8 years ago
Features (10 posts found)
Mezzanine Essentials: “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams”
Like the magic lantern that evokes childhood’s fascination with moving images in the films of Ingmar Bergman, the whole of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams seems to take us back to the medium’s infancy, to its primal pleasures and terrors. It is a film in which the sho...
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The 19 Best Actors-Turned-Directors
There's no single path that leads to directing a film--some dive right behind the camera as their first job, others work up to it after years of toiling as assistant directors, and then others get the gig because of their work in front of the camera coupled wi...
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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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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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Video Essays: On Orson Welles and “The Stranger”
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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Spotlight on Fandor: “Millennium Mambo”
The opening Steadicam shot of Millennium Mambo--of a young woman, Vicky (Shu Qi) skipping down a fluorescent-lit tunnel--is so distorted by slow-motion and a nostalgic voiceover that the scene comes to resemble a journey through a wormhole, a movement in dista...
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The Summer of Love: A Movie Preview
For many people, summer means beaches and fireworks and camping and other outdoorsy activities. For cinephiles, it means loving blockbusters, disparaging blockbusters, or some combination of both (hopefully in addition to the aforementioned activities -- live ...
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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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Spotlight on Fandor: “Mikey and Nicky”
Mikey and Nicky certainly resembles a New Hollywood-era feature, with its time-worn earthen colors, drab lighting, and fidgety cameras. But as with the rest of Elaine May’s criminally small filmography, the film’s sense of humor is shockingly modern. Indeed, t...
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