Maitland McDonagh
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Maitland McDonagh is an American film critic and the author of several books about cinema.
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[edit] Writing career
Born and raised in New York City, McDonagh received her B.A. from Hunter College and her M.F.A. from Columbia University, where she co-founded and edited the Columbia Film Review. She was simultaneously working in the publicity department of the New York City Ballet under George Balanchine and Peter Martins, eventually becoming head of publicity.
She wrote articles and reviews for numerous publications, including Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, and Fangoria, and published her first book, the auteur study Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, which grew out of her master's thesis.
After leaving New York City Ballet to pursue writing, McDonagh taught film as an adjunct professor at Hunter College and Brooklyn College, during which time she completed Filmmaking on the Fringe: The Good, The Bad, and the Deviant Directors and The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time.
She became senior movie editor of the TV Guide website in 1995, while continuing to contribute essays to such anthologies as the British Film Institute's The BFI Companion to Horror (Cassell, 1996), Fantasy Females (Stray Cat Publishing, 2000), Zombie (Stray Cat Publishing, 2000), and The Last Great American Picture Show (Amsterdam University Press, 2004), as well as to numerous film guides. She also writes an occasional column on dance movies for the British magazine, Dance Now.
Her book Movie Lust, third in the Sasquatch Books series begun with Book Lust by Nancy Pearl and Music Lust by Nic Harcourt, was published August 28, 2006.
[edit] Other work
McDonagh provides interviews and second-channel commentary on DVD releases, including for director Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, as well as liner notes, including for the Criterion Collection releases The Tunnel and Corridors of Blood/The Haunted Strangler. She contributed weekly commentary as the American correspondent for British Armed Forces Radio in 2004, and in 2005 became part of TV Guide's weekly pop-culture podcast.
[edit] Media and other appearances
McDonagh has appeared on panels for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, lectured at the Huntington (New York) Arts Center and the Jyväskylä (Finland) Arts Festival, and spoken at horror-film conventions, reflecting one of her specialties
Television appearances include the documentaries Scream and Scream Again: A History of the Slasher Film for the BBC; Night Bites: Women and Their Vampires for WE: Women's Entertainment; Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror for IFC; and the Bravo miniseries, The 100 Scariest Movie Moments and a sequel scheduled for 2006.
[edit] Bibliography
- Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, (London, England, Sun Tavern Fields, 1991; reissued New York, Citadel Press, 1994) ISBN 0-9517012-4-X
- Filmmaking on the Fringe: The Good, the Bad, and the Deviant Directors (New York, Carol Publishing Corporation, 1995) ISBN 0-8065-1557-0
- The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time: From Pandora's Box to Basic Instinct (New York, Carol Publishing Corporation, 1996) ISBN 0-8065-1697-6
- Movie Lust: Recommended Viewing for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (Seattle, Wash., Sasquatch Books, 2006) ISBN 1-57061-478-4
