Maitland McDonagh
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| Maitland McDonagh | |
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| Born | New York, United States |
Maitland McDonagh (pronounced /ˈmeɪtlənd mɨkˈdɒnə/) is an American film critic and the author of several books about cinema.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early career
Born and raised in the New York City borough of Manhattan, 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. McDonagh's Irish-emigrant grandparents owned The Moylan Tavern, comedian and habitué George Carlin's real-life basis for the same-name bar on the 1994-95 Fox Broadcasting sitcom The George Carlin Show.[1]
While writing articles and reviews for numerous publications, including Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, and Fangoria, McDonagh published her first book, the auteur study Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento (1991), which grew out of her master's thesis.
[edit] Later career
After leaving New York City Ballet to pursue a writing career, 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. Her freelance work during this period included film pieces for The New York Times.
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. Beginning in the mid-2000s, she began writing 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. Later that year, she became the founding vice-president of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.[2]
As of 2008, McDonagh writes the twice-weekly blog FlickChick,[3] answering readers' movie questions on Thursdays and recommending DVDs and giving book-club-style discussion points on her "DVD Tuesdays".
[edit] Other work
McDonagh provides interviews and second-channel commentary on DVD releases, including for director Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, and liner notes, including for the Criterion Collection releases The Tunnel and the paired Corridors of Blood/The Haunted Strangler.
She contributed weekly commentary as the American correspondent for British Armed Forces Radio in 2004. The following year, she helped initiate TV Guide's weekly podcast, TV Guide Talk, continuing with it through its final show in April 2008. In 2007, McDonagh additionally began starring in a Friday vodcast, Movie Talk, with fellow TV Guide film critic Ken Fox,[4] in which the two banter and review new releases.
[edit] Media and other appearances
McDonagh has appeared on panels for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of the Moving Image.[5] She has lectured at the Huntington (New York) Arts Center, the Jyväskylä (Finland) Arts Festival, and elsewhere, and speaks at horror-film conventions, reflecting one of her specialties.
She also specializes in erotic cinema, appearing as an expert in that capacity in the documentary The 100 Greatest Sexy Moments for the UK's Channel Four.
Other television appearances include NBC's Today and G4's Filter, and such documentaries as 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 its 2006 sequel, 30 Even Scarier Movie Moments.
A character in one scene of writer-director Lucky McKee's May (2002) can be seen reading McDonagh's Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds, as does the character Domini in the final issue (#18, April 1994) of the Marvel Comics supernatural series Nightstalkers.
[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
