Cat (played by Orangey, trainer Frank Inn) is one of the most popular characters in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961), possibly more well-liked than Holly Golightly’s (Audrey Hepburn) love interest, Paul Varjak (George Peppard). Cat watches Holly’s parties from above, preferring to perch himself on a high shelf, using men’s shoulders as stepping stones on his way up or down, unperturbed by the commotion of Holly’s life. (more…)
Guest post by Caitlyn Stevens, IU Cinema’s Social Media Specialist and Marketing & Engagement Assistant.
I was first exposed to the work of Claire Denis years ago when I blind-bought a copy of White Material during a Criterion Collection sale. I absolutely loved the film (which was one of the sparks that ignited my obsession with Isabelle Huppert) but didn’t dive deeper into Denis’ oeuvre until hearing Barry Jenkins cite her as one of his favorite filmmakers and greatest inspirations in 2017.
Until very recently, however, one particular film eluded me, despite being one of her most critically acclaimed. It was probably my general aversion to “war films” that kept me from seeking out Beau Travail (1999) sooner, but with High Life coming to IU Cinema next week and the deadline of this blog post impending, I decided it was finally time to take the plunge. (more…)
There are several ways you could measure the success of All About Eve (1950). You could measure it in terms of critical reviews, which were positive. You could measure it in terms of how many Oscars it won — 6, including Best Picture. But you can also measure its success in terms of its impact on cultural works to come.
One way to measure this impact is in the works that are direct adaptations of this film for other mediums. The most recent example was a production of a stage play of the same name that also tells the story of sneaky upstart Eve Harrington trying to steal the career of veteran stage actress Margo Channing. That stage play ran in London and starred Gillian Anderson and Lily James. But there are just as many parodies and homages in television, such as episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Simpsons. (more…)
Every month A Place for Film will bring you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series will reflect the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema, as well as demonstrate the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited. (more…)
The reverberations of the late 20th century seem to be endless. The neoliberal politics of the ’90s have come back to haunt us on social and financial policies that have morphed and evolved in ways we couldn’t imagine. Progressive and outspoken attitudes at the time, such as the unveiling of police corruption targeted at black people, helped shape the minds of people now fighting for ground on the same issues. The end of the century put forward the idea that buying music at full price, or for any price at all, would become a thing of the past. Napster took flight in June of 1999 and not only put nails in the coffin of the music industry, but did it with a rapid fire nail gun, leading us into a world where artists are “grateful” to get a fraction of a penny from a Spotify stream. And what of the wondrous world of cinema? Well, 1999 is a cataclysmic year for the filmgoing experience, giving us an overloaded stable of instant classics, cult mainstays, and cultural goal posts that defined the moviegoing vernacular for the next 20 years. It’s not just interesting in seeing how these films and cultural movements around them have held up and influenced the 21st century, but how they almost look foreign in the year 2019. (more…)
The cinema of Jerry Lewis is nothing if not bodily, and its capacity to formally display certain anxieties regarding the physical relationship between himself and his audience can sometimes result in feelings of discomfort and aversion in the viewer. Lewis, as filmmaker and as performer, draws upon the kinetic devices of multiplicity and metatextuality in order to correlate cinematic images with forms of sexual hysteria and corporeal discomfort. If Lewis’s work can be categorized simultaneously as an expression of the body and an expression about or against the body, it is first important to understand the role that the audience plays in his films. Because all of Lewis’s self-directed films function as elaborate explorations of spectacle, it is necessary that they contain both elements of performance and an audience or viewer to receive this performance – Lewis’s comedy often plays on the duality or tension between himself and those who are watching him. Chris Fujiwara, in his excellent critical essay “The King of Comedy,” asserts that, “In Lewis’s work, identity is always performed; there is no private self… A person in a Lewis film is a collection of traits (rather than a ‘subject’).” Because Lewis, like Andy Warhol, displays a kind of refusal or inability to conceive of people with any sense of psychological interiority, the material world of surfaces and appearances becomes intensified in his work. In this regard, the settings in his films often act as large-scale receptacles which contain the “play” or performance that he enacts. (more…)
