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Fashion & Film Feature

Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart: Dressed to Fit the Monochromatic, Distressed Reality of a 1955 Noir

From the very beginning, Mickey Rourke was one of the four actors Alan Parker had on his list to play Harry Angel in the film Angel Heart (1987). “We arranged to meet in New York. I picked Mickey up from his hotel looking, as he always does off-screen, like an unemployed gas station attendant. We had […]

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Feature

Past Evils Return in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear

This quarantine provided the time to finally view Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear (1991), originally shot by director J. Lee Thompson (1962) and based on John D. MacDonald’s The Executioners (1957). The innocent 90s-child in me can’t help but happily recall the iconic Simpsons spoof, “Cape Feare,” with Sideshow Bob tied under the family’s […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)

MATTHEW 25, 6: And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019), his final – we think? – go round the mobster realm and that detailed world and times he knows so well is peopled by … well, let’s just say “colourful” characters. […]

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Feature Screengem

Screengem: The Laughing Wallpaper in Scorsese’s The King of Comedy

Taxi Driver’s portrait of ’70s downtown New York, complete with neon signs and porno theatres flashing through the night, is an image that sticks with you like no other. Never before has a film so full of sexuality, rage and loneliness been kept at boiling point for so long, and Travis’ final howl of violence […]

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Feature Thousand Words

Thousand Words: We merely get in their way: The fierce chemistry of Herzog and Kinski

When film conversation turns to the greatest filmmaker/actor partnerships common touchstones are Scorsese and De Niro (latterly DiCaprio), Ford and Wayne, Kurosawa and Mifune, Leone and Eastwood, Fellini and Mastroianni or Bergman and Ullmann. Casting a shadow on the conversation is the work of director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski. Their partnership, in this […]