J.B. Spins

What could a dictator with unchallenged power and vast ill-gotten wealth possibly desire? Respectability, of course. Hollywood celebrities a...

The Rossellinis are like the Kennedys of European art cinema and fashion. They all inherit high expectations and a legacy of scandal. For Al...

Like Miles Davis or Picasso, Dean Martin had distinct periods to his career. There was the Martin & Lewis era, the early-Rat Pack Oceans...

If any film could never conceivably have a sequel, Mads Brügger’s The Red Chapel would be it. For starters, Brügger is now banned from ente...

The downside of social media is all too obvious (polarization, trolling, cat memes), but there are positives worth noting. You can get news ...

In 1985, T ampopo put ramen on the cinematic map. Since then, it has become a favorite culinary subject for art-house cinema, appearing in ...

Brave Cubans are planning a mass protest next Monday ( #15N ), planned by a leftwing playwright whose work was formerly produced by the sta...

State media really isn’t media. It is PR for their regime masters. They do not reporter the news, they slant it and spike it if necessary. P...

Hong Kong used to literally be a safe harbor. From 1950 to 1980, two million refugees swam to the freedom of Hong Kong from the Mainland. Th...

Few original films from 1979 are still generating sequels, theatrical documentaries , and even unlikely stage adaptations. Sure, the recent ...

You would expect it would make American headline news if an opposition party in a large influential country arrived at their headquarters on...