Tag Archives: Double Indemnity

Putting aside the unnecessary death, the financial collapse, and the ever-present sense of dread, is there anything about this pandemic that you’ll remember fondly?

By Mark | April 27, 2020

I know the world is pretty terrible right now. Jobs have been lost. Friends have passed. There’s a lot of fear, uncertainty and anxiety. But, I suspect, for most of us, there are also the occasional moments of happiness, when we realize that, at least for a fleeting moment, we’re well, happy, and have things […]

Posted in Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged Baby Face, Barbara Stanwyck, coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, pre-code, rice pudding, The Lady Eve, Win Schuler | 32 Comments

Designing the Curriculum for an Awesome High School Film Class: Part One

By Mark | August 1, 2019

An old friend of mine who teaches at a public high school in Minnesota just got word that he’s inherited a 12-week elective course on film, and he’s reached out to me, asking if I might help him design the curriculum. All that he’s been given to work with thus far is a list of […]

Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1957, 1974, A Face in the Crowd, Algeria, Algerian War of Independence, Andy Griffith, Billy Wilder, Blade Runner, bugging, celebrity culture, curriculum, Dan Richardson, documentary film, Donald Trump, drifters, Elia Kazan, Eugene McCarthy, film criticism, film history, film school, films, folksy, foreign film, France, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, Gillo Pontecorvo, Glenn Beck, great films, Harrison Ford, Harry Caul, high school, Hot Channels, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Italy, Lonesome Rhodes, M, Martin Stett, Mildred Pierce, neorealist, populism, privacy, red scare, simple truths, small town America, social media, Sunset Boulevard, surveillance, surveillance culture, terrorism, The Battle of Algiers, The Conversation, The Killing, The Night of the Hunter, torture | 26 Comments

“It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it.”

By Mark | June 12, 2019

I was going to take the night off and watch Double Indemnity with a glass of scotch, but then the President of the United States went and said on the record that he would accept the assistance of a hostile foreign power in order to stay in power, and now my night is pretty much […]