Maitland McDonagh

Maitland McDonagh
Born Manhattan, New York, United States
Occupation Writer, Film critic

Maitland McDonagh /ˈmeɪtlənd mɪkˈdɒnə/ is an American film critic and the author of several books about cinema.

Biography

Early career

Born and raised in the New York City borough of Manhattan, McDonagh received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College and her Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University, where she co-founded and edited the Columbia Film Review.[1] 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.[1][2] 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.[3][4]

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.

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. In the mid-2000s, she wrote 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.[5] She is also a member of the New York Film Critics Online.[6]

McDonagh wrote the TV Guide website's twice-weekly column FlickChick; helped initiate the magazines weekly podcast, TV Guide Talk; and co-starred with fellow editor/critic Ken Fox in a Friday vodcast, Movie Talk.[1] She left TV Guide in October 2008 and subsequently launched the website Miss FlickChick[7] and its accompanying blog.[8]

Publishing

In 2014 McDonagh created the company 120 Days Books to republish rare 1970s and 1980s gay-erotica genre novels, beginning with a pair of two-in-one volumes: the crime thrillers Man Eater and Night of the Sadist and the supernatural fantasies Vampire's Kiss and Gay Vampire.[9][10]

Other work

McDonagh provides interviews and second-channel commentary on DVD / Blu-ray releases, including for director Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, and liner notes, including for the Criterion Collection releases The Tunnel, The Innocents[11] Kuroneko[12] and the paired Corridors of Blood/The Haunted Strangler,[13] and Arrow Video's Dressed to Kill.[14]

She contributed weekly commentary as the American correspondent for British Armed Forces Radio in 2004.[1]

Panels and documentary appearances

McDonagh has appeared on panels for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of the Moving Image.[15] She has lectured at the Huntington (New York) Arts Center, the Jyväskylä (Finland) Arts Festival, the Morbid Anatomy Museum,[16] 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.[17]

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;[18] Night Bites: Women and Their Vampires for WE: Women's Entertainment;[19] Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror for IFC;[20] and the Bravo miniseries 100 Scariest Movie Moments and its 2006 sequel, 30 Even Scarier Movie Moments; 2008's Zombiemania;[21] and, in 2009, Pretty Bloody: The Women of Horror, for Canada's Space network.[22]

Film festival juries

McDonagh served on the five-member jury judging films in competition at the 2008 New York Asian Film Festival[23] and on the jury as well for the 2008 New York City Horror Film Festival.[24]

In the media

A character in one scene of writer-director Lucky McKee's movie 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.

Accolades

In 2016, McDonagh was nominated for a Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Commentary for her work on Synapse Films' DVD release of Dario Argento's film Tenebrae.[25]

Bibliography

As co-author

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Maitland McDonagh biography (official site). Archived from the original on March 18, 2012.
  2. ↑ Tyre, Peg (September 29, 1986). "Future Shock at the City Ballet?". New York.
  3. ↑ Pollak, Michael (December 30, 2007). "F.Y.I. > George Drank Here". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 13, 2015.
  4. ↑ Lovece, Frank (February 16, 1994). "Going, Going, Gone? Carlin goes for home run with comedy series that resembles his real life". Reading Eagle. Newspaper Enterprise Association.
  5. ↑ "Maitland McDonagh". Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Archived from the original on February 4, 2015. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Our Members". New York Film Critics Online. Archived from the original on June 8, 2015. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  7. ↑ MissFlickChick.com. Archived from the original on December 22, 2014.
  8. ↑ MissFlickChick.blogspot.com. Archived from the original on February 23, 2015.
  9. ↑ Noh, David (January 8, 2015). "Pulped!". Gay City News. Archived from the original on April 5, 2015. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  10. ↑ 120 Days Books (official site). Retrieved on January 8, 2015. Archived from the original on June 8, 2015.
  11. ↑ Smith, Jordan M. (September 23, 2014). "Criterion Collection: The Innocents Blu-ray Review". Ion Cinema. Archived from the original on June 13, 2015. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  12. ↑ Brevet, Brad (October 18, 2011). "Blu-ray Review: 'Kuroneko' (Criterion Collection)". RopeOfSilicon.com. Archived from the original on March 29, 2012. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  13. ↑ Hudson, David (October 25, 2011). "Scary Monsters 2011, Round 3". The Notebook (MUBI). Archived from the original on December 9, 2013. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  14. ↑ Holmes, Matt (July 29, 2013). "Win: Dressed To Kill Blu-ray". WhatCulture.com. Archived from the original on October 4, 2013. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  15. ↑ "It's Only a Movie: Horror Films from the 1970s and Today". American Museum of the Moving Image. June 16, 2007. Archived from the original on July 30, 2013.
  16. ↑ "The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies: Monsters in the Closet". Morbid Anatomy Museum. November 17, 2016. Archived from the original on May 5, 2017. Retrieved May 5, 2017.
  17. ↑ "The 100 Greatest Sexy Moments". Channel Four. Archived from the original on November 21, 2014. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  18. ↑ "Scream and Scream Again: A History of the Slasher Film (2000)". MTDb. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  19. ↑ Jones, Stephen (2004). The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Volume 15. Running Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0786714261.
  20. ↑ Horrocks, Adrian. "Film Reviews: Sleepless (Dario Argento, US, 2001); Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror (Leon Ferguson, UK, 2000)". Dark Star. Archived from the original on June 13, 2015. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  21. ↑ Martinuzzi, Heidi (October 13, 2009). "Donna Davies' 'Zombiemania' documentary on Starz! Tonight!". Pretty-Scary.net. Archived from the original on October 16, 2009.
  22. ↑ Zimmerman, Samuel (February 20, 2009). "Pretty Bloody explores women in horror". Fangoria. Archived from the original on March 2, 2009.
  23. ↑ Webster, Christopher (June 5, 2008). "Full line up announced for the 2008 New York Asian Film Festival". Quiet Earth. Archived from the original on December 28, 2011. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  24. ↑ "'I'm a Judge at the New York Horror Film Festival...". MissFlickChick blog. November 11, 2008. Archived from the original on April 10, 2012.
  25. ↑ "Here is the OFFICIAL ballot for the (Gasp!) 15th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards". The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. February 26, 2017. Archived from the original on March 22, 2017. Retrieved April 8, 2017.
  26. ↑ "New York City Ballet : [souvenir program] fortieth anniversary : 1988". WorldCat. Archived from the original on September 1, 2016. Retrieved September 1, 2016.
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