Here's Adam Curtis's six-and-a-half-minute documentary segment on how, over the last 50 (75?) years or so, we have become a culture of increasingly paranoid weirdos. (Satirical, too.) It reminded me of "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics…
I saw six movies this past weekend and it was exhilarating. That's a lot for me to suck up these days (though it didn't used to be), unless I'm neck-deep in a film festival. I used to think nothing of…
The For the Love of Film Blogathon (co-hosted by Ferdy on Films and Self-Styled Siren to benefit the National Film Preservation Foundation) has already inspired Greg Ferrara at Cinema Styles to come up with these two groovy announcements. I hope…
I was watching Akira Kurosawa's 1948 "Stray Dog" the other night, in which a nightclub owner said one of his chorus girls was "sick" with "her monthlies." This is not something you could have heard in a Hollywood film in…
Quentin Tarantino told a BAFTA audience in London last month that he'd like to remembered for a body of work, like Howard Hawks. This sparked a discussion between Anne Thompson and Jack Mathews of moviefone.com over at the indieWire-hosted Thompson…
It's a movie. No, it's a ride. No, it's a movie and a ride! Variety reports that Koreans have been lining up for 4D "ride films," beginning with last year's "Journey to the Center of the Earth." The 4D, "five-sense"…
In 1959 Jean-Luc Godard famously proclaimed that tracking shots are a matter of morality -- an inversion of fellow Cahier du cinéma critic Luc Moullet's formulation that "morality is a matter of tracking shots" ("morale set affaire de travellings," sometimes…
The tweet from Errol Morris came through a little before noon on Saturday, January 30: SENSELESS TRAGEDY: My beloved editor Karen Schmeer was killed last night by a car used in the robbery of a drugstore. She was 39 years…
If all the year-end and decade-end lists (even though we realize the decade isn't actually over until 2011) have left you dizzied and depleted, take heart! Perhaps you've missed out on some of the more invigorating, far-sighted list-based ventures. Over…
Traditionally (or, perhaps a better word is "statistically"), in order for film to win the Best Picture, it has to also receive director, screenplay, editing and acting nominations. Of the ten BP nominees this year, only "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious…
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