New Work

Hola, amigos. It's been a long time since I rapped at ya, so here are links to a lot of new work I've done for The Dissolve. First, features:

• Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and the rise and fall of Hollywood's happiest couple: A history of the collaborative partnership between Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, which produced some great films, at least two masterpieces, and a lot of bad blood.
  
  
• Animation's Lost Masterpiece: The story of Richard Williams' decades-long quixotic attempt to create the greatest animated film in history.
  
  
• Achievement Unlocked: Everybody knows video games based on movies and movies based on video games are terrible. What this article presupposes is maybe they aren't so bad any more?
  
  
• The Magnificent Hubleys: How one family changed the face of animation, from Snow White to Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
  
  
• Comrade Rambo: The story of a strange, low-rent Soviet action movie from the height of the Cold War.
  
  
• The Making and Unmaking of McCabe & Mrs. Miller: Robert Altman's masterpiece went through a decade of development before reaching the screen; here's what happened.

And also reviews:

• Iceman
  
• Field of Lost Shoes
  
• The Decent One
  
• Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead
  
• Diplomacy
  
• 1,000 Times Good Night

I think that's everything. Enjoy!

The Gag Man

I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be expanding an article I wrote for The Dissolve into a book for The Critical Press. Here's the original article, and here's some more information about the book. I'm looking forward to digging deeper into Bruckman's life, and I think it's going to be a really interesting book. Also: it's great and kind of unbelievable that The Dissolve let me write a story about Bruckman to begin with, except they publish bizarre, interesting, obscure and great stories all the time. I'm grateful they took a chance on this article.

Munchausen-by-Terrier

All credit to Chuck Jordan for the title of this post. I've written something new for the Dissolve, about puppies. Dog trainers, movies with dogs, that kind of thing, but also there are pictures of our puppy. Here it is. (My next article will be about a tragic Hollywood failure, don't worry.)

Film Preservation 2.0

In further non-Criterion-Contraption news, I wrote a feature for The Dissolve about the challenges of film preservation in the digital age, which is here.