The Academy Award for Best Picture is a fascinating prize. Some years, it seems like the winner is a clear indicator of what people will remember best about that particular year in film. Others, the prize feels almost meaningless, awarded more out of some arbitrary sense of importance than because the prize will actually mean …
SIDNEY AND THE SIXTIES: REAL-TIME 1957-1966 Throughout the 1950s, Hollywood’s relationship with television was fraught: TV was a hated rival but also a source of cheap talent and material, as in the case of the small-scale Marty (1955), which won the Best Picture Oscar. These contradictions were well represented by the apparently “televisual” 12 Angry …
“Sabrina” is a classic of American cinema … an exceptional example of the assured best the studio system had to offer.
During the mid-2000s, between his exercise in low-budget filmmaking and new modes of exhibition with Bubble, and his big-budget ensemble Ocean’s Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh made a mid-budget return to 1940s style with The Good German.
Announcing the unambiguous Casablanca reference with a mimicking poster, Soderbergh’s black-and-white film is full of classic Hollywood soft-lighting and sinister wartime figures.
So I’d gone over to my cousin’s house to see his new puppy and, as he and I are often wont to do, we got to talking about movies and TV and the like. The conversation drifted around to movies we liked but our kids didn’t. “I have Blazing Saddles (1974),” he said, nodding at …
Dead Man Down Directed by Niels Arden Oplev Written by J.H. Wyman USA, 2013 It’s hard to tell exactly when Dead Man Down topples over totally into an overwhelming sense of self-seriousness, to pinpoint which of Colin Farrell’s many soulful looks into the grim abyss of New York City is the one that pushes this …
AMC is currently rerunning the first and second seasons of The Walking Dead in black and white each Thursday night. For a fanbase that is growing tired of the channel over marketing the show and trying to ring every possible ounce of viewership it can I’m sure many are turned off by this “gimmick”. Of …
*Exclaimer: Please don’t read this if you haven’t seen Inception, The Empire Strikes Back, Planet of the Apes, The Wizard of Oz, Saw, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense – As a probable testament to my poor academic acumen, I cannot, in good memory, recall the particulars of the situation …
If I may, I’d like to quote from Entertainment Weekly’s review of the just released 70th anniversary Blue-ray release of Casablanca (1942). According to Chris Nashawaty’s piece, when the script arrived at Warner Bros. in December of 1941 “…there wasn’t an ending yet…the movie was just one of 50 in Warner’s crowded pipeline at the …
“How come you only show us clips from movies none of us ever heard of?” She was 30, a single mom who’d admirably gone back to school for a business degree to better things for her and her family. She’d taken my film appreciation class as an elective, a break from the grind of her …
The big-budget (usually summer) blockbuster is the financial cornerstone of the American motion picture industry, and has been for much of the last 35 years or so. In all its forms – action/adventure, suspense, Western, war story, horror, science fiction, fantasy, et al – the big budget thriller’s earning power is unmatched by any other …
Well it’s a new day and here is yet another montage, the second in two days. Lucky for us, it’s just as great. Yesterday we showed you A Brief History of Title Design. This time however, it’s the work of youtuber Hatinhand. He brings us a montage sequence of amazing movie ending spoilers. Overall there …