Zero for Conduct: Man on Wire

ZERO for CONDUCT

Michael Atkinson writing on cinema, culture & anti-imperialist dudgeon in a blindly Godless world

New Work

HEMINGWAY CUTTHROAT
From St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books

HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS
From St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books

Inspect the new author site and Hemingwaiana blog!

Watch the HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS book trailer!

EXILE CINEMA: Filmmakers At Work Beyond Hollywood (featuring essays by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Guy Maddin, Chuck Stephens, Howard Hampton, and more!)
From SUNY Press

FLICKIPEDIA: Perfect Movies for Every Occasion, Holiday, Season, Mood, Ordeal and Whim (co-written with Laurel Shifrin)
From Chicago Review Press

Use and abuse the new FLICKIPEDIA Blog

Remembering Carpenter and O'Bannon's Dark Star, at The L Magazine, 7/14/11

Impolex -- a microindie filmization of, ach, Pynchon's Gravity's Raindow, The Village Voice, 7/13/11

King Hu's A Touch of Zen! At The L Magazine, 7/10/11

Ah -- THE review of Malick's The Tree of Life, all bases covered, at Sight & Sound, 7/11

Last rites for John Carpenter's The Ward, for Time Out Chicago, 7/7/11

Reviewing: The Perfect Host, The Village Voice, 6/29/11

New York Asian Film Festival 2011! At The Village Voice, 6/29/11

Pseudo-Libyan historical saga Lion of the Desert (1981), considered at TCM.com, 6/28/11

"Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" for TCM.com, 6/28/11

Whoa -- Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death, for In These Times, 6/24/11

Wallowing in a full-on Bunuel retro at Harvard, in The Boston Phoenix, 6/16/11

"Essential Wandering: Jerzy Skolimowski and Essential Killing, Moving Image Source, 6/10/11

A 1956 Brit film about Libya? The Black Tent, at TCM.com, 6/9/11

Finnish junkies: Reindeerspotting, The Village Voice, 6/8/11

Who was Alan Ladd? On The Deep Six, at TCM.com, 6/6/11

At Sight & Sound, "Forgotten Pleasures of the Multiplex"; mine are The Entity and Nill Murray's The Razor's Edge, 5/11

Woe is Preminger, and Hurry Sundown, at TCM.com, 5/30/11

On Wajda's generational A Generation,at TCM.com, 5/30/11

On the Danish Afghan-war doc Armadillo, at In These Times, 5/28/11

"Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno," at TCM.com, 5/6/11

The Colombian import Colors of the Mountain, The Village Voice, 5/4/11

Take my impossible seeing-double-Hitchcocks trivia quiz, in honor of Double Take, at Fandor, 4/30/11

And then look at the answers, at Fandor...

O hail Anthony Mann and Reign of Terror, at The L Magazine, 4/22/11

Just a taste of "The Gestures of Robert Mitchum," from The Believer, 4/11

The very odd, quiet, self-deprecating British war saga The One that Got Away, TCM.com, 4/22/11

"Twentieth Century Man: Kaneto Shinoda," from Children of Hiroshima to Onibaba and beyond, Moving Image Source, 4/21/11

Having my way with Weerasethakul's best-of-'11-already dreaminess Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, at In These Times, 4/1/11

Reviewing Adrien Brody in Wrecked, The Village Voice, 3/30/11

Dissecting Chantal Akerman's Hotel Monterey for TCM.com readers, 3/28/11

Fellini's The Clowns -- a film, it seems, about the end of the world -- at Cinema Scope, 3/27/11

Tanya Hamilton's Night Catches Us, at TCM.com, 3/23/11

On Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia for the Light for The Village Voice, 3/16/11

All over Garth Edwards's magical DIY sci-fi indie Monsters, at In These Times, 3/11

Reviewing I Saw the Devil, The Village Voice, 3/2/11

Just a taste of "The Gestures of Robert Mitchum," in The Believer, 3/1/11

Can Criterion be Hulu-ized/iPadized? At Time Out Chicago, 2/23/11

Must we? Yes: Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre, TCM.com, 2/17/11

Lee Chang-dong, again so soon, and Poetry, at The Kino Blog, 2/14/11

Gobbling up Malick's The Thin Red Line once again, upon its Criterion DVDization, in Sight & Sound, 2/11

