Good Sam

Nov 24, 2009 — For twenty years, the remains of television’s self-proclaimed golden age lay dormant in the vaults of the commercial networks. I remember traveling, as a young researcher for NBC, to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where the old shows of the fifties...

Nov 18, 2009 — Wes Anderson’s surprising latest endeavor, the stop-motion Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox, is out in theaters now and garnering terrific reviews. We thought we’d catch up with our friend and ask him some questions about this charming labor of love,...

Nov 11, 2009 — As a member of the Harlem Amateur Players, Robeson had heard a great deal about Brutus Jones from the Playhouse’s set designer, Cleo Throckmorton. Moved by Robeson’s performances with the Manhattan-based troupe, Throckmorton was the first to approach him about...

Nov 2, 2009 — The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!—Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first it’s not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a...

Oct 27, 2009 — Who speaks of Howards End these days? Who expounds on the virtues of this magnificent drama, whose traditional style seems almost as distant as its Edwardian setting? Seen today, years past its 1992 release, it strikes one as not only...

Oct 19, 2009 — Though known primarily for her wildly varied, continent-hopping features (Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala, Vanity Fair, The Namesake), Indian director Mira Nair has for the past three decades also been forging a parallel career of short filmmaking. Both fiction (Migration, How...

Oct 18, 2009 —  So many worlds stream in from every direction in Monsoon Wedding that it comes to seem as if the whole globe is converging on a single family home in New Delhi: relatives from Houston, from Australia, from Dubai (“Muscat, actually”);...

Oct 12, 2009 — Man is Not a Bird: Flying Away The term “independent cinema” has lost its punch in recent years, from overuse and misapplication. One need only look to the films of Dušan Makavejev for a reminder of its true meaning. This...

Sep 22, 2009 — A new era in popular music deserves a new era in filmmaking—that’s the basis of the perfect, fortuitous match-up between rock and cinema in D.A. Pennebaker’s concert film.

Sep 15, 2009 — Words are the trained fleas in David Mamet’s sidewalk circus—dirty words, often bloodstained, usually swarming, that perform their acrobatic stunts for gawkers who will likely get their pockets picked. That’s the reputation, anyhow. More than thirty years after he made...