Nothing screams summer quite like a road trip. The pull of the open road, the freedom to choose this path or that, the small pockets of life one comes across on the way to the destination, the transformative experience of … Continue reading The International Road Movie with Suranjan Ganguly
Every year is a great year for the movies, but when was the best? Was it 1939, the year Hollywood gave us The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Or was it the great global year … Continue reading 2018: An Embarrassment of Riches
The theatrical release of Roma is the cinematographic event of the year. Initially acquired by Netflix for their streaming service, Roma’s visual and aural power proved too big for TVs, laptops, iPads, and phones. Sure, subscribers will be able to … Continue reading ROMA
The most important thing for us is that all of this stuff, and all of this technology, are only tools to achieve the cinematic experience and cinematic moment. When people see some depth you never intended that’s really cool, you … Continue reading Born On This Day — November 28, 1961
Formed in 1927 by Louis B. Mayer, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was designed to deal with improving the industry’s image. At that time, movies were not seen on the same sophisticated level as literature, music, and … Continue reading Oscars 2014
2013 was an excellent year at the movies, but I said the exact same thing about 2012. Film critic for The New Yorker, Richard Brody, chose to open his year-end summary with this quote, “The year 2013 has been an … Continue reading 2013: Another Year of Moviegoing
The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or a bad movie, it’s just to see what you learn for the next one. —Alfonso Cuarón Continue reading Born On This Day — November 28
If there was anything I learned from Roger Ebert, it was that movies are not what they’re about; they’re how they’re about what they’re about. Gravity is a movie about moving past tragedy. The how of it is accomplished by placing the subject in … Continue reading GRAVITY
When I was 7, I saw The Making of ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’. Hearing George Roy Hill talk about all the choices he made, I knew that directing movies was what I wanted to do. I remember seeing … Continue reading In Their Words — Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Michael J. Cinema 