John Waters

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Interview: John Waters shows you how to survive the holidays

Have yourself a fairy little Christmas
John Waters earned his lifetime 99-percenter cred the moment he had Divine eat dog shit in Pink Flamingos .
By ROB TURBOVSKY | December 08, 2011

Review: Theatre By the Sea’s rollicking Hairspray

Dance fever
Rockin' out with a social consciousness — who says we can't have it all? A girl just wants to have fun, while doing her part for integration in 1962 Baltimore.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | August 09, 2011

The 13th Annual Provincetown International Film Festival

Cape Crusaders
Henry Thoreau said of the song of the wood thrush: "Whenever a man hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut. . . . " For some reason, Provincetown is full of these birds — appropriately so, given the avowed intent of the Provincetown International Film Festival to present liberated "filmmaking on the edge."
By PETER KEOUGH | June 21, 2011

Review: Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis

Boston Lyric Opera pulls out the stops
The Boston Lyric Opera, with Boston Classical Orchestra music director Steven Lipsitt and a company of singers and designers largely new to Boston, has given us a memorable production of the opera that composer Viktor Ullmann and poet Petr Kien created in 1943 at the Terezín concentration camp, The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Quits .
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 03, 2011

Review: Williams S. Burroughs: A Man Within

Prime footage
Fairly disorganized in the telling and rather impersonally told by filmmaker Yony Leyser, this documentary biography of the stone-faced Beat author of The Naked Lunch is still worth seeing.
By GERALD PEARY | February 02, 2011

Review: Trash Humpers

Harmony Korine: older enfant terrible , or just plain old terrible?
A gang of elderly morons have sex with garbage. What more can I say about Trash Humpers ?
By PETER KEOUGH | June 15, 2010

Cinema paradisos

As Hollywood's summer fare goes cold, local film festivals heat up
Here's the dilemma: you love movies, but you also love the idea of taking a vacation to one of the many inviting resorts that New England has to offer — the beaches of Cape Cod or the Islands, picturesque towns in Maine or Rhode Island, or even the cultural and historical enclaves of Boston itself.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 16, 2010

There was a film fest from Nantucket . . . and P'town

Escapist Cinema
One look at the line-up at the local multiplex and you might ask yourself, "How far away can I get from Marmaduke and still remain in the state of Massachusetts?" Turns out that summer-movie relief is just a ferry ride away.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 14, 2010

Role model?

John Waters gets up close and personal
John Waters gets up close and personal
By SHAULA CLARK | June 07, 2010

Boston Underground Film Festival 2010

BUFF 2010 pays homage to cinematic fromage
The Boston Underground Film Festival has a knack for showing you things you've never seen before (not to mention things you can never un-see, such as the sentient penis jackhammering its way through sheetrock in last year's headlining Bad Biology ). BUFF 2010 proves no exception, starting with the exquisitely weird opening-night entry, LOVE EXPOSURE (2008; March 25 at 7 pm).
By SHAULA CLARK | March 24, 2010

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Video: 2010 horror movie previews

Hollywood Splat Pics and Horrific Indies
Will 2010 be a festive romp of eye-gouging, throat-slitting, and disemboweling?
By MICHAEL NEEL | January 28, 2010

Review: Gentlemen Broncos

Jared Hess's latest geek fantasy
Having peaked with his debut, Napoleon Dynamite , Jared Hess has settled into being a family-friendly John Waters — which is redundant, since Waters is already rated PG-13.
By PETER KEOUGH | November 04, 2009

Willy Wonka in Smellovision

Scent of the Times
If you'll imagine the New England Confectionary Company in Revere to be Willy Wonka's magical estate, then Union Square would be the analogous working-class outskirt from where Charlie Bucket hails.
By CHRIS FARAONE | September 09, 2009

Cursed films

"Le Film Maudit" at the HFA
At some point while watching the features in the Harvard Film Archive's "Le Film Maudit" ("cursed films") series — perhaps during the "Circle of Shit" chapter in Pier Paolo Pasolini's SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM — you might ask yourself, which is more cursed, the movies or anyone unfortunate enough to be watching them?
By PETER KEOUGH | July 17, 2009

Festival atmosphere

Between the Blockbuster and the beach there are the film festivals of New England
Summer traditionally has been the happy hunting ground for Hollywood studios — the time when they unleash their big-budgeted, f/x-heavy warhorses on armies of newly freed schoolchildren and frazzled adults trying to beat the heat.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 09, 2009

Review: The Lollipop Generation

There's a fine line between the trash of early John Waters and just plain garbage.
There's a fine line between the trash of early John Waters and just plain garbage.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 06, 2009

P+J say vote this way

Obama and Reed lead the Casa Diablo ticket
P+J have been suggesting — rightly in many cases — that you Pinga! your incumbent, who helped get the state into the deplorable and nationally notorious financial mess it is in.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | October 29, 2008

Urban myths

Maddin’s Winnipeg is the city that always sleeps
Fellini’s Rome, Godard’s Paris, John Waters’s Baltimore — none of these home towns has possessed (or been possessed by) its filmmaker the way Guy Maddin’s does and is in My Winnipeg .
By PETER KEOUGH | July 08, 2008