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The Past, Present, and Future of Real-Time Films Part One

What do film directors Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Agnès Varda, Robert Wise, Fred Zinnemann, Luis Buñuel, Alain Resnais, Roman Polanski, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Louis Malle, Richard Linklater, Tom Tykwer, Alexander Sokurov, Paul Greengrass, Song Il-Gon, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro Iñárritu have in common? More specifically, what type of film have they directed, setting them …

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BAFTAs 2014 – and the winner is… (Part 1)

It’s that time of the year again when the British Academy of Film and Television Arts celebrates the best of the cinematic world.  With the awards taking place just shy of a month before the Academy Awards, it is time to start making those all-important predictions. Part 1 will cover: – Best British Film – …

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Six Female Lead Choices Who Would’ve Made ‘Gravity’ a Better Film

As Alfonso Cuaron’s mega-hit Gravity continues to rack up praise and big box office dollars, it’s a good time to take a critical look at the weakest aspect of the film, which is the lead acting performance of Sandra Bullock. It’s widely known that Cuaron’s first choice, Angelina Jolie, fell through and there were reported …

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‘Gravity’ a visual stunner that lacks character complexity

By now, Alfonso Cuarón has pretty much earned the crown of being one of the best, if not the best, technicians in modern cinema. His last three films—Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, and now Gravity—all demonstrate a playful and intelligent command of space, his camera always roving in, around, and out of locations whenever possible. Gravity raises the bar for technical prowess in mainstream filmmaking, and Cuarón doesn’t shy away from the challenge of a film set entirely in space. This is nothing short of a flawless technical exercise, a frequently intense and relentless theme-park ride of a movie. The real downside is that Cuarón could’ve made more than just a ride.

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Shot Block: Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’

Now that Alfonso Cuaron’s long-in-the-making sci-fi spectacle Gravity has smashed its way through Venice and TIFF (it’s astounding), its detractors have raised two major objections: first, that its spectacle comes at the expense of its emotional content; second, that its lengthy, whirling camera movements are self-conscious and barely motivated, summarized by Nick McCarthy for Slant …

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NYFF 2011: ‘Miss Bala’ sets a new bar for Mexican filmmaking

Miss Bala Directed by Gerardo Naranjo 2011, Mexico You may not know it, but Mexican cinema is alive and has something to tell us. Overshadowed by the big wigs of the American studio system, foreign markets are endlessly trying to compete with the big budgeted, CGI saturated, sequel profiteering that has blindsided artistic talents to …

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Harry Potter as Cinema: ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’

In case you didn’t know, the last Harry Potter film is coming out on July 15th.  In  countdown to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, I will be doing a bi-weekly series called “Harry Potter as Cinema”, starting with the first film in the series and working my way up to the final …

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