by HELEN GEIB
SEPTEMBER 2, 2010- READING MOVIES TO STUDY THE CINEMA OF WAR
I got the chance to be a teacher this week. A professor I know at one of the local universities who teaches a course on “the cinema of war” invited me to be a guest lecturer for the first class. My job was to teach the students how to “read” a film critically. Basically I tried to show them things to look for beyond story, character, and performance- to pay attention to the visuals and the soundtrack, and to be aware of how filmmakers use images and sounds to shape meaning and elicit a specific emotional and intellectual response. I was inordinately nervous, but it was also a lot of fun, and the students were great. (more…)
by HELEN GEIB
Come and listen you fellows, so young and so fine,
And seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary mines.
It will form as a habit and seep in your soul,
‘Til the stream of your blood is as black as the coal.
CHORUS:
It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where danger is double and pleasures are few,
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine. (more…)
by RICHARD WINTERS
Director Frank Perry may not be a name one throws out when mentioning some of the top directors, but his early work in collaboration with his screenwriter wife Eleanor was definitely a forerunner of the independent film movement and ahead of its time. (more…)
by HELEN GEIB
Takers shows that writer-director John Luessenhop and some or all of his three co-writers are in thrall to their filmmaking influences. Additionally, some of those influences are incompatible. (more…)
by MIKE MACCOLLUM
Bollywood remakes Stepmon (or at least it sure sounds like it), and American independent filmmakers do a variation on It’s a Wonderful Life (or at least it sure sounds like it). Those are the two movies opening in limited release in Indiana this week- proving, if nothing else, that it’s not just the big-budget Hollywood stuff that could use a little boost in the imagination department. For all the details, keep reading below…. (more…)
by HELEN GEIB
The post-summer, pre-awards season movie season has definitely arrived. Anything in this list strike your fancy? (more…)
by HELEN GEIB
Harry Brown (Michael Caine) is a pensioner living in a public housing estate in a depressed working class urban area. He is alone in his tidy apartment; his wife of many years is dying in the hospital. His uneventful daily routine is built around visiting his Cath and spending companionable hours talking and playing chess in the local pub with his longtime friend Len (David Bradley). (more…)
by HELEN GEIB
Winner: MULHOLLAND DRIVE
Directed by: David Lynch
Written by: David Lynch
Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux (more…)
by MIKE MACCOLLUM
Well, all of you who follow this feature of the column (if, indeed, any of you follow this feature) may have wondered where it has been for the last few months. Well, thanks to a busy work schedule, a new dog, and many other factors, Thinking Beyond the Multiplex: National Edition had to go on a little vacation for a while. But we plan on being back next Wednesday, in our regularly-scheduled slot, with news of theatrical openings for August 20 and 27 (a little more up to date than what follows). Then, for the next few weeks, “current” columns will alternate with “catch-up” columns, until every week has been covered. Once everything is caught up and current, this feature will go back to appearing every other week (on Wednesdays, for the most part). (more…)
by NIR SHALEV
Now this is the summer movie that I’d been waiting for for a long time! Here we have hundreds of naked women dancing with topless men and swimming during Spring Break while underwater seismic activity breaks rocks apart and reveals a lake within a lake, one containing an extinct kind of piranha. That’s right: thousands upon thousands of piranha fish that’d been extinct for over two million years and were living off one another, eating and tearing at each other are eventually released into a large lake filled with college students gone wild. If this doesn’t sound like your type of movie then you needn’t read on. (more…)
