Our reader Christian Trapp sent a seemingly simple but actually boundless question: "What is a film?" We asked for an expert reply from Kristin Thompson, Ph.D., silent film expert and film historian at the University of Wisconsin, and co-author with…
View image"The Shining": A bug under a microscope. The most superficial and shopworn cliché about Stanley Kubrick is that he was a misanthrope. This is up there with calling Alfred Hitchcock "The Master of Suspense," and leaving it at that.…
A synchronistic cartoon from Peet Gelderblom at Lost in Negative Space. What the hell is wrong with the studio risk-management -- er, movie -- business these days? I share some of my own modest ideas for improvement in an "Open…
So many movies have opening shots that are like overtures, condensed miniatures of the whole film. In Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" you might even say it contains the entire movie in one shot. Not only does it begin with…
It's a newsletter and a web site! Nobody does a better job of reminding us that movies are always in the present tense, no matter how long ago they were made, than movie historian, critic, and (above all) enthusiast Leonard…
Voice Media slashes another film critic. Adding further grist to the discussion of "critical sameness" ("The Stepford Critics?)," Village Voice Media has cut another (film-)critical voice from its payroll. This time it's National Society of Film Critics member Rob Nelson,…
Guest commentary
View image You can't really like this "Seven Samurai" movie, can you? It's old and Japanese! Here are questions cinephiles and critics still hear all the time: "Why do you like old movies and foreign movies so much? What about…
View image A family meeting: Who is that sixth man (on the far right)? Hint: It's not Kevin Spacey. Longtime Scanners commenter and Ebert correspondent Ali Arikan, in Istanbul (one of my favorite cities), solves the mystery of The Sixth…
View image Alain Delon as Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Mellville's "Le Samourai." How un-American! Edward Copeland, mastermind and organizer of the online ""Best" non-English language films poll, reports that Danny Leigh at the film blog at The Guardian (UK) is…
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