Category: Film

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From the Archive: Revenge of the Sith

Dan Seeger

Let’s begin by noting this: if I didn’t refer to The Empire Strikes Back as Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in 1980–and I assure you that I did not–then I’m sure as hell not going to start now with some miserable acquiescence to George Lucas’s cumbersome attempts to forever remind people that he has more interest in perpetuating brands than in creating films. Ahem. At the urging of students I was working with at the time, I signed up for a LiveJournal account in the summer of 2004. For ages, I had no real idea what to … Continue reading From the Archive: Revenge of the Sith

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Twenty Performances, or Splitting Adams

Dan Seeger

As the banner above makes colorfully clear, this particular annual post is better-suited to make an appearance on Sunday, but that’s reserved for one of our beloved exercises in counting backwards. So instead, we’ll use it as a wrap-up to the extended retrospective on the best cinematic offerings of the calendar year not-so-recently completed. I’ve already rattled off my choices for the ten best films of the year, and here are the performances I’d celebrate if I had the privilege of filling out a nominating ballot issued to a member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences acting branch, ranked … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Splitting Adams

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Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Five

Dan Seeger

#45 — Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956) No matter how many times the comparison is invoked by those trying to distract from the damage wrought by the sport, boxing isn’t poetry. It is instead angry prose slammed into place by harshly struck typewriter keys. The definitive cinematic statement of this truth is and will forever be Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, though there are certainly predecessors to that masterpiece that make the same argument with similarly brutish authority, most notably Somebody Up There Likes Me. Based on the autobiography written by middleweight champion Rocky Graziano (with what was … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Five

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From the Archive: Basic Instinct

Dan Seeger

Many of the reviews to be shared in this space will come from my time as co-host and co-producer of The Reel Thing, the WWSP-FM radio show where I first took a spin a genuine film critic. There were a few other outlets that deigned to distribute my words, the most natural of which was the student newspaper, with offices directly adjacent to the radio station that was my most consistent collegiate home. I’d actually had an earlier stretch as a writer for the The Pointer, penning a terrible, under-conceived column in the first semester of my freshman year. Thankfully … Continue reading From the Archive: Basic Instinct