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Polanski's Chinatown: A dream analysis

WARNING: Big-time spoilers in the above video. From the introduction to my fully explicated video, "Chinatown: Frames and Lenses," at Press Play, Chapter 4 in a week-long series: LIFE'S WORK: THE FILMS OF ROMAN POLANSKI: Roman Polanski's "Chinatown" is a…

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Hitchcock's Family Plot Photo Album

I've been enjoying reading Dave Kehr's book, When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade, a selection of pieces he wrote between 1974 and 1986. One of them, his choice for best film of 1976, is a review of Alfred…

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Don Draper pitches Facebook Timeline

YouTube has disabled embedding of this video. Watch here. "Technology is a glittering lure, but there's the rare occasion when the public can be engaged beyond Flash." Or even HTML5. (tip: kottke.org)

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Tony Bennett, movie critic (Alec Baldwin, SNL)

"I like flicks that are great..." This is why Alec Baldwin may be the best host "Saturday Night Live" has ever had. He commits. I'll put this up there with anything he's ever done on the show. To me, it's…

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On the whole "realism" thing...

We've been discussing (with regard to "In the Cut Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)" what kind of film grammar Christopher Nolan was using (it's traditional narrative continuity editing -- most of the time). One of my key questions…

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Drive: An under-the-hood manual

When I saw, and immediately wrote about, Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive," I knew almost nothing about it except the title and that Ryan Gosling was in it. I remembered that it had received acclaim at Cannes back in May (I…

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Guy Maddin: Give him a hand!

Fandor is hosting a Guy Maddin Blogathon all week (September 19-23). As part of it, Fandor Editor-in-Chief Kevin B. Lee and Press Play's Matt Zoller Seitz have collaborated on a fascinating NSFW (silent film nudity!) video essay exploring Maddin's 2004…

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Drive: Yellow light, red light, blue light, pink light

I was going to say, up front, that I had some mixed feelings about Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive," but I'm not sure that "feelings" is the appropriate word. This 1980s pastiche (isn't that the "Risky Business" typeface lit up in…