Yet another statement in support of the First Amendment and the Bijou’s right to bare skin
Ah, Valentine’s Day, the Hallmark-approved day to celebrate love in all its many forms. Well, not all, if you’re the University of Iowa’s Tom Rocklin. Rocklin recently decided to cancel the Bijou Theatre’s showing of the 3-D camp porn classic [...]

I checked this out last night, and as a cinematic entertainment I really enjoyed it.  As a movie it’s much, much better than “Titanic,” which was an immensely successful entertainment, but also mawkish, sentimental and plodding.  Avatar is a more rigorously plotted and realized piece of film making, and gets points for advancing the state [...]

So, writing about a movie star when they die isn’t exactly my thing, but Brittany Murphy dying got to me. And I wouldn’t write about it at all except that through random trolling for movies with Melissa, I saw a few of her lesser known movies that were interesting. To wit:
Sidewalks of New York [...]

In their new documentary, producer Kembrew McLeod and director Benjamin Franzen—both University of Iowa professors—attempt to shed light on the costly and complex world of the simple sample.
- Reactions to last weekend’s screening and Q & A, hosted by the Bijou
- Movie trailer for PBS’s Independent Lens

Seeing Zombieland last Friday was quite the treat. Jessie Eisenberg ’s Michael Cera impression was spot on, so there were many moments to entertain my twenty-something female disposition. Regardless of that lovable effeminate geek-boy finding love theme that has been hot these past few years, zombies were still the star attraction of the film. They [...]

In Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 20, 1974, in what was billed as the Rumble in the Jungle, Muhammad Ali employed a strategy called the rope-a-dope, letting the reigning heavyweight champion George Foreman pummel him for the first several rounds of the fight. Then Ali began taunting the wearying champ, “They told me you could punch, [...]

In the beginning was High Fidelity, at least as far as I’m concerned. An actor I’d never noticed before by the name of Jack Black was channeling Generation X energies like nobody else on the silver screen. His Barry, the record-store slacker-snob, stole the show and left me with the firm conviction that a new [...]

Jody Hill’s Observe and Report is one weird movie. I’m pretty sure this dark comedy is meant to provoke reflection: The title suggests that the movie is holding the mirror up to our reality. In a sense, it is; the worst parts of the movie are the most interesting, and the best parts are pretty bad. [...]

Someone should write an essay called “In Praise of Pretentiousness,” because in the first years of adulthood—please, those years only!—a little insufferable pretentiousness goes a long way. It was pretentiousness, I admit, that led me into a Charlie Chaplin film festival when I was a freshman at Grinnell: I showed up to appreciate silent films. [...]

Copyright Criminals
Directed by Benjamin Franzen
Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod have put together a quite entertaining documentary history of the sampling controversy in hip hop music. In this film, or at least in the rough cut of it, you will hear the following amazing things: Chuck D admits that you can in fact copyright a beat; [...]