Glimpsing Alex Cox's autumn wind-down with Repo Chick, Time Out Chicago, 2/10/11

On Bruce Robinson's lovely How to Get Ahead in Advertising, new to DVD, TCM.com, 2/3/11

"Friend Your Day Away: Taking Down The Social Network," In These Times, 2/2/11

Reviewing The Illusionist, The Boston Phoenix, 2/2/11

On Chabrol, top to bottom, for LA Weekly, 1/27/11

Loving Ida Lupino and The Hitch-Hiker, at Fandor, 1/21/11

Von Sternberg's odd Crime and Punishment, at TCM.com, 1/19/11

The Ten Best Political Documentaries of 2010, in In These Times, 1/18/11

Explaining Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss," at TCM.com, 12/23/10

Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine, The Village Voice, 12/22/10

My Top Ten of 2010 for The Village Voice poll, 12/23/10

The full Bertolucci, The Conformist and the MOMA retro, The Village Voice, 12/15/10

On Wakamatsu's Caterpillar, The L Magazine, 12/13/10

The Ten Best Straight-to-Video Releases of 2010, from Shirin to Oshima to Taiwanese mumble-yocks,at IFC.com, 12/10/10

"The Hemingway Unadaptability Principle Prevails: Hemingway's The Garden of Eden," The Village Voice, 12/8/10

"Rabbit a la Berlin," The Village Voice, 11/28/10

"Warning Shadows: Cinema of the Weimar Republic," from Caligari to Madchen in Uniform, Moving Image Source, 11/23/10

"My Soul to Take: Murnau's Faust", at Fandor, 11/18/10

Summing up Ophuls's Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, new to DVD, at TCM.com, 11/17/10

Looking at William Fraker's post-anti-western Monte Walsh, at TCM.com, 11/17/10

Death to the machines!: Rocking with the newly restored, still troublesome Metropolis, at The Kino Blog, 11/16/11

On the World Cinema Foundation traveling retro -- Revenge, Limite, A Brighter Summer Day -- for The L Magazine, 11/13/10

The mysteries of The Thin Red Line disected at its Criterion release, for Sight & Sound, 10/10

The ultimate appreciation of a neglected film: Murnau's Faust, at Fandor, 10/26/10

The new, complete DVD-ization of Apocalypse Now, thoroughly sussed out, at IFC.com, 10/19/10

On the year's best doc, Marwencol, in The Village Voice, 10/6/10

The definitive appreciation of Feuillade and Fantomas, at Moving Image Source, 10/4/10

Me on L'Age d'Or and all things Surrealisme, at Fandor, 9/10

My booklet essay for the Criterion edition of Black Orpheus, 9/10

Swooning over the Criterion-silent-Von Sternberg set (The Last Command, THe Docks of New York, Underworld) for Sight & Sound, 9/10

And my favorite new film of 2010: the tripartite, collective Red Riding Trilogy, reviewed at Movieline, 8/31/10

On Kim Jee-won's hellzapoppin The Good, the Bad, the Weird at Movieline, 8/18/10

Kvelling, like who didn't, over Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, at Movieline, 8/17/10

Reviewing and not crazy-loving Animal Kingdom, The Village Voice, 8/11/10

Ursula Meier's wretchedly overlooked, Huppert-fueled Home, reviewed at Movieline, 8/10/10

Loving Bellocchio's Vincere, Movieline, 7/29/10

On Solondz's Life During Wartime, in In These Times, 7/26/10

Making a case for Ozu in, of all places, Movieline, 7/22/10

The index to all of my In These Times columns, going back years...

