by Joyless Staff

As the 88th Academy Awards approach we are faced with an unhappy reality. Once again every single acting nominee (and nearly every director, screenwriter, cinematographer, etc.) is white. In light of this, we at Joyless Creatures have decided to forego our ordinary Oscar Feature and instead hone in on something more obvious about the Academy Awards: they suck. Not only is the Academy a hotbed of racism, classism, sexism, cronyism, and basically every other negative -ism in the book, but it is also notoriously bad at picking a good movie.

Sure, with hindsight, it's easy to see the sore thumbs sticking out in the history of the Academy Awards (here's looking at you Crash) but this institution has been consistently atrocious at predicting whether a film would become a classic. So to show solidarity for #OscarsSoWhite, we at Joyless Creatures have decided to look back at the worst Academy Awards ever given.

by Joyless Staff

One of the most important legacies that David Bowie leaves behind in the wake of his death last week is his key role in catalyzing the potential of music to be not only an aural medium but a visual one. His iconic personae, including Ziggy Stardust, were forged out of both sound and image, through fashion, performance, and a spate of promotional films that presaged the contemporary music video.

It’s fitting, then, that he also penned pop’s greatest ode to watching movies. “Life on Mars?,” the surreal centerpiece of Bowie’s 1972 masterpiece Hunky Dory, expertly captures the sweeping duality of spectatorship, of feeling not only one’s own emotions but also those of the figures on screen. In one brilliant lyric, Bowie’ finds his protagonist—a young girl “hooked to the silver screen”—honing in on this central paradox, as she contemplates whether a film’s characters are as aware that they’re being watched as she is of watching them: “Take a look at the lawman / Beating up the wrong guy / Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know / He’s in the best-selling show.”

The questions raised by the song’s uncanny and cerebral wordplay echo throughout Bowie’s career, which spans not only some of the most vital and revolutionary music of the past 50 years, but the dozens of movies in which he appeared either as an actor or as himself (or somewhere inseparably between the two). Here, the staff of Joyless Creatures pays tribute to this inimitable icon by reflecting on his music, his films, and his influence. (Peter Valelly)

by Joyless Staff

Any list is just the sum of its parts, and in the case of Joyless Creatures' Best Movies of 2015, those parts include ten cinephiles whose tastes run the gamut of what the year had to offer. Ten lists from ten individuals produced a staggering 70 titles, a virtual cage match between a seductive lesbian love story and a rousing boxing throw-back, and a number of eclectic ties (check out the three movies tied for the number three spot) that raised our top ten to sixteen. See our individual lists here. Enjoy!

by Joyless Staff

Sound Unseen 2015 runs this week, November 11-15. Truly one of Minnesota's most unique cinematic forums, Sound Unseen pulls in a variety of films for, by, and about musicians. From conventional documentaries to narrative films starring musicians to films directed by musicians, Sound Unseen delves into what it means to be a music film. The Joyless Creatures staff took a look at a sliver of what the festival has in store.

by Joyless Creatures Staff

"What's your favorite scary movie?" a creepy voice asks Drew Barrymore to open Wes Craven's 1996 film, Scream. We at Joyless Creatures decided to ask ourselves the same question. Here follow our Halloween picks – from chilling characters and half-human monsters to legitimate encounters with hell itself, these movies are guaranteed to keep your Halloween spooky and your dreams troubled.

Many directors switch styles and thematic interests from film to film, but few are as fascinatingly chameleonic as Alain Resnais. In a career that spanned seven decades—from his initial short documentaries of the 1940s to his final film, Life of Riley (2014), made at the age of 91—Resnais refused to succumb to audience and critical expectations, instead prioritizing ceaseless innovation in narrative, form, and subject matter. An only child born in 1922 in the small Brittany town of Vannes, the asthma-stricken Resnais was home-schooled and quickly developed a voracious appetite for reading, from comic books to the surrealism of André Breton. It was, perhaps, this eclectic self-instruction in the history of literature that instilled in Resnais a love for the unpredictable and polysemous. Though he initially studied acting, Resnais became attracted to film editing in 1943 under the tutelage of Jean Grémillon, though his education was interrupted when he served in the French military during World War II.   

by Jeremy Meckler and Peter Valelly

Last Sunday marked the climactic final installment of HBO’s True Detective, a show whose innovative production format may transform and modernize television’s approach to narrative form. Conceived and heavily guided by its showrunner and sole writer Nic Pizzolato, a novelist and creative writing professor before making a foray into television, the show is a pure serial with its eight episodes forming a complete narrative arc. It runs sequentially on a weekly basis, in standard television fashion, but in a startling reversal of convention, it was shot in one six-month shoot, using the same director and cinematographer for its entire run. There’s a reason for this: the show is conceived so that each season will feature a new storyline and cast (assuming the show is renewed for a second), so this season of True Detective represented a fixed commitment. The format allowed Pizzolato to attract talent that would not normally sink as low as television—including bona-fide movie stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson—but more than that, it freed all involved from television’s primary constraints: the need to draw a continued audience and to perpetuate its characters’ stories over an indefinite succession of seasons. Instead, True Detective’s story arc is a well-drawn whole forming the show’s beating heart.