Given that this week filmmaker Matthew Rankin is back at Sundance with a short film for the second time in three years, he would probably be annoyed if I mention that I first encountered him as an odd, ferociously precocious 14-year-old, when he walked into the offices of the Winnipeg Film Group intent on signing […]
I find that my viewing habits in recent years have become so random and eclectic that the idea of coming up with a “year’s best” list is not only difficult – it borders on the arbitrary and meaningless. Much of what I watch these days consists of older films either just caught up with, or […]
In his December 26 New York Times column, Frank Rich calls our attention to a fascinating “home movie documentary” called Disneyland Dream. Shot by a Connecticut man named Robbins Barstow, a diligent amateur documentarian who apparently made numerous films about his family’s life and activities, this particular work was named to the Library of Congress’s […]
Issues of censorship and freedom of speech are always more complicated than we’d like. It’s never just simply a clear cut question of “this” or “that”. The complete denial that certain elements of pop culture, for instance, can’t possibly do anyone any harm under any circumstances, doesn’t really hold up – of course some people […]
An e-mail this morning from correspondent Jerome Wybon made me realize that it’s unclear from my journal just what format Anatol Pacanowski and I were using to document the production of Dune. Although Anatol initially had wanted to use 16mm film, we ended up with a newly developed combination camera/recorder just being put on the […]
The camera drifts above endless miles of mist-shrouded forest, following the meandering course of an old river. The soundtrack is rich with the sounds of birds and other wildlife. Then, as it rises over a tree-covered ridge, a different view opens up before us: what looks like an obliterated landscape stretching to the horizon. We […]