The Criterion Collection
Short Takes
Jun 8, 2018 — On a rainy Saturday in May that called to mind the foggy Pacific Northwest atmospheres of Twin Peaks, a crowd gathered at the music venue Brooklyn Steel for a journey through the world of David Lynch. Celebrating its third annual...
Short Takes
May 23, 2017 — Continuing my trip through Cannes history, today I’m focusing on one of the most celebrated works of Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni, who became an international sensation partly thanks to the booing and heckling he endured at the Cannes premiere of...
Essays
Dec 14, 2016 — Pseudodocumentary collides with pure fantasy in Federico Fellini’s intricately layered portrait of his adopted home.
Aug 31, 2011 — French sociologist Roger Caillois proposed that every form of human recreation could be placed somewhere on a continuum between two terms: ludus and paidia. The first of these represents games defined almost wholly by their rule systems. Crossword puzzles and...
Jun 30, 2008 — The idea of self-fashioning—of deliberately taking the raw materials of one’s body and mind and transforming them into a work of art—has been with us at least since the Renaissance. Yet no one, not even Oscar Wilde, has so rigorously...
Essays
Apr 26, 1999 — At some point in their lives, probably every sleepless person has switched on the TV in the wee hours of a weekend morning and chanced upon a fishing show. Invariably, a beefy, half-forgotten retired athlete shares a boat with some...
On the Channel
Nov 13, 2024 — Spend the holiday season with the Pope of Trash, the Master of Suspense, MTV Productions’s turn-of-the-century thrills, and Columbia Pictures’s pre-Code button-pushers.
Aug 23, 2022 — Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, a western depicting Black cowboy heroes, allowed two of the industry’s most significant Black stars to reorient themselves as artists.
On the Channel
Aug 8, 2021 — This month on the Channel, dive into the films of John Huston, Jean Harlow, Josephine Baker, and other cinematic icons.
Sep 26, 2018 — The completion of the project Welles began in the 1970s is one of the major cinematic events of the year.