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Indie Film Indie Film Celluloid Mavericks:A History …

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Indie Film Celluloid Mavericks:A History of American Independent Film By Greg Merritt (Thunder’s Mouth Press,416 pages, $18.95) Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film By Emanuel Levy, (NYU Press, 565 pages, $34.95) Sundancing By John Anderson (Spike Trade, 288 pages, $12.50) But is that what really happened? A core group of doubters suspects
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Waking the Dead Filmmaker Keith Gordon Bucks the Hollywood System

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Keith Gordon At 17, he played the young Bob Fosse in All That Jazz. The following year, he costarred in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill as the son of philandering socialite Angie Dickinson. Gordon continued to act through most of the 80s, in everything from The Legend of Billie Jean to the Rodney Dangerfield
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Mission to Mars As Litmus Test; Pro Wrestling Documentary Beyond the Mat

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Beyond the Mat Directed by Barry Blaustein The Oscar-nominated pro wrestling documentary Beyond the Mat is terrific when first-time director Barry Blaustein stays out of his own way and lets the pictures tell the story. But he can’t resist injecting himself into the material. The film begins with his nostalgic memories of growing up watching
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Treasure Island Treasure Island Directed by Scott …

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Spectres of the Spectrum Directed by Craig Baldwin What is film storytelling made of? The short answer, of course, is pictures. But those pictures are chosen by somebody (or a group of somebodies). And behind every choice lies a set of assumptions–cultural, racial, sociological, financial. Which is a long way of saying that most of
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BookWars Bookwars Directed by Jason Rosette …

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Bookwars Directed by Jason Rosette In BookWars, a superb nonfiction film by first-time feature director Jason Rosette, books are more than sources of knowledge. They are merchandise that’s appraised, bought and sold. They’re also artifacts, sometimes clean and intact but more often damaged, whose condition at the point of sale says plenty about the conscientiousness
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Reindeer Games Reindeer Games Directed by John …

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Reindeer Games Directed by John Frankenheimer "Quit talking and shoot the motherfucker!" barked a guy a couple of rows behind me at a screening of Reindeer Games, inviting murmurs of appreciation from the crowd and a couple of conspiratorial whoops. You know a film’s in trouble when somebody shouts out what he thinks the audience
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Wonder Boys Wonder Boys directed by …

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Wonder Boys directed by Curtis Hanson Shaggy, funny, perverse and overflowing with life, Wonder Boys is a rare Hollywood film based on a respected literary source that gets just about everything right. It preserves the essence of Michael Chabon’s book, which is about the half-demented, half-pathetic goings-on at a college literary festival in Pittsburgh. More
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"Neo-Noir" "Neo-Noir" The characters in film noir …

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

"Neo-Noir" The characters in film noir smoke, but they don’t have to; the genre itself smokes for them. It smolders and fumes. The city, seen in long-shot, in black and white or in desaturated color, looks like a dying campfire, its pinprick lights shimmering like embers. It’s fun to trace the influence of noir past
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Ash Fights Industry Cowardice; DiCaprio in The Beach; Geronimo

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Guns R Us The independently funded hostage drama Pups, which opens at the Sony Village East this Friday, nearly became one of the best films you never got a chance to see. The reason: film industry cowardice. Two days later, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did their Terminator number at Columbine High, triggering mass panic
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Simpatico Simpatico directed by Matthew Warchus …

Written by Matt Zoller Seitz on . Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

That such film-buff speculation rarely yields a disappointing image is proof of the actors’ low-key excellence. They each possess the chameleonic Method skills of Brando and De Niro, though they’re not always called upon to use them. Their resourcefulness and what-the-hell sense of adventure is a legacy of 70s filmmaking, and proof of their thoroughly
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