Matthew Cole Levine
  • Fiction
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Archive
  • About

The Curse of the Cat People

2/27/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
There are countless cases of Hollywood producers meddling with directors' artistic vision, as the crude demands of commercialism ruin ambitious creative endeavors. But it must be admitted that, sometimes, the push-and-pull between bottom-line moneymen and iconoclastic artists results in fascinatingly rich cinematic texts. Case in point: The Curse of the Cat People, which was marketed by RKO Studios as a sequel to the 1942 chiller Cat People, though the filmmakers—among them producer Val Lewton, directors Robert Wise and Gunther von Fritsch, and screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen—instead created a fantastic world ruled by childlike imagination, as well as a bewitching ode to the power of storytelling. 

Read More
0 Comments

The Wizard of Oz

1/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Not many movies can claim to be a beloved landmark in our pop-culture consciousness as well as a personal favorite of such iconoclasts as Salman Rushdie and David Lynch. Such is the paradoxical nature of The Wizard of Oz, which is both a masterpiece of lavish, big-budget entertainment and a nightmarish journey into the uncanny—a shining example of how movies make our deepest childhood dreams and terrors come true. I remember first seeing The Wizard of Oz at five or six years old and being unable to sleep for days because of the Wicked Witch and her Flying Monkeys; even now, when the green-hued witch appears in a red fireball to destroy the peace of Munchkinland, or when her devilish monkeys flit across the ground and abscond with Dorothy into the sky, I shudder at such a primal image of innocence besieged by monstrous evil.

Read More
0 Comments

    Archives

    October 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    September 2021
    February 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018

    Categories

    All
    Action
    African Film
    American Cinema
    Anime
    British Film
    Classics
    Climate Change
    Comedy
    Crime
    Cult
    Dance
    Documentary
    Drama
    Ethnography
    European Film
    Fantasy
    Filipino Cinema
    French Cinema
    Historical
    Horror
    Iranian Cinema
    Japanese Cinema
    Middle Eastern Cinema
    Monster Movies
    New Releases
    Pre-Code Cinema
    Romance
    Russian Cinema
    Samurai Movies
    Science Fiction
    Silent Movies
    Superheroes
    Surrealism
    Thriller/Suspense
    Top 100
    Turkish Cinema
    War
    Western

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Fiction
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Archive
  • About