Category Archives: Movies

December 11

Art and Insanity: Séraphine Louis, Naïve Genius

posted by

On the 11th of December 1942, a naïve painter, Séraphine Louis, also known as “Séraphine de Senlis“, died in a Villers-sous-Erquery hospital in northern France, although according to her mentor, Wilhelm Uhde, she died at Clermont’s lunatic asylum in 1934. It is questionable then whether Uhde wanted to withdraw from being associated with the mentally ill painter or […]

»»
December 05

GORDON’S ALIVE!

posted by

“World coming to end! Strange new planet rushing toward Earth! Only miracle can save us…” (Flash Gordon) There are movies that, like wine, get only better with time. Or, perhaps they stay the same all along, and it is only our perception of them that changes? One such movie is undeniably Flash Gordon. Released exactly […]

»»
November 25

Mishima Yukio: The Last Samurai

posted by

On the 25th of November 1970, Mishima Yukio, a Japanese writer, actor and film director, killed himself in the traditional Japanese warrior manner of seppuku in Tokyo, Japan. His suicide shocked equally the Japanese and people worldwide. It is believed that Mishima’s suicide was a premeditated act determined by certain political but also personal and […]

»»
November 13

David ‘Carbine’ Williams: From Prison to Hollywood

posted by

There are quite a few stories of criminals, whose exceptional intelligence gets them out of prison. We are talking here about characters such as, for example, Frank Abagnale, whose life story is probably best known from the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can. However, today, on the 114th anniversary of his birth, we recall […]

»»
October 06

Bette Davis: Bring the Bitch Back!

posted by

On the 6th of October 1989, actress Bette Davies died of breast cancer at the age of 81 in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. On her Hollywood tombstone, the inscription reads: She did it the hard way, summing up a woman’s lifetime of struggle for perfection but also survival. Most of this struggle was by […]

»»
September 29

Breaking Boundaries in TV Drama

posted by

On the 29th of September 2013, the long-awaited final episode of American drama Breaking Bad (2008-2013) was aired to U.S. television audiences. Vince Gilligan’s AMC TV series turned out to be a complex and complicated work of cinematic art. The most striking first impression is the film’s atmospheric intensity. The warm hues of the American southwest landscape with […]

»»
September 25

Aesthetic Delirium in Jack Smith’s ‘Flaming Creatures’

posted by

On the 25th of September 1989, American filmmaker, photographer, performance artist, and pioneer of underground cinema Jack Smith died in New York City, New York. From the early 1960s through most of the 1980s, he was a key figure in American avant-garde film and theatre. His works, marked by a deceptively playful camp sensibility, combine […]

»»