I haven’t been keeping up very well the past couple of months at mentioning what I’m posting over on Row Three (aside from the crossposting of the DVD Triage and Film on TV posts, which are always posts here and there at the same time), so there’s a good chunk of them here, some of them a wee bit out of date. Sorry about that. But just in case you missed any of these posts over there, here’s some of what I’m been yapping about.

This is a film I saw at Cinefamily back in August almost by accident – it was a Wednesday night so I was volunteering, but they were showing this as part of a Cinespia-co-sponsored series of trippy films instead of their usual Wednesday night silents (in fact, I think the Wednesday night silents may be pretty much dead at this point, except for the monthly Silent Treatment series). I was a bit put out by there not being a silent, and I was planning to leave as soon as the movie started and my volunteering duties were over, but I found out it was directed by Milos Forman, and I’ve liked his other films, so I decided to check it out. So very glad I did, because I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I’ve been meaning to post this particular scene, of a young hippie showing a bunch of parents how to smoke marijuana.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim since I finished playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion back in, like, 2007. In other words, several years before Skyrim was even announced, I was dying to play this game. And so far, it’s pretty much everything I’d hoped it would be – almost exactly like Oblivion but with a few refinements (many of them pulled from Bethesda’s other major current-gen game, Fallout 3). I’ve been too busy with life to get much further in the game than I when I wrote this, but I’m no less eager to get home every night and try to spend a few hours in Skyrim.

Near the end of October, Cinefamily had a live band called Nilbog (presumably after the town in Troll 2) come in and perform their covers of classic horror scores, from John Carpenter to Bernard Herrmann to John Williams to Goblin, and after hearing them perform the music from Suspiria, I couldn’t get it out of my head and had to write this post about it. Mostly just an intro to the clip, though, which contains the first several minutes of Suspiria and already indicates just how important the Goblin score is to the feel of the film, and to the sound design of it in general.

I read this novel on Kurt’s suggestion, in a chat thread on Row Three about sci-fi novels. I had mentioned really enjoying Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and explained a bit about the plot, which involves a monastic order based on science rather than religion, but still incorporating a lot of elements from church history that I recognized and found fascinating. Kurt said I had to read A Canticle for Liebowitz stat, and he was totally right – this 1959 novel postulates a post-apocalyptic world in which a monastic order is the only thing saving the scientific writings of the twentieth century, and following it through the next several hundred years as the world rebuilds. Fascinating stuff for both sci-fi and history fans.

It’s easy to rail against remakes and despair that Hollywood never has any new ideas, but remakes have been around as long as movies have, and not all of them are bad! Here’s fifteen that are, in fact, not bad at all. They may not all be better than the originals, but I think they all deserve to be seen on their own terms, and they come from throughout Hollywood (and indeed, world cinema) history.

Rewatching Jaws recently reminded me how much I enjoy the quiet moments, the character-driven parts in between the shark attacks. Spielberg is so great on timing in his movies, but also at giving us something to care about and chew on besides the thrills and scares themselves. This scene with the three disparate shark-hunters in the boat drawn together (and to some degree, separated) by their scars is a perfect example of the vibe that Spielberg, Benchley, and the actors create so perfectly, making Jaws far more memorable than most creature features.

This evocative short played at Cinefamily before a Silent Treatment feature several weeks ago, and I was transfixed by it. It’s a very unique kind of animation that uses a box of thousands of pins that you can push in and out to create shapes when a light is shone on it from the side. I can’t imagine how difficult and time consuming creating this must’ve been, but it’s bizarre and gorgeous and creepy.

I told you some of these were really old – obviously we’re back at the beginning of October now, with a list of classic horror films that are light on gore, but heavy on atmospheric creepiness. I love horror films like this, and even though October is done for this year, it’s never too early to plan for next year!

I have been severely lacking in time to get my link love posts finished (or read other blogs, to be honest…sorry guys!). Some of these have been sitting in a draft post for weeks now, but the posts are good enough (and not time sensitive) that I still want to draw attention to them for anyone who hasn’t happened to read them yet.

Lucking Out and Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark by The Self-Styled Siren

There have been a whole lot of posts about Pauline Kael lately, thanks to the recent publication of a new collection of her writings, a new biography of her by Brian Kellow, and a new memoir by James Wolcott that includes many memories of her. This one from the Self-Styled Siren is one of the best, discussing both Kellow’s and Wolcott’s accounts as well as her own uneasy relationship with Kael’s criticism. And that’s a theme among most of the posts, as it is in my own life. I first became aware of Kael as a young film buff, probably thirteen or so, from 5001 Nights at the Movies, a collection of her New Yorker capsule reviews. I didn’t like her at all, finding her dismissive of things I loved for what I thought were all the wrong reasons. I didn’t read anything else of hers for years, until I forced myself to read some of her long-form essays and found someone impassioned about film but incredibly idiosyncratic about it. I still find her difficult much of the time, but she can also be really insightful. The Siren gets at all this and much more. See also articles from Jim Emerson, Dennis Cozzalio, and Glenn Kenny.

