Chinatown
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The Definitive Original Screenplays: 10-1
The end of the road. The scripts that should be studied, dissected, and taught for their quality, their timeliness, and their impact on the film industry as a whole. Some were perfect for their time and place. Some were ahead of their time. Some defined their generation. And one still rules all, forty years after […] More
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New on Video: ‘Tess’
The imagery of “Tess” is what strikes first and leaves the greatest impression, and it was undoubtedly with this in mind that Criterion pulled out all the stops with this release. More
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Grimm, Ep. 3.04, “One Night Stand” a fun twist on The Little Mermaid
While Grimm is rooted in fairy tales, this week’s episode is the first to seemingly take direct inspiration from a modern classic, The Little Mermaid. Usually the show takes a particular myth or folk tale as a jumping off point before going in a new direction, but “One Night Stand” is a break from this, providing direct parallels to several of the beloved film’s key elements. Elly, our main Nyad protagonist, loves Jake from afar and saves him from drowning, pulling him onto the land and resuscitating him. She stares lovingly at him as he blearily opens his eyes, not sure what he’s seeing, and then jumps back into the water once he’s awake. Jake then spends much of the episode trying to understand what happened to him and find this woman who, being deaf, cannot speak to him. The antagonists as well as many of the specifics may differ, but there are too many similarities for this to be intended as anything other than Grimm does The Little Mermaid, a format Once Upon a Time has built much of its show around. More
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‘Chinatown’ is neo-noir at its best
Film noir comes full circle in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974). Thirty years before its release, crime dramas saw the birth of a fundamental character – the noir hero. From Dashiell Hammett to Raymond Chandler, The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The Big Sleep (1946), the noir hero inhabits a world of hopelessness and dark tragedy. The Maltese Falcon saw Humphrey Bogart’s inaugural portrayal of this amoral anti-hero and began film noir as we know it. More
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Amazing Stories – Literally: Nolan, Kubrick, and the Puzzle of Puzzle Pictures
The Sixth Sense has come and gone as has its (alleged) twist ending. It’s hard to categorize The Sixth Sense but like The Shining or Inception I shall dub it as part of the puzzle picture genre that keeps appearing then disappearing only to come back. At first sight, the very existence of puzzle pictures […] More
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Tumblr Round-Up: ‘Star Wars’ – ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ – ‘Breaking Bad’ – Bill Murray and more
The Tumblr round-up is a compilation of images, links, posters, stories, videos and so on, taken from the Sound On Sight Tumblr account. We simply do not have the man power nor time to write articles on every interesting movie related goody we find, so this is our way of still promoting some of the […] More
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TIFF Bell Lightbox Retrospective: Roman Polanski, God of Carnage
This weekend sees the start of a new retrospective at the wonderful TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. In anticipation of Roman Polanski’s upcoming film, Carnage, TIFF has decided to highlight a selection from his filmography. The retrospective is incomplete, missing at least a couple key films in the long career of the established, controversial director, […] More
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Oscar Season Chat #2: A Conversation with Reviewer Stephen Whitty
At a time of the year that’s all about picking the best of the best among movies, it seems singularly appropriate to talk to someone whose year-round profession is assaying the good and the bad up on the big screen. “I’m one of the few people on the paper who’s never had a journalism class, […] More
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The Career Of Robert Evans
“The producer is like the conductor of an orchestra. Maybe he can’t play every instrument, but he knows what every instrument should sound like.” Zanuck The producer can be an enigmatic presence in the film making process. It is a role that is hard to define and thus, rarely recognised with the same reverence as […] More