Giving Last Tango Another Whirl

I had meant to send up this link last week, but, some other stuff got in the way. At Slant Magazine early last week, Ed Howard and Jason Bellamy participated in a lengthy and quite interesting back and forth about Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. The film, which recently debuted on Blu-Ray, was already on lots of people’s minds thanks to the untimely death of Maria Schneider this past February. Their conversation is lengthy, fascinating, and well worth the read -- and it prompted some further thoughts of my own, which I'll share below.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

Charlie Chaplin’s in the air these days – a Chaplin at Keystone DVD set just came out, a Modern Times Criterion is impending, and the retro that hit Film Forum this Summer is now at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, prompting this overview piece from yours truly. It kind of came together fairly quickly (the article, not the retro), and I wasn’t able to watch all of the films again, so forgive me if I made any silly mistakes. None of that should detract from my main point, which is that these movies are awesome, and residents of Nashville (and anyone else with a DVD player, really) should do whatever they can to see them (again, if necessary).