Our favorite art form is crumbling away at an alarming rate.  The world’s film heritage — barely a century old — is shriveling, disintegrating and turning to vinegar like so much cheap wine.  In a statistic quoted in this short produced by Greg Ferarra of Cinema Styles, fully eighty percent of the films made before [...]

Federico Fellini famously opined that artists have about ten good years in them, that after that, things go down hill.  This proved prophetic about his own career (perhaps it was self-fulfilling), in that his masterpieces, all but one, anyway, appeared from 1954 (La Srada) to 1963 (8½). The exception is 1974’s Amarcord, the bittersweet “reminiscence” [...]

Way back in Christmas of 2001, my daughter bought me the DVD box-set of the Godfather trilogy, and at the time, I was thrilled with their quality.  I had a 32-inch, standard definition (SD) set, I didn’t know scan rate from a hole in the ground, and I thought I was on my way to [...]

The post-World-War-II reality of American global hegemony was viewed with deep ambivalence by our European allies.  In Part I, we took a look at how that dynamic is portrayed in The Third Man, as filtered through the sensibilities of the British Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), and embodied by Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten).  Martins is portrayed [...]

Everyone has probably already seen this, but hey . . .  it’s new to me.  Wenders’  charming story behind the photo is in the Guardian. Kurosawa looks like he’s working, but maybe he’s just taking a nap.   (Click on the photo for a much better view.)

Up on Coosa Creek — which as you know is not New York or Los Angeles — it’s been a pretty grim prestige-film season.  I just haven’t yet seen anything like a crop of year-end hopefuls that would get my blood going, much less anything that will make me mildly curious come Oscar time.  (Insert [...]

After World War II, the United States emerged as a world power, and films from more than one nation reflected a profound ambivalence about the new reality.  In Japan, filmmakers like Ozu and Kurosawa expressed it from the viewpoint of a vanquished nation.  On the other side of the world, our allies — grateful though [...]

I don’t go to many opening day screenings, and for several reasons: first of all, I hate crowds.  Just hate ‘em.  Second, I hate today’s movie crowds.  Note the caveat:  today’s movie crowds tend to talk all through the picture, telling their friends what to expect, commenting noisily on the action, or answering their cell [...]

If good ol’ imdb.com is correct, and you know they never lie, you’ll see that Alfred Hitchcock directed some 65 features.  Of those, the first 24 were made in his native Britain, before he and his family moved to California for good.  The penultimate feature made before the move was The Lady Vanishes, and for [...]

I like Larry David.  I like Woody Allen.  So, when I heard that Woody and Larry were teaming up for Whatever Works, I thought:  “Why not?”  It might not be terrible, given that Woody’s been experiencing something of a renaissance lately, with one film (Match Point) nominated for Best Picture and his latest — last [...]