Cinemadope
Cinemadope: Missing the Warm and Fuzzies?
At the Headfort School in Kells, Ireland, two of the school’s most popular teachers are getting ready to retire. The husband and wife team have been educating and inspiring children for almost half a century, and their example — and what the possibility of their...
Cinemadope: Musical Bandits Plan Their Escape Tour
When September hits, the kids head back to school — and for film fans, that can be a great thing. One of the many film events that are hosted on area campuses is The German Film Series, presented by the Amherst College department of German on irregular Thursdays in...
Cinemadope: CAAAAAN’T Miss this one
For all its ham-fistedness, the world of Star Trek has done an impressive job of putting important issues in front of its audience over the years. And while the first series was set sometime in the 2200s, it all began, in our world, during the late 1960s — and Star...
Cinemadope: Whose Streets? Life in Ferguson after fatal shooting of unarmed, black teen by white officer
One of the more disturbing things about cinema is the establishment of who is a hero and who is a villain. Most often this looks like a white man taking down a non-white man. The specifics may change with the era — from the villain being African-American to South...
Cinemadope: Human Smuggling Just to Get By
Shelburne Falls Pothole Pictures continues its summer movie series with something frosty: a screening of Frozen River. This 2008 film, written and directed by Courtney Hunt, was the hit of the festival circuit when it debuted, winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance...
Cinemadope: Actor-in-Chief, Reagan forever changed the role of US President (Spoiler! Not for the Better)
With the ongoing avalanche of reporting on Russia and that nation’s relationship with our current president, it feels almost quaint to look back on the days of the Reagan era. Certainly there was international intrigue then, but today, the jelly beans and faux...
Cinemadope: How Reagan Forever Changed The Presidency
With the ongoing avalanche of reporting on Russia and that nation’s relationship with our current president, it feels almost quaint to look back on the days of the Reagan era. Certainly there was international intrigue then, but today, the jelly beans and faux...
Cinemadope: It Takes Two To Go Down In A Bloody Shootout
For as long as stories have been told, they have been told about pairs: Odysseus and Penelope, Arthur and Merlin, Bugs and Elmer. It’s a rare tale that doesn’t focus, in some way, on that essential human desire to connect. It can bring us to ecstasy or despair —...
Cinemadope: Summer Cinema Slam in Brattleboro
Summer Cinema Slam 2017 is taking place at the New England Youth Theater in Brattleboro this Saturday night. Featuring an all-Vermont slate of films and artists — the bill includes four shorts and one hour-long feature, with musical act Hungrytown providing ambiance...
Cinemadope: That Time the MoMA Refused to Return Nazi-Stolen Art
My first exposure to Egon Schiele came via Deane G. Keller, an artist and professor whose figure drawing classes remain one of my most lasting memories of art school. We had been working on some hand studies when he suggested I might enjoy the Austrian artist’s work,...
Cinemadope: ‘Wanna-Bes Need Not Apply,’ Documentary on Madonna’s Back-up Voguers
“Wimps and Wanna-Be’s need not apply!” That was the tagline of a print ad announcing an open audition for “FIERCE Male Dancers” who wanted to earn a spot on Madonna’s controversial, ground-breaking Blond Ambition Tour in 1990. It would have been a dream job for any...
Cinemadope: A ‘Damned Dirty’ Future Classic
At the risk of sounding impossibly out-of-touch, let me tell you something: I sure do miss Dialing for Dollars. That syndicated TV program — in which an afternoon movie was chopped into a few hundred pieces, allowing host George Allen to pick a number out of the area...
Cinemadope: I Like Mike, Michael Keaton doesn’t get enough credit
In film, there have always been levels of stardom. There are those stars whose wattage is measured in tooth whiteness, and whose films are expected to earn many millions based more or less on their mere presence — your Pitts, your Cruises, your Lawrences. Then there...
Cinemadope: Better Than Finding A 45-Year-Old Porno
Many years ago, I found myself deep in the basement of the old Pleasant Street Theater (now the location of McLadden’s pub in Northampton), cleaning out some old storage lockers. From one of them, I pulled out a dented, dusty, film can, a flat circle of metal about 15...
