Melika Bass chats with Michael Glover Smith; Drawing away clichés; Franklin Leonard's Hollywood list; On the set of "The Last Picture Show"; Distillation process of adaptation.
RIP Harper Lee; Hell in Oz; "The Witch" reawakens childhood nightmares; How to hire women directors; How David Milch gambled away his fortune.
Even the Pope loved Eli Wallach; North Korea threatens war over Seth Rogen movie; Remembering Peter de Rome; Dennis Hopper's lost photography; Richard Linklater on "Boyhood"
Marie writes: For those unaware, it seems our intrepid leader, the Grand Poobah, has been struck by some dirty rotten luck..."This will be boring. I'll make it short. I have a slight and nearly invisible hairline fracture involving my left femur. I didn't fall. I didn't break it. It just sort of...happened to itself." - Roger
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Marie writes: I may have been born in Canada, but I grew-up watching Sesame Street and Big Bird, too. Together, they encouraged me to learn new things; and why now I can partly explain string theory.That being the case, I was extremely displeased to hear that were it up Romney, as President he wouldn't continue to support PBS. And because I'm not American and can't vote in their elections, I did the only thing I could: I immediately reached for Photoshop....
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Enlarge image: Slapping flesh and heavy breathing.
From Kim Morgan, Sunset Gun:
When reading the request for greatest opening shots, the first film that popped into my head was immediate and almost too easy — “Kiss Me Deadly.��?
And then I reflected more.
There are so many masterful opening shots, some I find works of genius or some I simply love. But the more I thought about it, the more I drifted back to where my mind always manages to drift back to — stark, hard-boiled cruelty, paranoia, insanity and psycho sexual angst — so there it was again, “Kiss Me Deadly.��?
But for good reason. Robert Aldrich’s masterful noir hits you with a hysterical bang that sets its frenzied tone with such balls-out experimental élan; you can’t believe the film was released in 1955:
Before any credit sequence, the film begins with a pair of naked feet running down the middle of a highway in the black of the night.
