The Death of Me Yet (1971)

Exploring a zippy premise from offbeat narrative angles, telefilm   The Death of Me Yet   is more a compendium of promising ideas than a fully realized dramatic statement, but an engaging leading performance and solid supporting turns help make the piece as palatable as it is befuddling. The movie is about a KGB sleeper agent living a seemingly normal life in California until circumstances cause him to question his allegiance to Mother Russia. While much the plot comprises the twi...

The Burnt Orange Heresy

It was Jean-Luc Godard who came up with the famous quote about film being "truth 24 times per second," and then Brian de Palma (a Godard superfan) later countered that by stating that film is, in fact, "lies 24 times a second." Both are correct, and both statements no doubt gave rise to a million undergraduate arts theses regarding the slippery nature of truth in art and the unmediated intentions of the artist. Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, adapted from Charles Willeford’s 197...

Deconstructing Woody - Self-reflexivity in the Films of Woody Allen

Deconstructing Woody: Self-reflexivity in the Films of Woody Allen Home Deconstructing Woody: Self-reflexivity in the Films of Woody Allen Ronan Doyle (N.U.I. Galway) Woody Allen Among the most prolific directors in American cinema since his debut with What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Woody Allen’s work has spanned the eras, his style evolving from the broad comic leanings of films such as Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973) to elegiac rom-coms the like of Annie Hall (1977...