The complete index to IFC.com columns, from 10/06 to 7/10

Getting some open road on Bong Joon-ho's Mother, Movieline, 7/22/10

The apocalyptic poetry of Gamera, at Movieline, 7/20/10

Nothing but ardor for the French animated nutbunch A Town Called Panic, plus a mess of noir DVD releases, from Fleischer's Armored Car Robbery to Karlson's The Brothers Rico, IFC.com, 7/20/10

A major blogtour stop: Big Two-Hearted Hemingway, my essay on biography and its discontents, for the British mag Culture Wars, 7/19/10

Unpacking the doper daydream of Bob Levis's forgotten 1968 hippie splooge Gold, for Movieline, 7/14/10

On Alain Resnais and Wild Grass and what it all means, at Moving Image Source, 7/6/10

Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr., plus a shrug over The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, IFC.com, 7/6/10

German angst and doubt, via The White Ribbon and Divided Heaven, IFC.com, 6/29/10

My annual swoon over the New York Asian Film Festival, from Symbol to A Little Pond, The Village Voice, 6/22/10

Roger Corman's Death Race 2000 and Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard, discussed, at IFC.com, 6/22/10

Retro-ing '70s sci-fi, from Tarkovsky to McBride, for The Boston Phoenix, 6/15/10

Love for Mary & Max, and Burma VJ, IFC.com, 6/15/10

Cutting up The Wolfman as only an ex-Monster Times reader can, at Movieline, 6/2/10

On Tony Manero and Techine's The Girl on the Train, IFC.com, 6/1/10

On the new Nagisa Oshima box, plus the doc Waiting for Armageddon, IFC.com, 5/25/10

The Messenger, and German gray-porn Cloud 9, IFC.com, 5/18/10

Romero's The Dark Half, The L Magazine, 5/18/10

Christian Nemescu's California Dreamin' and Coppola's Tetro, IFC.com, 5/14/10

My latest liner notes for The Criterion Collection: Wim Wenders's landmark Wings of Desire, Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey, Jules Dassin's Brute Force, and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine. Plus: an original video "essay," for Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven. And for Zeitgeist: Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay
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Bio

Film and culture critic, recently in Sight & Sound, In These Times, The Village Voice, The Boston Phoenix, The Guardian, The Believer, Moving Image Source, Modern Painters, IFC.com, TCM.com, Film Comment, The Forward, True/Slant, Chicago Reader, The Progressive, The Stranger, The American Prospect, poetryfoundation.org, GOOD, Hollywood Life, LOST Magazine, Greencine.com, The Criterion Collection, and Philadelphia City Paper.

Author/editor/coauthor of seven books, including Flickipedia: Perfect Movies for Every Occasion, Holiday, Season, Mood, Ordeal and Whim (Chicago Review Press), Exile Cinema: Filmmakers At Work Beyond Hollywood (SUNY Press), Ghosts in the Machine: Speculating on the Dark Heart of Pop Cinema (Limelight Eds.) and Blue Velvet (BFI).

Novelist; with new novel, Hemingway Cutthroat, out now from St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books!
The series' first volume, Hemingway Deadlights, is available wherever good books are sold.

Poet, with the debut collection One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train (Word Works), and poems recently Michigan Quarterly Review, Zone 3, Mudfish, Phoebe, Passages North, Cimarron Review, Rhino, Carolina Quarterly and New Letters.

Professor of film, at C.W. Post/Long Island University, and New York University.

Father of three.

Ambivalent co-screenwriter, of among other things a doomed-yet-somehow-deathless TV pilot, Babylon Fields (CBS), starring Amber Tamblyn, Ray Stevenson, Jamey Sheridan and Kathy Baker, but which you're not supposed to see. But can.

Member of the New York Film Critics Circle.

Son of Sayville, New York.
Recent Work

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE: Speculating on the Dark Heart of Pop Cinema (Limelight Eds.)

ONE HUNDRED CHILDREN WAITING FOR A TRAIN (Word Works)

BLUE VELVET (British Film Institute, Modern Film Classics series; translated into Portugese for Rocco Pub., Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and into Hebrew for Resling Pub., Tel Aviv, Israel)

"The Calm After the Storm: Making Sense of Lebanon's Civil War," by way of Lebanese movies, that is, The Village Voice, 5/4/10

On Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata and Farocki's How to Live in the German Federal Republic, IFC.com, 5/4/10

"Castle of Protest: The Provocations of Joao Cesar Monteiro," Moving Image Source, 5/3/10

"Pale Fire: On Michael Caine," Moving Image Source, 4/28/10

"Remember to Forget: Memento," Moving Image Source, 4/22/10

My Criterion essay on Godard's Vivre sa Vie, and the lostness of Karina, The Criterion Collection, 4/22/10

