The Academy Award for Best Picture is a fascinating prize. Some years, it seems like the winner is a clear indicator of what people will remember best about that particular year in film. Others, the prize feels almost meaningless, awarded more out of some arbitrary sense of importance than because the prize will actually mean …
Christopher Nolan recently announced a new project entitled Quay, a documentary short about two British stop-motion animators. Set to premiere next week, it’s a far cry from Nolan’s blockbusters in both scope and subject matter. Yet it’s clearly a personal project, with Nolan using his clout and money to promote two obscure filmmakers. Every artist …
It might be cliché by now to admit that The Godfather changed my life, but it truly did change my perspective on the possibilities of cinema. At a very young age, I constantly looked forward to going to the movie theatre. I vividly remember being terrified but thrilled by the realistic dinosaurs of Jurassic Park …
The first time I went to the movies was in 1994 at the age of five. It was the first outing that my sister and I were privy to that didn’t involve coloring mats, kid’s menus, or a playground. This was something adults got to do. This was something magical. The Regal theatre didn’t appear to …
Last month David Fincher’s Gone Girl made a smash at the box office. As if plugged directly into the Zeitgeist, it seemed as if everyone had a take on the film’s views on gender, the media and marriage. Gone Girl was a sensation that turned the camera inward, revealing our discomfort with the institution of …
Once Upon a Time in America is a gangster film of the highest order, and, at the same time, it recalls so many of its predecessors
The obligatory movie catchphrase…memorable golden dialogue for the cinematic soul. What film fan does not enjoy reciting and repeating their favorite movie quotes? After all, there are countless catchphrases in films–some are famous, some are familiar, some are obscure. Still, paraphrasing movie quips has become an art onto itself? So what are your all-time movie …
The United States of Murder Inc. #1 Story by Brian Michael Bendis Art by Michael Avon Oeming Cover by Michael Avon Oeming, David Mack, David Marquez,[more…] Publisher: Marvel Icon 2014 When Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming get together, it’s murder. Powers #1 began so long ago with the death of Retro Girl and The United …
Locations in films are rarely the thing an average filmgoer remembers after watching a film; it’s always about the story, character and the lines they say that later form the proverbial ‘word of mouth.’ However, when you think of great confrontations, conversations and simple exchanges, they always take place in a nice public setting – …
Consider this an offer you shouldn’t refuse. The nationwide Cinemark movie theater chain is kicking off another Classics Series tonight, April 10, with one of the all-time classics, a film whose iconography is endless: 1972’s The Godfather. Cinemark will also be showing such films as Alien, Blazing Saddles, and The Graduate over the next five …
Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director’s point of view. – Steven Spielberg Ah, the joys of hindsight, such as they are. It is so easy to look back on what came about from the small decisions coming together to form an unforgettable whole, and laugh at those …
As Sound on Sight’s Western month reaches its conclusion, two of the hosts of your favorite Disney movie podcast, Mousterpiece Cinema, Josh Spiegel and Gabe Bucsko met in the show’s vaunted and secretive HQ to discuss and debate what many people would claim is the greatest Western of all time: the 1956 John Ford film The …
We love crime movies. We may go on and on about Scorsese’s ability to incorporate Italian neo-realism techniques into Mean Streets (1973), the place of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) in the canon of postwar noir, The Godfather (1972) as a socio-cultural commentary on the distortion of the ideals of the American dream blah …
*Exclaimer: Please don’t read this if you haven’t seen Inception, The Empire Strikes Back, Planet of the Apes, The Wizard of Oz, Saw, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense – As a probable testament to my poor academic acumen, I cannot, in good memory, recall the particulars of the situation …
Somehow we’d fallen into calling her “Luce the Moose.” No one even remembers why. After that, I used to buy her some kind of moose – a stuffed doll, a carving, anything – every Christmas. Her given name was Lucy Sylvia Mesce. Lucia, actually, but other than her immigrant parents, I don’t think anybody ever …
If I may, I’d like to quote from Entertainment Weekly’s review of the just released 70th anniversary Blue-ray release of Casablanca (1942). According to Chris Nashawaty’s piece, when the script arrived at Warner Bros. in December of 1941 “…there wasn’t an ending yet…the movie was just one of 50 in Warner’s crowded pipeline at the …
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, …
The Godfather Trilogy Directed by Francis Ford Coppola There has been no lack of superlatives used to describe Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. So taken for granted is its greatness, one doesn’t even need to have seen it to know that, next to Citizen Kane, it remains the standard by which cinematic portraits of American striving …
A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. Louis Nizer In his indispensable film study text, Understanding Movies, Louis Gianetti held forth on …
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 …
The saying goes: If Hollywood is really the movie capital of the world, then Oscar night is the world’s biggest wrap party, and like all parties, each event comes with unwelcome guests, embarrassing situations, strange fashions and controversial moments. In fact, controversy and the Oscars seem to go hand in hand and despite the fact …
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, …
Measured against the guidelines for creating good drama as articulated by Aristotle in his Poetics a few millennia ago – the earliest surviving treatise on literary theory — many of the big-budget studio releases of the last 20-30 years stand pretty feebly. While some might understandably wonder whether anything anybody wrote about good stage drama …