Top Posts

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32 Days of Movies - "To Become Immortal, and Then, to Die."    "Reality Cinema"
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Chapters 19 & 31 in video series - one closes off the 60s epoch with a bang (including a lightning fast montage featuring 60 years of cinema in 40 seconds) and the other scans the 00s, with its mixture of documentary and impressionism



One hundred films I love, with a picture and brief capsule for each



Art...on the March! (a visual mixtape)
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Ninety great works of art from 1305 to 1998, plus hundreds more in a slideshow



Astaire and Rogers
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Video clips of every single Fred & Ginger dance number



The Big Picture: The Movies and Me
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A memoir, a confession, a manifesto, a declaration of principles...



Boomer Baseball: Field of Dreams & the 60sSixties Reunion: The Big Chill & Return of the Secaucus Seven
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Two essays on a generation and its cinematic mythology: Field of Dreams seen through a prism of 60s nostalgia, and The Big Chill & Return of the Secaucus examined against the rise of the "baby boomer" culture



Blog 10
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In tribute to the blogosphere, a greatest-hits sampler of fellow blogger's work from 2010 (chosen by them), illustrated throughout with pictures and even the occasional video



A Century of WondersCinema in Pictures...
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Two lavish visual lineups, featuring screen-caps from hundreds of classic films, also serving as directories for Allan Fish's decades countdowns and my own video series



Cities of the Imagination
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A prose/image reflection on city dreams, using Carl Jung, the Chinese film The World, Michel Gondry's music videos, and my own memories



Citizen Kane
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An analysis of how each narrator subtly shifts the tone and style, both cinematic and narrative, in this celebrated masterpiece



Civilisation in Pictures
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Great works of Western art, in visual tribute to the wonderful British TV series



Class of 2002
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In this short film, a fictional photo memoir I wrote & directed, a young man recalls the tragic lives of his classmates in fleeting impressions.



The Comedy Countdown - Modern Times
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My video essay entry in a comedy countdown, juxtaposing the contending views of Graham Greene, Roland Barthes, and Otis Ferguson with memorable moments from the beloved Chaplin classic they are discussing



The Corruption of Michael Corleone
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The descent of a character into darkness and evil, told using only images from the Godfather films



directed by Brian De Palma
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A video tribute to the dark fusion of sex and violence in the director's cinema
This is the one piece I am proudest of.



The Director's Chair
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32 favorite directors, represented by evocative title cards & clips from their work



A dirty dozen
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An imaginary lineup of double features, arranged thematically into six categories: 'Their Town,' 'Secret Societies,' 'She Did It Her Way,' 'Rising to the Top,' By Airplane or Submarine,' and 'Movement, Music, and Montage'



The Fall and Redemption of Anakin Skywalker
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An image-only representation of Darth Vader's trip to the dark side



Fists in the Pocket: Shaking the FoundationsLovely PaolaI am My Brother's Reaper
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Three posts devoted to the most-referenced film on my site, a fantastic Italian favorite from the sixties - the first two are visual tributes to the film's vivid beauty (not least its leading lady), the third is my first narrated video essay



Flight of the Red Balloon
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A review of the French film, exploring its relationship to the earlier Red Balloon and the French New Wave, which kicked off my 'Best of the 21st Century?' series



The Great Movies
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A tribute to one of my favorite movie books, an obscure, out-of-print coffee table tome discovered in childhood and relished ever since; includes many scanned images from the book itself



Hooray for (Hating) Hollywood: Sunset Boulevard
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A review of Sunset Boulevard which concludes my series on early 50s films dishing the dirt on the film industry



In the Beginning...
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Nine great 'opening' images from movies - meaning these are the very first visuals we see onscreen; this post also kicked off an active and lively 'picture gallery' meme, and the other entries are listed at the bottom



Island of Lost Pictures
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A massive image dump, collecting all the striking screen-caps and stills I'd uploaded but never posted (previously), this also doubles as backward-moving, entirely visual alternate history of my blog, its interests, and its approaches



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A re-examination of the holiday classic in light of its psychological darkness, political implications, and historical resonance



Just because you are a character, doesn't mean you have character... Part 1 Part 2
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Two posts, taken together comprising 100 favorite characters in film history, from Nosferatu to King Kong to Mrs. Robinson to  E.T. to the Dude



Lawrence of Arabia
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An essay on one of my favorite films, celebrating its expression of personal psychology through epic landscapes