On Bahman Ghobadi, The Village Voice, 4/14/10

Pontecorvo's Kapo, pace Serge Daney, IFC.com, 4/13/10

On "the newspaper picture" and how movies learned to talk like Americans, at The L Magazine, 4/6/10

Thankful for Clair's The Italian Straw Hat, plus the odd little WWI musical La France, IFC.com, 4/6/10

Crooning with angry love for The Baader-Meinhof Complex, at IFC.com, 3/31/10

On Kiarostami's Close-Up, The Village Voice, 3/24/10

Mystery Blog Tour stop #3 -- on JFK and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, The Rap Sheet, 3/26/10

Gyorgy Palfi's unforgettable Taxidermia, and Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy, IFC.com, 3/23/10

A deranged little doc about North Korea, Kimjongilia, The Village Voice, 3/18/10

Hanging with Madame Varda on The Beaches of Agnes, plus the Uruguayan indie Gigante, IFC.com, 3/16/10

On Kurosawa's Ran, LA Weekly, 3/10/10

Whatever Gentlemen Broncos is, and what Rocky Road to Dublin has become 30 years on, IFC.com, 3/9/10

The Pleasure of Being Robbed, plus Ophuls's Lola Montes, IFC.com, 3/2/10

Steve McQueen's Hunger, and Joe Swanberg's Alexander the Last, IFC.com, 2/23/10

Ranting on media vacuity vis a vis Tiger Woods's johnson, at True/Slant, 2/20/10

My Criterion Top Ten, The Criterion Collection, 2/17/10

The first Holocaust movie ever -- shot in Auschwitz in 1947! -- Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage, IFC.com, 2/16/10

Noh Young-seok’s Korean micro-indie Daytime Drinking, plus a cataract of femme noir, from 1951's Two of a Kind to Hugo Haas's One Girl's Confession (1953), IFC.com, 2/9/10

Vintage Czech cinema in L.A., including Marketa Lazarova!, LA Weekly, 2/8/10

On Solidarnosc-era Polish cinema, The Village Voice, 2/3/10

Looking at Wholphin 10, and W.S. Van Dyke's long-underseen White Shadows in the South Seas, IFC.com, 2/2/10

Summing up the death of Miramax at The Village Voice, 1/30/10

Reviewing Eastwood's Invictus, Sight & Sound, 1/29/10

On the sublime Canadian deconstructionist horror beaut Pontypool, plus Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export, IFC.com, 1/26/10

The Dardennes' Lorna's Silence, and Craig Baldwin's Mock Up on Mu, IFC.com, 1/19/10

Considering Roy Andersson's magnificent You, the Living, plus Duncan Jones's Moon, at IFC.com, 1/12/09

Why I won't see Avatar, True/Slant, 1/7/10

On (500) Days of Summer and the Soviet pulp marathon Miss Mend, IFC.com, 1/5/09

A one-man, one-room remake of First Blood, Flooding with Love for the Kid, The Village Voice, 1/5/10

Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, plus a shout-out to Facets' new disc of Alexander Alexeieff animation, IFC.com, 12/29/09

On Chaplin's The Great Dictator, The Village Voice, 12/23/09

The annual Best-Films-to-Go-Straight-to-Video-and-Why-Is-That-Not-a-Legit-"Release" megalist, at IFC.com, 12/22/09

My song of love for Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, plus Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues, IFC.com, 12/15/09

Reviewing the Coens' A Serious Man in Sight & Sound, Dec. '09

A Dantean reading of The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, The L Magazine, 12/11/09

The end-of-decade case made: Adaptation is the American film of the '00s, IFC.com, 12/11/09

"Prophet Motives: Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater," which I actually went to see in a theatrer, The L Magazine, 12/10/09

"Did They Protect Bin Laden?", True/Slant, 12/9/09

The historic doc event The Battle of Chile finally coming to DVD, plus Kino's Avant-Garde 3, IFC.com, 12/8/09

Riffing on The Omega Man in The L Magazine, 12/2/09

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys, and the philosophical mega-doc The Ister, IFC.com, 12/1/09

Luis Bunuel's never-remembered Death in the Garden, and Michael Ritchie's acidic '70s honey Downhill Racer, IFC.com, 11/24/09

