Yesterday, I posted a clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) that showed the dialog scene from a classic Hollywood perspective. The conversants are established half-facing each other, and after a master shot, the dialog proceeds in shot/reverse-shot fashion, with alternating takes shot over the shoulder of the actors. The lighting is [...]
Watching Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, I got to thinking about what David Bordwell and others have called the “Classical Hollywood Style.” It refers to a collection of techniques or rules that work together to enable smooth, unobtrusive film-making that does not call attention to itself.
Here’s a scene from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest [...]
OK, let’s get the obvious out of the way: Norah Jones can’t act. She is beautiful, and she can sing like an angel, but she can’t act. She’s inexpressive, a blank canvas, a tabula rasa. And when she is called upon to emote, she’s too obvious, like a kid who’s been [...]
Marilyn Ferdinand has a review of Errol Morris’ (right) new documentary on the Standard Operating Procedure, and a very thought-provoking interview with Morris here. After a rocky start, the interview makes telling points about the Abu Ghraib incidents and how our citizens deal with clear evidence of the wrong-doings of our government. Way to [...]
I realize some of this is not the freshest news in the land, but hey … I was in Atlanta, working to grade, of all things, ordination exams. So here is some catch-up news.
Over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule — Dennis Cozallio’s blog, the name of which I wish I’d thought [...]
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