View image: ANY movie is good as long as Seth Rogen is on the screen. When he isn't... no guarantees. While Roger Ebert is on the mend, I'll be chipping in and doing occasional reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times (and…
View image: From synapses deep inside the brain... View image View image: ... out through a sweaty pore... From Robert Humanick, a film odyssey: I'm not sure if this applies to the "opening shot" rules, in that it is included…
View image: "Only women bleed, only women bleed..." -- Alice Cooper (1975) View image: The Super Best Friends in 2001. Readers responding to the news that the banned "South Park" episode "Trapped in the Closet" is scheduled (again) for its…
Der Funnyman und der Führer. It's the hottest thing in contemporary cinema -- after superhero movies and pirate movies, that is! I refer, of course, to movies about clowns in Nazi concentration camps! Who doesn't adore that genre? Let's see,…
Don't forget to set your TiVo, Tom. I just love a Xenu joke. But, seriously, this just in from reader Ali Nagib: I just noticed on my TiVo that it claims that Comedy Central will air "Trapped in the Closet"…
In case you hadn't noticed: Comments are working, and some good discussions have been started -- annotations to particular Opening Shots and (especially stimulating) various reactions to my diatribes against the Slate writer who bashed "The Searchers" for his own…
View image View image Shane Carruth's ingenious "Primer" (2004) offers a textbook example, if you will, of a "What are we looking at?" opening shot. Linear and rectangular or trapezoidal patterns of light dot the dark screen. Then the irregular,…
View image View image View image From John Hartl, film critic for MSNBC, Seattle, WA: “Nights of Cabiria��? (1957) The opening scene in Federico Fellini’s greatest film presents a pattern that will be repeated in the story of Cabiria, a…
Above: That gritty Hollywood literalism and/or naturalism: "Off-putting to the contemporary sensibility." I was wrong. Last night, just before going to bed, I read Stephen Metcalf's "Dilettante" column, "The Worst Best Movie: Why on earth did 'The Searchers' get canonized?".…
"What an asshole." I don't read Slate much anymore since David Edelstein, a real film critic, departed for New York Magazine, and the once-sentient Christopher Hitchens ceased being capable of writing about anything but his own old opinions, circa 2002…
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