“Tragedy is a close-up, comedy a long shot.”—Buster Keaton “Life is a tragedy when seen in a close-up, but comedy is a long shot.”—Charlie Chaplin The great silent comedians knew it best. The quotes up top reveal much in their simplicity. Serious is personal, funny is removed. When seeing a face contorted by physical or [...]
A jaunty jalopy ride down a dusty Kansas road to a former lover’s funeral was all it took to rope conman, Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal), into meeting one of the most special ladies his puny life might ever know. Shot in glorious black and white and boasting a sharp wit set rakishly against bleak Depression-era [...]
So what do you think of when I say Soviet sci-fi? Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)? Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972)? How about Georgi Daneliya’s Kin-dza-dza! (1986)? Aelita is a creaky cult silent space adventure where Russian space travelers introduce oppressed Martians to the freedoms of communism and Solaris ties cosmonaut isolation together with repressed memories [...]
Special effects have been a part of film since the very beginning. The very idea of organizing a series of slightly different images and playing them in quick succession to establish the illusion of movement in the eye of the viewer is in itself something of a special effect. Eadweard Muybridge, you sly dog, you. [...]
My biggest regret of tackling this article is that I have not seen more of Mr. Lon Chaney, Sr.’s (1883-1930) work. Of the handful of films I’ve seen of his, none have disappointed and all have been wonderfully twisted. Lon Chaney (father of the Wolf Man, Lon Chaney, Jr.) was one of the biggest icons [...]
Some movies are just too big for a mere 90 minutes. “I saw Gone With the Wind (1939), Ben Hur (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003) so I know epic.” First of all, thank you for not referencing Gladiator (2000). I agree. Spartacus (1960) is the far [...]
