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New on Video: ‘Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson’

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.

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‘Thieves Like Us’ shows Robert Altman’s relationship with the American South

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.

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New on Video: Robert Altman’s ‘Nashville’

“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.”

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Director and Actress Duos: The Best, Overlooked, and Underrated

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 …

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‘Room 237’ a fascinating exercise in the obsessive nature of the modern man

Room 237 Directed by Rodney Ascher USA, 2012 A blessing and curse of being human is that we grasp for meaning in all things. If something is not spelled out for us directly, we have to get to the bottom of it, our curiosity unable to be sated until we’ve gotten to the bottom of …

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