Posterized: The Wondrous Work of Ruth E Carter

For today's Posterized, a special birthday treat. We've only covered themes, sub-genres, directors and actors in this series so today a first... a costume designer. Today is the 60th birthday of Oscar winner Ruth E Carter (Black Panther) and she's designed so many important pictures over the years (including multiple Spike Lee classics) that she's definitely worth celebrating in this form.

We're still not over her bizarre Oscar snub for Dolemite Is My Name last season but let's look back on the whole feature film career in movie poster form.

How many of her 51 feature films have you seen? 

Click to read more ...

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

by Cláudio Alves

In a career full of little gimlets of cinematic madness, The Lady from Shanghai is Orson Welles' most demented work. With an incomprehensible plot and a cast willing to go to the extremes of grotesque, it's a waking nightmare on celluloid. Through surrealism, Hollywood's most famous enfant terrible untethered himself from the demands of audiences and studios alike, spitting on their face as he went about it. The result is a film noir in the process of imploding unto itself, unencumbered by reality it projects shrapnel of shock and provocation every which way.

Beautiful stars turn into fleshy gargoyles and the dialogue gets increasingly florid, like drunken poetry coming directly from the pits of hell. Appropriately enough, an atmosphere of apocalyptic nihilism infects the hearts of everyone involved, onscreen characters and offscreen audiences alike. And then, this melodrama for the end of the world explodes into an ecstasy of beauty. As the lunatic plots converge and the characters reach their nasty apotheosis, Welles' venomous flower of a film loses itself in a hall of mirrors…

Click to read more ...

Night of the Linker

• Los Angeles Times Thoughtful terrific interview with Merrit Wever on HBO's Run and Netflix's Unbelieveable
• Vanity Fair Brad Pitt teamed up with the Property Bros? What?
• Florence Pugh has a message for all the toxic "fans" out there -- it's not your place to comment to bully celebrities about who they love! Hear hear.

Roger Deakins, Broadway woes, Natalie Wood, Disney furloughs, Beetlejuice, Missi Pyle in Ma, and more after the jump...

Click to read more ...

The bruised authenticity of "In a Lonely Place"

by Cláudio Alves

There's something deeply unsettling about finding yourself scared of someone you love. Part of it is the admittance of personal failure to oneself for the frightened person is the one that let themselves become vulnerable. To love is to let defenses fall and lay splayed at the mercy of another, believing our beloved will never abuse the gift of openness they have been given. We hope against hope that this trust is well-founded but sometimes it isn't. To realize you're scared may lead you to accept loneliness as a companion or else learn to live with fear. Like a toxic cocktail of arsenic and vinegar, that second option is a difficult thing to swallow and can be deadly. It often is. 

Such nightmares of heartbreak and panic have rarely been better captured in celluloid than in Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place…

Click to read more ...

The Smackdown Returns. Which Years Next?

The Smackdowns will return.

Happy Smackdown to you Happy Smackdown to you
Happy Smackdown you actressexuals,
Happy Smackdown to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

After StinkyLulu graciously let us continue/revive the series here seven years ago (eep!) we've done 26 episodes: 1941, 1943, 1944, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1994, 1995, 2001, and 2003, and concurrently with Oscar races as they happened 2016, 2017, and 2018. 

So, where to now? Let's look at our options...

Click to read more ...