Carrie Rickey (born November 26, 1952) is an American feminist art and film critic. Rickey was a film critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1986 to 2011, and has contributed to The New York Times , San Francisco Chronicle and Village Voice .
Her essays are collected in many books including The American Century [1] and American Movie Critics. [2] Rickey was an early champion of women filmmakers including Gillian Armstrong, Kathryn Bigelow and Ava DuVernay. During her tenure as a movie reviewer she covered technological evolutions in the industry from the video revolution to the rise of digital film, and has profiled artists and filmmakers from Clint Eastwood and Sidney Poitier to Elizabeth Taylor and Nora Ephron.
Rickey grew up in Los Angeles, California, where she developed a lifelong interest in film. She attended the University of California, San Diego (AB 1974, MFA 1976) where she studied with Manny Farber and worked as his teaching assistant. [3] Between 1975 and 1976 Rickey participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program.
From 1980 to 1983, Rickey was a film critic at the Village Voice. She wrote one of the first retrospectives of the work of filmmaker Ida Lupino [4] and one of the first considerations of filmmaker David Cronenberg. She then became a film critic for The Boston Herald (1984–85) and also wrote for Artforum and Art in America as an art critic. She has served on numerous juries, including the New York Film Festival from 1988 to 1991. [5]
In 1986, Rickey became the film critic at The Philadelphia Inquirer, a position she held for the next 25 years. [6] She has written essays on many artists such as Leon Golub and Philip Guston [7] and wrote the Criterion Collection essays for Broadcast News [8] and Videodrome. [9] She has also taught courses at the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences. [6]
Rickey contributed chapters to The Power of Feminist Art, [10] The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, [11] among many other collections. She is included in the book Feminists Who Changed America [12] for her role in chronicling the work and the progress of women artists and filmmakers in articles and catalogue essays.
In 2018, she won the award for Best Commentary (Film/Television) from the L.A. Press Club for her serve, "What Ever Happened to Women Directors?" [13] and won a regional Emmy (Mid-Atlantic division) for best Documentary for the film, "Before Hollywood: Philadelphia and the Birth of the Movies." [14]
David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers (1975), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.
The Gold Rush is a 1925 American silent comedy film written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film also stars Chaplin in his Little Tramp persona, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman and Malcolm Waite.
Broadcast News is a 1987 American romantic comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by James L. Brooks. The film concerns a virtuoso television news producer who has daily emotional breakdowns, a brilliant yet prickly reporter, and the latter's charismatic but far less seasoned rival. It also stars Robert Prosky, Lois Chiles, Joan Cusack, and Jack Nicholson.
Scanners is a 1981 Canadian science fiction horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Stephen Lack, Jennifer O'Neill, Michael Ironside, and Patrick McGoohan. In the film, "scanners" are psychics with unusual telepathic and telekinetic powers. ConSec, a purveyor of weaponry and security systems, searches out scanners to use them for its own purposes. The film's plot concerns the attempt by Darryl Revok (Ironside), a renegade scanner, to wage a war against ConSec. Another scanner, Cameron Vale (Lack), is dispatched by ConSec to stop Revok.
The Brood is a 1979 Canadian psychological body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, and Art Hindle. Its plot follows a man and his mentally ill ex-wife, who has been sequestered by a psychiatrist known for his controversial therapy techniques. A series of brutal unsolved murders serves as the backdrop for the central narrative.
Videodrome is a 1983 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, and Debbie Harry. Set in Toronto during the early 1980s, it follows the CEO of a small UHF television station who stumbles upon a broadcast signal of snuff films. Layers of deception and mind-control conspiracy unfold as he attempts to uncover the signal's source, complicated by increasingly intense hallucinations that cause him to lose his grasp on reality.
Ida Lupino was a British actress, director, writer, and producer. Throughout her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed eight, working primarily in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. She is widely regarded as the most prominent female filmmaker working in the 1950s during the Hollywood studio system. With her independent production company, she co-wrote and co-produced several social-message films and became the first woman to direct a film noir, The Hitch-Hiker, in 1953.
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing.
Dead Ringers is a 1988 psychological thriller film starring Jeremy Irons in a dual role as identical twin gynecologists. David Cronenberg directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Norman Snider. Their script was based on the lives of Stewart and Cyril Marcus and on the novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, a "highly fictionalized" version of the Marcuses' story.
Blow Out is a 1981 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma. The film stars John Travolta as Jack Terry, a movie sound effects technician from Philadelphia who, while recording sounds for a low-budget slasher film, unintentionally captures audio evidence of an assassination involving a presidential hopeful. Nancy Allen stars as Sally Bedina, a young woman involved in the crime. The supporting cast includes John Lithgow and Dennis Franz. The film's tagline in advertisements was, "Murder has a sound all of its own".
Ace in the Hole, also known as The Big Carnival, is a 1951 American drama film directed by Billy Wilder. The film stars Kirk Douglas as a cynical, disgraced reporter who stops at nothing to try to regain a job on a major newspaper. The film co-stars Jan Sterling and features Robert Arthur and Porter Hall.
A History of Violence is a 2005 action thriller film directed by David Cronenberg and written by Josh Olson. It is an adaptation of the 1997 DC graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. The film stars Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, and William Hurt. In the film, a diner owner becomes a local hero after he foils an attempted robbery, but has to face his past enemies to protect his family.
Philip Guston was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. "Guston worked in a number of artistic modes, from Renaissance-inspired figuration to formally accomplished abstraction," and is now regarded as one of the "most important, powerful, and influential American painters of the last 100 years." He frequently depicted racism, antisemitism, fascism and American identity, as well as, especially in his later most cartoonish and mocking work, the banality of evil. In 2013, Guston's painting To Fellini set an auction record at Christie's when it sold for $25.8 million.
Crash is a 1996 Canadian erotic thriller film written, produced and directed by David Cronenberg, based on J. G. Ballard's 1973 novel of the same name. Starring James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas, Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette, it follows a film producer who, after surviving a car crash, becomes involved with a group of symphorophiliacs who are aroused by car crashes and tries to rekindle his sexual relationship with his wife.
Emanuel Farber was an American painter, film critic and writer. Often described as "iconoclastic", Farber developed a distinctive prose style and set of theoretical stances which have had a large influence on later generations of film critics and influence on underground culture. Susan Sontag considered him to be "the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country has ever produced."
The Naked Kiss is a 1964 American neo-noir melodrama film written and directed by Samuel Fuller and starring Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante and Virginia Grey. It was Fuller's second film for Allied Artists after his 1963 film Shock Corridor.
Chameleon Street is a 1989 independent film written by, directed by and starring Wendell B. Harris Jr. It tells the story of a social chameleon who impersonates reporters, doctors and lawyers in order to make money.
Dore Ashton was a writer, professor and critic on modern and contemporary art.
Elke Solomon was an American artist, curator, educator and community worker. She was known for her interdisciplinary practice that combines painting, drawing, object-making, performance and installation. Solomon exhibited widely in the United States and abroad.
Modernist film is related to the art and philosophy of modernism.