Cinemadope: Musical Evolution
There have been many eulogies given over the years for the American Movie Musical. And while the popularity of the form is certainly not what it was during its heyday — superhero movies, with their own kinds of acrobatics and wish-fulfillment scenarios, seem to have...
Cinemadope: Pedaling Up a Mountain While Playing the Keyboard
This week, bicyclists (okay, you power walkers can come, too) get a film festival devoted to that sense of freedom when the Ciclismo Classico Bike Travel Film Festival comes to the Academy of Music in Northampton for a Thursday evening screening. Now in its eighth...
Cinemadope: City Mouse, Rat Film exposes who the rodents really are in Baltimore
Fans of filmmaker John Waters might be familiar with the director’s odd fascination with rats. They crop up with some regularity in his life and work — from the original poster for 1977’s Desperate Living, which featured a cooked rat on a restaurant dinner plate, to...
Cinemadope: Mad Max ‘Black & Chrome’ Escapes Hollywood’s Color Crutch
There has been a trend in Hollywood filmmaking that, for the last decade or so, has steadily changed the look of our blockbusters. It’s a pervasive change, but one that has happened gradually enough that many people aren’t even aware that it has been happening, quite...
Cinemadope: Northampton Movie Night
An evening in Northampton has never been boring. Meet your date for a cocktail or a glass of wine, move on to dinner at any number of downtown bites, catch a concert, go to an art opening. Stroll the streets, duck into the renovated Pulaski Park, circle Paradise Pond...
Cinemadope: It’s Going to Be a Damn Fine Reboot, and FREE Streaming Movies )w/vid)
Amherst Cinema is gearing up for the return of Special Agent Dale Cooper. Kyle MacLachlan returns to TV this week in his early role as Cooper, the FBI man who got tied up in the death of Laura Palmer and the mysteries of Twin Peaks when the show of the same name first...
Cinemadope: Would You Take a Bullet for Art? Documentary on full-throttle artist Chris Burden (w/vid)
For such a rich subject, films about art and the people that make it all too often feel either forced and flat or ridiculously over the top. Better, usually, to take the documentary route, and let the art speak for itself. That’s the course taken by directors Timothy...
Rabbit Season: ‘Donnie Darko,’ cult classic about a boy and an apocalyptic bunny, returns to the screen
In the world of film, it is sometimes depressingly simple to point out why a given film is popular: perfectly groomed stars with gleaming teeth, things going boom, good over evil. I get it — we are, by and large, easy to please, and that’s okay. It’s just not that...
Cinemadope: This Is Spinal Tap deadpans for gold
While the idea of a “mockumentary” now seems almost old-hat, in 1984 director Rob Reiner gave birth to the zany medium. His ridiculously entertaining satire about life on the road with aging, British metal band Spinal Tap during their American comeback tour was mostly...
Cinemadope: TED talks live on the Cinemark screen
TED talks — the bite-sized presentations given at the organization’s annual Technology, Education, and Design conference — have become an oddly popular cultural phenomenon. At once elitist and public-spirited (a standard conference membership will run you 10 grand,...
Cinemadope: Hopptornet, a documentary that pushes people to jump
Maine Course Like so many of my middle-aged compatriots, I seem to have adopted food as a new hobby. Not cooking, necessarily — quite a bit of this particular enterprise is taken up simply by watching other people cook, it turns out — but eating, at least. And what...
Cinemadope: Banned in the U.S., Documentary about Massachusetts prison for criminally insane turns 50
One of my favorite discoveries from the last year was Documentary Now!, a wonderfully endearing mix of parody and love letter to the modern documentary genre. Originally created for the IFC channel — I first ran across it on Netflix, where you can still check out the...
Cinemadope: Your Nearest Screening of 1984
Hurt Feelings A few weeks back I found myself with a rare night off — the kids asleep early, the house somehow clean, the bills already paid. I was scrolling through my various Netflix queues when a familiar title popped up: V for Vendetta, the Wachowskis’ 2005...
Cinemadope: In a Pickle
The annual Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival returns Now in its twelfth year, the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival (PVJFF) has long been a wonderful part of the Valley’s plentiful film offerings. Carefully curated, the festival screens films big and small,...
