We’re coming up on the 200th birthday of motion pictures,” film editor Walter Murch told the audience at the 51st Telluride Film Festival. “I said pictures, not photography,” he continued, pointing out that the first zoetropes and phenakistiscopes created crude … Continue reading In the Cut: Dispatch From the 51st Telluride Film Festival
Loving cinema is a one-way street. Oh, I love movies. Hell, I love certain movies more than some of the people in my life. But I realize that adoration isn’t reciprocated. I Know Where I’m Going! doesn’t give a damn … Continue reading MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER
Something must have been in the water in 1960. All around the world, filmmakers, either at the beginning, middle, or the end of their careers, swung for the fences. In Japan, Akira Kurosawa spun Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a corporate thriller with … Continue reading PEEPING TOM
On this week’s edition of After Image, I chat with Metro Arts’ producer Veronica Straight-Lingo about the new documentary, Bitterbrush (playing theatrically in limited release on On Demand through all the usual providers), Cha Cha Real Smooth (also in limited … Continue reading
England, 1944: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger want to make a movie about an English bomber pilot and an American radio operator falling in love—in this world and the next. They envision a Technicolor fantasia unlike anything seen. The only … Continue reading I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING!
The timing couldn’t be better. The Alamo Drafthouse’s series, Hot Takes & Remakes, is a bizarre and beautiful collection of 30ish movies—some revered, some despised, all worth a second look. And if you haven’t given Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Boston cops … Continue reading THE DEPARTED
Filmmaking is an act of optimism. Setting ideas to paper; convincing others to come and join the party; devoting time, money, blood, sweat, and tears to capture those images on celluloid; believing those images can carry meaning throughout the world; … Continue reading Thelma Schoonmaker and Margaret Bodde on THE TALES OF HOFFMANN
Michael J. Cinema 