Why Is Everyone So Obsessed With ‘Inception’?
Elliott Kastner (1930-2010)
I had known Elliott Kastner a little over the years, by way of phone calls. He had tracked me down once and called, and I had wondered why, and it was just to say he had enjoyed some things I had written. Without any strain, I told him I was very fond of some of his pictures. So we agreed we should meet some time, but nothing ever developed until a couple of years ago. He was coming to San Francisco, where I live—let’s have dinner. He had a plan. READ MORE >>
Dead, Man
There was a time when Dennis Hopper exulted in the reputation of being the first kid who knew what was wrong with Hollywood. What he said, more or less, was that the movies have gone dead, man, that it’s just old-timers doing it all on automatic pilot, that there’s no truth, anymore, man, and they won’t put me in lead parts. READ MORE >>
The BACKLOT: ‘Breathless’ at 50
Three On A Match
All in the Family
“You Used to Be in Pictures!”
Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America By Peter Biskind (Simon & Schuster, 627 pp., $30) READ MORE >>
The Mogul Empire
Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince By Mark A. Vieira (University of California Press, 504 pp., $34.95) READ MORE >>
Eric Rohmer and the Roaming Eye
As a person, he was the most deferential of the New Wave directors, yet the most persistent. Eric Rohmer. He died yesterday, aged eighty-nine, and he had made 50 films in that time--as regular, as festive, but as resigned as birthdays--and they were all the same film, about men and women looking at each other. It sounds commonplace as a subject, perhaps, calm and contemplative. READ MORE >>
