Network is easy to avoid. On the surface, it looks like another dated boardroom drama about white men who argue about white, male issues. On top of that, its director, Sidney Lumet, has an established legacy of maleness and moralism. 12 Angry Men (1957) is a courtroom drama about one man’s attempt to prove another …
The Bond franchise which has been with us so long, has become so deeply entrenched in popular culture, that we often forget what it was that first distinguished the Bonds a half-century ago. Skyfall might be one of the best of the Bonds, and even, arguably, one of the best big-budget big-action flicks to come …
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 …
SIDNEY AND THE SIXTIES: REAL-TIME 1957-1966 Throughout the 1950s, Hollywood’s relationship with television was fraught: TV was a hated rival but also a source of cheap talent and material, as in the case of the small-scale Marty (1955), which won the Best Picture Oscar. These contradictions were well represented by the apparently “televisual” 12 Angry …
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 …
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 …
Network Directed by Sidney Lumet Written by Paddy Chayefsky US, 1976 You can always pick out the true greats from the history of cinema by viewing them today and discovering that the product hasn’t aged, the message has not faded, and the era was not an inherent part of its magic. In fact, quite often, …
With the notion of film canonization once again at issue, we thought it might be an appropriate occasion to check in on our staff’s collective opinion of the greatest films of all time. We had no idea what to expect; our contributors come from all over the world and come from vastly different backgrounds and …
As happened for so many other genres, the 1960s/1970s saw a tremendous creative expansion in crime and cop thrillers. The old Hollywood moguls had died off or retired, most of the major studios were bleeding red ink, attendance had gone off a cliff since the end of WW II, and a new breed of young, …
Well it looks like another John le Carré novel is about to be adapted into a feature film. In 1965, Martin Ritt directed the first film adaptation of a John le Carré novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In 1966, Sidney Lumet directed The Deadly Affair. In 1969, Frank Pierson directed …
One of the true giants passed away this week: filmmaker Sidney Lumet, dead at 86 of lymphoma. He was one of an incredibly talented class of directors who graduated from the early days of TV; a group which included such august talents as Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967), George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and …
The Verdict Directed by Sidney Lumet Screenplay by David Mamet 1982, USA Sidney Lumet, who passed away yesterday at age 86, was one of the great moral compasses in American cinema. His best films – 12 Angry Men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon – are challenges to consider our individual culpability and responsibility in the actions …
Yes, he was the punchline of approximately a quarter-million Tonight Show jokes. But Michael Jackson’s stop-on-a-dime dance moves and sensual soprano have influenced generations of musicians, dancers and entertainers, and the man was so much more than what the tabloids made him out to be. One of entertainment’s greatest icons, he was incredibly gifted, and …