Really solid, deep analysis of PT Anderson by Kevin B. Lee over at BFI. You can see a steady change in Anderson’s direction: early works (e.g. Hard Eight, Boogie Nights) tend to be far more kinetic and Scorcese-like, while later films (There Will Be Blood) use the Steadicam in a more restrained fashion.
I’d argue Pumping Iron is ranked too high, but I can’t fight much with film critic Matt Singer; dude has his Schwarzenegger knowledge down cold.
Cool breakdown at BoxOfficeQuant by stat major Edmund Helmer on what colors dominate modern film trailers.
Legendary photographer Steve McCurry (probably best known for his National Geographic ‘Afghan Girl’ shot) was given the last roll of Kodachrome film ever produced. He took a trip around the world to shoot those last 36 frames.
If there’s any sign of technology’s rapid progress, it’s in the switch in photography (and now film) from analog to digital. But McCurry’s shots highlighted here – from New York to India – are powerful, and still illustrate the warmth of ‘real’ film that will be gone forever.
Somehow this amazing dance film completely illuded me through all of 2012. But now it’s 2013 and there’s no excuse: if you dig Girl Talk, dance, or just great DSLR driven cinematography all over NYC, you should check out this film.
Film critic Scott Mendelson on Zero Dark Thirty:
All because [director and writer] Bigelow and Boal didn’t spoon-feed their opinions to the audience in a way that made for easy digestion. They didn’t have a fictionalized scene where a character explicitly explains to the audience how they got each piece of vital information over the eight years during which the film takes place. They trusted the audience to make the connections… One must remember that the film initially began back when Bin Laden was still alive and it was presumed that he’d never actually be caught. It was initially a Moby Dick-esque story of futile obsession, and I’d argue the film still stays on that path even with the new ending.
Moral ambiguity. Presenting complex issues without trying to fall on one political side or another. Forcing you, as the audience, to engage, debate, ponder what we’ve been doing with our foreign policy for the last twelve years. That’s what Zero Dark Thirty is all about (and at least partially what makes it great) and I agree with Mendelson regarding the Bigelow snub. Ridiculous.
This Slate feature always crops up this time of year and never disappoints. At the time of this writing they have already had six entries and the writing team is really solid: Dana Stevens from Slate, Wesley Morris from Grantland, and freelancers Keith Phipps (formerly a senior writer at The A.V. Club) and Stephanie Zacharek (most notable for her writing at Salon and The New York Times).
Leave it to Reddit for someone to mashup the Swedish original with director David Fincher’s English remake. Nice side by side via animated gifs.
As a YouTube commenter points out, it’s pretty rare to get interviewers that can keep up with Tarantino’s rapidfire thoughts, but Furguson does a good job. Watch to get Tarantino’s thoughts on Prometheus, Hatfields & McCoys, kids movies and more.
Mark Bowden writing for The Atlantic (warning, Zero Dark Thirty spoilers ahead):
The charge that the film is pro-torture is easy to debunk. I have already noted the dramatic failure depicted in the opening scenes with Ammar. The futility of the approach is part of the more general organizational failure depicted in the movie’s first half, culminating in a dramatization of the tragic 2009 bombing of Camp Chapman, in Khost, Afghanistan, where an al-Qaeda infiltrator wiped out an entire CIA field office. The agency is shown to be not only failing to find bin Laden and dismantle al-Qaeda, but on the losing end of the fight.
There’s been a huge flap in recent weeks over Zero Dark Thirty and its ‘pro-torture stance’. After viewing (and being blown away by) the movie last week, I just don’t buy it. Adding onto what Bowden writes above, the early torture heavy scenes made me feel queasy and very uncomfortable, and I think that’s exactly what director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal intended. It happened, and to skip over it or portray it anything else than what it was would be a whitewash.