Categories
Feature Screengem

Screengem: The Red Barn in My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)

First of all, there is still an Art House in Champaign, IL. When I saw My Own Private Idaho there in 1991 it had been called the “New Art” theater since around ‘87, when it was resurrected from its seedy past as a 70’s porn venue. The theater has been in existence since the early […]

Categories
Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) has become one of the most iconic bad guys in cinema history.  With his penchant for quiet weaponry and disquieting conversation, the character takes on a mythic quality that reads to both the audience and the inhabitants of the film as an unstoppable force of evil, an angel of death, or, perhaps, […]