The 80th Academy Awards--overview

The 80th Oscars, of course, were given out on Sunday the 24th of February, 2008. I have been a lifelong fan of the Oscars and their ability to teach us about some of the best the picture biz has to offer in any given year. This is not to say that I agree with their picks as a whole; 60% of the time, I disagree to whatever they picked as a winner, for any given year or category. Yet I still value

Film #6: Blood Simple

I thought I'd include one of my first reviews, written for my college newspaper in 1985, in honor of the Coens finally set, 22 years later, to get the recognition they deserve from Hollywood. By the way, this is largely the way the original story appeared, but I've been unable to resist editing it. I can't tell if this is a breach of ethics or what, but certainly full disclosure is at least

Film #5: The Conqueror Worm a.k.a. Witchfinder General

One of the horror genre’s most criminally overlooked classics is 1968’s The Conqueror Worm. Known in the U.K. as Witchfinder General, this extraordinarily downbeat tale stars Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins, the real-life henchman for Cromwell in wartorn 17th century England who was assigned to find and prosecute witches hidden within the country’s tiny townships. He’s an intriguing character

Film #4: Thesis

Alajandro Amenabar’s 1996 film Thesis was made a few years before he stunned American audiences with his hallucinatory Open Your Eyes, but his debut, which won six Spanish Goyas (their Oscar equivalents), is more impressive. Ana Torrent is terrific as a film student working on a thesis about extreme violence in the media. While researching, she gets wind of a snuff video shot in Czechlosovakia,

Film #3: Eyes Wide Shut

Upon its release in 1999, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut promptly took its place alongside Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Antonioni’s L’Avventura, at least half of David Lynch’s entire oeuvre, and Kurosawa’s Dreams as one of the cinema’s great phantasms. If, upon seeing it, you’ve any sense of it sporting a traditional story--even a derailed or dull one--then, if you will pardon

Film #2: Bye Bye Birdie, Film #2 1/2: No Country for Old Men, 2007 Oscar Predictions, and "The Latest Show on Earth"

Well, I made my debut on Internet TV--more specifically, on "The Latest Show on Earth," hosted by Joe Hendel (www.downtowntv.com, www.thelatestshowonearth.com). Like you may have read on my earlier post, I have live TV experience, so it was a real trip back to those times for me. I'm a little rusty, but I think I aquitted myself nobly, making my picks for the Oscars on the show. Joe, a customer I

Who Am I? / Film #1: Chilly Scenes of Winter

(Here I am on the set of Film Forum, the Atlanta-based, live movie review show once hosted by Aron Siegel and myself; I was on it from 1999 to 2003.)

I think it's only fair I introduce myself before you read my stuff. It's a complicated history, so bear with me.

My name is Dean Treadway and I have been studying movies all of my life. I live in Brooklyn, near New York City now. But back down