Great Movies
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Stuart Gordon: 1947-2020
A tribute to the late director, Stuart Gordon.
A tribute to the late director, Stuart Gordon.
A look back at the creation of 10 Things I Hate About You, which celebrated its 20th anniversary on March 31.
Emer Kinsella on "Jungle"; Zadie Smith on social media; John Landis on "Innocent Blood"; "Josie and the Pussycats" was ahead of its time; "The Florida Project" is one of the year's best films.
Marie writes: Behold a truly rare sight. London in 1924 in color. "The Open Road" was shot by an early British pioneer of film named Claude Friese-Greene and who made a series of travelogues using the colour process his father William (a noted cinematographer) had been experimenting with. The travelogues were taken between 1924 and 1926 on a motor journey between Land's End and John O'Groats. You can find more footage from The Open Road at The British Film Institute's YouTube channel for the film. You can also explore their Archives collection over here.
Marie writes: The unseen forces have spoken! The universe has filled a void obviously needing to be filled: there is now a font made entirely of cats. Called Neko Font (Japanese for "cat font") it's a web app that transforms text into a font comprised of cat pictures. All you need to do is write something in the text box, press "enter" on your keyboard and Neko Font instantly transforms the letters into kitties! Thanks go to intrepid club member Sandy Kahn for alerting the Ebert Club to this important advancement in typography. To learn more, read the article "There is now a font made entirely of cats" and to test it out yourself, go here: Neko Font. Meanwhile, behold what mankind can achieve when it has nothing better to do....
Marie writes: As some of you may have heard, a fireball lit up the skies over Russia on February 15, 2013 when a meteoroid entered Earth's atmosphere. Around the same time, I was outside with my spiffy new digital camera - the Canon PowerShot SX260 HS. And albeit small, it's got a built-in 20x zoom lens. I was actually able to photograph the surface of the moon!
(click to enlarge)
Marie writes: It's no secret that most Corporations are evil - or at the very least, suck big time. And while I have no actual proof, I'm fairly certain there is a special level of Dante's Hell reserved just for them. (Map of Dante's Hell.)That being the case, when my younger brother Paul wrote me about a cool project sponsored by Volkswagen, I was understandably wary and ready to denounce it sight-unseen as self-serving Corporate shyte. As luck would have it however, I was blessed at birth with curiosity and which got the better of me and why I took a look. For what I found was nothing less than extraordinary....
NEW YORK — Heath Ledger was found dead today at a downtown Manhattan apartment, and police said drugs may have been a factor. The Australian-born actor was 28. Police said Ledger was naked in his bed with an unknown number of sleeping pills near the body.
View image Matt Damon and Julia Stiles scope out the situation in "The Bourne Ultimatum."
Kathleen Murphy and Richard T. Jameson present their much-anticipated annual list of indelible memories-at-24-fps, Moments Out of Time, at MSN Movies. They've been sifting through the fragments of movie-time for these shining moments for many years, beginning in Movietone News and continuing through the 1990s in Film Comment.
Beginning when I was in high school, I would read through them religiously, looking for moments I'd treasured, too -- or maybe even ones I hadn't spotted or properly appreciated. Then I'd re-read, again and again, as if I were holding gems to the light and examining them through a magnifying glass, for the sheer pleasure of how they caught the rays. I'd pore over every turn of phrase, teasing out the meanings, even for the movies I hadn't seen with my own eyes (yet).
Here are a few of my favorites for 2007: In "Ratatouille," the remembrance of things past courtesy of the eponymous dish: the critic's flashback to childhood
When Bourne (Matt Damon) wonders why the CIA operative (Julia Stiles) who once set him up is helping him now, she answers with what passes for a declaration of love in the killing environs of "The Bourne Ultimatum": "You were ... hard for me." ...
In "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," the pebbles sliding away from the vibrating rail as Jesse's boot rests there, waiting to stop his last train
Leaving her friend to wait out her abortion, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) attends an obligatory birthday party in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." The camera holds and holds as she sits frozen, claustrophobically hemmed by babbling guests, until she and we nearly explode with tension
The first getting-to-know-you-and-your-music duet in "Once," one of the purest distillations of rapport ever
In "Starting Out in the Evening," confronted by a redheaded beauty (Lauren Ambrose), the elderly gentleman (Frank Langella) involuntarily covers his face with his hand -- to hide his age or to shield his eyes from her bright heat
Night birds: Chigurh, the raven, and the gunshot reverberating off the otherwise deserted bridge, after which the two bend their separate ways in "No Country for Old Men" ...
"There Will Be Blood": Killing God in a two-lane bowling alley: "I'm finished."... Hungry for more? Devour all of 'em here.
PARK CITY, Utah – Closing pages from a festival diary:
