An alphabetical listing of every individual film about which we've ever written, from Action Jackson to Zeder.
An alphabetical listing of every individual film about which we've ever written, from Action Jackson to Zeder.
With DVR, On Demand, fancy-pants disc technology, streaming, and online rental services as well as comprehensive movie databases changing the home entertainment market seemingly every second, the days of going out of your way to seek something odd and unexpected aren't just waning, they're pretty much gone. So these days Cribbs returns to Alexandra's Video Vault to do something he always took for granted: to browse. He's bringing home VHS weirdness and writing about it.
As an internet website, we are legally required to compile themed lists. Fulfilling this requirement are articles like the good director/baffling project rundown 8 Inexplicable Cinematic Miscalculations, the woeful performances marring masterpieces in Awful Performances in Classic Films and our 100 Movie Moments series highlighting some of the best individual moments in cinema history.
From their celebration of Ray Bradbury to their look at the films that truly mattered in their lives (The Whole History of My Life), these are The Pink Smoke's constellations of articles on a single subject. Plus, orphan articles that don't fit in anywhere else: a discussion of the Elmore Leonard t.v. adaptation Justified or a look at Godard and Truffaut's Favorite Films of 1957. Honestly, if you want to read the best stuff they've ever written, you'll probably find it in this section.
An examination of movie novelizations, which have fascinated Cribbs ever since his days as a movie-starved youngster who would read and re-read the paperback versions of favorite films in the months between their theatrical debut and home video release. This series addresses a question nobody's ever cared enough to ask: is there any kind of value to be found in these disreputable cash-in media oddities?
Despite their towering reputations, some beloved films and filmmakers just don't do it for The Pink Smoke. This series, Second Chances, follows Funderburg and Cribbs as they actively make an effort to appreciate esteemed artworks for which they currently have a distaste. They give cult favorites like Escape from New York another shot and dig deep in the filmographies of beloved auteurs whose appeal baffles them (like Nicholas Ray) - sometimes they even emerge as newly-minted fans...
An experiment dedicated to great directors. Great directors who've... transgressed. Disappointed. Befuddled. Some of our favorite filmmakers have occasionally gone off the deep end and this ongoing column will try to figure out what their motivation might have been in choosing projects that proved questionable, wrongheaded or outright embarrassing. Think William Friedkin's black-magical murder-tree psychodrama The Guardian or Sidney Lumet's preposterous "The Hangover... as a murder mystery!" The Morning After.
One occassion of their passing, remembrances of filmmakers, personalities and institutions that were especially meaningful to us here at the Pink Smoke, including counterculutral poet and horror icon Gunnar Hansen, experimental filmmaker Peter Hutton and one of the greatest video stores in the history of le cinema, Alexandria's Video Vault.
A series that compares the films on our dvd shelves to the novels on our bookcases, exploring how the two works differ from each other and what the existence of one says about the other. Begins with a look at Wim Wenders taking on Patricia Highsmith's famous Ripley character in The American Friend and from there winds through a collection of fictions both literary and pulp including Jean-Luc Godard's debasement of Donald Westlake in Made in U.S.A., the uneasy marriages of Luis Bunuel and Jean Renoir to Octave Mirbeau's chambermaid as well as Peter Yates' excellent adaptation of George V. Higgins' even better book The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
Every year Cribbs and Funderburg make the drive up to Canada for the Toronto International Film Festival and come back with their TIFF in Review. Theoretically, they could go to some other festival and write about that. They haven't yet but trust me, they've thought about it. Funderburg went to Sundance once and was surprised to find out it was full of terrible films and Industry Phonies. There was zero poutine in Park City, Utah.
Stored in a single warehouse are the complete works of five filmmakers, their entire bodies of work, every last 35mm & 16mm print, dvd disc, vhs tape and hard-drive together in one place. When the warehouse goes up in flames, you have the chance to save five films - which ones do you keep and which ones do you let burn? Each installment features a different list of directors and a different writer taking on the enjoyably pointless theoretical exercise. Gimme the Loot director Adam Leon's list is as good a place to start as any.
All of our series focused on actors, actresses, acting and actulation, including the Lee Marvin on tv project LeeTV, character actor spotlight I'll Never Forget Ol' Whatsisname and the true-crime stories of Murdered Actresses (one of the best and weirdest projects in the history of The Pink Smoke.) Also, Christopher Lambert junkies will find their fix in Lambertathon right here and Charles Bronson-iacs can revel in his late career persona as an avenging angel of death in The Point of Dyin'.
Tired of reading about The Godfather and Aliens for the 8 billioneth time? Rather find out more about Eric Rohmer's The Aviator's Wife or Andre de Toth's Springfield Rifle? In this series, our writers endeavor to direct your attention to some lesser-seen masterpieces: give your palate over to The Pink Smoke and we'll treat it to some delicacies that you maybe didn't even realize were thoroughly, totally, 100% worth your attention. When was the last time someone told you to go for a Mexican Bus Ride?
This takes a look at some of the most obscure works by cinema's acknowledged geniuses, the films that even fanatics have over-looked. If you love Luis Buñuel, you've seen Belle de Jour, you've probably even seen El (This Strange Passion) – but have you seen his Mexican mind-bender The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz? Same came be said for George Armitage fans who love Miami Blues but might not even be aware of the existence of his "black Get Carter" flick Hitman. Focusing on films not readily available on VHS or DVD with English-language subtitles, it's an attempt to dig deep into the filmographies of cinema's greats and explore the rarest of rarities.
In October 2006, Funderburg and Cribbs set out to watch at least 200 Movies over the course of the next 200 Days. They both watched a different slate of films and wrote about every single one; from epic high art masterpieces such as Fassbinder's 15 & 1/2 hour Berlin Alexanderplatz to goofy teen comedies like Savage Steve Holland's worthy One Crazy Summer to idiotic trash like Open Water 2. In sections spanning 10 days at a time, The Pink Smoke is reprinting their writings about the grueling experiment in cinematic endurance. They like to think Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington's 500 Movies in 500 Days was making fun of them specifically, but it wasn't.
A round-up of all of Funderburg & Cribbs's Pink Smoke and Artcal Ructive Films-related podcast appearances, including a handful of appearances on The Wrong Reel. If you're up for it (which you definitely are), you can hear Funderburg discuss Claire Denis along wtih Marcus Pinn & James Hancock or listen to an episode of Inside The Phoenix where Cribbs and Funderburg go through the making of The Burning Bride. There's also a lot of footage out there of Funderburg doing empty promotional bullshit for his former employers, but we're not linking to any of that.
A round-up of every article we've ever written associated with a specific date or time of the year: A Short List of Films About Love for Valentine's Day, a heart-warming list of The Worst Movies to Watch on Mother's Day, our Summer Movie Previews, movies for every occasion, including Cribbs' annual Halloween Horror Movie Marathons.
Our annual looks back at previous year; the best, the worst, the instantly forgettable. In 2011, Stu Steimer mulled over much-despised future classics like Tree of Life, Unclee Boonmee Who can Recall his Past Lives and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. In 2009, Funderburg and Cribbs agreed that three films stood out above all others. After a strange 2006, Funderburg singled out Christiane Cegavske's Blood Tea and Red String as well an Atom Egoyan documentary that was never released while Cribbs extolled the virtues of Verhoeven's Black Book, Lynch's Inland Empire and Chabrol's The Bridesmaid. Monstrously lengthy breakdowns of the years that were.