Posted on

On Rick Prelinger’s “Lost Landscapes…”

I’ve just finished a really fun feature in Experience magazine on Rick Perlinger’s “Lost Landscapes…” films.

Far more than just a movie screening or local history talk, the event is an alchemical spectacle, in which old images — traces of light, etched on scraps of celluloid ages ago — are re-awakened to recall our urban past….

Thanks so much to my editors at Experience, Joanna Wiess and Erick Trickey, as well as Rick Perlinger for spending time with me to talk about his work, as well as Sharon Harlan at Northeastern, who added some thoughtful comments to the piece. (Click here for the article.) Enjoy!

ps: Be sure to notice the 1918-era pandemic masks on the guys in the streets in the short video illustration….!

Golden-Gate-loop-2.jpeg

(please share! all is takes is one quick click...)
Posted on

Mayors on Film

For my latest column in Planning Magazine, I discussed a number of recent mayors on the big (and small) screen, including thoughts on Fred Wiseman’s City Hall, David Osit’s Mayor, and the latest NBC sitcom starring Ted Danson, Mr. Mayor.

And, of course, I couldn’t resist including a shout-out to the unforgettable Mayor of Amity Island from Jaws, portrayed by Murray Hamilton…

amity.png

(please share! all is takes is one quick click...)
Posted on

Nomadland (Chloé Zhao, 2020)

I had a lot of fun reviewing Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland for The Arts Fuse, which was nicely paired with a commentary from Peg Aloi.

In the same year you got your license, you saw Easy Rider at the drive-in and were turned on by Canned Heat singing “Going Up the Country” at Woodstock, followed by a steady diet of “Going Mobile,” “Going to California,” and counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. The highway was calling and you rose to answer — but then life intervened, with a husband and a mortgage and a job at the gypsum plant and shopping lists and gutters to clean and 1,001 other daily responsibilities and hassles, and being on the road was just something Willie Nelson would sing about on the jukebox.

And then like that, decades later, with a whoosh of the undertow and a great sucking sound, the plant closed and the bottom dropped out of the world and everything that was once stable evaporated – husband, job, house, community – and all that was left was you and the road again….

To read more, see The Arts Fuse — and be sure to also read Peg’s commentary on the site as well. (And for fun, check out this Nomadland “filmerick”, too.)

(please share! all is takes is one quick click...)
Posted on

Herself (Phyllida Lloyd, 2020)

Now out on the Arts Fuse, my review of Herself, Phyllida Lloyd’s new feature produced in partnership between Amazon Studios and Screen Ireland.

Through this classic cinema framing, we come in for the close up: by watching Sandra’s story — by attending to this particular life, as lived and experienced slowly, by this individual — we may hope to understand a more general story playing out elsewhere.

Sadly, this “elsewhere” is more accurately an “everywhere,” as there are loads of Sandras not just in Dublin, but in Dayton, Durban, Dallas, Dubai, Delhi, and Da Nang — as well as right here in Boston and its suburbs. Based on a true story and reminiscent of too many others, Sandra is a mother fleeing an abusive spouse, hoping to find a safe home for her children in a world where even something this simple would seem to require a miracle.

To read the full review, click here. To watch this film, head to Amazon Prime.

(please share! all is takes is one quick click...)
Posted on

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Ross Brothers, 2020)

I had a great time reviewing the new quasi-documentary, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, directed by Bill and Turner Ross, set in an staged recreation of a dive bar, but exploring some very real interactions. It’s a super film that really stretches the limits of the medium.

Here’s a teaser from my write-up:

The tone is what critics love to call “elegiac,” but one senses that using such language in “The ’20s” (as the bar is known to locals) might earn you the titular bloody nose, so we’ll just say it feels like the bar is hosting an Irish wake for itself. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tonight we die” could well be the subtitle for the film – or perhaps an updated and more accurate NSFW version, given the multiple paths to “merry” taken over the course of the night: “Eat, drink, smoke some weed, drink some more, fool around a lot and fondle a little, fall down a few times, pick a fight, drink some more and make up and hug it out, for tomorrow we finally accept the fact that we’ve all died a long time ago….”

To read the full review, head on over to The Arts Fuse.

(please share! all is takes is one quick click...)