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Twig The Wonder Kid: David Bowie’s “Drive In Saturday”
“Not only is it arguably the finest track on Aladdin Sane,”Drive-In Saturday” is also the great forgotten Bowie single…(it is) one of Bowie’s most underrated classics.”–Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie– “When the chorus came around there it was again, “Twig the wonder kid”, and I thought, blimey. I remember being absolutely bowled over and… Continue reading
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Elvis at Fifty: The 1985 Gregg Geller Supervised Elvis Presley Albums
“Elvis Presley was the person who awakened me to music and records when I was very young, and there had always been all these things I had dreamed of doing if I ever got the chance.”- -Gregg Geller- Elvis Presley was the most important and successful artist of the 20th century. He was also the… Continue reading
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KING CREOLE in the Netherlands
A few vintage Dutch clippings I clipped and saved marking KING CREOLE, starring Elvis Presley, playing theatrically in the Netherlands throughout 1959/1960. A film and performance that means a lot to me. Continue reading
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The Collapse of an 8mm Amateur: Krzysztof Kieslowski’s CAMERA BUFF (1979)
More than a decade before he mesmerized audiences with masterful works like The Decalogue (1988), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), and the Three Colors Trilogy (1993-1994), Polish-born filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski had mainly worked in documentary shorts. While some of these shorts had been fictional works, it was as a documentary filmmaker that Kieslowski had… Continue reading
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Frankie Teardrop is Dead. Viva Frankie Teardrop. Buddy Giovinazzo’s American Nightmares (Combat Shock)
“Frankie teardrop,Frankie put the gun to his head.Frankie’s dead,Frankie’s lying in hell.We’re all Frankies,We’re all lying in hell”. -Alan Vega, Martin Rev- One of the great films of the eighties, Buddy Giovinazzo’s ferocious and visionary Combat Shock remains one of the most visceral works of American cinema ever created. The history of Combat Shock should… Continue reading
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“Some Thought They Couldn’t Die”: Gordon Parks Jr’s THOMASINE AND BUSHROD (1974)
The strange saga of filmmaker Gordon Parks Junior’s Thomasine and Bushrod (1974) came to a tragic end on an April morning in 1979 when a small plane he was traveling in crashed into a Kenya mountainside. More than a decade later Parks’ father, famed photographer, poet, and filmmaker Gordon Parks, remembered that the crash had… Continue reading
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A Week Beats A Year: In Tribute To Toshio Matsumoto and FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (1969)
Toshio Matsumoto, one of the great cinematic rebels and non-conformists, passed away this month back in 2017 at the age of 85. Matsumoto was a fierce artist and boundary pusher who challenged his viewers as much as he enlightened and entertained them. Here is a short piece I wrote about his absolutely breathtaking 1969 work… Continue reading
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Blackouts, Berkowitz and Billy ‘Fuckin’ Bagg: THE VIOLATION OF CLAUDIA (1977)
Most moviegoers back in the early eighties wouldn’t have blinked an eye at the casting but, for those in the know, Sharon Mitchell’s brief bit as “2nd Nurse” in William Lustig’s ferocious 1980 masterpiece Maniac was a small but significant milestone for the both of them. The New Jersey native Mitchell was just shy of… Continue reading
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“The Crows are Laughin.” Visiting Two SCARECROW Filming Locations
In the fall of 2018, I spent my final day in Denver visiting two shooting locations of one of my favorite films…Jerry Schatzberg’s magnificent 1973 work Scarecrow. What was once the Turk’s Supper Club at 539 West 43rd is still standing…abandoned but I felt the ghosts of Hackman and Pacino as young men everywhere around… Continue reading
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NOUCHKA VAN BRAKEL’S Van de koele meren des doods (THE COOL LAKES OF DEATH) ON BLU-RAY AND DVD FROM CULT EPICS
At the turn of the last century, the growing city of Lawrence, Kansas, was still a relatively rural area located in the very center of The United States. Lawrence was suffering a bit of an identity crisis grappling with modern technology in 1909 when a new streetcar system made life a little easier for the… Continue reading