Email Author Michael Fox

2012 Stories by Michael Fox

• Video of the Day: The Idiocratic Life

  published Sep 25, 2012

  Hollywood directors test-drive their movies for focus groups in Anaheim. Bay Area documentarians, although not averse to reaching the multiplex masses (even if they're a good deal less shameless about... More >>

• When Movies Mattered

  published August 29, 2012

  Left coasters may not pay much attention to the New York film scene, but the Apple’s exhibitors, curators, festivals, and critics set the... More >>

• To Rome, with Love

  published August 15, 2012

  As you count down the dwindling days on your summer fling, it’s perfectly natural to feel a melancholy twinge. The Italians have a word for... More >>

• Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

  published August 1, 2012

  Live cinema is the next unpredictable step in the movie-going experience, if you haven’t been paying attention to the experimental... More >>

• 90 Years Young

  published August 1, 2012

  The masterful director Howard Hawks had a simple strategy: Craft great scenes. String enough of ‘em together, and you have a great movie.... More >>

• Who Let the Flying Monkeys Out

  published July 18, 2012

  You know you’re an adult when you no longer enjoy The Wizard of Oz as a fabulous fairy tale or a demented drug trip but appreciate it... More >>

• Ride ‘Em All Around the Old Corral

  published July 18, 2012

  Todd Solondz’s human comedies are so dark, and so filled with awkward and humiliating behavior, that it’s sometimes hard to see the... More >>

• Christmas in July

  published July 11, 2012

  The proudly (or perversely) named San Francisco Frozen Film Festival -- a reference to Mark Twain’s apocryphal one-liner, not the... More >>

• The Silent Treatment

  published July 11, 2012

  “Shut up and smile” is generally good advice for guys who tend to screw up dates by saying something overly candid, or revealing, or... More >>

• Alex in Wonderland

  published July 4, 2012

  A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess’s brilliant, slang-infused 1962 novella of disturbed and disturbing youth, is one tough... More >>

• Catch Cult Classic A Clockwork Orange on the Big Screen

  published Jul 10, 2012

  Anthony Burgess's brilliant, slang-infused 1962 novella of disturbed and disturbing youth, is one tough read. Stanley Kubrick's harrowing 1971 film is more, ahem, penetrable, but remains an unapologet... More >>

• Those Summer Nights

  published June 20, 2012

  Say what you will about John Travolta -- and we have, many times -- the man is a walking miracle of career longevity. He’s successfully... More >>

• Poe-try in Motion

  published June 27, 2012

  Imagine Edgar Allen Poe filtered through a Euro sensibility and the delirious excesses of the ‘60s, and you’re apt to conjure... More >>

• Heroes and Villains

  published June 13, 2012

  Knowledge isn’t power; context is. That’s the timeless lesson that Vito Russo, the fearless queer activist and devoted film buff,... More >>

• Sting Like a Bee

  published June 13, 2012

  The San Francisco Black Film Festival has never sugarcoated unpleasant truths, nor has it endorsed the illusory and fleeting comfort of... More >>

• Blue Meanies Beware

  published June 6, 2012

  The cultural and social upheaval of the 1960s was so pervasive and palpable that even a child couldn’t miss it, especially if that... More >>

• The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" Gets a Digital Makeover

  published Jun 08, 2012

  The cultural and social upheaval of the 1960s was so pervasive and palpable that even a child couldn't miss it, especially if that child's parents provided a couple of quarters to see the latest featu... More >>

• Pretty in Pink (and Crimson)

  published May 23, 2012

  For most of us insecure (that is, normal) adolescents, Prom Night meant Prom Nightmare. A minefield of potential humiliation, it began weeks in... More >>

• Revolutionary Rutting

  published April 25, 2012

  Remember when certain types of hetero sex were acts of political rebellion? Don’t fret if you don’t — those days will return... More >>

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  FEATURED STORY

  Jonathan Lethem Gets Bookish in Cinema Address

  published Apr 24, 2012

  At last year's San Francisco International Film Festival, indie producer and invited speaker Christine Vachon embarrassed her hosts with a sloppy and unprepared "State of Cinema" report. To erase the ... More >>

• Organizing a Community

  published April 4, 2012

  In the mid-1980s, Barack Obama left a promising and well-paid New York business career to work as a community organizer on the South Side of... More >>

• "Choked": Economic Parable Exposes Social Mores

  published April 18, 2012

  A good deal less harrowing and cataclysmic than it could (and perhaps should) have been, this well-observed first feature considers the narrow... More >>

• "Smugglers' Songs": A Glimpse down the Road to Freedom

  published April 18, 2012

  This episodic, easy-rolling saga of nomadic living and grassroots insurgency centers on a convivial band of armed traders in the French... More >>

• The S.F. International Film Festival Stirs Up Ethical Dilemmas

  published April 18, 2012

  The inventor and radical thinker R. Buckminster Fuller walked into a public washroom and, spying an unflushed urinal, pulled the handle. Asked... More >>

• Hitchcock Heights

  published March 28, 2012

  A glamorous, glittering city on a hill, San Francisco in the late 1950s represented the pinnacle of American prosperity and sophisticated... More >>