Network Awesome

By Kristen Bialik

In 1989, Reverend, televangelist and Founder of the International School of Exorcism Bob Larson sat down for a friendly interview with two people who represent everything he opposes in life. Those two people were Nikolas Schreck and his wife Zeena, daughter of Anton LaVey -- the founder...

By Glauco Gotardi

If you take just a quick look at Death In Venice -- and for what matters here, we'll talk about the movie, not the book -- it is, we might think, just another love story. Then, if you dig little deeper -- i.e. actually watching the movie...

by Kristen Bialik

Metal music is all about persona. Why else would the unmasking of KISS have been such a big deal? How else would GWAR exist? Even metal artists who don't look like pig-spawned aliens have a certain theatricality to them. It's there in everything from the full-face makeup...

by RJ White

In 2003, Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab founded the monthly film festival Channel101 with a simple premise: Make a five-minute pilot and if enough of the audience at the live screening in L.A. votes for it, you have one month to make another episode. If they vote...

By Kristen Bialik

What do Amy Winehouse, N.W.A., David Bowie, a Jeep 4x4 commercial, and the cartoon Futurama all have in common? Believe it or not, they all share six seconds of drum music. But these aren't any drums, they're the drums of the "Amen Break," a break beat many...

By Whitney Weiss

From humble beginnings at Chicago's Gold Coast bar to its current incarnation as a four-day extravaganza, International Mr. Leather has come a long way. But what's particularly impressive when you're watching archival footage of guys in hot cop drag and tiny black shorts flexing for the crowd...

by Thomas Michalski

Before the videos you're about to watch (just watched?) landed in my email inbox, I had never heard of Jim Simon. This, in and of itself, was not surprising (there are many things I've never heard of), but where things got interesting was trying to learn about...

By Johnathon Davis

Jacques-Yves Cousteau is a man who truly needs no introduction. His name is as synonymous with sea exploration as water is with filling the oceans he so loved. World Without Sun (released in 1964) is Cousteau's second theatrical outing after The Silent World (released in 1956). Here...

By David Selden

There is something about the Theremin, both its sound and the manner of its playing, that is almost comedic. An all-electric musical saw, its over-familiar, spooked warble has become a staple of B-movie sound effects. A "good vibration" quickly reached for as shorthand for...

By Tom Winkelspecht

Go ahead and think of a science fiction stereotype. Take a minute. I'll wait. Any one you'd care to name comes up in Forbidden Planet. Flying saucers? Check. Robot servant bound by Asimov's Three Laws? Check. Blasters that are entirely worthless? Check. Relics of a massively advanced...

By Robert Ham

Is it any wonder why Bruce Weber was drawn to Chet Baker as a documentary subject?

Weber, a longtime fashion photographer, is in love with the image of beautiful young people. It's why some of his warmest and most engaging portraits are for ad campaigns (Abercrombie &...

By Zack Kotzer

"My dear Moebius," wrote Federico Fellini in a fan letter to the poignant comic artist, "Everything that you do pleases me; even your name pleases me." Fellini goes on to praise Jean "Moebius" Giraud's abilities as a creator, reminisces of his joyous first encounter with...

By Kathleen Furey

Ennio Morricone is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers of all time. In the span of his six-decade career, he has scored over 500 films and television shows, including Fistful of Dollars (1964,) The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1967,) and Danger: Diabolik...

By Kristen Bialik

Without knowing you at all, I can say that Fehérlófia is unlike any other movie you've seen. Sure, it's animated. That's familiar. And sure, there are some recognizable images. Like, in that the English title is The Son of the White Mare, and there are both sons...

By Robert Ham

In my fantasy vision, the Italian government tapped their most treasured cultural export, Federico Fellini, asking him to make a film that would encourage people to visit Rome. Something light and funny and stylish that would drum up some business for a flagging tourism industry and that...

by David Selden

It is evident in the opening frames of Billy Wilder's archetypal film noir, even before the confession he is about to recount, that Walter Neff is a doomed man. With his back to the camera, Neff slumps in abject defeat. In his colleague's office he narrates the...

By Matt Kelley

If you're not familiar with the work of Roy Andersson, you probably aren't Swedish. His first feature film, En kärlekshistoria (distributed as A Swedish Love Story in the U.S.), premiered in 1970. Influenced by the Czech New Wave, En kärlekshistoria recounts the love between two working-class young...

By C.D. Hermelin

Before the sharks, the dinosaurs, the aliens, and the archaeology professors turned adventurers -- before the 150+ producing credits, 50 directing credits, and 3 Academy Awards, before Steven Spielberg was Steven Spielberg, there was Duel.

In 1971, Steven Spielberg had been a nobody in the movie industry...

By Lady Foursquare

I saw Paris Is Burning in 1992 with my mom. She told me that it was a documentary about dancers in New York. She did not tell me that Jennie Livingston's 1990 masterful love letter to the New York ball culture of the 1980s would be the...

When examining any type of art, whether it be painting, film, music, or anything else, there is often a tendency to attribute the quality, power, and who knows what else to just one artist that we deem the mastermind -- the painter, the director, the songwriter. Even if it's very...