Author: bslemurgeek

Female Filmmakers, Film Festivals, Film Reviews, Horror, Indie Film, Renegade Film Festival, Reviews

Black Lake Director’s Cut: Renegade Film Festival 2023 Review

Year: 2023 Running Time: 90 minutes Written and Directed by K/XI By Brian Skutle Director’s Cuts are always a dicey situation for a film. Sometimes, they can help correct films that had studio interference, like “Blade Runner” (1982), “Dark City” (1998) or “Justice League” (2017), and sometimes, they are able to allow the director to give a fuller representation of their initial vision, like the … Continue reading Black Lake Director’s Cut: Renegade Film Festival 2023 Review

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Activism, Female Filmmakers, Feminism, Film Festivals, Film Reviews, Horror, Indie Film, Renegade Film Festival, Reviews

Give Me an A: Renegade Film Festival 2023 Review

Year: 2023 Runtime: 101 minutes Written by: Natasha Halevi (Created by, “Wraparound – The Cheerleaders,” “Abigail,” “Vascectopia”), Megan Swertlow (“The Voiceless”), Bonnie Discepolo (“DTF”), Trevor Munson (“DTF”), Danin Jacquay (“Good Girl”), Matthew Vorce (“Good Girl”), Annie Bond (“Our Precious Babies”), Sarah Kopkin (“The Walk”), Lexx Fusco (“mediEVIL”), Rowan Fitzgibbon (“mediEVIL”), Madison Hatfield (“Sweetie”), Megan Rosati (“Plan C”), Savannah Rose Scaffe (“Hold Please”), Avital Ash (“God’s … Continue reading Give Me an A: Renegade Film Festival 2023 Review

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Awards, Female Filmmakers, Film Score, Music, Reviews, Women in Film

Oscar Winning Women: Film Composers (Part 3 of 3)

By Brian Skutle If I was looking forward most to revisiting “The Full Monty” (1997), I was looking forward to revisiting our final film, Todd Phillips’s “Joker” (2019), the least. I have had very mixed feelings about this film since its release- would this watch change anything for the better? The Composer: Hildur Guðnadóttir Guðnadóttir is an Icelandic cellist and composer from a family of musicians. … Continue reading Oscar Winning Women: Film Composers (Part 3 of 3)

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Awards, Female Filmmakers, Film Score, Music, Women in Film

Oscar Winning Women: Film Composers (Part 2 of 3)

By Brian Skutle One of the reasons I wanted to do this series was to give these scores an opportunity to engage me in a fresh way, with not just a fresh rewatch of the film, but listening to them again as I wrote these pieces. None was more anticipated in that respect was the second one in this series, Anne Dudley’s score for “The … Continue reading Oscar Winning Women: Film Composers (Part 2 of 3)

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Awards, Female Filmmakers, Film Score, Music, Women in Film

Oscar Winning Women: Film Composers (Part 1 of 3)

By Brian Skutle Film scores have been a fundamental part of my love of cinema since the 1990s. A big part of what has shaped my taste in terms of what film music I respond to is that, from the outset, I tried not to limit myself to just following the titans of the genre- names like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, and Alan … Continue reading Oscar Winning Women: Film Composers (Part 1 of 3)

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Acting, Female Characters, Personal Essays

From “Sugarland” to “The Fabelmans”: Mother Figures by Steven Spielberg

By Brian Skutle In “The Fabelmans” (2022), Steven Spielberg finally turns the lens on his own family after spending nearly five decades taking bits and pieces of his upbringing for stories as varied as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) and “Catch Me if You Can” (2002). Here, we follow his surrogate, Sammy … Continue reading From “Sugarland” to “The Fabelmans”: Mother Figures by Steven Spielberg

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Personal Essays

DragonCon: Versatile Guests, Ever-Changing Experiences and Unforgettable Moments

By Brian Skutle When I first began to attend DragonCon in 2009, I didn’t know what I was doing. I had never been to a convention before, and I didn’t really research the first thing to do in terms of how to plan in terms of funds to prepare to go down there. I saw some of the guests on the site, and was like, … Continue reading DragonCon: Versatile Guests, Ever-Changing Experiences and Unforgettable Moments

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Female Filmmaker, Feminism, Retrospect Reviews

“Lady Beware”: A Flawed, Feminist Look at Erotic Fantasy

By Brian Skutle The reasons I watched Karen Arthur’s “Lady Beware” (1987) in 1997 were not the reasons that I do now. I had just developed a crush on Diane Lane after “Murder at 1600” (1997), and this erotic thriller was one of the films that fed that- in some ways, for part of the reasons why Arthur would come to disown the film. Over … Continue reading “Lady Beware”: A Flawed, Feminist Look at Erotic Fantasy

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Female Characters, Female Filmmakers, Feminism, Retrospect Reviews, Spotlight, Women in Film

30 Years Later, “A League of Their Own” Still Wins

By Brian Skutle When “A League of Their Own” was in theatres in 1992, I remember my mom and grandfather and I going to see it. I thought it was a good movie, and it was something we taped off of HBO to watch. I was going on 15, though, and relatively new to really starting to watch movies on a regular basis, so the … Continue reading 30 Years Later, “A League of Their Own” Still Wins

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