The Down-to-Earth must know She cannot rival the Sky We move on suspended Between Reality and Dream Between Oblivion and Eternity Through a Labyrinth of Evergreens   cjk  8/10/05

Double Take Dir. Johan Grimonprez The documentary Double Take is bookended by two of the scariest moments in American history: the launch of Sputnik and the release of The Birds.  It suggests that these events had a great deal to do with one another.  In their collage-essay on the work of Alfred Hitchock and the ... read more »

So this filmmaker, Johan Grimonprez, who teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, gets the idea of creating a fictional film about Alfred Hitchcock constructed largely from footage of the man himself (e.g., the intros to his TV series) and based on an essay by Jorge Luis Borges, no less.  The basic conceit?  ... read more »

I mean, DAME Helen Mirren.  (Photo via Associated Press.  Joke via Oscar co-host, Steve Martin.) Very happy for Kat B and The Hurt Locker. Worst Award of the Evening -  The Best Cinematography Award to Avatar.  It should have gone to the great Robert Richardson (Inglourious Basterds), or if not to him, to Christian Berger who was ... read more »

The publication of Hitchcock’s Films by Robin Wood in 1965 (shortly after the release of Marnie, a Wood favorite) was the moment when English-language film criticism truly came of age. Wood went on to write other book-length studies of film auteurs such as Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, Claude Chabrol, and Arthur Penn, as well as ... read more »

They Caught the Ferry (1948) is a short highway safety film – much like the ones we used to watch in Drivers Ed. – produced by the Danish Film Commission, and directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, the legendary auteur of The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), Ordet (The ... read more »

In celebration of the birthday of director Michael Powell (1905-1990) today, I’d like to share with you this clip from Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 color masterpiece, Black Narcissus, a story of spirituality, sexuality, and madness set in the exotic Himalayas. Note in particular the many similarities to the climax of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo made ... read more »

It’s amazing to me that some fellow Jews who were so indignant about Sophie’s Choice (by which I mean the Styron novel — arguably his best — and not the hollow Pakula movie) can give Tarantino a free ride on this one, presumably under the theory that this boy should be allowed to enjoy every ... read more »

One of the many incidental pleasures of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is the reappearance after far too long an absence of the wonderful Rod Taylor. Taylor, who was born on January 11, 1930 in Sidney, Australia, has worked with some of cinema’s greatest auteurs – with George Stevens in Giant, playing memorable leads for George ... read more »

Having already submitted a list of ten to Movieman’s Movie Bookshelf meme, a “gathering of all the movie books that influenced, enlightened, and excited me, you, and everyone else,” I was delighted to read his master list of books submitted to him by all the bloggers who participated in the meme – not only delighted, ... read more »