Reviewing The Road -- oy -- and Me and Orson Welles, at IFC.com, 11/25/09

Park Chan-wook's Thirst, plus Kent MacKenzie's rediscovered The Exiles, at IFC.com, 11/17/09

Aghast at Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, along with Sokurov's The Sun, at IFC.com, 11/18/09

On Lance Hammer's Ballast, and Don Siegel's The Lineup, at IFC.com, 11/10/09

Kvelling over Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and not so much about McGehee & Siegel's Uncertainty, at IFC.com, 11/11/09

On Samuel Fuller, Shockproof, Scandal Sheet and It Happened in Hollywood, at IFC.com, 11/3/09

Staring at The Men Who Stare at Goats, and staring at the ceiling after Collapse, at IFC.com, 11/3/09

My supplemental essay to Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire, at The Criterion Collection, 11/3/09 and for the hereafter.

Check out and BID UPON my Significant Objects significant object, a near-worthless tchotchke reinvested with significance by my commissioned story, on eBay! 10/6/09

At True/Slant, I settle the Polanski affair, 10/5/09

The notorious New York ultra-indie Frownland, and the 1950 Mexican spitfire camp Aventurera, at IFC.com, 9/29/09

Peter Greenaway's return, with Nightwatching and Rembrandt's J'Accuse, IFC.com, 9/14/09

Premier silent Soviet agit-pulp: Lev Kuleshov's The Death Ray, The L Magazine, 9/8/09

On the bewitching film criticism of Graham Greene, Moving Image Source, 8/21/09

On Elem Klimov's Rasputin grand mal, Agony, The L Magazine, 8/21/09

Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The L Magazine, 8/7/09

Powell & Pressburger's The Small Back Room, The L Magazine, 8/7/09

More Godard!: on Vivre sa Vie, The L Magazine, 7/28/09

On Godard's autobio wasteland, Made in U.S.A., and the tweedy old Barrymore silent Sherlock Holmes, at IFC.com, 7/21/09

"Project X: Revisiting the Season of the Blair Witch," Moving Image Source, 7/17/09

"Thunder Roads: Gangster Movies in Search of America's Nomad Soul," Sight & Sound, 7/09

On Yoshihiro Nakamura's Fish Story, The L Magazine, 6/24/09

On Tarkovsky's Solaris as it's mediated by the fab new Japanese film The Clone Returns Home, at The Criterion Collection, 6/17/09

Summing up Lewis Klahr's Tales of the Forgotten Future, at The L Magazine, 6/3/09

On The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Tarkovsky's Voyage in Time, IFC.com, 5/19/09

Quick pitch for Alexei German Sr.'s My Friend Ivan Lapshin, L Magazine, 5/19/09

"Endless Summer: Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day," at Moving Image Source, 5/18/09

Azazel Jacobs's "Momma's Man, and Terence Davies's Of Time and the City, IFC.com, 5/12/09

On Wendy & Lucy, and Chris Marker's A Grin without a Cat, at IFC.com, 5/5/09

"Time Regained: Remembering Julien Duvivier," Moving Image Source, 5/4/09

"Ironweed," TCM.com, 4/12/09

William Wellman's pre-Code films (especially Other Men's Women and Wild Boys of the Road), plus The Believer's album of Godardabilia, JLG in USA, at IFC.com, 3/31/09

Revisiting Guy Maddin's Careful, TCM.com, 3/09

Hiroshi Shimizu and Ornamental Hairpin, and Visconti's L'Innocente, at IFC.com, 3/17/09

On Zizek and The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, and Charlie Kaufman and Synecdoche, New York, at IFC.com, 3/10/09

"The Bright Side of Genocide: the New Holocaust Movies," In These Times, 3/9/09

A glimpse of my piece on the aesthetic of Polish movie posters (w/ illustrated gatefold!), in The Believer, 3/09

"Ashes of Time: On the death of VHS," Moving Image Source, 2/26/09

Godfrey Cheshire's Moving Midway, and, inexplicably, The Midnight Meat Train, IFC.com, 2/24/09

On Luis Bunuel and Simon of the Desert, IFC.com, 2/10/09

"Waltz with Bashir," In These Times, 2/12/09

On William Friedkin, retro'd at the Harvard Film Archives, Boston Phoenix, 2/11/09