Cinemadope: Perfect 10
Talk about the American Dream, and one of the first things that will likely come up is the idea of owning your own home. To be sure, having a house of one’s own brings with it a host of benefits — if you have kids, for instance, cleaning all those rooms every day...
Cinemadope: In Plain Sight
Over the last few months, it has become impossible to ignore the rising tides of xenophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry and hatred that have suddenly made America a much scarier place for so many of those who call it home. Of course, these prejudices aren’t...
Cinemadope: Wolverine’s Back — For the Last Time
We Americans are a nostalgic bunch. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just that we are still such a young nation — there are Italian cafes that are older than our whole country — that we like to fool ourselves into thinking we have more history than we do. Or maybe, when...
Cinemadope: The Short List
It’s easy, when Oscars season rolls around, to feel jaded about the cult of celebrity that Hollywood engenders. It can seem that the same kinds of films, and the same kinds of stars, come away with the golden statue every year. But if we’re still waiting for the...
Cinemadope: The Venice Ghetto – 500 Years of Life
Every year at Oscar time we get a speech about the power of visual effects and their ability to “capture the magic in our mind” or some such thing, followed by a green-screen montage of dragons, space aliens, and transforming cars that are also space aliens. Don’t get...
Cinemadope: The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
Building a Wall Over the last few years, a regular appointment in Boston meant that I was frequently traveling along Route 2 between Franklin County and the Hub. It was more convenient than driving south to hook up with the Pike, and more picturesque, even if it did...
Cinemadope: “The Brand New Testament” at Amherst Cinema
The Man Upstairs Let me say this right up front: I’ve never acted a day in my life. The closest I came was tagging along with a friend while he auditioned for an open call for extras on a pirate movie, where my college-freshman goatee briefly attracted the attention...
Cinemadope: Schlep West, Young Man
More than most people, Americans love a good road story. I think it’s something that is simply part of our collective national subconscious, a metaphysical result of the vast physical breadth of the nation. Few of us, even today, really get (or take) the chance...
Cinemadope: Is Spielberg Corny?
There are times when I look back on my youth and shake my head at my younger self. Mostly, it’s when I think about the dreck that was on in the after-school hours on the local UHF stations: sugar-cereal cartoons that were a 12-year-old’s forbidden fruit. It is with a...
Cinemadope: Three films about hummus, bagels and blintzes
When it comes to film, the Christmas and New Years weeks are not usually a great time for filmgoers, with the exception of a few blockbusters and carefully planned Oscar-hopeful releases. Studios and theaters know that we’re all too damn busy rushing out to buy a last...
Cinemadope: Wild Things
Director Garth Jennings has had an interesting, if short, career. Coming out of the gate with an adaptation of the Douglas Adams cult classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 2005, his first big film grossed many millions, starred people like Zooey Deschanel...
Cinemadope: Cracking a Chestnut
When my wife and I began seeing each other — a decade ago, now — one of our early big dates was an afternoon out for a December performance of The Nutcracker, put on by the Pioneer Valley Ballet at the Academy of Music in Northampton. It felt special and somehow...
Cinemadope: Going Rogue
It was about a year ago that I stole away for a late night screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the long-awaited “Episode VII” that returned fans to the world of droids, lightsabers, and The Force. It had been an especially anticipated film due to the terrible...
Cinemadope: All Together Now
Whatever your thoughts are about the outcome of last month’s election, it seems fair to say that a Trump presidency will be less welcoming of — if not downright hostile to — many of the world’s cultures. As a film writer, that leaves me feeling both deflated (will...
Cinemadope: Into the Woods
With Black Friday upon us this week, the maelstrom of the holiday shopping season has officially begun. Weekends will find increasingly desperate hordes descending on anything that looks like it might hold toys or electronics, toddlers will go into full meltdown mode...
Cinemadope: Animal House
Anyone who has invested enough time in reading a great book series will recognize the feeling: as the end of the final installment approaches, a mix of elation and emptiness starts to creep in. Soon the story will come full circle, and when it does, there will be...
