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Riotsville, USA 2022
"I know a disproportionate number of people who have read Nixonland over the last decade, and as an inveterate Nixonian I was pleased to see the great man himself make an appearance at the end” is an almost self-parodic level of on-brand for me to use as an interview opener. Anyway, here’s an interview with director Sierra Pettengill.
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Cusp 2021
I don’t know why this link isn’t working properly but there filmmakermagazine.com/111214-sundance-2021-critics-notebook-vadim-rizov-and-abby-sun-cusp-and-close/
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Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist 2008
A couple of years ago I got the chance to write an essay about NYC geographical representation onscreen, how this movie is the champion of that and so on. Just re-read it and it seems to hold up OK, so here it is.
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David Byrne's American Utopia 2020
In between songs, Byrne gives a few speeches—all good-intentioned, some cornball. One is about Kurt Schwitters and Hugo Ball; Byrne quotes a few lines from the latter about resisting fascism and gets a nice round of applause from the crowd. Later on, he urges people to vote, noting that local elections only boast a 20% turnout. “We gotta do better than 20%,” he says, and the crowd cheers (what were they going to do, boo?). The intent in projecting a…
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Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese 2019
"I definitely sat right up in my seat when Michael Murphy appeared as 'Rep. Jack Tanner,' to testify to the profound influence Dylan had on him once Tanner’s good friend Jimmy Carter recommended he attend one of the shows. Scorsese has a cameo in Tanner on Tanner, Robert Altman’s second edition of the fictional politician’s saga, so there’s a direct connection—but still, it’s not entirely clear what the joke is here, especially since the dialogue is in no way funny…
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Death of a Nation 2018
"To thoroughly unpack the falsehoods, rhetorical sleights of hand, goalpost shifting, and general bad-faith arguments would require a monograph. One example will suffice: To prove that Hitler wasn’t a 'right-winger' but truly belongs to the left, D’Souza notes that the dictator is often deemed right-wing because he’s perceived as homophobic. (Well, yes.) But in fact, that’s incorrect, because Hitler tolerated homosexuals in the brownshirts as long as they were good fighters; ergo, he wasn’t homophobic, and by extension he’s not…
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Personal Truth 2017
“You’re being lied to, Susan. You’re being lied to on a daily basis by the entire mainstream media. Twenty years in this town [editor’s note: Hollywood, naturally], surrounded by all these showbiz phonies, and you can’t see that?”
“They’re not the ones lying, it’s you. Everything you say now is a lie.”
John fixed her with a cold stare. “Are you going to tell me Pizzagate is a lie?”
Susan fell suddenly silent. Her two decades in Hollywood had taught her plenty about the sexual perversions of the rich and famous. “I don’t know about Pizzagate,” she said quietly.
Watch here.
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Faith of Our Fathers 2015
"The Pure Flix Entertainment production company recently rocked the Christian film market with the noxious overperformer God’s Not Dead. Now, on the heels of this year’s less successful Do You Believe?, comes Faith Of Our Fathers. The film is stocked with a relative supergroup of participants from the Christian market both above and below the line: Like most of the cast, director Carey Scott is a regular actor in such films, and one of the editors, Alex Kendrick, was (along…
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God's Not Dead 2014
In the small town world of God's Not Dead, you're either a Christian or you're not, and if you're not, you have to explain why. You can't simply "be" an atheist, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or a happy-go-lucky person who just doesn't care; if you're not a Christian, you probably secretly "hate God" (as it turns out Kevin Sorbo, avowed atheist, does) or are otherwise activiely antagonistic to what everyone knows must be true, even if they don't…