Rick McGinnis
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rickmcginnis.bsky.social
Rick McGinnis
@rickmcginnis.bsky.social
Photographer and journalist.
My NEW MOVIE COLUMN - Bernardo Bertolucci's very influential The Conformist (1970), the story of a man who tries to lose himself in the crowd.

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The Conformist: How to Make a Fascist
The word fascist gets thrown around a lot now, almost inevitably without context or understanding, and mostly as a shorthand to tar an object of hatred and signal that the utterer is certain that the ...
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January 4, 2025 at 11:45 PM
My NEW MOVIE COLUMN - a little-known 1979 movie version of Erskine Childers' very influential 1903 proto-spy novel, The Riddle of the Sands.

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Turning the Tide: Erskine Childers and The Riddle of the Sands
Early on in The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers' 1903 novel about espionage and conflict between the Great Powers, there's a moment that's either wildly prescient or a statement of simple, bruta...
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December 28, 2024 at 10:15 PM
NEW MOVIE COLUMN: Kirk Douglas is out for revenge in John Sturges' 1959 western Last Train from Gun Hill

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Boys to Men: John Sturges and Last Train from Gun Hill
Something was happening to the Hollywood Western in the 1950s. Television had killed off the serial and the b-movie "oater" – Republic Pictures, a major name in both, ceased production in 1958 – and a...
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December 14, 2024 at 10:51 PM
NEW on my PHOTO BLOG today: fifth installment of a personal project documenting my hometown's Art Deco buildings before they disappear.

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Art Deco Toronto 5
Simpsons Addition, Toronto, July 2020 THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN ON THE BACK BURNER FOR TOO LONG. It’s been well over a year since my last installment documenting the Art Deco architecture of my h…
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December 11, 2024 at 5:57 PM
NEW MOVIE COLUMN: Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and the Pearl Harbor attack, 83 years later.

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Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor, Eighty-Three Years Later
The Japanese surprise attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor was a surprise not just because the Imperial Japanese Navy had planned and executed it almost flawlessly, but because almost no one thought ...
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December 8, 2024 at 3:15 PM
I photographed UK dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson backstage while shooting another performer on the bill; these photos were never published. bit.ly/49kcXwM
LINTON KWESI JOHNSON Toronto 1990
Toronto has had a big Caribbean diaspora for decades, so I grew up hearing calypso, soca and reggae on the streets and reggae on the radio, which is where I probably heard British dub poet Linton Kwe…
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December 5, 2024 at 2:17 PM
I photographed Harold "Herk" Harvey, director of the cult horror film Carnival of Souls, in 1990, when a publicist called me over while I was shooting another job at a downtown hotel and asked if would do her a favour and do a quick portrait shoot. bit.ly/4fL9vOb
HAROLD "HERK" HARVEY Toronto 1990
In the fall of 1961 Harold "Herk" Harvey took three weeks off from his job making industrial films for the Centron Corporation of Lawrence, Kansas to direct his first (and only) feature movie, an art…
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December 1, 2024 at 6:58 PM
NEW MOVIE COLUMN - Jean Gabin in Pepe le Moko (1937) - was he the French Bogart, or was Bogart the American Gabin? bit.ly/3BeLMH6
Smooth Criminal: Jean Gabin in Pépé le Moko
An important film's cultural influence can spread in any direction. Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937) is one of a small group of films regarded as essential in what would later be called film noir...
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December 1, 2024 at 6:51 PM
My NEW MOVIE COLUMN - Spalding Gray in Swimming to Cambodia (1987) and my brief encounter with its star bit.ly/3CTFxc8
Drowning not Waving: Spalding Gray and Swimming to Cambodia
On the 12th of April, 1975, the U.S. military put Operation Eagle Pull into effect, evacuating Americans and staff of the American embassy in Phnom Penh as well as Cambodians and third-party nationals...
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November 24, 2024 at 4:31 PM
My 1990 portrait shoot with Spalding Gray in his SoHo loft; we talked about our dead mothers.
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SPALDING GRAY NYC 1990
Spalding Gray had just woken up when I arrived to photograph him at his loft in SoHo; I was let in by his director and collaborator Renee Shafransky, the "girlfriend Renee" that Spalding frequently m…
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November 23, 2024 at 6:38 PM
My NEW COLUMN on Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert (1934), a more timely comedy than you'd expect (at the time) bit.ly/4fSRXPJ
Two Peas in a Plot: Laurel and Hardy in Sons of the Desert
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were at the pinnacle of their careers when they made Sons of the Desert in 1933, an efficient and economical comedy feature barely over 90 minutes long that's considered o...
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November 19, 2024 at 1:59 PM
Not here for the drama.
November 18, 2024 at 4:17 PM
My NEW movie column - John Wayne in The High and the Mighty, one of the first "terror in the skies" movies about air travel. bit.ly/4fC6C1K
Fear of Flying: John Wayne, the Disaster Movie and The High and the Mighty
Flying has never been safer, but I still know people who have a ritual checklist to bolster their air travel luck or anaesthetize their anxiety with some combination of medicine (prescription or illic...
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November 11, 2024 at 4:43 PM
From my archives: My portrait shoot with They Might Be Giants in 1990, when they released their major label debut Flood. bit.ly/4eo3o0S
THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS Toronto 1990
John Flansburgh and John Linnell - known as "the Johns" or "the Two Johns" (a joke only '80s alt-rock nerds will still get) - met in high school in Massachusetts but formed They Might Be Giants in 19…
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November 11, 2024 at 4:33 PM
New here. Hello.
November 11, 2024 at 4:31 PM