Author Archives: Nicholas

Black Hole, by Charles Burns (Pantheon, 2005) and the ending of Under the Skin (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2014). Shedding.

“You might also be stopped in your tracks by phrase-making I doubt could have been produced by anyone else on earth.” A belated thank you to Greil Marcus for this, about A Cultural Dictionary of Punk, which originally appeared (the … Continue reading →

A few years ago I wrote a doomed but sort of fun column over at The Oxford American called “Panel Busting.” One installment looked at a few nineteenth-century cartoons and their relationship to the development of early cinema and since … Continue reading →

Interview at BOMB (cf. knife fight) over here.

Reading Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 again (and yet again, eternally it seems, which is a sort of beautiful curse, or a curse that has no end) and there is a terror, a real terror, to certain lines, and not because of … Continue reading →

Back in 2010 I launched the Requiem 102 project, inviting theorists, writers, and artists in an exploration of Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem for a Dream (2000). Here it is, and here is the introduction to the project. Each of the … Continue reading →

10/40/70: Constraint as Liberation in the Era of Digital Film Theory is now available in paperback and e-book from Zer0 Books. If you’d like a review copy, drop me an e-mail. Related to that, look for the astonishing results of … Continue reading →

Here are the films/contributors to The 70s so far. The list includes film title, director, and first name of the submitter. Excuse all caps; my typewriter is stuck on them. Further updates to follow.

Four frames from the extended walking sequence from the magnificent Agnes Varda film Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962).

One of the reasons I buy used versions of books when I can, even when new versions are available for a better price, is the element of surprise in terms of the previous owners’ comments, markings, and doodles. This semester, … Continue reading →