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

If Black Lives Matter, must ‘Gone with the Wind’ be gone?
June 18, 2020 By Ed Rampell
Without a doubt, the four-hour Technicolor blockbuster about the antebellum South, Civil War and Reconstruction is problematic.
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Culture

‘On the Record’ documentary lays bare music industry racial and sexual politics
June 3, 2020 By Ed Rampell
During an election year when the role Black women play in society receives lots of attention, this documentary adds another rarely seen dimension to that discussion.
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Culture

The Kaminski method: Tight, taut WWII action in ‘Enemy Lines’
April 20, 2020 By Ed Rampell
As people grapple with a planetary pandemic, an exciting new movie is premiering just in time to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of our last global conflagration.
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Culture

‘The Hunt’ released Friday the 13th: Must we burn Blumhouse?
March 12, 2020 By Ed Rampell

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Culture

‘Antigone, Presented by the Girls of St. Catherine’s’: On- and offstage lives
March 9, 2020 By Ed Rampell
Award-winning playwright Madhuri Shekar is the latest in this venerable lineage, injecting a female, (South Asian) Indian, and 21st-century sensibility with her idiosyncratic take on the iconic Grecian legend.
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Culture

‘Show Me a Hero’: Greek tragedy and valor from A to Z
March 2, 2020 By Ed Rampell
What I loved about playwright Willard Manus’s Show Me a Hero is that it introduced me to Greek freedom fighter Alexandros Panagoulis, a significant historical figure I’d never heard of, and brought back to life the...
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Culture

A traitor’s trial in ‘Roberto Devereux’: The unprivate lives of Elizabeth and Essex
February 26, 2020 By Ed Rampell
For its stellar stagecraft and affecting bel canto lyricism, I do indeed heartily recommend that opera-goers see, hear and enjoy Roberto Devereux.
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Culture

‘Earthquakes in London’: Aftershock of an epic play about climate change
February 24, 2020 By Ed Rampell
Overall, this heady, ambitious apocalyptic concoction is the type of theatrical Molotov cocktail we’ve come to expect one of L.A.’s leading theater companies to toss at its audience.
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