In the Cut: Piecing together the action sequencePart I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)Part II: A Dash of Salt The third part of my series of video essays about action sequences is called "I Left My Heart in My Throat…
Click here to watch larger video on Vimeo. In the Cut: Piecing together the action sequencePart I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)Part III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in San Francisco (Bullitt, The Lineup, The French Connection) From…
Click here to watch larger video on Vimeo. Annotated full transcript of the video here, for easy reference. In the Cut: Piecing together the action sequencePart II: A Dash of SaltPart III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in…
Each of these astonishing "cinematoGIFs" (animated .GIF files) by Gusaf Mantel distills the essence of a cinematic moment into a living, breathing "movie still" -- an indelible moment preserved in time. Once you start gazing into them, you'll find it…
Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo. Matthias Stork, a German film scholar now based in Los Angeles, has created a most stimulating two-part video essay on a subject near and dear to my heart: "Chaos Cinema." At…
You've probably read that Sean Penn, in an interview with Le Figaro, said this about working with Terrence Malick on "The Tree of Life": "I didn't at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the…
I've never understood the pleasure (or the disappointment) some people seem to get out of trying to spot continuity errors in movies. Such a waste of time and attention. But I've seen this 30-second TV spot for "The Debt" starring…
UPDATE: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, known as the "West Memphis Three," were freed from prison Friday, August 19, 2011. They were incarcerated for 18 years for the murders of three young boys in 1993. Filmmakers Joe Berlinger…
Watching Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert movie "Shine a Light" (2008) for the first time the other night, it struck me that Scorsese has always been extremely good at shooting and cutting musical sequences not only as if they were…
A horror or science-fiction movie without subtext is like Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory without electricity. The inner metaphor is what gives it life and resonance. Otherwise, it's just a story about stitched-together people parts. Or take David Cronenberg's "The Fly," a…
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