On Carol Reed's Our Man in Havana, IFC.com, 2/3/09

"Ferrari's Dillinger Is Dead," at BAM, 1/29/09

"Rossellini's The Taking of Power by Louis XIV," IFC.com, 1/20/09

"Che," The Boston Phoenix, 1/13/09

"Marco Bellochio's The Wedding Director, and Michael Powell's A Matter of Life and Death," IFC.com, 1/6/09

"Hong Sang-soo's Woman on the Beach, and Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker," IFC.com, 12/30/08

"The Best Straight-to-DVD Releases of 2008," and #1 is a forgotten Larry Jordan animation!, IFC.com, 12/17/08

On Sam Fuller's White Dog, and Werner Herzog's Ballad of the Little Soldier, IFC.com, 12/16/08

"Silent Light: Frank Borzage at Fox, in the Shadow of Sunrise, and on the Brink of Sound," Moving Image Source, 12/16/08

Assayas's Irma Vep, IFC.com, 12/9/08

On Jia Zhangke's Still Life, and Roberto Rossellini's always-forgotten Era Notte a Roma, IFC.com, 12/2/08

"Children of Paradise: How to Watch Hal Roach's Our Gang Comedies and Why," Moving Image Source, 11/20/08

On the excruciating pulp satires of Minoru Kawasaki, and Keaton's The General, IFC.com, 11/18/08

On the occasion of W., a mad rummage through "Bush-era cinema," in Sight & Sound, Dec. '08

On Budd Boetticher, and Ousmane Sembene's Camp de Thiaroye, IFC.com, 11/11/08

"Ends of the Earth: The 20th Annual Boston Jewish Film Festival," The Boston Phoenix, 11/5/08

"Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising," In These Times, 11/5/08

On Hou's Flight of the Red Balloon, and Mystery Science Theater 3000, IFC.com, 10/28/08

"The Shadow Army: The Thin Red Line Ten Years After," Moving Image Source, 10/28/08

"Paris vu par... (Six in Paris), and Lewis Milestone's Arch of Triumph," IFC.com, 10/21/08

"First Person Plural: Mike Leigh's Search for Happiness," Moving Image Source, 10/17/08

"Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos and Le Deuxieme Souffle," IFC.com, 10/14/08

"Boy A", IFC.com, 10/7/08

Saluting Children's Poetry Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman, at The Poetry Foundation, 10/8/08

"Be My Knife: Sex as Transgression and Transaction in Oshima's Political Erotica," Moving Image Source, 9/30/08

"Mr. Vengeance: The Bill Douglas Trilogy," Moving Image Source, 9/22/08

"Aki Kaurismaki's Proletariat Trilogy," at IFC.com, 9/24/08

"Mon Oncle Antoine," TCM.com, 9/22/08

"Who Needs Critics?" -- an optimistic symposium of critics loving other critics, in Sight & Sound, 9/08

"The Title Above the Name," in which I consider the value of poetry book titles, at The Poetry Foundation, 9/10/08

"Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, IFC.com, 9/2/08

"Kino Pravda" -- Mosfilm and Russian cinema history, in Boston, Boston Phoenix, 8/26/08

"The Man in the Glass Booth," The Forward, 8/18/08

"Hellboy II: The Golden Army," Sight & Sound, 8/08

"On DVD: the films of Larisa Shepitko," IFC.com, 8/12/08

"Hotel Berlin," TCM.com, 9/08

"Dystopian Idol: The Ignored Prophecies of Peter Watkins's Privilege, Moving Image Source, 8/25/08

Dreamy contributions from me plus 49 others to "The Lost World of the Double Bill," Sight & Sound, 8/08

"St. Bill of Illinois: The Poignant Case for William Holden," Moving Image Source, 7/2/08

