Archive for June, 2008

One More from Boudu

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Here’s one more clip from Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932). Unlike the indoor tracking shot from yesterday’s post, it’s a pan (i.e., the camera remains still and rotates around its vertical axis). It takes place near the beginning of the movie as [...]

The Art of the Tracking Shot: Boudu Saved from Drowning

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Those who’ve read this blog before (and you know who you are!) will know that I’ve made a case for Jean Renoir being perhaps the greatest director of all time. As Peter Bogdanovich has noted, during the 1930s he made a virtually unprecedented [...]

Zohan Love

Adam Sandler’s latest movie You Don’t Mess With The Zohan has a title ready-made for lampooning. Never ones to miss an easy target, critics have been happy to oblige: “You mess with the Zohan at the risk of your own IQ,” says Chris Vognar of the Dallas Morning News. And “while you don’t [...]

The Cohan Brothers’ Cut-Rate Cinema

In the opening scene of Barton Fink, there’s a play put on by some New Yorkers about some guys selling fish or something, and the first thing I thought about was “who wants to see a play about some fish?” And the second thing I thought was “Geez, it’s just like those Cohan boys [...]

Short Take: Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writers: Brian Koppelman, David Levien
Cinematographer: Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews)
Editor: Stephen Mirrione
Production Designer: Philip Messina
The third of the Ocean movies by Soderbergh and company, Ocean’s Thirteen follows the formula laid out in the first two: Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his cronies set out to accomplish an un-accomplishable heist. In the [...]

Short Take: 27 Dresses

Director: Anne Fletcher
Writer: Aline Brosh McKenna
Cinematographer: Peter James
Editor: Priscilla Nedd-Friendly
I confess a fondness for romantic comedies. (That’s right — I’m male and I like rom-coms. Wanna make something of it?) And one of the reasons, I suspect, is their predictability: they are as formal and mannered as Kabuki theater. And there’s [...]

I’m Still Kickin’

In case anybody’s wondering, I’m up in Seattle getting my daughter married off. Being a preacher type, I’m going to perform the ceremony myself. Needless to say, we’ve been kind of busy this week, and I haven’t had time to update this blog.
On the film side of things, these are the last few [...]

Review: Shine a Light

It must be nice being Martin Scorsese. He’s acclaimed as one of the greatest filmmakers in the world, he finally won the Oscar he’s been pining for, and best of all, he gets to make movies about his rock n’ roll idols. Well, once in a while, anyway. First there wasThe Last Waltz [...]

Kurosawa Resurrected! Film at Eleven.

So I was rooting around on IMDB the other day, and I came to Akira Kurosawa’s page, and here’s what I saw under “Director”:

Gendai no No (2010) (filming)

And I thought: You can’t fool me . . . Kurosawa’s been dead for years. Must be one of IMDB’s legendary mistakes. Just for yucks, I pressed the [...]

Yasujiro Ozu’s Intimate Style

If you were asked what director had the most consistent, immediately recognizable style, what would you say? Although that sort of thing is hard to quantify, you’d be safe if you answered Yashujiro Ozu (right), the director of an astonishing 54 films over his 36-year career. He’s known for a style so minimalist as to [...]