Posted in Art, Art-house Cinema, Inspiration, Literature, Movie Reviews, Movies, Psychology, tagged David Lynch, Philosophy, Foreign Films, Film Classics, Film School, Criterion Collection, Ingmar Bergman, Persona, Fanny and Alexander, Swedish Films, Mulholland Drive, August Strindberg, A Dream Play, Dreams, Theater, Robert Schumann, Classical Music, Existentialism on July 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Anything can happen; all things are possible and plausible. Time and space do not exist: over a minute patch of reality imagination will weave its web and create fresh patterns…”
–August Strindberg, Preface to A Dream Play (1902)
This spring I arrogantly went through my own self taught film school where I explored critically for the [...]
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Posted in Art-house Cinema, Arts and Entertainment, Awards, Book to Film Adaptations, History, Movies, Pop Culture, tagged Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Joe Wright, Oscar Predictions, David Fincher, Previews, Trailers, Fall Movie Preview, Spike Lee, The Miracle at St. Anna, Movie Trailers, Mongol, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Australia, Baz Luhrmann, The Soloist, Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes, Changeling, Clint Eastwood, Defiance, Edward Zwick, Daniel Craig, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Alexandra Maria Lara, Burn After Reading, Quantum of Solace, Ghengis Khan on July 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »
CAPTION: Ghengis Khan is all up in this yurt.
So last week I saw that flick Mongol, you know, the new epic about Ghengis Khan made by a Russian director (Sergei Bodrov), starring a Japanese dude (Tadonubo Asano), nominated for an Oscar, and inexplicably released stateside in the middle of the summer movie season. It was a pretty [...]
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Posted in Art, Art-house Cinema, History, Inspiration, Movie Reviews, Movies, Psychology, tagged Carl Dreyer, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Catholocism, Criterion Collection, Danish Cinema, Film Classics, Film School, Foreign Films, French Heros, French History, Joan of Arc, Maria Falconetti, Mysticism, Religion, Richard Einhorn, Saint Joan, Saints, Silent Films, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Voices of Light on June 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Re-watching Carl Dreyer’s silent classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), was the final piece of my self-taught Spring Film School that started in April with The Third Man and continued in May and June with M, Metropolis, The Big Heat, The 400 Blows, The Innocents, Twelve Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Citizen Kane and finally Dreyer’s film. One of [...]
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Posted in Art-house Cinema, Current Events, Movie Reviews, Movies, Politics, tagged Danai Gurira, Deportation, Detention Centers, Haaz Sleiman, Hiam Abbass, Illegal Immigration, New York City, Richard Jenkins, The Visitor, Thomas McCarthy on June 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »
CAPTION: Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira call their agents demanding better scripts.
A Political Visitor, 9 June 2008
Author: David H. Schleicher from New Jersey, USA
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Thomas McCarthy’s second feature film had the potential to be a poignant human drama, but instead sacrifices the story for the message. The Visitor unfortunately turns [...]
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Posted in Art, Art-house Cinema, Movie Reviews, Movies, Travel, tagged Adventure, Beethoven, Beethoven's Seventh, Catinca Untaru, Fantasy, Independent Films, Justine Waddell, Karen Haacke, Lee Pace, Seventh Symphony, Silent Films, Stuntmen, Tarsem, Tarsem Singh, The Fall, Vanity Project on June 3, 2008 | 6 Comments »
CAPTION: Mountains and water and trees, oh my! And funny costumes, too!
The Stuntman, 3 June 2008
Author: David H. Schleicher from New Jersey, USA
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
The Fall opens with a disembodied symphony of black and white images done to the tune of Beethoven’s 7th where the beauty is in not fully understanding what [...]
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Posted in Art, Art-house Cinema, Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture, tagged Orson Welles, Film Classics, Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst, Ballyhoo, Rosebud, RKO, Mercury Theater, Film School, Criterion Collection on May 12, 2008 | No Comments »
This spring I continue to utilize my Netflix queue to take myself to “school” with film classics. Earlier in the month I finally sat down to watch Citizen Kane in its entirety for a critical review. Without further adieu…
CAPTION: Say, Charlie, you gotta name for that sled?
All That Ballyhoo!, 5 May 2008
Author: David H. Schleicher [...]
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Posted in Art, Art-house Cinema, History, Movie Reviews, Movies, Politics, Psychology, tagged Film Classics, Film Noir, Film School, Fritz Lang, German Expressionism, Group Think, Individualism, Jungian Archetypes, M, Nazi Germany, Peter Lorre, Propoganda, Symbolism, Weimar Republic on April 21, 2008 | 3 Comments »
With nothing worthwhile at the cineplex this spring, I’ve been using my Netflix queue to catch up with many of the classics I studied in film class but never watched as a complete whole. Fritz Lang’s M is one of those classics that looks great on your shelf, but you might only pop in the [...]
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Posted in Art-house Cinema, History, Inspiration, Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture, tagged Alexander Korda, Alida Valli, Anton Karas, Carol Reed, David O. Selznick, Film Classics, Film Noir, Film School, Graham Greene, Joseph Cotten, Kati Marton, Orson Welles, Post WWII Occupation, The Third Man, Trevor Howard, Vienna, Zither on April 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »
CAPTION: In 1949, this Valli was located in GreeneLand.
CAPTION: In the best of film noir, a viewer can actually feel the dampness and breathe in the darkness.
The Trouble with Harry Lime, 1 April 2008
Author: David H. Schleicher from New Jersey, USA
I initially felt a fool for not having seen The Third Man earlier. However, in retrospect, [...]
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As I write this, the details are sketchy, but it’s been confirmed that Oscar-winning film director Anthony Minghella has died at the age of 54. At the turn of the millennium, Minghella was the go-to man for star-studded, moderately budgeted, profit-making, literary minded prestige films.
In 1996, he achieved his greatest success with his film adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s [...]
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Posted in Art-house Cinema, History, Literature, Movie Reviews, Movies, Psychology, Travel, tagged Belgium, Brendan Gleeson, Bruges, Clemence Poesy, Colin Farrell, Crime Thriller, Dark Comedy, David Mamet, Dwarves, Graham Greene, Hit Men, In Bruges, Martin McDonagh, Midgets, Ralph Fiennes on February 17, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Clemence Poesy says “oui oui” to a vaction…In Bruges.
Just when I was about lose faith in film due to the muck and mire currently overstuffing multiplexes and DVD shelves, In Bruges comes along, out of nowhere, to restore my religion. First-time feature length director/screenwriter Martin McDonagh hasn’t crafted an earth shaking masterpiece, but he has a made a film [...]
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