Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

December 2005 activity

Total Log Entries: 53

Total Comments: 10

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Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story / USA / 1987

A surprising undercurrent of emotion runs through this retelling of 1970s easy-listening star Karen Carpenter’s rise to fame and subsequent death from anorexia. Using Barbie-like dolls in place of real actors, director Todd Haynes revisits (and simultaneously pokes fun at) biopic conventions to evoke Carpenter’s suffocating home life and relentlessly demanding touring schedule. Thematically similar to Safe and Far From Heaven, the action plays out like a slow-burning horror film in which the female protagonist fades into a shadow of her former self. Although the movie’s approach to anorexia is a clinical one, it displays a firm grasp of the psychology underlying the disease and treats Carpenter’s plight with utmost sympathy (though her family and business colleagues come off in a decidedly less flattering light).

by Beth Gilligan | Source: VHS
13 Dec 2005 12:37 PM | Submit Comment

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