film | The Smart Set

Pokey’s Cinematic Multiplex

Paula Marantz Cohen — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 11:30:00 +0000

I often think about my deceased dog, Pokey. He was a Wheaton terrier with a genetic predisposition toward stomach problems, and he eventually succumbed to gastric cancer in his 11th year. I miss Pokey and have nostalgia for his daily routine. He had a fairly mellow disposition (except with the mailman and the gasman, for […]

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A (Stone Cold) Stunner of a Picture

Melinda Lewis — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 12:31:43 +0000

Despite only recently breaching his 20s, director and writer, Pedro Vasquez, a 2024 Drexel University graduate, completed an ambitious project: a film that marries existential anxieties, action-packed sequences, and challenging counterpoints to those with preconceptions about the life of professional wrestlers. Within this interview, we talk about his road to completing the film Slow Dancing […]

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More Human Than Ever

Gus Mitchell — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 13:05:21 +0000

For Alejandro Jodorowsky, art is life. An artist’s role is to follow a continuous thread of liberation between worlds. Over his nearly eight-decade adventure in art, he has dealt in literature, theater, mime, comic books, tarot, spiritual texts, repulsive performance, cinema, poetry, visual art, music, therapy. He intended his unrealized film of Dune in the […]

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Our Oscars, Ourselves

Alex Dabertin — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:30:00 +0000

In our second Oscars story republished from 2016, writer Alex Dabertin examines the red-carpet race for Best Actress. The cultural landscape was marked by a significant emphasis on issues of gender equality, diversity, and representation in Hollywood. 2015 brought the #MeToo movement and infused discussions surrounding the Oscars with a heightened sensitivity to issues of […]

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Central Asia in Film

Komron Ergashev — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:30:00 +0000

To the Ends of the Earth: A Unique Perspective Imagine a world in which the essence of a nation is defined by its portrayal on the silver screen. Now, what if said nation has no portrayal at all to go by? Uzbekistan has long suffered from cinematic anonymity. The vast sand dunes of the Kyzylkum […]

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Print the Legend

Matt Hanson — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 10:57:06 +0000

A few years ago, I had to assemble a syllabus for a writing class. I added John Ford’s 1962 black and white western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I don’t quite remember why, and I was worried how it would go over. Thankfully the first class discussion went much better than expected and the […]

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A Mink

Paula Marantz Cohen — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 11:30:00 +0000

When we consider the predatory behavior of high-profile individuals like Andrew Cuomo, Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer, we tend to think that they were driven by lust and egotistical entitlement. We fail to take into account the societal expectations that prevailed a mere 50 or 60 years ago when these men were boys. Within the […]

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Has Hollywood Finally Heard Us?

David Giatras — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 17:13:10 +0000

This past year, I’ve been seeing a lot of myself on the screen. It feels weird to say that. As someone who has been deaf for most of their life, I’m not used to seeing people like me in movies or on television. Before this year, I could name a handful of movies or television […]

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Theses on Sugar Man

Sam Kahn — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 11:30:00 +0000

My girlfriend and I have plenty of things to argue about, but, surprisingly enough, the leading topic of argument — the argument that pretty much all others circle back to — is about the documentary film Searching for Sugar Man. You probably already know at least the outlines of the story. Sixto Rodriguez (the “Sugar […]

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Going Above Ground

Matt Hanson — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 13:12:15 +0000

“We were just anarchists. But we were anarchists with heart.” So says John Cale in the liner notes to the Velvet Underground’s Peel Slowly and See box set, written by Rolling Stone editor David Fricke, which I have read approximately 7,000 times. Thank god for Columbia House (remember them?) and their buy-one-get-one-half-price box set deal, […]

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