Articles by Kathleen Olmstead

Trembling Before G-d

Sandi Simcha Dubowski

PUBLISHED Jan 1, 2006

I'm fond of this film because it's a topic my friends and I have argued for years. Why do people want to participate in a community that fu...

Ray Harryhausen Gift Set

PUBLISHED Dec 1, 2005

The Ray Harryhausen Gift Set isn't the best example of the animator's work but it does provide a solid base for '50s B-movie style. Each fi...

The Green Butchers

Anders Thomas Jensen

PUBLISHED Nov 1, 2005

We've come to expect certain things from films about cannibalism. We have low budget, high-gore zombie movies (Cannibal Ferox), high camp (...

The Bob Newhart Show: Season One

PUBLISHED Apr 1, 2005

It's not too surprising that The Bob Newhart Show opens with a telephone bit; no one works the phone like Mr. Newhart. This certainly wasn'...

Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation: Caught in the Act

PUBLISHED Apr 1, 2005

It's a stretch calling most of these animated shorts "sick" and/or "twisted." "Fair" and/or "middling" is more appropriate. It's very telli...

Finian's Rainbow

Francis Ford Coppola

PUBLISHED Mar 1, 2005

When Finian's Rainbow arrived on Broadway in 1947, it's content was unusual. The idea that a sharecropper community in Kentucky lived a hap...

Return to Peyton Place

José Ferrer

PUBLISHED Feb 1, 2005

Return to Peyton Place falls between the cracks; it doesn't have the same glamour or trashy melodrama of the original, lacking the incest/m...

A Letter to Three Wives

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

PUBLISHED Feb 1, 2005

Joseph Mankiewicz is a master of voiceovers. A Letter to Three Wives is introduced by Addie Ross, a woman the audience hears but never sees...