I had fun listening to hosts Tyler and David run through Nolan’s entire career. Look for some solid insights into the generally overlooked Insomnia and plenty of rants that pit the three Batman films against each other.
Usually I’m not the biggest fan of list style posts, but The A.V. Club‘s work here is really useful. I’d recommend you do what I did: make a quick scan and add what looks interesting to your Netflix queue. There were a few big ones that were completely off my radar, like Once Upon a Time In Anatolia.
Given all the press over The Dark Night Rises, articles and analysis on director Chris Nolan have reached the point of absurdity. Yet the British Film Institute’s work here is standout and well worth your time. I loved author Joseph Bevan’s analysis of trends throughout Nolan’s work. For instance, Bevan suggests video games influences Nolan’s work:
While it’s hard to imagine him adding to the regrettable lineage of video-game film adaptations, he has paid direct homage to newer games in his last two films. The elevated shots of Bruce Wayne’s speeding Lamborghini in The Dark Knight mimic the player’s view in Grand Theft Auto, while Inception’s infiltration of a snow-bound compound echoes the Splinter Cell games, as well as the Japanese game Metal Gear Solid.
These resonances also occur at script level. Inception’s dream levels are structured like the levels of a game, while Memento – with its emphasis on a lone hero picking up clues while working his way around strange environments – is reminiscent of myriad point-and-click adventures.
Excellent, thorough roundtable discussion over at popular film site Mubi.com. Clearly the three critics discussing TDNR are not big fans, with one going so far to call Chris Nolan’s range “from borderline hack to mildly competent”, something I completely disagree with.
This piece is standout in its discussion of TDNR’s politics. I agree completely with a lot of their takes: Nolan’s politics on display are often self-contradictory, very murky, and ignored when it’s inconvenient for the action on display. As Slashfilm’s David Chen argued, The Dark Night Rises is clearly making some rough political grabs, but by the end it’s an incomprehensible stance.
Cool story over at Movies.com on how author Katie Calautti’s friend landed a bit part in the ultimate summer blockbuster:
Movies.com: So when did you realize it was for real?
AD: My agent said, “The paperwork looks legit!” And then I went in for a costume fitting and by then they were in New York. And then I was like, “OK – it’s totally legit” – because their offices took over an entire building and the costumes took over an entire floor. There were hundreds of Army outfits…
Movies.com: What was it like on set?
AD: They had hundreds of extras there, because in the scene there’s a lot of people yelling and screaming. Christopher Nolan shows up and he chats with Bale, Gordon-Levitt and the DP. Eventually Nolan asks me, “Do you know your lines?” And I said, “Yeah” and repeated them. And he said, “Alright, don’t worry about your lines, just get the point across.”
Spike Lee, talking to Vulture’s Will Leitch on the recent popularity of Tyler Perry movies:
SL: I would not call it a syndrome. Thing is, those box-office numbers prove there is an audience for those films. Yet, at the same time, I think there is an audience that would like to see something else. At this moment, those other films have to be made outside the Hollywood studio system. This comes down to the gatekeepers, and I do not think there is going to be any substantial movement until people of color get into those gatekeeper positions of people who have a green-light vote…When I first started making films and I would have Hollywood meetings—and I know this for a fact—they would bring black people out of the mailroom to be in the meeting.
WL: That doesn’t still happen, does it?
SL: I do not know. But I will say the best chance of me meeting somebody of color is the brother man at the gate who is checking to see if I am on the list.
Great, revealing interview with a director who generally has a less than ideal relationship with the press.
Seriously awesome interview with the notoriously private former Batman. A very loose, eclectic conversation here: Keaton discusses his rumored rejection of Batman 3, fly fishing in Montana, drunken escapades with Quentin Tarantino and much more. I loved his thoughts on playing the same Elmore Leonard character Ray Nicolette in two different movies (Jackie Brown and Out of Sight):
Keaton: Yeah, I’ve never seen that done — ever. And I hope I’m not getting too esoteric about this, but it was almost like postmodernism.
Daniel Kellison, Grantland: If people are still reading this far into this article, they’re obviously pretty big Michael Keaton fans — I don’t think you can get too esoteric for them.
Michael: What I felt was: It’s like he exists in the world. He might show up in your barbershop, you know what I mean? Different studio, different script, different story, different director. Everything is different, and all of a sudden, this guy shows up again. And I thought, Man, it would be cool — I’d just like to show up again somewhere else.
A wonderful look at the title sequence from Se7en. I still remember my experience in the theater with the film rather vividly; that staccato-edited macabre opening was amazing, dare I say influential later on when I started designing at work. Just look at the detail noted here:
The typography itself – which would likely break several guild legibility rules in modern times – was hand-etched into black-surface scratchboard and manipulated during the film transfer process to further smear and jitter it. This transfer was then cut up and reassembled during post production to add a final layer of temporal distress.
Staff over at The A.V. Club discuss the plot devices and mistakes that take you out of a film’s story. I chuckled at this choice by Marah Eakin:
Mine’s super-petty, but here it is: I hate when a character drinks from or carelessly wields a clearly empty “hot” coffee cup in a movie or TV show. Most people would just be a little annoyed by this, but it makes me question the whole production. Couldn’t they bother to put some water in those cups? And if they aren’t paying attention to even middling details like that, then what else did they ignore? Are the characters developed? Are the sets how they should be? Did they edit the whole thing together well?
Tim Grierson, writing for The A.V. Club:
Now he’s back with “Magic Mike,” which I think is a revelation in how it shows McConaughey playing with his persona and twisting it…buff and tan, McConaughey’s Dallas isn’t as young as his boy-toy dancers, and you can feel that conflict inside this aging man-child, who isn’t quite ready to admit that his time in the spotlight is fading. Like McConaughey’s characters in “Lincoln Lawyer” and “Bernie,” Dallas wants the attention, and in all three performances there’s a poignancy to that desire because none of them can see how faintly ridiculous their lives are.
Seriously, McConaughey was the best part of Magic Mike. He kept the film grounded and it was a blast seeing him jump into his part so readily. Hopefully, as author Grierson surmises, McConaughey will continue to evolve and take bigger risks.