Category Archives: cinema

dig the critics

Sight and Sound. Winter 73/4.

Héctor Martínez, Alejandro Jodorowsky and dead rabbits.

Alejandro and Brontis Jodorowsky.

El Topo. Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1970.

catching up with the chaplins

The freshly knighted Sir Chas poses with the family: Annette, Josephine, Oona, Christopher, Geraldine and Jane. March 4, 1975.

adolph zukor in 3d

Adolph Zukor subjects himself to being filmed by a 3-D camera for some sort of promotional film.

one plus one

Mick Jagger in One Plus One. Godard. 1968.

buñuel directs

Luis Buñuel directs Fernando Rey and Delphine Seyrig in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. 1972.

f for orson

Orson looking a little stiff in The Immortal Story. 1968.

way back

Fred Ott‘s Sneeze, the first close-up ever made photographed by W.K.L. Dickson at the Edison “Black Maria” studio—at right—Annabelle-the-Dancer in the Serpentine, pictured by Edison for the Kinetoscope.

advertising

1955.

cover art

March 1966.

Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion. Roman Polanski. 1965.

andrew sarris is dead

Influential American film critic, author, Pauline Kael nemesis and editor of the original English language edition of Cahiers du Cinéma, Andrew Sarris died today at age 83. He is survived by his wife, with whom he is pictured above, noted film theorist Molly Haskell.

A number of his books and articles are favorites of mine that I have gone back to repeatedly over the years. If it were possible to wear the grooves out of a book as one can a record, I would have done so with the Preston Sturges chapter in his 1998 book “You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet”: The American Talking Film, History and Memory, 1927-1949. He’ll be missed.

Check out the New York Times obit here, his Top Ten film lists for every year from 1958 to 2006 here, or a podcast of a charming discussion between Sarris and his wife here.