Keeping Track (February 16, 2012)

by HELEN GEIB

Last Week at the Movies

The Quiet Man- wonderful, of course
Safe House
Pina- and also wonderful Read more

Keeping Track (February 9, 2012)

by HELEN GEIB

Last Week at the Movies

Would you believe crocus are blooming all over the neighborhood in the first week of February? (That’s a month too early, for those living at different latitudes.) Whether it’s a cold or unseasonable allergies, I’ve been in no shape for going to the movies. Only because it was a once-in-a-lifetime movie experience- no exaggeration- did I push myself out the door Sunday to see David Copperfield at the IU Cinema. Read more

Keeping Track (February 2, 2012)

by HELEN GEIB

Last Week at the Movies

Man on a Ledge
The African Queen
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Read more

Keeping Track (January 26, 2012)

by HELEN GEIB

Last Week at the Movies

As if a Powell and Pressburger movie on the big screen wasn’t special enough, the IMA screening of A Matter of Life and Death was followed by a Skype Q&A with Thelma Schoonmaker, who I knew as Martin Scorsese’s editor and who is also Michael Powell’s widow. The really bad reviews for Red Tails put me off it, but I did see the weekend’s other two new releases, Haywire and Underworld Awakening. Read more

Keeping Track (January 19, 2012)

by HELEN GEIB

Last Week at the Movies

Gene Tierney impressed me more than she ever has before in Leave Her to Heaven, the second film in the IMA’s Winter Nights series; even more than in Laura, which I adore. I’ve seen the movie described as the “Technicolor noir” more than once and while I’d call it noirish myself, I can see where the description comes from: the ceilings. Never have I seen so many ceilings with exposed beams in a single film. And if it wasn’t actual bars on the ceiling (consistently filmed from a camera position close to the floor, making it seem like the ceiling was pressing downward), it was corners and shadows, or bars on the balustrade or bars on the window. The movie even passes the venetian blind test in practically the first scene. They’re living in a cage.

New movie-wise, Contraband was a so-so start to the 2012 movie year. Also caught up with The Adventures of Tintin. Read more

Keeping Track (January 12, 2012)

by HELEN GEIB

Last Week at the Movies

The IMA’s Winter Nights series kicked off with a double feature of Douglas Fairbanks’ iconic The Black Pirate (1926) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), a Warner Brothers pre-Code. The pairing is explained by the series theme of Technicolor: Both films are top examples of two-strip Technicolor. An archivist from George Eastman House gave a very informative introduction (you could call it a very long introduction or a shortish lecture) on Technicolor as a company and an evolving technical process. There was improv piano accompaniment for the silent. Read more