Jocelyne LaGarde @100: "Hawaii"

by Cláudio Alves

This year, there was much talk about Lily Gladstone as one of the few Native Americans ever nominated at the Oscars. This focus on indigenous representation makes one's mind wander further into Academy history. After all, who was the first? Jocelyne LaGarde was her name, and today marks a century since her birth. The film that earned such honor was one of those 1960s overblown epics, the historical farrago of Hawaii by George Roy Hill, whose future work would stray away from such stodginess. Yet, to dismiss the piece as colonial apologia like some of its harsher critics do is unjust. The picture's much stranger than that, cruel and miserable, willing to see missionary work as the destroyer of paradise, a tragedy marred by the kind of spiritual bleakness no luscious island vista can conceal…

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"The Exorcist" Prologue: Buzzing Perfection

by Cláudio Alves

Between William Friedkin's death, a special spooky season re-release to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and a new sequel, The Exorcist feels like a hot topic. Then again, the 1973 movie is hard to shake off, even half a century after its original release. Indeed, one can count it among the most influential horrors in film history, a classic whose legacy lives on, scaring, maybe even scarring, generations long after it first shocked audiences. And yet, when discussing it, most people focus on the nightmare of a possessed child and her terrified mother, the doubt-ridden priest who regains his faith confronting evil beyond belief, or perhaps the freezing room where domesticity rots into hell on earth. 

For me, though, the best part of The Exorcist is its prologue, perhaps the picture's most divisive passage…

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Bergman in '57

by Cláudio Alves

Ingmar Bergman is my favorite filmmaker of all-time. That being said, I'm aware of the difficult reputation his cinema has earned over the decades. As Nick Taylor wrote in his fabulous piece about Harriet Andersson, few directors have so masterfully captured the overwhelming pain of unhappiness as Ingmar Bergman did. In his films, God is either dead or a giant stony-faced spider, a monster intent on causing suffering to everyone, making for a cinematic cosmos where agony is the most universal experience of all. It's heavy stuff which justly earns the fame of depressing art, though I'd argue that there's more to Bergman's cinema than constant unbearable ache.

Just look at his 1957 masterpieces, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries…

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Horror Actoring: Max von Sydow in "The Exorcist"

by Jason Adams

"I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us."

Re-watching The Exorcist this weekend for the gazillionth time -- but for the first while under the Coronavirus quarantine here in New York -- was an interesting experiment. Like a lot of you I've been locked up in my apartment now for three days, just watching movies and binging TV shows and doing whatever I can to avoid looking at the news (or god forbid Twitter). But still it's proven impossible not to see each successive thing through the lens of now -- the characters in whatever I'm watching will go to a bar or hug and I will wince, thinking "Socially distance yourselves dammit!" before I can even catch myself.

One week ago (a lifetime in itself, at this point) Max von Sydow died and Nathaniel wrote up a lovely memorial and asked me if I'd like to switch up our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series for an actor who we loved like an actress, and one who did his fair share of time mucking about in the horror genre. Max had a face for dallying with Death, be it over a chess board or a little girl's bedside; as gaunt and serious as the grave, as a medieval plague etching, but also capable and strong enough to smile, knowingly, back at it. Max Von Sydow always looked like he knew things he wasn't telling us...

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Links

EW Scarlett Johansson covers the magazine and talks Black Widow
Guardian Guy Lodge curates a Max von Sydow mini-fest for us
Disney+ Frozen 2 is now streaming three months ahead of schedule.
EW Judi Dench delighted by her Razzie nomination for Cats
Coming Soon new Wonder Woman 1984 motion poster

Coronavirus 

The New Yorker "what the coronavirus crisis means for watching movies"
The Oatmeal "How to touch your face less" practical advice for a pandemic time
IndieWire AMC and Regal are limiting capacity to 50% at their movie theaters to help stop the quick spread of Coronavirus
IndieWire Cannes is now waiting until April 15th to decide on whether to cancel Cannes in May (French movie theaters have now closed)
Deadline Emmy campaigning forced to change due to industry shut downs and fears