Cinemadope: Continental Divide
Strike up a conversation about foreign film with most American film buffs, and the discussion will almost certainly travel East, over the Atlantic, on a European course. Those buffs with enough wind in them might even reach the Middle East and parts of Asia, but few...
Cinemadope: Underdogs, from the Sox to the Cubbies
Shortly before I sat down to write this column, the unimaginable happened: the Chicago Cubs clinched a World Series berth for the first time in 71 years. If you don’t follow baseball, just know that it was a long drought — Lawrence of Arabia long, if you’re more of a...
Cinemadope: Food for Thought
We in the Valley may have an above-average awareness of food co-ops. Take a Sunday drive around Western Mass, and you’ll find co-ops dotting the landscape, serving local communities and offering an alternative to the big box grocery chains that might not find it...
Cinemadope: The Vermont Yankee Story screens Sunday
Yankee No How Live in the Valley for any length of time, and you’ll soon know of Frances Crowe. The diminutive white-haired woman is something of a local celebrity, thanks to a life spent in activism, where her infectious cheer is matched by her uncompromising (and...
Cinemadope: The Nanny’s Gaze, discovering the secret world of little known Chicago street photog Vivian Maier
A lifetime ago — maybe two lifetimes now — I was an art school student. I was a hard worker but probably too concerned with what others thought of my work, and even then I knew that was a problem. That feeling seemed confirmed by the work being done by a classmate of...
Cinemadope: Going Wilder
When the world lost Gene Wilder a month ago, it was a bit of a surprise to many — he hadn’t appeared onscreen in quite a few years, preferring to devote himself to the books he wrote later in life. But if it was a surprise, it also stung. For myself, and I suspect for...
Brace Yourselves: Nostalgia is Coming
Fall in Love Now that I spend a good five minutes a day sweeping dry leaves out of our back entry, I think it’s safe to finally say it: autumn is upon us. And I’ll take it, dry leaves and all. Nestled between the smothering humidity of our summer and the desiccating...
Cinemadope: Transitions
When your life seems fairly well set in its ways, change can be hard. Actually, change can be terrifying. You might have a family that you love and a job that you look forward to, and something can still seem not right. Accepting that — in other words, accepting our...
At Amherst Cinema: An actor dives into a reporter’s death
There’s a famous scene in Network, Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film about the state of the television industry, in which veteran newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), bitter about his impending dismissal in the face of declining ratings, announces to his audience that instead...
Cinemadope: A Queen and Her Kings
A musician’s life is never easy. I’m not talking about those of us who pick up the guitar now and then, or even the many who, long after it becomes clear that they will likely not move beyond the coffee house or bar circuit, still pack up the Volvo to head out for a...
Cinemadope: These New Kid Flicks Aren’t Just For Kids
No Kidding One of the great myths of cinema is that kids movies are for kids. Sure, they might be a bit more brightly colored than most, or hit most of their punch lines a little more on the nose, but never forget that these films are made by grown-ups. Peel back that...
Cinemadope: On the Road Again
Alien. Blade Runner. Black Hawk Down. The Martian. Over the decades, director Ridley Scott has built a career on making the kinds of films (often with a bit of a sci-fi bent) that combine quiet moments with explosive action. But for me, he will always be first...
Sisters and Soldiers: New Films This Week
A quiet world, invaded Sometimes it seems like we have always been at war. Whether on a small scale or a world stage, we as a species seem never to tire of hurting each other, and of finding inventive new ways to do it. But perhaps even more depressing than that...
Amherst Cinema Turns Cloak and Dagger
In Vienna Once Quick, name this film: stylish, black and white, set overseas in or around the Second World War, but not about the ground fight in Europe.If you guessed Casablanca, you’re in good company. Michael Curtiz’s 1942 romantic drama, pairing Bogart and Bergman...
Cinemadope: Music! Intrigue! Nuts! Documentary film screenings this week
In this political season, there has been a lot of talk about the meaning — good and bad — of dynasties in our national discourse. The truth is that, for a country that prides itself on its history of flipping the bird to royalty all those years ago, we sure do love to...E-Edition
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