Author Archives: Eric Thirteen

Celebrating October with something old. Two films about people outcasted from society and the roles the are relegated to play. The invention of cinema in Paris. Or Europe. Or, you know, New York. Film was born wherever you want to say it was born. The era of the movie palace. Keeping Americans from watching foreign films. A period within a period within The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Getting to the bottom of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. The often cited rise of television pushed film exhibition along – but, in often overlooked ways, film exhibition caused television to innovate as well. It’s the birth of repertory! (or: the re-run) Continue reading →

A deep dive into Technicolor. The experiment inspired by The Love Witch – what can be learned about technicolor by watch back to back? Plus, how Technicolor became a powerful influence on the style of the 1950s and how it’s remembered today. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a 1953 movie filmed on three strip technicolor film and processed using Technicolor’s dye imbibition development process. The Love Witch, a 2016 movie painstakingly recreating the feeling of 1950s cinema, using many of the same techniques of the 1950s, and shot on 35mm film – but importantly, without the ability to utility long-obsolete technicolor film or processing. Bonus theme for people who don’t care about any of this nonsense: decade separate contrasts on feminism! First up, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes provides an amazing example of spectacle technicolor Continue reading →

Independent, and maybe Independent As Fuck. One of the all-time greatest comic book adaptations, Ghost World. It seems illegal to watch these actors in this film. A debate on whether or not every single person in Ghost World is fucking boring. An extended exercise in writing a logline and what it can tell us about about films that refuse to be put in a box. Todd Solondz’s film Wiener Dog as a collection of stories connected to the presence of the eponymous doggo who goes from owner to owner. Eric refuses to speak french, even for Bresson. The impossibility of Dawn Wiener and the Todd Solondz multiverse. A case for every Solondz film’s gallery-quality. A whimsical anthology gets two wieners out of a possible five. In conversation: a twenty-first century meditation on dick jokes contained within podcast descriptions. In a special bonus chapter, a human continues writing lengthy descriptions for the purposes of robot organization based on outdated assumptions about search engines. Continue reading →

Enter the world of Wong Kar-wai with Chungking Express and the spiritual successor Fallen Angels. A day and night Hong Kong pair from a director who should have been on Double Feature a long time ago. Continue reading →