1. Paul Thomas Anderson learned to make movies by watching movies. Each of his films bears the ghostly fingerprints of his masters and mentors: the obsession and one-point perspective of Kubrick; the tough-guy veneers and fetid societies that sated the first decade of Scorsese’s career; the intense meditative stares of Jonathan Demme, constantly reminding us …
It’s December. And you know what that means? It means for every popcorn blockbuster, we get about three Oscar bait movies that are made solely to appease that body of somewhat stodgy Academy voters. Don’t get me wrong – a good portion of the Best Picture winners in history are still some of the greatest …
With Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Altman was again breaking down the Western, only this time, he was focused on one critical aspect of the genre and of America’s Western heritage: the making and maintenance of a myth.
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 …
Robert Altman’s foray into film in the 70s left him with a body of work densely packed with revered quality which enshrined him as one of the great American directors. M*A*S*H, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye and 3 Women would have been enough to designate him a worthy auteur who spoke a certain mystical anti-Hollywood Hollywood language with beams of nostalgia resonating from current cinephiles who wonder “How did they get away with that?”. It wasn’t by fitting in with contemporaries such as Scorsese or Hellman or emulating the previous nouvelle vague that made Altman a mainstay in cinematic history — much of that is due to his unabashed critique of genre understanding, his unique editing, and perhaps unexpectedly, his understanding of his subjects in a matter rivaled only by the likes of Stanley Kubrick. One of such successes lies in a work that receives a relatively diminished praise even from Altman’s most ardent followers: Thieves Like Us. It is the second adaptation of the novel of the same name by Edward Anderson — the first being Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night — and yet the first to shoot its real subject, Depression-era Mississippi, on location. For full disclosure, I have lived in Mississippi my entire life and am intimately familiar with many of the locations visited and mentioned in Altman’s film, allowing me a (albeit rather weak) privileged lens on his use and message about his location, style, and, through the combination of the two, substance.
Robert Altman’s work of the 1980s saw him exploring new stylistic trends as he ventured to adapt popular plays. These works stand in stark contrast with his earlier films as they were often secluded to single locations, with Altman’s sprawling vision of America confined to either a small interior space or even tied to a …
Coming a year on the heels of MASH, one of his best known films, Robert Altman’s Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller certified the director as a genre revisionist. The opening strains of Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song” lilt underneath a panning wide shot showing McCabe (Warren Beatty in his finest role), unrecognizable beneath bundled furs and astride a …
Often considered one of Robert Altman’s best films, Nashville subverts and revisits the tropes of the classic Hollywood musical through a revisionist lens. Though musicals still found success in the 1970s, the golden age of the genre was long gone and was due for a revival and re-evaluation. Utilizing tropes from classic Hollywood musicals, Nashville …
The influence of Robert Altman on film is indisputable and widespread. A true auteur Altman was a fearless, utterly unique and often completely human.
Director Robert Altman had his fair share of ups and downs. The oscillation between works widely lauded and those typically forgotten is prevalent throughout his exceptionally diverse career. This was — and still is — certainly the case with his 1970s output. This decade of remarkable work saw the release of now established classics like …
“With its eclectic cast of individuals from all walks of life (typical for Altman), its sprawling narrative of disjointed personal and professional connections (ditto), and its setting of a distinctly American city around the time of our nation’s bicentennial, Nashville comes across as more than a fictional depiction of characters embodying certain nationalistic traits; it truly feels like the film itself is America in a nutshell.”
Riffing on Terek Puckett’s terrific list of director/actor collaborations, I wanted to look at some of those equally impressive leading ladies who served as muses for their directors. I strived to look for collaborations that may not have been as obviously canonical, but whose effects on cinema were no less compelling. Categorizing a film’s lead …
Following are some supplemental sections featuring notable director & actor teams that did not meet the criteria for the main body of the article. Some will argue that a number of these should have been included in the primary section but keep in mind that film writing on any level, from the casual to the …
The Long Goodbye Directed by Robert Altman Written by Leigh Brackett USA, 1973 My introduction to classic film was through Humphrey Bogart. I would watch Casablanca (1942) and To Have and Have Not (1944) with my mother, but none of his films had as much of an effect on me as The Big Sleep (1946) …
The greatest accomplishment of this film is how it seeks to surprise its viewers, not just with what happens but with where we place our loyalty. Short Cuts (1993) Directed by Robert Altman United States – 187 min. Color Criterion Spine #265 The Criteron Collection’s two-disc issue of Robert Altman’s 1993 film Short Cuts comes …
1)Nashville (1975) Robert Altman’s Masterpiece captured America in the 70s like one else: All its confusion, disappointment, and uncertainty. The film follows 24 different characters over a period of as few days in Nashville just before a political fundraising concert. We take a peak in the lives of country music superstars, hippies, aspiring singers, mothers, …