with Felice Stuart (Joan Weldon), daughter of the newspaper publisher who can not break up the romance through persuasion. A senate committee investigating crime gets involved, the racketeers, other than Merrick who is a “nice guy”, strike back and kill a reporter, and Merrick’s own son, Jerry Merrick (Robert Arthur), commits suicide. Merrick, to his own disadvantage, helps bring down the syndicate. Since it is in black-and-white-, deals with crime and was an American-made film, some will call it “film noir” since that seems to be the current guidelines for putting a film in that, at one time limited-and-defined genre. It ain’t, and neither are most of the others currently so classified.Read More »