"My Blueberry Nights, IFC.com, 7/2/08

"Robert Wiene's The Hands of Orlac," TCM.com, 7/2/08

"Pabst's Secrets of a Soul," TCM.com, 7/1/08

"Chris Marker and The Last Bolshevik, IFC.com, 6/24/08

"Outskirts of the Kingdom: Werner Herzog," Moving Image Source, 6/4/08

"The Delirious Fictions of William Klein," IFC.com, 5/27/08

"A Human Being!: Philip Schultz and Failure," Poetryfoundation.org, 5/24/08

"Darkness Visible: HFA's 'Unseen Noir' retro," Boston Phoenix, 5/19/08

"Errol Morris's Myopia: Standard Operating Procedure," In These Times, 5/13/08

"Todd Haynes's I'm Not There and Abel Gance's La Roue, IFC.com, 5/13/08

"Ray Harryhausen's Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and It Came from Beneath the Sea," The Stranger, 5/08

"Anna Karina and the American Night," The Believer, March-April '08

"Harry Houdini, Movie Star," TCM.com, 4/08

"The New York Underground Film Festival's Last Hurrah," The IFC Blog, 4/4/08

"The Stepford Wives," TCM.com, 4/08

"Moving Targets: The Iraq War on Film," Modern Painters, 4/08

"Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade and Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon, IFC.com, 3/25/08

"Sergei Paradjanov on DVD," TCM.com, 3/08

"JewishFilm 2008," The Boston Phoenix, 3/25/08

"Hell Boy: Berlin Alexanderplatz," The Boston Phoenix, 3/18/08

My case for George Melies, at IFC.com, 3/17/08

"Portuguese Man of War: Manoel de Oliveira," The Boston Phoenix, 3/12/08

On Hiner Saleem's Kilometre Zero and the Lubitsch musicals, IFC.com, 3/3/08

"Mafioso," TCM.com, 2/08

"Alex Cox's Walker and Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract," IFC.com, 2/25/08

"I'm All Right, Jack," TCM.com, 2/08

"Viva la Godard: Pierrot le Fou and Helas pour Moi on DVD," IFC.com, 2/18/08

"Lisandro Alonso's Los Muertos and Aaron Katz's Quiet City," IFC.com, 1/28/08

"Get Carter," TCM.com, 12/21/07

"The Kite Runner," The Stranger, 12/12/07

"My Darling Clementine," TCM.com, 12/11/07

"The Anti-Ozu: Shohei Imamura," The Boston Phoenix, 11/27/07

"Stealers of Sleep: The New French Absurdist Thrillers," Sight & Sound, 11/07

"The Boston Jewish Film Festival 2007," The Boston Phoenix, 11/1/07

"Zazie dans le Metro," TCM.com, 10/22/07

"Dark New Wave: The New Romanian Cinema," The Boston Phoenix, 10/1/07

"Ivan's Childhood," TCM.com, 10/07

"1408," Sight & Sound, 9/07

"Scandal Sheet," TCM.com, 8/07

"On Norman McLaren," TCM.com, 8/07

"The Host & Swordsman II," The Stranger, 8/1/07

"Mismanagement or Mass Murder?: No End in Sight," In These Times, 7/24/07

"Hairy Potter: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," The Boston Phoenix, 7/10/07

"Comme Ci, Comme Ca: The Boston French Film Festival," The Boston Phoenix, 7/10/07

“Artifice and Old Lace: Greenscreen Movies,” Modern Painters, 7/07

"The Uncelebrated Genius of Peter Watkins," GOOD Magazine, 7-8/07

“Big Momma: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,” The Stranger, 7/4/07

"Mouchette," TCM.com, 7/07

“Givers of the Viscera: Grindhouse Cinema Remembered,” Sight & Sound, 7/07

"The Fallen Idol," TCM.com, 7/07

"Glaciation and Bloodshed: The Early Works of Michael Haneke," The Stranger, 6/6/07

"Tragic Diagrams: Sansho the Bailiff," The Stranger, 5/30/07

“Glee and Venom: The Films of Harold Pinter,” Boston Phoenix, 5/8/07

“That’s Entertainment: American Indies,” Sight & Sound, 4/07

"Inland Empire," Sight & Sound, 4/07

"The Double Life of Veronique," TCM.com, 4/07

"The Fountain," Sight & Sound, 3/07

"Sokurov's Elegies," The Stranger, 3/14/07

"Film Among the Ruins: Helmut Kautner," The Boston Phoenix, 2/21/07

"Starship Troopers," TCM.com, 2/07

"Rain Man: The Lingering Gaze of Béla Tarr,” The Boston Phoenix, 1/10/07

“Cinema Belongs to Him: Jacques Rivette,” The Boston Phoenix, 1/3/07

“Moral Horrors: Guillermo del Toro and Pan’s Labyrinth,” Film Comment, 1-2/07

"Magic Can Get Lost: An Interview with David Lynch," The Stranger, 1/17/07

"Tales from the Other Side: Letters from Iwo Jima," Philadelphia City Paper, 1/10/07

