10.28.14 |
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I was worried when I saw the feature title; was The Dissolve stooping to cheap listicle work for page hits? Turned out to be a false alarm – the entire Dissolve staff trades off for analysis of how each music snippet works so well within a film’s context. There’s almost always a Youtube clip to accompany each selection as well.
Only disappointment: The Big Lebowski’s “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In” should have ranked higher.
10.21.14 |
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The Dissolve’s Matt Singer writes a David Fincher essay that’s thankfully not another think piece on misogyny within Gone Girl (there been many excellent pieces, but it feels done to death at this point.) Instead Matt takes a broader look at the director’s entire career:
Perhaps the most compelling rebuke to the idea that Gone Girl isn’t worthy of Fincher, or that he has no authorial stake in the material, is the fact that Flynn’s story—about the exceedingly nasty fallout of an unhappy marriage—lets Fincher finally foreground one of the most persistent background themes in all his work: the inherent incompatibility of men and women, and the inevitability of an unhappy ending in almost every relationship.
Lots of smart examples and analysis throughout.
10.10.14 |
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Considering Gone Girl was just released it’s an apt time to review director David Fincher’s filmography. There’s surely a lot of other good video essays out there, but this recent analysis by Every Frame a Painting is excellent. It’s devoted to a technical breakdown of Fincher’s preferred shot composition, supported by many examples from his entire filmography (with Gone Girl of course, exempted.)
10.08.14 |
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GoodBadFlicks reviews the evolution of the PG-13 rating since it’s introduction in 1984. Most of the focus is on recent years where many otherwise R rated films trim content to ensure a PG-13. Remember, with a PG-13 the desirable teen demographic can watch unrestricted. But in the process, it’s watering down a lot of otherwise great content. To quote the narration:
PG-13 is supposed to be pushing the envelope of PG, not pulling R backwards.
10.02.14 |
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Such an amazing debut from director Kenneth Lonergan. It’s one of my favorite movies from the early 2000s, highlighted by impeccable acting by Mark Ruffalo (who broke through to a wider audience after being noticed here) and Laura Linney.
09.26.14 |
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Wonderful brief look back over at The A.V. Club at Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express, still one of my favorite movies of all time. Whimsical, gorgeously shoot, this is essential 90s cinema that many overlooked in favor of Kar-Wai’s later In the Mood for Love. In the Mood is still wonderful, but it never quite connected with me tonally like Chungking Express did.
09.25.14 |
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The Dissolve’s Scott Tobias:
French-Tunisian director Mabrouk El Mechri, working from a script he wrote with Frédéric Benudis and Christophe Turpin, pours these biographical details into a scenario that’s half hostage thriller, half Irma Vep-style meta-movie. And though the latter part is more compelling than the former, JCVD never forgets that Van Damme’s image is the focal point. El Mechri opens with the best shot of Van Damme’s career (and really, a legitimate candidate for any list of all-time great opening shots), a single take of the 47-year-old kicking, punching, shooting, and stabbing his way through a gauntlet of attackers, who come after him with guns, knives, grenades, even a flamethrower. The shot is ruined when the cheap set collapses at the end, but the young Chinese director has no sympathy for his exhausted middle-aged star: “Just because he brought John Woo to Hollywood doesn’t mean he can rub my dick with sandpaper.”
The movie has its weak points, but overall JCVD is very compelling (especially for someone like me who grew up loving Van Damme’s earlier work like Kickboxer and Bloodsport), both for that aforementioned opening fight scene and a legitimately moving six minute monologue Van Damme delivers partway through the film. There’s something about his presence that makes me root for a comeback out of direct to VOD purgatory.
09.13.14 |
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One of my favorite films of the year gets the film study treatment in this informative video.
09.11.14 |
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Look over De Niro’s best work in that 70s to 80s period; staggering output. But my how the mighty have fallen in recent years.
09.05.14 |
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Sam Adams, writing for Indiewire:
In [Verge writer] Pierce’s rationale — or, more to the point, rationalization — downloading the movie in advance is like peeking at a band’s setlist before the concert…”The Expendables 3,” you see, “is meant not to be watched but to be experienced. As art becomes commoditized experience becomes the only thing worth paying for, and there’s evidence everywhere that we’ll pay for it when it’s worth it. We don’t want to pay for access, but we’ll gladly pay for experience.”
Of course, commodities are things you pay for. What Pierce really means by “commoditized” is “devalued,” and what he means by that is that since ‘The Expendables 3’ isn’t worth anything in the first place, there’s nothing wrong with taking a copy for yourself.
Working as a web developer/designer myself, I tend to support policies that push technology forward. But there’s no justification behind David Pierce flat out stealing a movie with the justification that it’s “access” over “experience”. Technology has limits; it’s worrisome to see Pierce, a senior writer at what’s normally a pretty solid tech news site, adopt this sort of blind “techno libertarianism” bent.