Perhaps no modern sports figure has gone from the heights of praise to the depths of public revulsion as spectacularly as Lance Armstrong, the disgraced former cycling champion who beat cancer, won several consecutive Tours de France, but then watched his legend implode after admitting to doping over the course of many years. Armstrong’s unlikely rise and even more drastic fall is being retold ... more >
INTERVIEWS
INTERVIEW : Barak Goodman on his PBS documentary about George W. Bush
Program is airing this week on PBS
George W. Bush left office over a decade ago, with his eight years as president long been consigned to the provenance of historians. However one might have felt about the 43rd president at the time of his administration, it was time to give those eight years of the first decade of the new millennium a second look. “‘American Experience’ is very clever because they time these things so that ... more >
Alicia Malone: ‘Growing up in Australia, all films were foreign to me’
The TCM Host talks to Rudy Cecera about growing up Aussie and cinephilia in a film industry where opportunities for women are improving, too slowly
Although home isolation maybe getting to some, this is the perfect time to catch up on some classic films and the network synonymous with those is Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Last month, I had the great pleasure of speaking with host, author and film historian Eddie Muller. I am happy to now bring Alicia Malone into the conversation. Malone has been engrossed in film from her early beginnings in ... more >
INTERVIEW: Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance of “Slay the Dragon”
Pushing back on gerrymandering in Wisconsin, Colorado and Michigan and across the rest of the nation
(April 3, 2020; runtime: 101 min.)
The 2020 Census is upon us, and its results will determine how much representation each district will get in the House of Representatives. But for decades there have been various attempts to cheat the system in a trick called gerrymandering, wherein voting districts are redrawn to effectively divide certain blocs and thus reduce their collective representative power in Congress. “Slay the ... more >
INTERVIEW : Eddie Muller, Czar of Noir
Its most committed afficionado lays bare the cinema of the disenchanted
These are tough times for movie lovers. Theaters across the country are closed, many libraries shuttered and people are staying home. However, there is still a way to enjoy watching films. In fact, it may give people a chance to see the more classic cinema that they’ve otherwise been ignoring. The Turner Classics Network (TCM) runs films 24/7 and perhaps the highlight of their line-up is the ... more >
TALKING with the cast of “Gentefied,” the newest NETFLIX comedy
This is the first cast of characters to speak Spanglish like a boss
Much like the relationships between the native-born children and their Mexican immigrant parents in the new Netflix series “Gentefied,” many of the actors in the series grew up under similar circumstances. “I’m first-generation born here. My mom speaks English fluently and perfectly because she was actually born in the Dominican Republic but moved to New York when she was young,” said actress ... more >
ALA EDDINE SLIM : “In Tunisia, the army remains this hidden monster” (INTERVIEW)
Slim has won awards at the Thessaloniki and Venice Festivals
Born in Soussa, Tunisia thirty-seven years ago, a consumer mainly of ninja and Jean-Claude Van Damme VHS movies as a teenager Ala Eddine Slim came into cinema upon discovering, not without thrills, "The Sunchaser” [1996] by Michael Cimino on television, "on a Thursday evening after Special Reporter." For the last ten years he has run, along with a few close friends, a kind of collective derived ... more >