Sherlock Jr. @100: For the love of Cinema

by Cláudio Alves

This week, one of the best comedies ever made and a silent film masterpiece celebrates its centennial. It's none other than Sherlock Jr., Buster Keaton's 45-minute miracle of stunt work and cinematic considerations about cinema as materialized dream and broken escapism. A meta-movie for the ages, I consider it the old Stone Face's crowning achievement. Sure, The General is much more complex and Steamboat Bill, Jr. trumps it in sheer iconography. As for technical innovation, something like The Play House is probably Keaton's peak. However, there's something special about the 1924 lark, a simplicity that bolsters perfection, an ingenuity that rekindles my love for cinema whenever I set my eyes on it…

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Streaming Roulette (Halloween Weekend)

Happy Halloween Weekend! There are quite a few newish-to-streaming things to screen this weekend (many of them horror themed) so herewith 10 ideas to take you through Halloween on Monday night. 

If we can raise him up, we can raise up anyone in the cemetery.

WENDELL & WILD (2022) on Netflix
Went in with the highest hopes since Henry Selick is just great. Plus stop-motion animation is always such a treat in the more lifeless era of the absurdantly dominant CG 3D style. The animation here is definitely the highlight and it's perfect for Halloween...

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100th Anniversary: "Leaves from Satan's Book"

by Cláudio Alves

Carl Theodor Dreyer is one of my favorite filmmakers. I'll never forget the first time I watched The Passion of Joan of Arc on the big screen and was transported, how experiencing Vampyr felt like witnessing a projected nightmare, the ecstasy of Ordet's ending or Gertrud's stern ruminations on love. It's to my great shame that I'm not familiar with the Danish director's early works, having mostly ignored them until now. The centennial of Dreyer's second feature, Leaves from Satan's Book, makes this a great time to start correcting these cinephilic lacunas…

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Sessue Hayakawa: From sex symbol to Oscar nominee

We've been celebrating 1957 for a couple of weeks. Here's one more from Cláudio Alves

In 1957, Miyoshi Umeki became the first and only Asian woman to win an acting Oscar. However, the Best Supporting Actress champion wasn't the only Japanese performer to score an Academy Award nomination that year. Sessue Hayakawa, who played the ruthless Colonel Saito in the Best Picture winner The Bridge on the River Kwai, became the first male actor of Japanese descent to be nominated by the Academy. Unlike Umeki, who had less than a decade of experience in show business by the time she achieved Oscar glory, Hayakawa had a long history with Tinsel Town. Many decades before his nomination, when the American film industry was creating itself and Silent Cinema was entertainment for the masses, Sessue Hayakawa had been one of the first sex symbols… 

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In defense of "The Artist"

by Cláudio Alves

For Oscar obsessives, it's no news that to win big at the Academy Awards can be a curse rather than a blessing. The reigning champions are more discussed and overtly scrutinized than the defeated, their triumph like sweet nectar, attracting the bees of discontentment, resentment, and retroactive bashing. The tides of time can also make an atypical choice seem like a perfunctory one. Notice how some of our strangest Oscar champions of recent vintage have gained the fame of being boring winners when they're anything but. You might not like The Shape of Water, for instance, but a love story between a mute woman and a fish-man is not your run of the mill Best Picture winner.

The same can be said about The Artist, a romantic tale with comedic overtones that, in 2012, became the first silent film to win the Oscars' top honor since 1928…

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