Email Author Michael Fox

2009 Stories by Michael Fox

• Dirty Work

  published June 3, 2009

  California’s agribusiness plows, plants, and picks pretty much year-round, but we tend to celebrate only the spring-summer harvest. (Seen the... More >>

• In Cold Blood

  published June 3, 2009

  Horror flicks account for most of the cheap, nasty fun provided by the annual bad-taste film frenzy known as Another Hole in the Head, and... More >>

• Oil and Water

  published May 20, 2009

  One of the miraculous characteristics of the corporate structure is its built-in ability to endlessly deflect responsibility from the top... More >>

• On the QT

  published May 20, 2009

  Once hailed as the Great White Hope of American movies, Quentin Tarantino instead turned out to be the King of the "B"s. It's now clear that... More >>

• Rabbit-Ear Blues

  published May 13, 2009

  We’ve been beaming TV signals into space for decades with no reply, or at least none that we can decipher. What if it’s because those... More >>

• Lesser-Known Nightmares

  published May 6, 2009

  There are no second chances in film noir. Hell, the first chance is a scam, a hundred-to-one shot, a fool’s errand or, if the sucker is... More >>

• Freeze Frame

  published May 6, 2009

  Hand-drawn animation — at the going rate of 24 cels per second — may be the most labor-intensive form of filmmaking ever concocted by... More >>

• Sacred Cinema

  published May 6, 2009

  Notwithstanding the dweebs who claim to have found religion watching Star Wars, spirituality and the cinema don’t go particularly well... More >>

• Ferlinghetti

  published April 29, 2009

  The San Francisco poet, painter, and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who just turned 90, is a well-traveled citizen of the world, a North... More >>

• Pixel Flicks

  published April 22, 2009

  The Holy Grail for mainstream American film directors — even before the monomaniacal pursuit of jaw-dropping verisimilitude in CGI-driven... More >>

• Framing the Truth

  published April 22, 2009

  Half a century ago, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank published a landmark book of 83 piercing photographs culled from the 25,000 (!) he’d... More >>

• SFIFF52:Star Power

  published April 22, 2009

  Stars have long lured moviegoers to the theater, and for half a century festivals have used that gravitational pull to generate media... More >>

• A guide to the best of this year's S.F. International Film Festival

  published April 22, 2009

  When the San Francisco International Film Fest rolls around, we at SF Weekly rejoice. Then we get overwhelmed. How are we going to... More >>

• Requiem for a Heavyweight

  published April 8, 2009

  The extraordinary stage actor John Cazale made just five movies, but all were nominated for Best Picture Academy Awards. It wasn’t a... More >>

• Rude Reels

  published April 8, 2009

  With all the discerning purveyors of schlock, genre, and exploitation cinema in the Bay Area, do we really need some dudes from Texas to show us a... More >>

• Weimar Days

  published April 8, 2009

  In the ’30s and ’40s, urban sophisticate Ernst Lubitsch turned a corner of the Paramount lot into Old Europe for his masterful romantic... More >>

• Tony! Tony! Tony!

  published March 25, 2009

  Brilliant and uncompromising, violinist Tony Conrad cut a swath through the pop-rock ’60s with his loud, droning, “minimal” music.... More >>

• More Than a Movie Night

  published March 25, 2009

  It is no slight to the programmers of the San Francisco Women’s Film Festival to say this is one event where the main action happens... More >>

• Thank God for God

  published March 25, 2009

  Erich Von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille may not have believed they had a divine right to make movies, but on the set they were assuredly God.... More >>

• Godardian Knot

  published March 25, 2009

  Pop quiz: How many of you Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman fans out there have seen even one Jean-Luc Godard film? Frankly, friends, that’s... More >>

• Hand to Mouth

  published March 11, 2009

  It started by accident, when Mike Plante’s dining companion chanced to be out of cash. The CineVegas Film Festival programmer had the bright... More >>

• Camelot Revisited

  published March 11, 2009

  It’s a marvelous thing when fiction, even historical fiction, is trumped by actual factual history. Oliver Stone’s JFK,... More >>

• Know Your Rights

  published March 11, 2009

  When it comes to social-issue documentaries, the citizenry has finally figured out that the best (and usually only) way to find out what’s... More >>

• East of Eden

  published March 11, 2009

  In one key category — revelations per minute — the S.F. International Asian American Film Festival has the edge over Frameline... More >>

• A Strand in Time

  published February 25, 2009

  We love the folks who run the perpetually challenged arthouse theaters, but the truly unsung heroes in the film scene are the small distributors... More >>