Film History
Home Movies/Out on Digital: July 6, 2017
The award-winning indie psycho-drama Wichita, the ’70s cop movie Brannigan and the 1970 production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters have been released on DVD or Blu-ray. more
Home Movies/Out on Digital: June 22, 2017
In Gauguin: Maker of Myth, canvas after canvas fills the frames of this documentary on one of the great visionaries of modern art, Paul Gauguin. more
'Hollywood Presents Jules Verne'
Morethan a century after his death Jules Verne remains one of the world’s mostfamous authors, recognized even by people who have never read a single wordfrom his stories. The reason, as Brian Taves explains in Hollywood PresentsJules Verne: Th.. more
'Hitchcock Lost & Found'
Asthe authors concede on page 1 of Hitchcock Lost & Found: The ForgottenFilms , there has been a lot of hype over the “rediscovery” of missing piecesfrom Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography. Alain Kerzoncuf and Charles Barr complainof “excessive.. more
Kentucky Press
What’s a War Movie Anyway?
The question most asked about my latest book, War on the Silver Screen : is that really a war movie? I included Casablanca as a war movie though few shots are fired and battle scenes are entirely absent, and The Manchurian Candidate , which mostly.. more
Francis Ford Coppola, Boss Man
Jeff Meene has found a new angle on one of the most remarkable filmmakers of his era. In Francis Ford Coppola (published by University of Illinois Press), Meene identifies Coppola as an especially prominent manifestation of the post-industrial, ne.. more
‘War on the Silver Screen’
Milwaukee authors Glen Jeansonne and David Luhrssen’s War on the Silver Screen: Shaping America’s Perception of History is an objective, sometimes coolly detached chronicle of many of the war films that have played a part in cinematic histo... more
The Real Orson Welles?
OrsonWelles was 11 when he enrolled in the Todd Seminary for Boys, a progressiveprep school in Woodstock, Illinois. The influence of its alternative pedagogy,which encouraged creative thinking based on the maxim that doing is t.. more
From Big Screen to Small
DavidThomson is among the preeminent film critics of our time. The Britishexpatriate, living in San Francisco, has written several big doorstopper bookson movie history. His latest, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies (Farrar,.. more
The Faint w/ Zola Jesus
Even before the indie-dance boom of a half-decade ago, The Faint were playing glamorous, danceable synth-rock, marked by retro New Order arrangements and big, catchy choruses—their libidinous signature single, “Worked Up So Sexual,” stil more
Dr. Manhattan w/ Two Star, Chris Slone, Tadashi and Taken the Coast
The Illinois band Dr. Manhattan delivers the healthy dose of indie quirk and post-teenage angst you’d expect from a band whose name is lifted from a character in Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” comics. As students at Wauconda High School, more
Blue Rodeo
Blue Rodeo, something of an institution in their Canadian homeland, has released 12 studio albums since 1987. The Things We Left Behind, an ambitious double CD, blends country, folk and pop while taking a serious glance back toward the stu... more
Hotel Milwaukee
For seven years, from 1995 to 2002, Wisconsin Public Radio’s popular “Hotel Milwaukee” variety show spotlighted Milwaukee comedians, playwrights and musicians. It was taped live at hotels across the city and eventually at the Eisner Amer more
Actors Shine in Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s ‘Moon Over the Brewery’
If this sounds like a made-for-TV movie plot trickedout with some fancy metaphors, no won Moon Over the Brewery ,Theater more
Piggsville Revisited
Joe andMary Hutterer opened the Valley Inn in the 1950s and it is the only business ofits kind that remains in the neighborhood.Jim, the oldest of their five children, took over the business in 1996. Until afew years ago, the menu consisted... more
Top Films of the ‘60s
Ask a film critic to locate the golden age of cinema and you’ll likely hear one of two answers: the late ‘30s era of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, or the late ‘60s-early ‘70s period bracketed by Bonnie andClyde and Star Wars. Scree.. more
Film Artists United?
Unlike those academic film scholars who try to confine movies within the narrow coffins of dubious theory or ideology, Tino Balio just wants to know how things work. He is concerned with the nuts and bolts of cinema as an industry. Balio’s two vo.. more
Obscene, Indecent, Etc.
When they were introduced in the 1890s, motion pictures were a marvel in an age of marvels. Cities were being lit by electricity and crowned by skyscrapers, telephones carried distant voices and pictures began to move in a jerky semblance of rea.. more
Great Escape Artist.
When most film buffs hear the name Sturges, Preston pops to mind. But while director Preston Sturges masterminded such sophisticated and hilarious comedies from Golden Age Hollywood as Sullivan's Travels and The Miracle at Morgan Creek, it was th.. more
