Writers on Film

1971 was a great year for cinema.  Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Dario Argento, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Sergio Leone, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Nicolas Roeg and Steven Spielberg, among many others, were behind the camera, while the stars were also out in force. Warren Beatty, Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Sean Connery, Faye Dunaway, Clint Eastwood, Jane Fo...

Mean Streets was Martin Scorsese's third feature film, and the one that confirmed him as a major new talent. On its premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1973, the critic Pauline Kael hailed the film as 'a true original of our period, a triumph of personal film-making'. The tale of combative friends and small-time crooks is set amid the bars, pool halls, tenements and streets of Manhattan's Li...

Clint Eastwood is Hollywood’s elder statesman and its conscience. He is the standard by which other films and filmmakers are judged. He represents both classical Hollywood and an entirely modern, uncompromising and unfussy directorial presence. There are those who adore him as a cowboy, a superstar, the rugged, unyielding yet introspective face of American machismo. There are those who read him as...

Friend of the podcast and cultural historian Chris Yogerst critically celebrates the century of Warner Bros by looking at the family behind the studio The Warner Brothers. You can buy your copy here (among other outlets). And Chris recommended Sam Wasson's The Big Goodbye and Scott Eyman's upcoming Charlie Chaplin biography. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for m...

Jem Duducu talks Hollywood v History. Buy his new book here. And listen to hi s podcast here. Here's the blurb of his book: There is no shortage of Hollywood films about historical events, but what do the movies actually get right, and why do they get so much wrong? Hollywood loves a story: good guys versus bad guys, heroes winning the day, and the guy gets the girl. But we all know real life isn’...

Lawrence Grobel is a freelance writer who has written 31 books and for numerous national magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Newsday, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Reader's Digest, American Way, Parade, Details, TV Guide, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Penthouse, Diversion, Writer's Digest, and AARP. He has been a contributing editor at Playboy, Movieline, Hollywood Life, Autogr...

Molly Haskell is a legend of film criticism. A critic for the Village Voice, she also is one of the earliest most powerful voices in feminist film criticism, with her ground-breaking work From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies as well as books on Spielberg and Gone with the Wind . Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted...

James Peaty and John Bleasdale talk about the summer release and particularly the success of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Peaty has written for publishers including Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics in the US as well as Rebellion Publishing and Titan Comics in the UK. During that time he has written for titles including The Batman Strikes!, X-Men Unlimited, Green Arrow. Supergirl,...

Clint Eastwood called her “Truly one of my favorite people.” Her former students include Michael Bay, Joss Whedon, Laurence Mark, Akiva Goldsman, Paul Weitz, Marc Shmuger and Alex Kurtzman. She's written a dozen books and recently co-authored Hollywood: An Oral History with Sam Wasson (friend of the podcast, read his essay on Jeanine here ). Jeanine Basinger is legendary and it is a true honor to...

Josh Winning is a writer and film critic. Bur the book here . The BlurbABOUT  BURN THE NEGATIVE In this incendiary mash-up of horror and suspense, a notorious slasher film is remade…and the curse that haunted it is reawakened. Arriving in L.A. to visit the set of a new streaming horror series, journalist Laura Warren witnesses a man jumping from a bridge, landing right behind her car.  Here we go...

Nothing To Fear: Alfred Hitchcock And The Wrong Men To buy click on this link. Alfred Hitchcock is not often associated with a social justice movement. But in 1956, the world’s most famous director focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The result was  The Wrong Man , a wrenching and largely overlooked drama based on the...

Who wrote Citizen Kane? Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz or Herman Makiewicz and Orson Welles? Or David Fincher. Scholar and film writer Warren Buckland turns to the evidence and away from the prejudice to resolve the question once and for all. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com f...

The  Alien  films are perceived to be a fractured franchise, each one loosely related to the others. They are nonlinear, complicated, convoluted: a collection of genre movies ranging from horror to war to farce. But on closer examination, the threads that bind together these films are strong and undeniable. The series is a model of Catherine Keller’s cosmology as a cycle of order out of chaos, an...

Kaleem Aftab talks about his career as a high flying journalist, publishing in The Independent and Variety among many others. He also talks about his authorship of a 'As told by' biography of Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to it . And gives his book recommendation. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWiz...

Get the book here . “Matt Pais deserves four stars for reintroducing us to many of the greatly talented but often unsung heroes of 1990s film. This is a terrific read.”—RICHARD ROEPER “Even if you’re drowning in pop culture nostalgia, Pais’ book is a fun, insightful and informative life raft.”—ROBERT K. ELDER, author of  The Film That Changed My Life “Matt Pais captures an entire era succinctly an...

The second part of my report on Karlovy Vary with conversations featuring Karel Och, artistic director of the festival, Ben Dalton of Screen, Deadline writer Damon Wise and Ben Nicholson from The Verdict. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and us...

From the noted Hollywood biographer and author of  The Contender  comes this celebration of the great American love story—the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart—capturing its complexity, contradictions, and challenges as never before. In Bogie & Bacall,  William Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann detai...

John Bleasdale talks to a host of great writers attending the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It includes Wendy Ide, Leigh Singer, Hugo Emmerzael and Marcus Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Bleasdale talks to Alan Dean Foster, the poet laureate of the novelisation as well as a novelist of original fantasy and science fiction. He has recently published his memoirs The Director Should've Shot You available her e. For more information and updates visit his website . Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an Ad...

Joseph McBride returns to Writers on Film to talk about his new book on the films of Billy Wilder. But this wide-ranging discussion doesn't stop there. Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge is available here . The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films―including  Double Indemnity ,  Sunset Blvd. ,  Some Like It Hot , and  The Apartment ―Billy Wilder earned acclaim as American c...

Happy Pride Month: Writers on Film talks with Kyle Turner on his amazing book The Queer Film Guide: 100 Great Films the tell LGBTQIA+ Stories " Kyle Turner has selected 100 of cinema’s greatest queer films that are often overlooked but foundational to the art form and the wider culture. Starting in early cinema with trailblazers like  Making a Man of Her  and  Different from Others , the list prog...

Joseph Aisenberg is a writer and novelist. His book on Carrie is available in a new updated version here . Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Writers on Film hits the Croissette, talking to David Marquand of EuroNews; Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian; Jo-Ann Titmarsh of The Evening Standard and Ed Potton of The Times. My own reviews can be found at Cine-Vue here and Next Best Picture here . I also wrote a couple of pieces for Variety, which can be found here . Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in...

We talk Life Above the Clouds : Steven DeLay's expansive collection of essays in this anthology proves that the subject of Malick is far from exhausted, and continues to affirm this filmmaker as an arousing artist of aesthetic, philosophical, and cinematic intrigue "In  Life Above the Clouds: Philosophy in the Films of Terrence Malick , DeLay curates both established and emerging Malick contributo...

Jim Colvill is an editor based in New York City. He is also the publisher who along with Jake Perlin established Film Desk Books, a NYC based small press and online bookseller dedicated to books on cinema. He also edited The Press Gang, a collection of work from New York Press, with critics Godfrey Cheshire, Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White. Here's a link to the site of Film Desk. Get bonus cont...