Fear of the Velvet Curtain
A Blazing Saddles Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving. The real inauguration of the holiday season in the United States, and in homes, countries, points and vast places all around…
Articles by Dennis Cozzalio
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
GUNNAR HANSEN 1947 – 2015
Gunnar Hansen was born in Reykjavik, Iceland on March 4, 1947, and he died this past weekend, on November 7, in his…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
NEW IN THEATERS: SPOTLIGHT
The new movie Spotlight begins inside a South Boston police station in 1976, where a Catholic bishop is counseling a distraught mother…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
FOR HALLOWEEN: ORPHAN
Halloween doesn’t have to be over once the last trick-or-treater has crept back into the shadows of the night. You may still…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
FOR HALLOWEEN: BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO
Halloween doesn’t have to be over once the last trick-or-treater has crept back into the shadows of the night. You may still…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
FOR HALLOWEEN: EYES WITHOUT A FACE
Halloween doesn’t have to be over once the last trick-or-treater has crept back into the shadows of the night. You may still…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
TALES FROM A LIFE LIVED WITH MONSTERS
Over at my other haunt, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, there is currently posted, in honor of Halloween week, what…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
KILLER COUTURE: THE SUPPLEMENTARY PLEASURES OF CRITERION’S DRESSED TO KILL DISCS
July 25, 1980. That was the day Dressed to Kill opened in theaters across the country, and it marked the first of…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
TWO DOCS ABOUT ECCENTRIC WOMEN AND THEIR ART: KISS THE WATER AND IRIS
A look at the list of my favorite movies from 2014 reveals the presence of six extraordinary nonfiction films, and that’s just…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
20 YEARS LATER: THE GLORIOUS EXCESS OF SHOWGIRLS, PAUL VERHOEVEN’S NASTY CLASSIC
About five years ago I made my way over to Montana Street in Santa Monica to attend a screening of the magnificently…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
NO THOUGHTS OF LOVE: THE PROFESSIONALS – 1966
“This 1966 western… has the expertise of a cold old whore with practiced hands and no thoughts of love. There’s something to…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
Unfriended
For anyone who cringes at the words “found footage,” especially when applied to the recent glut of variable-quality horror movies like REC,…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
EXITS: HANNIBAL LECTER AND WES CRAVEN
The three-year run of Hannibal, one of the most visually and narratively innovative series ever to air on television, broadcast or cable,…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
THE RETURN OF RENE CLEMENT’S FORBIDDEN GAMES (1952)
It’s 1940, and the Nazi invasion of France is fully under way. A mother, father, a five-year-old girl and her tiny dog…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule
Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Ever since I came up with the quizzical, whimsical (quizzimsical?) name for my blog way…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
HONESTY (NO LIE!) ABOUT THE MOVIES OF 2015… SO FAR!
So here we are, smack dab in the middle of the dog days of summer (and if you don’t get that little…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
MOVIE HISTORY CATALINA ISLAND STYLE
A long time ago, sometime around 1912, a director by the name of D.W. Griffith packed up his filmmaking wares and took…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
GOOD-BYE, ALEX AND MARY
It’s definitely been a week for good-byes. My daughters and I spent the weekend in the beautiful, still somewhat quaint small town…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
Irrational Man and VIVE LE DISCOUNT MOVIE HOUSE!
Early on in Irrational Man, Woody Allen’s latest half-narcotized attempt to dramatically grapple with a philosophically tinged moral crisis, a fellow academic…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
WILD, DANGEROUS, IMPERFECT GRANDEUR: 11 DOUBLE FEATURES ABOUT AMERICA
The United States is “my country, right or wrong,” of course, and I consider myself a patriotic person, but I’ve never felt…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
THE BEATING UNDEAD HEART OF BURYING THE EX
Burying the Ex, director Joe Dante’s feature-length expansion of screenwriter Alan Trezza’s 2008 short, doesn’t have much use for the zombie apocalypse,…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
PAST AND FUTURE AT THE DRIVE-IN
Ten years ago this summer five nerds and some members of their very patient families answered an ad listing on Drive-ins.com and gathered…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
THROWBACK THURSDAY: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PETER, CHRISTOPHER AND VINCENT!
It’s a Throwback Thursday behind the Velvet Curtain, and no, don’t expect a picture of me in a blue baby bonnet, or…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
MAD MAX: BEYOND FURIOUS
You can practically feel the whole drive-in history of revenge-oriented biker pictures come roaring up from behind and crashing through the beginning…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT EARL HOFERT (AND DAVID LETTERMAN)
At this writing we are about a week away from May 20, 2015, which will mark an event that many of us,…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
SCI-FI SHORT ENDS: ROBOTS, HEROES AND MOVIE DREAMS
With the leap from Siri to Samantha, the seductive and increasingly sentient computer program heard (but never seen) in Spike Jonze’s Her,…