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The Five Types of Moments in a Michael Mann Movie

For a director whose work is known to be incredibly macho and conform to genre tropes, Mann stands out amongst a lot of cinephiles as the one of the best studio filmmakers working today. His films, shot in digital or non-digital, evoke a moody imagery that glorifies his character’s emotional being yet is radiated by coolness. Last night, the BAMcinematek …

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35 Years on, ‘Thief’ Is Still Visionary

Released thirty-five years ago, Michael Mann’s Thief was an auspicious debut from an American filmmaker. Mann had actually directed a television film two years prior, but Thief represents the true start of his feature film oeuvre. The film’s style, its use of color and light, and its influential electronic score all set the template for …

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‘Thief’ is Michael Mann’s coming out party, boosted by the magnetic James Caan

Minor quibbles aside, there is little doubt that Thief remains one of the director’s more accomplished and assured projects. It serves as an indicator of the material that speaks to him, material he would borrow from a few more times in the following decades and boasts a raw, subtly layered performance from the iconic James Caan. Whether it represents Mann’s best work or not, it certainly is neo-noir done right.

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Remember Me: Dennis Farina (1944 – 2013) – Coming By It Honestly

When the news of Dennis Farina’s death by cancer at age 69 came through early this week, I think I felt a particularly sharp pang because it came so soon after the passing of James Gandolfini. I hadn’t thought of it before, but with Gandolfini still fresh in my mind, when I heard about Farina’s …

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Eight Counts of Grand Theft Cinema

We love crime movies. We may go on and on about Scorsese’s ability to incorporate Italian neo-realism techniques into Mean Streets (1973), the place of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) in the canon of postwar noir, The Godfather (1972) as a socio-cultural commentary on the distortion of the ideals of the American dream blah …

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