"The Truth is Out There... Somewhere: Alex Jones's Terrorstorm," Greencine.com, 12/7/06

"Movies from Outer Space: From Tsars to the Stars, Russian Fantastik Cinema,” The Boston Phoenix, 11/30/06

"Story of a Cloistered Nun," TCM.com, 11/06

“Assassination Vacation: Bobby,” Philadelphia City Paper, 11/21/2006

“Fissionable Material: The 2006 Festival of Films from Iran,” The Boston Phoenix, 11/10/06

“Gossip and Booze: Marie Antoinette,” The Stranger, 10/19/06

“Other People’s Bookmarks: Fellow Wanderers of a Forgotten Republic,” The Believer, 11/05
Reprinted (but without the fabulous bookmark centerfold!) at BiblioBuffet, 11/07

“History Worth Repeating: Hearts and Minds,” The Guardian, 11/5/05

“When We Were Psychos: Winter Soldier,” In These Times, 10/24/05

“Look Out, It’s Real!: Haskell Wexler and Tell Them Who You Are,” In These Times, 6/3/05

“Swan Song of the Century: The Ramones and End of the Century,” In These Times, 9/21/04

“Spin’s the Thing: The Manchurian Candidate,” In These Times, 9/20/04

"Stranger than Fiction: Bush-era Docs," In These Times, 9/6/04

“Counter Cultural Programming: The 50 Best Election Year Movies,” In These Times, 5/31/04

“Hyperauthor! Hyperauthor!,” The Believer, 12/03

“To Saragossa and Part Way Back: A Polish Ghost Story,” The Believer, 7/03

“O Biblioklepts!,” The Believer, 5/03

Against George Lucas, at The Guardian, 8/00

"Mad about Marlene," swooning for a Dietrich retro, for The Guardian, 6/00

DVD liner notes for Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay (Zeitgeist), Jules Dassin's Brute Force (Criterion), Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine (Criterion), Hong Sang-soo's Woman Is the Future of Man (New Yorker), Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring (Criterion), Lodge Kerrigan's Claire Dolan (New Yorker), Julien Duvivier's Pepe le Moko (Criterion), Rene Clair's A Nous la Liberte (Criterion), Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid (Criterion), Lasse Hallstrom's My Life as a Dog (Criterion)

September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (William Heyen, ed.; Etruscan Press, 2002)

The Best American Movie Writing 2001 (John Landis/Jason Shinder, eds.; Thunder's Mouth Press, 2001)

The Best American Poetry 1993 (Louise Gluck/David Lehman, eds.; Scribners, 1993)
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Zero for Conduct: Man on Wire

Man on Wire

Posted by Michael Atkinson at 1/21/2010 11:26 AM

Categories: readings, Literary Death Match, Hemingway
Tags: Literary Death Match Hemingway

Tonight I submit myself, amid the first serious cold I've had in five years, to groggily compete in Opium Magazine's new Literary Death Match, at the Bowery Poetry Club @ 7:30, and I'm all about those split infinitives... It's late notice, of course, as it was for me, so I'll save this space for afters, as they say in Brighton, and for the inevitable and inevitably mortifying YouTube clip...

1/22/10: All done, no clip as yet, but I lost, my subtly ironic/noirish Hemingway narrative proving no match for the distinctive non-sequitur humor mill of the Opium contingent... Ah, well. Sold some books, had some drinks, met many lovely women.

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1/21/2010 1:43 PM SharonM wrote:
It's going to be fine, it's going to be fun, but it may be a little unnerving. Work the cold for sympathy points. Todd understands intellectual fun, as do you, so have no worries and may the best writer triumph!
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1. 1/22/2010 1:01 PM Michael Atkinson wrote:
  You know Todd?
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