The reason why Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker succeeds where every other Iraq War movie made to date has failed has little to do with the war itself. Audiences have generally avoided films dealing with this unpopular – and probably unwinnable – conflict/occupation.
If The Hurt Locker seems as fresh and compelling as it does, it’s ... 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 ... read more »

So many other bloggers have posted tributes to the late, great, Jack Cardiff that it was difficult to find an image that hadn’t already been posted at one of those blogs. However, here is the radiant Audrey Hepburn, radiantly photographed by Cardiff, in one of the finest epics ever made, King Vidor’s War and Peace ... read more »

English-born Michael Powell, like the American John Ford, was a master at creating idealized filmic universes. A Canterbury Tale (1944), discussed by Erich Kuersten below, shows one such idealized world. Powell’s last feature film, Age of Consent (1969), depicts another, similar in many ways to Donovan’s Reef (1963), one of Ford’s last films.
Creating idealized worlds ... read more »