Let Them All In... Let the Right One In Book/Movie/Remake
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History of all the different versions of Let the Right One In, a film about a teenage girl vampire and her strange friendship with a lonely little boy



Lucasfilm Lost
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Requiem for one of Hollywood's last private empires, flawed but personal, in the wake of its sale to Disney



The Magnificent Ambersons
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Observations on a massacred masterpiece, and how the studio's cuts actually reflect the very theme of the movie: the descent from elegance into the mundane





The Musical Countdown - 42nd Street • The Gay Divorcee
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Two offbeat entries in a musical countdown: 42nd Street leads with a 5-minute video examining the narrative & stylistic sweep of the Busby Berkeley classic, while The Gay Divorcee explores the "Night and Day" number through Arlene Croce's prose & images from the film



Reading the Movies
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My ten favorite movie books, with the stories behind each one, fifteen runners-up, and an invitation for other bloggers to participate (they did)



Remembering the Movies, Dec. 3 - 9
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Probably the most interesting entry in my movie-history series, this covers a Siskel & Ebert conversation on Edward Scissorhands, two classic cartoons from Warners and Disney, my capsule on Flash Gordon, memories of films seen when I was 7 and 17, and extracts from a contentious debate between Pauline Kael and the Maysles Brothers on the truth of Gimme Shelter



The Restoration: Glimpses of the Past - and Future?
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A smorgasboard of screen-caps, stills, and posters from unavailable films, in tribute to the 'Film Restoration' blogathon



Shine on You Crazy Diamonds...
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20 headshots of my 20 favorite actresses



The Singer Not the Song
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Beautiful images captured from 'The Nightingale,' based on a Japanese fable, aired for Shelley Duvall's 1980s TV series 'Faerie Tale Theatre,' starring Mick Jagger in yellowface



The Social Network Paper vs. Plastic
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Musings on The Social Network, presented in the form of a Facebook page, and a visual tribute to old and new technologies in the film



Spade & Marlowe, Private Eyes
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Comparing and contrasting the two iconic detectives and their creators, on page and screen



Summer Hours (Best of the 21st Century?)
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Review of the French film about a family letting go of their country home - maybe my strongest piece for the 'Best of the 21st Century?' series



The Sunday Matinee - Before the Revolution
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Bertolucci's hard-to-find classic, about a romantic young man who struggles with his Marxist beliefs and sleeps with his aunt, gets the 'Sunday Matinee' treatment, as part of my series on 60s New Wave cinema



Syndromes and a Century
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Images of city and country, green and white, warm and cold, from great Thai film



They Once Were Coming Attractions... (memories of my movie past, 1988 - 1998)
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Sheer nostalgia for my generation (born circa 1983), a lineup of movie posters from everything I saw in theaters between ages 4 - 15



This Sporting Life, Billy Liar, and the British New Wave
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Historical overview of British 'kitchen sink' films of the 1960s, focusing on two films which came out in 1963, representing a profound shift in the movement



Top of the World
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A visual tribute to Rocky's triumphant morning run



Triumph of the Will
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Reflections on Leni Riefenstahl's powerful and disturbing Nazi propaganda doc



Twin Peaks: Lonely Souls • Beyond Life and Death
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Write-up on two climactic 'Twin Peaks' episodes (the revelation of the killer, and the finale), entries in my series on the TV show



Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
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After watching this movie (the prequel to the TV series), I was impressed, upset, and uneasy with what I'd seen, and I wrote this review



Two Things We Know About Pictures
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Impressionistic tribute to Pierrot le fou, using Godard's famous quote and images captured from the film



Waiting for the 25th Hour
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Seven years after the movie came out (and at the exact time the main character would be getting out of prison) I revisit Spike Lee's 25th Hour, one of the few films to deal directly with 9/11, for 'Counting Down the Zeroes'



The Way We Weren't: Art Under Bush
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Polemical response to Newsweek's shallow 'Art in the Bush Era' piece, reflecting on culture and politics of the 00s - this one came straight from the gut



Who's Killing the Movies - and Who Cares?
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My enthusiastic response to David Denby's "crisis in the cinema" piece, not only affirming his despair but suggesting what the way forward will look like



The Wind in the Willows - Toad Hall • Dulce Domum 
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Observations on Kenneth Grahame's classic book accompanied with images from film adaptations: 'Toad Hall' explores the setting in light of British social history; 'Dulce Domum' relates Grahame's personal biography to the book's theme of 'home'