Ed Rampell

Ed Rampell is an LA-based film historian and critic, author of "Progressive Hollywood: A People’s Film History of the United States," and co-author of "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book." He has written for Variety, Television Quarterly, Cineaste, New Times L.A., and other publications. Rampell lived in Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaii, and Micronesia, reporting on the nuclear-free and independent Pacific and Hawaiian Sovereignty movements.

LATEST ARTICLES BY Ed Rampell

Culture

We’re off to see the ‘Wicked,’ the wonderful ‘Wicked’ of Oz
November 20, 2024 By Ed Rampell
I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing how the epic is resolved and worked out in part two next year when we’ll all be off to see the Wicked again.
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Culture

‘Unstoppable,’ an upbeat biopic about real-life wrestler Anthony Robles
November 14, 2024 By Ed Rampell
Audiences, especially sports fans, are sure to enjoy this crowd-pleasing, exciting sports/family survival melodrama.
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Culture

Mike Leigh sings the British Black blues in ‘Hard Truths’
November 12, 2024 By Ed Rampell
Hard Truths is no comedy, indeed far from it. Released by Bleecker Street, this film really couldn’t be much bleaker.
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Culture

Hong Sang-soo’s ‘A Traveler’s Needs’ stars Isabelle Huppert in Korean film
November 8, 2024 By Ed Rampell
One of AFI FEST’s top virtues is that it brings many foreign films to L.A., including this year the latest from South Korean writer/director Hong Sang-soo.
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Culture

‘Memnon’: Harlem comes to Malibu (ancient Black Lives Matter too)
September 12, 2024 By Ed Rampell
The approximately 80-minute one-act play can be a bit talky with lengthy monologues or soliloquies, although I imagine this may be how some Greek dramas were presented in those ancient amphitheaters under the starry Grecian skies...
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Culture

Fighting racism on two fronts: ‘The Double V’ on stage
August 28, 2024 By Ed Rampell
Carole Eglash-Kosoff has thankfully rescued an important chapter in human rights history from obscurity and crafted an enjoyable anti-racist, antifascist, feminist drama about Blacks joining the crusade to make the world safe for democracy.
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Culture
$Bridging the great cultural chasm: A fractured comic fairy tale of ‘Human Error’$

Bridging the great cultural chasm: A fractured comic fairy tale of ‘Human Error’
August 13, 2024 By Ed Rampell
Beyond our dogmas and ideological differences, we’re only human, and to err is human, while to laugh is divine.
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Culture

Arthurian legends, Cold War realpolitik and sexual politics in ‘Camelot’
July 31, 2024 By Ed Rampell
Set in medieval England, Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Camelot, one of Broadway’s top musicals of all time, is as fabled as the legends this play is derived from.
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