One day in the middle of September 1951, Akira Kurosawa went fishing. He needed to. The film he had just finished, The Idiot had been released by the studio Shôchiku in a savagely cut version (from 265 minutes down to 166) and was far less popular and less critically acclaimed than earlier films such as […]
The purpose of this essay is to offer a Deleuzian time-image analysis of Tarkovsky’s montage theory of “time-pressure,” foregrounded against the historical backdrop of Eisenstein’s montage of attractions. Several films from Tarkovsky’s later work will be examined for montage elements that support or contravene these theories. The history of the post-Revolution USSR can be broken […]
How the combo of Robert De Niro going comedic and Charles Grodin getting neurotic turned an action-comedy into an endlessly rewatchable classic. “Jack, you’re a grown man. You have control over your own words.” “You’re goddamn right I do. So here come two words for you: shut the fuck up.” Over the course of Midnight Run, […]
Playboy: Much of the controversy surrounding 2001 deals with the meaning of the metaphysical symbols that abound in the film—the polished black monoliths, the orbital conjunction of Earth, Moon and Sun at each stage of the monoliths’ intervention in human destiny, the stunning final kaleidoscopic maelstrom of time and space that engulfs the surviving astronaut and […]
Released the day after Christmas, 1973, “The Exorcist” was an immediate sensation. In its first few weeks in theaters, stories abounded of viewers fainting, becoming nauseous or leaving the theater in tears. One man who passed out from fright and hit his head actually sued Warner Brothers, the studio that released the film. Warner’s could […]
When the writers (and future film makers) of the influential French film journal Cahiers du Cinema formulated what became known as “the auteur theory” in the late 1950s and early 60s, it caused a lot of controversy in cinematic circles. Simply put, it stated that the director was the prime mover, the “author” of the […]
Mr. Jarmusch, you’ve lived in New York for over 40 years. Do you consider yourself a New Yorker? I have lived there for so long, but I am not a New Yorker. Originally I am from Akron, Ohio, which borders Michigan. Whenever anyone says I’m a New Yorker, I cringe. I’ve also lived in Berlin. […]
At no point preceding my viewing of Blade Runner 2049 did I understand the reason anybody would make a Blade Runner sequel. My perspective, after viewing, remains unchanged. Blade Runner does not have a good story. It barely has a story. It’s a cinematic poem, a mood piece, an aesthetic. Poetry can have a story, of course; poems can have […]