writings by craig keller
Dormant Last read · last published · next check
Read 1 day ago and current, but nothing has been published for 19 months.
First Seen of the Year: Charlie Victor Romeo [Robert Berger, Patrick Daniels, and Karlyn Michelson, 2013] Last Seen of the Year: Last Embrace [Jonathan Demme, 1979] === Le 15/8 [Chantal Akerman, 1973] 35 rhums [35 Shots of Rum] [Claire Denis, 2008] O aleijadinho [The Little Cripple] [Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1978] The All Golden: The Polyamorous Soap Opera [Nathaniel Wilson, 2024] All That Money…
These are the books I read in 2024. The list would have been longer, but health-issues were a hindrance for the best part of the year. My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles by Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles edited and with an introduction by Peter Biskind 1983-1985 / 2013 Miracle Methods No. 4: Tricks and Sleights (Second Edition) by Jean Hugard and Fred Braue…
"What's the Showstopper?" "A feature, of course. The other two, calling cards or proof of concept. This is the biggie." — "It's got evyerthing from the previous films?" — "All that and more. I mean, it's different, but the same." — "I get this OJ vibe." — "You're not off. You like the amibiguous shit after all, right?" — "Sure I do." — "So what's to say we doing have IP here. White girl, blames…
"You Know, a Companion Piece. Throw Me the Title." "That would be Whiskey Fist . " — "What's the angle?" — "Late night, house party, more twentysomethings and shit when our lead decides to rawdog this chick from the rear." — "Can we work in some placement?" — "I know a guy at J.D. who's shitting to get eyes on this treatment." — "So 'day after'..." — "'Day after' he's full of regret as the movie…
"So Gimme the Title of The Picture..." "Well it's 'bout a dame can't help it" — "Thinking Roger Avary, eh?" — "Nah, this Horvat character. Gillian Wallace Horvat." — "Sounds a Wiltshire heiress, like a Avery Louisiana." — "Aaron knows her through Eliza." — "Who's the playbill?" — "Kate Lyn Sheil female lead, Anton Yelchin co-pilot." — "What's the big idea?" — "Sheil and Yelchin meet up at one of…
Water Everywhere You couldn't quite call What Doesn't Float [Luca Balser, produced by Pauline Chalamet] an aquatic odyssey through the plunge of the New York City waterworks — there's bongwater on the carpet and it's ruined the collectible Ayoades. What Doesn't Float suggests not so much the end or beginning of a certain era in independent American filmmaking,— Balser seeks neither plaudit nor…
Coming Home Colleen (Addison Timlin) used to be splatter-goth; now she cleans up in modern ash cardigan accented by a silver crucifix. She's come to Asheville to visit her brother (Keith Poulson) who has also arrived home, living in an apartment detached from the main property. The entirety of his head has become disfigured by burns suffered during a tour of duty in the Iraq War and its associated…
Untouchable Tuscarora, Nevada, zero-mile marker, end of the road. Seems like the end of the world based on its isolation alone.Vast horizon murals of lowering clouds; sometimes something near a cyan. At ground level piles of collapsed structure lie strewn like toppled lecture hall skeletons. Schickele's documentary subject, Dennis Parks, was a middle-aged teacher, in fact, a sculptor and master…
Revolutions Can't Be Televised Bushman picks up where David Schickele's Give Me a Riddle left off a few years earlier; it's 1971 now. The self-proclaimed Nigerian "bushman," Paul, has made his way to the States, San Jose environs to be exact. The direct cinema method of Give Me a Riddle has been jettisoned in place of a mixture between the documentary style and a raw narrative (sometimes handheld,…
Sort of a Magic Lantern On the eve of the 1967 Nigerian Civil War, filmmaker David Schickele arrived in a remote village for a multi-year stint courtesy of the Peace Corps's diplomatic relations and cultural exchange program. Give Me a Riddle [1966] employs a direct cinema method that focuses on Schickele's friend Roger Landrum, who is teaching (and frequently meeting with) the work of Chinua…