It Ain’t the Meat (It’s the Motion): Thoughts
on movie technique and movie criticism by Jim Emerson at scanners::blog

I almost included this essay among the Kael essays linked as “also sees” above, but it really deserves its own place. It starts off dealing with a bunch of quotes either from or about Kael regarding the question of technique and style – Kael resolutely refused to discuss technique on any technical level, arguing that the general public didn’t give a damn and privileging emotional impact over technique. Emerson distinguishes between “technical” and “technique”, showing how an understanding and explication of technique doesn’t necessarily have to be presented technically to readers, but also wrestling with the core of Kael’s populist stance.

Not Appearing in This Film: The Silent Movie Career of Carole Lombard – Sort Of by The Mythical Monkey

A fun piece submitted for a Carole Lombard blogathon in October (yeah, told you some of these were rather old), this one looks back on a part of Carole Lombard’s career that I frankly didn’t know existed. If you’d asked me, I would’ve said Lombard started in film in the early ’30s (I think 1932′s Supernatural is the earliest Lombard film I could name), but I would have been wrong. She actually started in film as early as 1921, when she was twelve. But she’s either invisible in most of these films, the films are lost, or they’re exceedingly lackluster. Still, the Mythical Monkey seeks out what he can, and brings forth a fascinating picture of a beautiful girl who never quite found her niche until screwball comedy came along with 1934′s Twentieth Century.

In Profile: The Life and Films of Bong Joon-ho by Jordan Winter at Anomalous Material

So far in my admittedly limited experience, Korean cinema is pretty fantastic (I think I’ve seen eleven or twelve Korean films and basically loved them all), and Bong Joon-ho is right at the center of it right now. He’s got the crowd-pleasing, genre-bending The Host, and the critical darling Memories of Murder, and a whole lot else. Jordan Winter runs through his whole filmography, finding patterns and connections among the films as well as charting a trajectory for his career, which I certainly hope is only beginning.

Pioneers of Animation: Winsor McKay by Brandie at True Classics

Winsor McCay is justly credited as one of the creators of animation, being one of the first cartoonists to move his drawings to the screen and figure out how to make them move – not only that, he was one of the first to give his animated creations personality and interaction. Brandie has written a great rundown of his career, both as cartoonist and animator (because the two were inextricably connected), and of his importance to early cinema and to animation as we know it today.

Sometimes, You Have to Come Back to The Tree of Life by Greg Ferrara at CinemaStyles

I loved The Tree of Life the minute I saw it, but not everyone did, and I respect that. Greg didn’t love it the first time he saw it, but he went back and watched it again, and this piece is a result of that second viewing. And it’s wonderful. Not only because he now agrees with my love of the film, but because it’s such a lovely piece about how to watch any film, how to let it get hold of you, and because it’s hard to admit complete changes of mind. It’s less of an “aha, got it” moment here, and more that the film just didn’t let him go, and his way of expressing that is perfect.

Sound and Vision: Charlie Chaplin and the Sound of Silence by Carly at the Kitty Packard Pictorial

Charlie Chaplin is well known for continuing to make silent films (well, two of them, at any rate) well into the sound era. But it’s maybe not quite as well known how important sound and music were to him, even in the silent era. He played and wrote music himself, and was one of the earliest people to provide theatres with fully-written score to be played alongside his silents. I knew he wrote scores for some of his films, but I had no idea how deep his appreciation and use of music went until reading this excellently researched and presented article.

Happy Birthday, Louise Brooks by The Mythical Monkey

I try not to include multiple articles from the same source, but this post has been so long in the making that people are oustripping my ability to do that without skipping over great posts. So I had to let a couple of people in here twice. I know virtually nothing about Louise Brooks other than that her hairstyle started a bob craze and that she was in two highly regarded G.W. Pabst films, Pandora’s Box and The Diary of a Lost Girl. Reading this article was a treat, but a sobering one, as Brooks’ life and career seemed constantly undermined by mismanagement and her own poor decisions, despite her obvious talent and appeal. By the end, I really wanted to order a do-over for her – and recommitted myself to seeing whatever films of hers I can find.

Diabolique by Chris at Silent Volume

Chris has been eschewing his usual silent cinema posting diet due to a Clouzot retrospective going on in Toronto, and all his reviews from that are worth reading, but I really liked this one because it both reminded me that I need to rewatch Diabolique and gave me a lot of things to think about that I hadn’t thought of before for when I do, especially in relation to its use of genre. Like, it’s usually billed as a thriller or sometimes a film noir, but I hadn’t really considered how close to horror territory it comes – I’m definitely going to look for way that it genre-bends next time I watch it.

