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.


May 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 54

Total Comments: 16


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Powder / USA / 1995

Having seen this for the first time since I caught it in a theater over a decade ago, I consider Powder one of the most blatantly manipulative films I’ve ever seen (it shares company with the similarly manipulative but just slightly less contrived American Beauty). The eponymous character – an albino who “is electrolysis” – is introduced in the same manner as a monster: we see an infant child’s pale-white hand, and hear his voluminous cries as father denounces him as a son. Flash-forward some eighteen years, and he is discovered in his grandparents’ house, in a dark corner, seen in close-up but out of focus. His introduction is made with patience, and thus suspense. It’s because you may consider him a freak, and the film will spend its remainder combating any notion of such. Powder is a unique entry in neo-gothicism (the scene where Powder transmits the death throes of a deer to its hunter is truly disturbing), but it is more akin to American Beauty than, say, Frailty.

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Cable TV
22 May 2006 10:20 AM | Submit Comment


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