Category: Film

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Edwards, Ficarra and Requa, Levy, Stoller, Wyatt

Dan Seeger

Focus (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2015). There are a whole lot of film folks trying to pivot their careers with this strangely aspirational con job drama. Star Will Smith is clearly trying to put After Earth completely behind him by staking a claim on the territory of smart movies for adults that George Clooney has made his whole grain bread and artisan butter. At the same time, filmmaking partners Ficarra and Requa endeavor to demonstrate they can do more than comedies with a slightly twisty edge. Everyone fails in their attempt to stretch. The film is notably tepid, even as … Continue reading Edwards, Ficarra and Requa, Levy, Stoller, Wyatt

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From the Archive: Serenity

Dan Seeger

I don’t feel obligated to sync this backward-looking weekly post to some current media offering, but this weekend seems to call for it. Much as I was a Joss Whedon disciple, I wouldn’t have tagged him at the likely future impresario of the biggest blockbuster franchise going, but then I also wouldn’t have imagined that my boyhood comic book collection would provide such lucrative fodder for moviemaking. If the Make Mine Marvel aesthetic is going to be the defining quality of the current cinematic age, then Whedon is an excellent choice to be a primary creative force behind it. His television … Continue reading From the Archive: Serenity

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Eight

Dan Seeger

#38 — Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) Rebecca holds a unique place in Oscar lore as the sole Alfred Hitchcock film to nab the Best Picture trophy (or Outstanding Production, as it was still called at the time). The famously unrewarded filmmaker lost out to John Ford (for The Grapes of Wrath) the second of four Best Director awards Ford collected in his career. Of course, naming Rebecca Best Picture without similarly honoring Hitchcock is patently absurd, given the director’s always distinctive stamp characterized by a nearly unparalleled skill at the interlocking of the mechanics of narrative with a striking visual sense (to be … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Eight

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Nine

Dan Seeger

#39 — Without Love (Harold S. Bucquet, 1945) Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy made nine films together. It is without a doubt one of the great screen partnerships in American film history, practically defining what that elusive quality chemistry looks like for every generation to follow. Of course, there was an off-screen pairing between the two of them, officially secret but widely known, that added turbo to the fuel, but the real life twinkle of romance does explain everything. It’s entirely possible that the splendid contrasts of their acting styles — she strident, he relaxed, she crisply intelligent, he scruffily … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Nine

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Trivia Answer of the Day: Nicholas and Copernicus

Dan Seeger

This weekend, I’ll participate in The World’s Largest Trivia ContestTM. I’m a little preoccupied with preparations for that, including some significant travel. To provide some sense of the madness of minutiae that dominates my mind this week, I’ll return to a bit of a tradition around these parts and share a few personally memorable answers from the twenty-five years or so that I’ve been involved with this contest, in one way or another. In this instance, I’ve reminded myself of the answers by flipping through our team’s old answer sheets. There are questions I simply do not want to miss. … Continue reading Trivia Answer of the Day: Nicholas and Copernicus

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Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty

Dan Seeger

#40 — Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941) For all the huffing and harrumphing that plenty of people resort to when engaged in discussions of the broken state of modern politics (and I include myself in that “plenty”), there’s a sad, corrosive truth at the core of our problems. To borrow a handy bit of phrasing, this dysfunction of our politics isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. That’s perhaps best evidenced by the ways in which the damage decried today as proof of the historic animosity and corruption within the power structure can be found recurring through U.S. history like the clearest … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty

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My Writers: Richard Price

Dan Seeger

There was a time in mid-nineteen-nineties — before my energy started to flag — when I actively sought out books that I knew were on their way to becoming potentially significant feature films. This was especially common, weirdly enough, after I no longer had a public outlet to review films, meaning I had no particular impetus — no mandate, imposed or otherwise — to fill in the background. Freed from the burden of collegiate assigned text, I felt I had the time (though I was routinely working well over forty hours per week) and I maintained a hangover principle from … Continue reading My Writers: Richard Price

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Greatish Performances #19

Dan Seeger

#19 — Eric Bogosian as Barry Champlain in Talk Radio (Oliver Stone, 1988) The play Talk Radio had its off-Broadway premiere in May of 1987, with its writer, Eric Bogosian, in the leading role. It wasn’t exactly viewed as transformational theatre (New York groused, “neither as drama nor as social psychology does it cut deep enough”), but it had the air of sensation to it. And it transformed Bogosian, however briefly, from that unique nineteen-eighties calling as “performance artist” into a more well-rounded creator who needed to be taken seriously. When the property was snapped up for a film adaptation, … Continue reading Greatish Performances #19