Away from Her

Apr 21, 2014 — A real-life prison uprising inspired this two-fisted tale directed by Don Siegel, who would go on to make many more films about men in extreme situations.

Nov 5, 2013 — The author’s colorful interactions with the famously crusty filmmaker.

Sep 4, 2013 — Only Ernst Lubitsch got the great comedian to be as funny on the big screen as he was on the radio.

Mar 25, 2013 — Robert Bresson’s prison-break story is a tale of religious faith and a work of striking purity.

Oct 4, 2011 — Pier Paolo Pasolini’s work demonstrates an aversion for the present while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of escaping it, and thus the need to confront it.

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...

May 26, 2011 — Last month, a new art-house theater opened here in Austin, the Violet Crown Cinema. (Our city has several pet names, and one of them is the City of the Violet Crown. Why it’s called that has been completely lost to...

Sep 2, 2010 — This year’s ATP New York—the stateside iteration of the British independent music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties—at the Catskills resort hotel Kutsher’s Country Club, is just a day away. Starting September 3, ATP will begin its annual weekend blowout (this year...

Jun 22, 2010 — Sitting on a hard drive here in the office is the unedited footage of an interview we shot here with Peter Brunette on April 26, for an upcoming release of Senso. The release had been delayed, but I told Peter that since...

Jun 16, 2010 — What seems so extraordinary to me about Mystery Train, watching it again twenty years after its deadpan arrival, is not just how fresh and vivid—how utterly timeless—it remains but the extent to which it truly embraces both the myth and...