Great Movies
Features
The 10 Best Start-of-Summer-Movie-Season Films of the 21st Century
With The Fall Guy launching this summer’s glut of event movies, we look back at the finest films to get the warm-weather season going.
With The Fall Guy launching this summer’s glut of event movies, we look back at the finest films to get the warm-weather season going.
A look back at one of the messiest awards seasons in Oscar history.
The newest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born, and Overlord.
A report from the Golden Globes, where Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody were the night's big winners.
Scout Tafoya's video essay series on maligned masterpieces continues with a celebration of Shane Black's The Predator.
A great lead performance and some nice moments can't compensate for a disappointingly reactionary framework.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Solo, Leave No Trace, and Three Identical Strangers.
Scout Tafoya responds to our Movie Love Questionnaire.
The latest and greatest on Blu-ray and DVD, including The Neon Demon, The Wailing, Central Intelligence, and more.
A guide to the latest and greatest on Blu-ray and streaming services, including Ex Machina, It Follows, Clouds of Sils Maria, What We do in the Shadows and more!
R.I.P. PJ Paparelli; "Rambo II" was the "Sniper" of its day; Amy Berg's "An Open Secret"; "Mad Max: Fury Road" reviewed by mother-in-law; Arielle Holmes goes from addict to actress.
Remembering Elaine Stritch; The Eddie Murphy Raw Burger; Black Twitter is Dead; Writer Escapes His Pederast; Deleted Scenes from "Twin Peaks" Movie.
A recap of the latest Silicon Valley episode; Hollywood scandals in the new era; Movie magic in the 21s century; Summer film anticipation guide; Ebertfest coverage.
Jana Monji reports from WonderCon 2014, including details on The Maze Runner, How to Train Your Dragon 2 & Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
Gerardo Valero reflects on "Man of Steel" and the challenges of making a good Superman movie.
Marie writes: Behold a living jewel; a dragonfly covered in dew as seen through the macro-lens of French photographer David Chambon. And who has shot a stunning series of photos featuring insects covered in tiny water droplets. To view others in addition to these, visit here.
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We all live in our own little subcultures. In mine -- loosely categorized as international film-festival cinephiliacs -- big-name contemporary filmmakers such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Abbas Kiarostami, Michael Haneke and the Dardennes brothers (yes, they've all won the Palme d'Or at Cannes) are huge, huge stars. In fact, some of us, whether we like them or not, feel they are overexposed, on the verge of becoming more than famous: ubiquitous. Like Kardashians or something. (I'll be honest: I don't know what a Kardashian is, but I keep hearing the term.) I mean, good god, the Dardennes have been all in your face throughout the 21st century, making movie after movie and picking up awards everywhere you look. And don't even get me started on Kiarostami. That guy became the international flavor-of-the-film-fest-cicruit in the 1980s, achieved his biggest commercial success in 2010, and has a new film in competition at Cannes right now.
I suppose it's true that, to most people outside our own little coterie, the Cannes Film Festival means just about nothing. Its impact on the American box office is negligible (although Kiarostami's Palme-winner "Taste of Cherry" grossed a pretty impressive $312 thousand in the US in 1998. That's about what "Marvel's The Avengers" took in while you were reading the last sentence). I guess fame -- or importance -- depends on your perspective.
A few things got me to thinking about this. One was Manohla Dargis's NY Times dispatch from Cannes. I love her observations:
My friend Richard T. Jameson sent an e-mail with the subject line: "Why am I depressed?" In it he quoted the first two sentences of an April L.A. Weekly story headlined "Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling":
Shortly before Christmas, director Edgar Wright received an email inviting him to a private screening of the first six minutes of Christopher Nolan's new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises." Walking into Universal CityWalk's IMAX theater, Wright recognized many of the most prominent filmmakers in America -- Michael Bay, Bryan Singer, Jon Favreau, Eli Roth, Duncan Jones, Stephen Daldry.
It was that second sentence, RTJ said, that tripped him up. (Later, in a Facebook post, he recommended the article itself, but followed that second sentence with the comment: "The parade's gone by, all right."
Marie writes: Doug Foster is a filmmaker and artist who produces large scale digital film installations that often play with ideas of symmetry and optical illusion. His piece The Heretics' Gate is currently on view at "Daydreaming with... St. Michael's" - an exhibition taking place at St. Michael's church in Camden, London. Note: Foster's piece first appeared at the Hell's Half Acre exhibition at the Old Vic Tunnels in London in 2010."The Heretics' Gate" draws inspiration from Dante's Inferno, the first part of his epic poem The Divine Comedy. A twenty foot high, arched screen and a thirty foot long reflecting pool, are cleverly combined to deliver a mesmerizing and strangely ethereal vision of hell at the central focus point of the church's imposing gothic architecture. To learn more, visit: Liquid Hell: A Q&A With Doug Foster.NOTE: The exhibition is the latest installment in renowned British music producer James Lavelle's curatorial and collaborative art venture, "DAYDREAMING WITH..." - a unique and visceral new exhibition experience, inspired by the desire to marry music and visual art. The goal is to bring together some of the most acclaimed creative names working in music, art, film, fashion and design.
The Grand Poobah shared the following recently and which struck me as just the thing to put in here - for it amounts to someone inventing a moving still akin to those seen on the front page of Harry Potter's famous newspaper."You know how people sometimes say that jazz is the only truly American art form? Animated GIFs are like the jazz of the internet: they could only exist, and be created and appreciated, online. That said, PopTart Cat is not exactly on par with Thelonious Monk. But photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg may have finally found a way to elevate the animated GIF to a level approaching fine art, with their "cinemagraphs" -- elegant, subtly animated creations that are "something more than a photo but less than a video." - fastcodesignAnd sadly, they won't work in here; Movable Type doesn't like animated gifs. It's easily solved however, just visit Far Better Than 3-D: Animated GIFs That Savor A Passing Moment to see an assortment in play!
