Jed Mayer
-
Press Play0 commentslike0tweet0
Raised in Fear: The Superdynamational Horrors of Ray Harryhausen
You never forget the first time you fall in love, especially in the movies. My moment came when I was eight years old, at a Saturday matinee in a cramped multiplex theater. Setting my sights high, the object of my adoration was Kali, Hindu goddess of Time, Change, and Death, brought to life by the m...
Read More » -
Press Play1 commentlike0tweet0
Raised in Fear: The Self-Help Horror of Todd Haynes’ SAFE
For all its originality, "Safe"'s narrative owes much to the made-for-TV movies that once permeated the airwaves, films like "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," "The Best Little Girl in the World," and "Brian’s Song" that have been called “disease-of-the-week” movies for their morbid fascination with n...
Read More » -
Press Play0 commentslike0tweet0
Raised in Fear: POLTERGEIST and the Culture of Forgetting
Poltergeist is a film about the repressed traumas and anxieties underlying the American dream.
Read More » -
Press Play2 commentslike17tweet2
The Bleak Spaces and Blank Faces of FARGO
When Fargo was released, I felt that my home state of Minnesota had finally been given its "Oresteia," its "Njal's Saga," its "Double Indemnity." Over the ensuing years, however, the popular image created by the Coen Brothers' regional epic has been a questionable inheritance.
Read More » -
Press Play0 commentslike11tweet10
The Grimm Possibilities of MAMA
Though "Mama" does not ultimately succeed as a film, it does offer a set of rich possibilities for the creation of a modern fairy tale, one that, like those told once upon a time, faces the horrors of everyday life head on, also recognizing the power of fantasy to make imaginative sense of those hor...
Read More » -
Press Play1 commentlike75tweet110
Raised in Fear: Horror Films as Schoolyard Lore
All I really need to know about fear I learned in elementary school.
Read More » -
Press Play1 commentlike76tweet22
Raised in Fear: The Shining as R-Rated Christmas Ghost Story
Stanley Kubrick’s "The Shining" is not generally considered a family picture, but it is certainly one of the most brutally honest films ever made about the nature of family relationships. I discovered this when seeing the film for the first time with my father when I was fourteen.
Read More » -
Press Play1 commentlike46tweet18
Raised in Fear: Obsolete Technology, Retro-Futurism, Ultra-Violence, and Stanley Kubrick
I have always been drawn to visions of the future, but little did I know what brutal images were held on the Beta videocassette of Stanley Kubrick’s "A Clockwork Orange" I rented at the tender age of ten.
Read More » -
Press Play1 commentlike55tweet17
Screaming Hides the Sound: John Carpenter’s Death Disco
The year after John Carpenter’s "Halloween" left its indelible mark on future developments in film and music, a stadium full of baseball fans would vent their misdirected hatred on a pile of disco records. If this was 1979’s version of 1969’s Altamont, clearly Marx was right when he said that histo...
Read More » -
Press Play2 commentslike62tweet7
RAISED IN FEAR: Frankenstein, Dracula, and Other Supernannies
Most responsible parents will tell you that using the television as a surrogate nanny is bad for kids, but my own experience as a child would argue against this. My parents were wise enough to know that there were some places in the child mind that parents shouldn't go, and the only reliable guides...
Read More »
fresh from the blogs
-
The Schemes of Mel BrooksCriticwire
-
J.J. Abrams Redubbed & Retouched Preview Scenes To ...The Playlist
-
Watch New Full Trailer For Trinidadian-Made Drama 'God ...Shadow and Act
-
Cannes Review: James Franco's 'As I Lay Directing'Thompson on Hollywood
-
Quote of the Day: Michelle Rodriguez on Female Wri ...Women and Hollywood
-
CANNES 2013: Joel and Ethan Coen's INSIDE LLEWYN D ...Press Play
-
Good Night, Lost Boy(s)The Lost Boys
-
In Search Of ‘The Searchers’Leonard Maltin
on 
