Month: April 2020

Here is a short rundown of film noir: …[b]ut the vivid co-mingling of lost innocence, doomed romanticism, hard-edged cynicism, desperate desire, and shadowy sexuality that was unleashed in those immediate post-war years proved hugely influential, both among industry peers in the original era, and to future generation of storytellers, both literary and cinematic. This site […]… Continue reading [1944] Double Indemnity — The Academy Nominees Project

A day is both a discrete event and part of a string of days that hopefully make up a full, expectant life. During, and within, each day seems insignificant and to evaluate requires a perspective unavailable to us until much later: we don’t pre-write memoirs for this reason, and often our elders are wise because […]… Continue reading [1987] Moonstruck — The Academy Nominees Project

Three-hour-long movies that feel like half-hour sitcoms are a treasure, and are extremely rare, especially that the style has shifted, almost totally away from this format in recent years. Labor has gotten simultaneously cheaper (software does a lot of the editing grunt work) and more expensive (it takes more specialized experience to run it). Budgets […]… Continue reading [1975] Barry Lyndon — The Academy Nominees Project

Pinpointing where a trope starts is a core concept in film history; tracing the origins of story tells a story itself. For example, think about the first time movie showed a natural disaster on screen. Can you remember which movie showed a tornado? Flood? Huge earthquake? It’s a challenge because this process is multi-dimensional, multi-cultural […]… Continue reading [1941] Here Comes Mr. Jordan — The Academy Nominees Project

The youngest Baby Boomers, poster children of Postwar America, would have been 15 in 1979; the oldest pushing 35. This isn’t new in generation theory—that there’s often as much difference at the margins of generations as there is between them. But they follow cycles on larger scales, on attitudes, and in events that define them. […]… Continue reading [1979] Breaking Away — The Academy Nominees Project

Since evolved from a romantic horror genre to a more complex emotional battleground, Gothic arts take pleasure in allowing audiences to take part in their characters’ suffering; it’s the defining feature. The Germans have a word for the positive-extreme version: schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in someone else’s pain. It’s a mostly strange oddity of the […]… Continue reading [1940] Rebecca — The Academy Nominees Project

There’s enough copy out there about how Ingmar Bergman drenched his feature, Cries and Whispers in red (röd). He chose red (especially after the majority of his earlier work was monochrome) for its striking visuals, color theory, and connection to Swedish history. If nothing else, in Sweden a specific red, Falu Rödfärg, colors a significant… Continue reading [1972] Cries and Whispers — The Academy Nominees Project

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7UKVzr7v1gM%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D0%26fs%3D1%26autohide%3D2%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26wmode%3Dtransparent Here’s Samuel L. Jackson being himself. The video does bleep out profanity. (Haha) If you know anyone going out in public places because they’re not taking Covid-19 seriously, you might just want to let Samuel L. Jackson do the speaking for you. via Actor Samuel L. Jackson Gives Us A Message Regarding Covid-19 — We… Continue reading Actor Samuel L. Jackson Gives Us A Message Regarding Covid-19 — We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OF-lElIlZM0%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26fs%3D1%26autohide%3D2%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26wmode%3Dtransparent I’ve coyned the word “younged” as the opposite of the good word “aged”. (The video below calls it “de-aging”.) If you saw Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” a movie I like very much, you’ll know that Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Robert De Niro, who are getting up there in years, looked a lot younger in… Continue reading How they “younged” the older actors in The Irishman — Why Evolution Is True

by Ryan Lanz “As a writer, I am just an actor in a play, telling a story that needs to be told.” -Rita Webb I hate memorizing lines. In my teens, I had a brush with the acting bug. I enjoyed the thrill of being on stage. The thunder of the […] via How Writers are… Continue reading How Writers are Actually Actors — A Writer’s Path