It’s interesting that Criterion has released Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) so soon after Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (1962). The two films, separated by an ocean, by different cultures and by almost a decade, represent two distinct approaches to the same essential problem: is it possible for film to capture […]
The late ’50s saw the biggest technology-based shift in movies since the coming of sound (the next big shift would be the arrival of digital technology several decades later). New highly portable equipment not only altered the way movies were made, it also altered creative choices and even content. New lightweight cameras and sync sound […]
Continuing my survey of one month’s movie viewing: Red Dawn (Dan Bradley, 2012): As dumb as John Milius’ original about small town American kids fighting against vicious invaders. Milius had Nicaragua(!) taking over the States; here it’s North Korea backed by, for some reason, the Russians (aware of how much U.S. debt is held by […]
I usually only have time to write once a week for this blog, and my occasional obligations to Blogcritics (i.e. the free review copies I get through them) have pushed me into the habit of doing reviews more often than more general posts about broader topics (which was what I actually anticipated when I started […]
After three years of steady releases, for some reason the BFI suspended their Flipside series last May. Now, after an eleven month break, they’ve released two new titles, as unexpected as anything which has come before. In John Krish, they’ve returned to a filmmaker familiar from a number of previous BFI releases, while in B.S. […]
It’s Monday morning and I’m still coming down from an exhilarating weekend high. My friend Dave Barber, programmer of the Cinematheque, has been talking to me since last year about screening my documentary, Going: Remembering Winnipeg Movie Theatres, but the question was always how to fit it into his schedule. Well, that and the fact […]