7 years ago
Featured (10 posts found)
Spotlight on Fandor: “Miami Connection”
To reword Leo Tolstoy, sometimes it feels as if all good movies (at least as they are typically defined by the mainstream) are all alike. But bad films, truly bad, haphazard, baffling films, are bad in their own special way. A pall of irony hangs over the embr...
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How Orson Welles Lost “The Magnificent Ambersons”
Editor's Note: Today we’re proud to present readers with an exclusive passage from F.X. Feeney's new book, Orson Welles: Power, Heart, and Soul, where he discusses the director's relationship with The Magnificent Ambersons. Feeney's book is an essential study...
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Hot Docs 2015: Roundtable, Part 2
It’s no secret that filmmakers love making movies about making movies. For some, that self-reflexivity is a sign of cultural and artistic myopia. For others, though, turning the camera back on the process of filmmaking illuminates the bonds between art and hum...
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Hot Docs 2015: Music Documentaries
Biographical films can be a tough nut to crack. On one hand, there’s the problem of trying to condense a topic of such scope into a feature-length format. More pressingly, there's the paradoxical notion that, while a day in the life can be the stuff of great l...
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Being in Time: Aging Onscreen
Anders Bergstrom is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, ON. In 2011 he contributed an introduction to the second volume of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema. In 2013, his ess...
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Video Essay: On Orson Welles and “Touch of Evil”
F.X. Feeney's new book, Orson Welles: Power, Heart, and Soul, is an essential study of one of the most iconic and influential American filmmakers, director of such films as Citizen Kane and Chimes at Midnight. This video essay explores Welles' use of tracking ...
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“Avengers: Age of Ultron”
The Avengers was a full-blooded event -- its sketchy opening aside, the film truly felt like the culmination of five years’ worth of buildup throughout the then-new Marvel Cinematic Universe. Avengers: Age of Ultron is the team’s obligatory triennial meetup. I...
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Spotlight on Fandor: “Stop Making Sense”
For all its formal inventiveness and the quality of its subject, the band Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense may be the best concert film of all time because it actually tells a story. It begins with art rock overlord David Byrne wandering out alone on a stage t...
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On Johnnie To At Age 60
Today marks the 60th birthday of the world’s most exciting filmmaker, Johnnie To. The Hong Kong master enters his seventh decade more popular than ever, riding a wave of critical support with Drug War, his first film released in the West in years, as well as e...
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The Agony of Comedy
“In order to become a comic—pay attention—you have to love watching yourself die.” —Lewis Black
In the new documentary Misery Loves Comedy, funnyman Kevin Pollak interrogates the popular notion that comedians must necessarily live wretched lives to fuel their...
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