From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Glendale, CA: When Jim invited me to participate in this survey, I accepted with enthusiasm and then immediately began to worry. Every example of a great opening shot that was…
"Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true. / You'll see it's all a show, / Keep 'em laughing as you go. / Just remember that the last laugh is on you..." "For life is quite absurd / And…
View image: The crawl recedes... View image; The camera tilts down. View image; The surface of a planet spans the lower part of the frame as a ship passes through the top. "Star Wars" has, not surprisingly, been the popular…
View image: It starts here... View image ... and ends here. And nearly everything that happens, except for a slow movement in on the house, happens off-screen. From Richard T. Jameson, Editor, Movietone News, 1971-81; Editor, Film Comment, 1990-2000: The…
View image: ANY movie is good as long as Seth Rogen is on the screen. When he isn't... no guarantees. While Roger Ebert is on the mend, I'll be chipping in and doing occasional reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times (and…
View image: From synapses deep inside the brain... View image View image: ... out through a sweaty pore... From Robert Humanick, a film odyssey: I'm not sure if this applies to the "opening shot" rules, in that it is included…
View image: "Only women bleed, only women bleed..." -- Alice Cooper (1975) View image: The Super Best Friends in 2001. Readers responding to the news that the banned "South Park" episode "Trapped in the Closet" is scheduled (again) for its…
Der Funnyman und der Führer. It's the hottest thing in contemporary cinema -- after superhero movies and pirate movies, that is! I refer, of course, to movies about clowns in Nazi concentration camps! Who doesn't adore that genre? Let's see,…
Don't forget to set your TiVo, Tom. I just love a Xenu joke. But, seriously, this just in from reader Ali Nagib: I just noticed on my TiVo that it claims that Comedy Central will air "Trapped in the Closet"…
In case you hadn't noticed: Comments are working, and some good discussions have been started -- annotations to particular Opening Shots and (especially stimulating) various reactions to my diatribes against the Slate writer who bashed "The Searchers" for his own…
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