Dr. Strangelove

Death by Hanging is a phenomenally experimental work, a brilliantly conceived way to explore issues of capital punishment, Japanese identity, and the prejudices that create sociocultural barriers.

Throughout the 1960s-early 1970s, a combination of financial desperation, creative daring, and an adventurous movie-going public had produced a creative detonation in mainstream American movies not seen before or since.  Each year of the period seemed to bring at least one mightily ambitious visual experiment by a new contributor to the commercial movie scene, the …

40. Beauty and the Beast (1991) Lost to: Silence of the Lambs 1991 was the first time an animated film ever grabbed a nomination for Best Picture with Disney’s version of “Beauty and the Beast.” The film also picked up nominations for sound, Original Score (for which it won) and three – count ’em THREE – …

THE DIGITAL ERA: REAL-TIME FILMS FROM 2000 TO TODAY 40 years before, in 1960, lighter cameras enabled a cinéma vérité-flavored revolution in street realism. By 2000, new digital cameras suggested a whole new set of promises, including telling stories that would have been unimaginable within minimum budgets for features even ten years before. In 2000, …

THE POST-1960S, PRE-DIGITAL AGE: REAL-TIME ONE-OFFS, 1975-1998 British filmmaker John Byrum is responsible for the first (and in some ways only) real-time period film. Inserts (1975), set in the early 1930s, is about a Boy Wonder movie director (called Boy Wonder, played by Richard Dreyfuss fresh from American Graffiti (1973) and Jaws (1975)) now washed …

There are few auteurs as instantly recognizable and divisive as Stanley Kubrick, few filmmakers as idiosyncratic or groundbreaking. His work spans the entirety of life itself–sometimes in the same film–and has inspired almost as much derision as hosannas. There is no easy consensus on Kubrick’s films–though you may not be terribly surprised by our writers’ …

Having finished Lolita, a subversive Hollywood piece even by noirish standards, Kubrick returned to war. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’s scope was more encompassing than the private torture of Paths of Glory, looking forward to the threat of apocalyptic destruction instead of a reflective portrait of immediate world wars. Instead of matching and multiplying the grave tone inherent in both his previous work and the source material, Red Alert by Peter George, Kubrick opted for a brand of blacker-than-pitch humor claiming “The only way to tell the story was as a black comedy or, better, a nightmare comedy, where the things you laugh at most are really the heart of the paradoxical postures that make a nuclear war possible…”. This does not deter from the omnipresent horror surrounding both the film and the historical environment that determined its existence. Beneath the antics and the (wonderfully) strained acting of Sellers and Scott lies the taut strains of nuclear holocaust with only these chummy actors in control. It’s dread at its purest, comfortably resting amongst the instantly quotable dialogue and perfectly composed images: an atmosphere of unspeakable horror-that-is-to-come.

“Good-bye, my sweetheart. Hello, Vietnam.” — Johnny Wright “Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?” – Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket was Stanley Kubrick’s eleventh film (twelfth, if you count Spartacus) and his last to depict war and the military. Kubrick dealt with the military in Fear and Desire, Paths of …

It’s both perfectly fitting and a darkly wry punchline that the last word in Stanley Kubrick’s last film is “fuck,” utilized in its most literal definition. The word is spoken, in both direct and slightly imploring fashion, by Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman) to her husband Bill (Tom Cruise) at the end of the still slightly …

Stanley Kubrick’s voice as a director and writer was so singular, so fitfully honest. Every project seemed so richly influenced by him and the worlds he created. That world often floated somewhere between a cold brutal honesty and some kind of hyper reality that’s uniquely his own.

Well it’s a new day and here is yet another montage, the second in two days. Lucky for us, it’s just as great. Yesterday we showed you A Brief History of Title Design. This time however, it’s the work of youtuber Hatinhand. He brings us a montage sequence of  amazing movie ending spoilers. Overall there …

Put together to compete in the SXSW Title Design Competition, Ian Albinson has edited a large mix of some of the greatest film and television titles ever made. Slashfilm reports that the websites mission is: A compendium and leading web resource of film and television title design from around the world. We honor the artists …

Throughout the 1960s-early 1970s, a combination of financial desperation, creative daring, and an adventurous movie-going public had produced a creative detonation in mainstream American movies not seen before or since.  Each year of the period seemed to bring at least one mightily ambitious visual experiment by a new contributor to the commercial movie scene, the …