A very thorough breakdown of Iñárritu’s recent best picture winner at the Oscars; it’s structure, Steadicam continuity and the long take. Overall I walk away from the piece having more respect for the film than when I actually saw it (a technical and acting masterpiece saddled with some poor screenplay choices.)
Grantland contributor Mark Harris wrote an influential, well circulated essay on Hollywood’s increasing investment in superhero movies. I finally caught up with it this week; it’s incredibly pessimistic, but Harris makes a compelling argument.
Another year, another Indiewire roundup discussion with top cinematographers on their preferred shooting formats. If you think it’s a one-sided argument of digital always trumping film, think again. While it’s true nearly every DP interviewed shoots with mostly digital today, there’s an interesting nuance to their position, one that speaks highly of the natural warmth and grain inherant to real film.
One positive byproduct of the fairly unremarkable (in the eyes of most film critics) Unbroken from late last year: a few solid interviews with legendary DP Roger Deakins.
Time Out’s David Ehrlich made one of the definitive video roundups of the best in cinema for 2013, and for 2014 he nails it again. The blend of music cuts (all of David’s selections are exclusively from his top 25 list) and stellar editing really makes this something well worth the video’s full twelve minutes of your time.
Jason Bailey, writing for Flavorwire:
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when Waters and Lynch were doing their most commercially successful work, it was possible to finance — either independently or via or the studio system — mid-budget films (anywhere from $5 million to $60 million) with an adult sensibility. But slowly, quietly, over roughly the decade and a half since the turn of the century, the paradigm shifted. Studios began to make fewer films, betting big on would-be blockbusters, operating under the assumption that large investments equal large returns. Movies that don’t fit into that box (thoughtful dramas, dark comedies, oddball thrillers, experimental efforts) were relegated to the indies, where freedom is greater, but resources are far more limited.
The Dissolve’s Keith Phipps:
From a certain point of view, to borrow a phrase from a different movie, Star Wars isn’t an attempt to escape from Vietnam, but an attempt to recontextualize it, with the United States slotted into the role of the Empire, and the Rebellion standing in for the NVA and the Viet Cong. By the time the film reached screens, this source of inspiration was so deep in the mix—buried beneath everything from Joseph Campbell to Bruno Bettelheim to The Wizard Of Oz—that it hardly counted as subtext anymore. But it’s still fundamentally a story about revolutionaries standing up for what’s right, and its Vietnam-inspired origins complicate the notion that Star Wars was ever purely an escapist enterprise. No matter how long ago and how far, far away you set a story, the real world has a way of creeping in.
Of all the many influences on George Lucas for Star Wars, Vietnam wasn’t one that came to mind before reading Keith’s piece. Yet he makes a fairly persuasive argument.
Another meticulously detailed Typeset In the Future post, this time about the use of Futura, Helvetica, and many other fonts in Ridley Scott’s Alien. The movie is a masterpiece of horror, sci-fi, and suspense, one of my favorite movies of all time. So it’s wonderful to see author Dave Addey geek out in such depth on small typographic cues contained all over the picture. It’s complemented with lots of freeze frames and behind the scenes knowledge.
Every Frame a Painting strikes again with a great three minute clip dissecting how Snowpiercer uses cinematography to convey a character’s choices and propel the narrative forward.
Andrew Deyoung on Inception’s well debated ending (mild, oblique spoilers for that film below):
Lost in these either/or debates (which I find to be pretty dull, see also: The Sopranos) is what I’ve always found to be a far more interesting possibility: that this final shot functions less in the world of the story than it does on the meta-level of the film itself—the shared dream-world created by Nolan and his filmmaking crew and occupied, for a time, by the audience, a dream world that comes to an abrupt end with the cut to credits that immediately follows the wobbling of the top.
In other words, I don’t think that is Dom’s totem. I think it’s ours.