Just over twenty-five years into their existence as Pixar and over fifteen years since they shifted the foundations of film with Toy Story, the computer animation studio that can make as much of a claim towards auteurship as any major … Continue reading I walked away from everyone I know, I looked around and thought, This must be what it’s like to be alone
I had a few contributions up at Spectrum Culture this week, including one more than I originally anticipated. The first thing that posted was a review of the new album from Lemonade, which I actually forgot landed in my iTunes because I was supposed to write about it. So while I’ve been listening to it a fair amount since I got it, I hadn’t been thinking about what to say about it until the official deadline crossed my inbox. I think I pulled it together fine, but it was a little more of a scramble than it needed to be. … Continue reading Spectrum Check
#28 — Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972) As always, I come to Ingmar Bergman as a wary traveler, an interloper into a cinematic world of abstract artistry that I’m not quite confident I’ll ever fully grasp. The legendary Swedish director, as much as anyone who ever stood on a movie set and told the cameraman where to point his machinery, comes at his films with a devotion to mood, deeply developed emotional truth and finding the profundity in that which is withheld. There are mysteries between the lines of his visual poetry and that is where the meaning lies. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Eight
As I mentioned at the start of this project, the original impetus came from a Facebook meme that challenged me to name ten personally influential authors as quick as could, tapping into the literary stream of consciousness that flows through … Continue reading My Writers: Anne Tyler
The Quiet American (Phillip Noyce, 2002). Occasionally there will be a movie that adheres to a classic narrative structure that is also stolid, humorless and painfully dull that a small but vocal bundle of critics will tout as a dwindling example of cinematic material created for adults. I get that full-time critics were spending the end of 2002 gritting their teeth and covering their eyes while watching supposed comedies and franchise-killing sequels, but they still needed to grade on a helluva curve to find nice things to say about this dire adaptation of the Graham Greene novel. Michael Caine received … Continue reading Brooks, Hansen-Løve, Noyce, Polanski, Teshigahara
#29 — Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974) Like a lot of people who devote way too much mental energy to considering the best and worst of cinema, I have a distinct and enduring admiration for those filmmakers who artfully explore … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Nine
Great pains have been taken in recent weeks to preserve the mystery and secrets of Prometheus, the film that represents director Ridley Scott’s return to the franchise which he unwittingly launched over thirty years ago with 1979’s Alien, before the notion that film concepts could go on forever and ever through endless sequels and reboots. A big screen secret agent with a habit of introducing himself last name first was about the only example of such a process of constant recycling that has now became the norm. It was widely known that Prometheus was more of a prequel, all the … Continue reading The walls were crumbling, the wheels were coming off
#30 — The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978) I have a strong memory from when I was a kid, and by kid, I mean an age that I could accurate convey using nothing more than the fingers of my two … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Thirty
I would think that working on a film that grounds itself in the logic of fairy tales is very freeing. The parameters of plausibility widen quite a bit when the plot is inherently open to fairies, haunted forests and nasty … Continue reading Where’s my nurse, I need some healing. I’ve been paralyzed by a lack of feeling.
I had a fairly busy week with Spectrum Culture. Because of the shifting vagaries of release schedules, I wound up with the rare instance of two new film reviews in one week. First off was my take on a gloomy extra-natural drama about a musician who starts hearing a low tone that no one else can, and the ways in which it drives him crazy (thanks in no small part to a conspiracy-minded brother-in-law). This is the sort of film I always feel a little bad beating up on. It’s so clearly a labor of love for the chief creators … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Coffee for Two 