The Movie Orgy
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“Self-Aware Doesn’t Work for Us”: Joe Dante on The Movie Orgy, Matinee at 30 and William Castle’s The Tingler
All of Joe Dante‘s films revolve around distinctly American paranoias—consumerism, threats to the nuclear family, suburban NIMBY sensibilities—but none feel more entrenched in a tangible era of American anxiety than Matinee. Now 30 years old, the film takes place during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, centering B-movie shlock jockey Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, riffing big time on William Castle), who lands in a panicked Key West, Florida for a promotional screening of his radioactive new horror film Mant (half-man, half-ant, all monster!) Both enraptured and horrified by the real-world implications Woolsey’s film hints at (nuclear disfigurement, neighborhoods-turned-warzones, the […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 10, 2023 -
MOMA’S ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF FILM PRESERVATION LINEUP ANNOUNCED
Looking for something to do in Manhattan over the next month? MoMA has announced the slate for its 9th annual International Festival of Film Preservation, in which the museum presents preserved and restored films from archives, studios and distributors around the world. This year’s festival runs from October 14 through November 19, and the lineup looks like a pretty stellar way to spend an evening (or twenty). One of the highlights is the focus on ’70s genre-enthusiast and frequent Spielberg collaborator Joe Dante (Gremlins, Piranha). The festival opens this Friday with a digital preservation of the original celluloid print of […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Oct 12, 2011
