movies | The Smart Set

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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‘Tis the (Oscar) Season

Melinda Lewis — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 21:50:00 +0000

This is the first story in a package celebrating all-things Oscars, republished from The Smart Set archives. Entering the dazzling world of Hollywood’s glittering extravaganza, ‘Tis the Oscar Season’ is a whimsical journey through the pomp and circumstance of the Academy Awards. From the opulent red-carpet spectacles to the meticulously crafted speeches and the delightful […]

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A Rare Thing in His Age

Sloane Dzhitenov — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 12:30:00 +0000

It just seemed like the thing to — to do at the time. I don’t really know . . . Well, I have — you know, I have been asked the question before, by — by Bill Murray, who said, ‘Why am I doing — why would I do this?’ Um, and I, ah, I […]

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Watching Wayne’s World

Julie Zigoris — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 12:24:00 +0000

In the first locket I owned, I didn’t put in photos of my lover or my mother or my best friend. Not my pets, not my sister. Instead I glued teeny-tiny pictures of Wayne and Garth from the movie Wayne’s World. The movie was released when I was 13, and my childhood best friend Bridget […]

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Aide-de-Noir

Colin Fleming — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 13:33:06 +0000

Long before Alfred Hitchcock and his marketing team implored moviegoers in 1960 not to share what they had seen with Psycho, there was another film labeled a thriller during its time — and now gets tagged as noir — that had made similar entreaties. The year was 1944, and the picture called Phantom Lady, one […]

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Short Form Terrors and Lifelong Horrors

Colin Fleming — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 12:49:06 +0000

Horror, be it in film or literature, often works best in short forms, which is perhaps the most suitable setting for what is meant to be an unnatural medium. Edgar Allan Poe, for instance, believed that if you couldn’t read a terror tale in one sitting, it probably wasn’t much worth reading. If we play […]

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Federico Fellini’s Phenomenal Films

Matt Hanson — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 11:30:00 +0000

When he was a young boy, maybe about seven or eight years old, Federico Fellini stole away from home in his small seaside resort town of Remini and joined the circus. While wandering awestruck under the big top, he hung out with circus folk and wound up tending to a sick zebra. Quite an experience […]

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Haunted Memories, Sifted Dreams

Melinda Lewis — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 11:30:00 +0000

Gina Nutt’s Night Rooms is a book of passages. I mean this literally in its form, a collection of nonfiction narrative poems that construct the book, and also metaphorically as each paragraph moves us from one sensation to another, unlocking a series of memories and feelings. Covering Nutt’s childhood, early adolescence, and adulthood, the collection as […]

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La Haine

Matt Hanson — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 12:30:00 +0000

There’s a grand tradition in French art of celebrating the poetic outlaw. Shocking the bourgeoisie with some avant-garde aesthetic is a badge of honor. You can read it in the 15th-century murder ballads of Francois Villon or in the tainted love between the “cursed poets” Verlaine and Rimbaud. You can behold it in all those […]

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Cinematic Violence

Matt Hanson — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 17:52:38 +0000

Movie titles are attention-grabbing by design, but never more so when the story promises the illicit thrill of decadent behavior. Just for a start, there’s Murder, My Sweet; Dial M for Murder; Murder on the Orient Express; Murder by Numbers; Manhattan Murder Mystery; Murder by Death; Anatomy of a Murder; How to Murder Your Wife; A Perfect Murder; Witness to Murder; and plain old Murder! which adds a quivering exclamation point just for good […]

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