The Great Citizen Kane Debate at True Classics

You can’t run around in film buff circles for five minutes before finding out that Citizen Kane is considered the finest film of all time by many, many people. You can’t run around in such circles for more than ten minutes before finding out that many other people think Citizen Kane is hopelessly overrated. The girls at True Classics take this debate to blogathon form, asking people to write pieces either for or against Kane as the greatest film of all time. I’ve seen the film five or six times and still don’t know which side I come down on, so I didn’t write anything for it, but the bloggers who did participate have some really good perspectives, definitely proving the debate is far from settled.

Czech New Wave series at Bonjour Tristesse

Bonjour Tristesse does a good many marathons to catch up on specific genres of film, and does a WAY better job than I do of actually following through on these marathons. Right now, the Czech New Wave is under scrutiny, at the rate of a few films per week. I’ve seen a few of these films myself, and it’s definitely a movement I like and want to see more of – I’m watching the progress here closely to help guide my own eventual viewing.

Godard Series: Pierrot le fou, etc. at Andy Buckle’s Film Emporium

Meanwhile, Andy Buckle has chosen Jean-Luc Godard, a filmmaker very close to my own heart, as his director of the month, and is going through at least all his major 1960s films. I’m not sure how far he intends to go, and really, there’s no reason I chose to link the Pierrot le fou review as opposed to any of the others, except that Pierrot le fou is one of my favorite Godard films and I think Andy wrote about it very well. Check his “Classic Throwback” category for more reviews – he’s going pretty much in chronological order.

The Nostalgia Merchants by David Kalat at Movie Morlocks

This is a really great and wide-ranging article from David Kalat, touching on everything from the difficulty of selling (or even explaining) silent films to modern audiences to the ease of introducing them to children, but with a central focus on the idea of the “nostalgia merchants,” which he defines as people who are fans of classic film and refuse to see value in anything else. The “they don’t make them like that anymore” syndrome. Kalat is obviously a fan of classic and silent film – his opening anecdote recounts a Harry Langdon box set that he developed and promoted – but he has a very astute point that in many cases, the nostalgia merchants who think they’re defending the thing they love actually end up being the worst ambassadors for it. I love classic films. I love contemporary films. Everything old is not good (or bad) by virtue of being old, just as everything new is not good (or bad) by virtue of being new. Kalat’s article hits a lot of points, but this is one classic film fans like me need to hear and remember.

It’s Buster Keaton’s Birthday at the Mythical Monkey Writes About the Movies

Well, it WAS Buster Keaton’s birthday two days ago when the Mythical Monkey posted this really excellent article on Keaton – it hones in specifically on Steamboat Bill, Jr., but also gives a background on Keaton’s life and entry into show business. I’ve seen a lot of Keaton films, but hadn’t really read up on his life very much, so this was a very helpful piece to have come through my feed-reader this week.

Life is Much the Same, Sometimes Bitter, Sometimes Sweet by Stevee Taylor at Cinematic Paradox

Reading Stevee Taylor’s blog gives me hope for the next generation. She’s sixteen years old and not only is she actively seeking out great films like Sunrise and many others (as well as plenty of contemporary films of all sorts), but she’s writing about them with a depth of insight and command of language that most teenagers don’t even know exist. I’m stereotyping teenagers, I know. It’s for literary effect. But truly, she writes about film much more compellingly than many other bloggers – a fact I recognized even before I realized how young she is. I was watching films like this at her age, but I wasn’t writing about them as well, that’s for sure. This is a lovely review of Sunrise, one of my all-time favorite films, but the rest of her blog is well worth reading as well. In short, Stevee is the opposite kind of film fan from the ones Kalat derides as nostalgia merchants (see above) – the kind of film fan that we should all strive to be.

Drive: An Under the Hood Manual by Jim Emerson at scanners::blog

A collection of quotes by Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling about Drive, collected by Jim Emerson. I’m not much for reading interviews most of the time, so these quotes were all new to me reading this post, but they give quite the insight into the filmmakers’ vision of the film – a vision I could see while watching it, but it’s great sometimes to hear those impressions filled out by the writer/director. Refn and Gosling both have an excellent understanding of their craft, and communicate it well.

Elisabeth Rappe (Film.com) and Jake Cole (Not Just Movies) on Dumbo

Two takes on Disney’s Dumbo (released this week on DVD and Blu-ray); Elisabeth observes that Dumbo seems to be much less talked-about, and less-merchandised, than most of Disney’s other films and discusses why that is as well as why it’s an enduring classic anyway, while Jake discusses the intriguing fact that Dumbo was made as a blatant cash grab after the financial losses of Pinocchio and Fantasia, and champions the film as among Disney’s best despite that. It is true, when I think about Disney classics, Dumbo is rarely the first one to come to my head, but it has a charming simplicity and depth of feeling that still hold up. Elisabeth and Jake help show us why (and yes, both do talk about the depiction of the crows).

Review: Hanna by Roderick Heath at Ferdy on Films

I didn’t write a full review of Hanna when I saw it, but if I had, it would’ve said the same basic things that Roderick does here – but likely not as eloquently. I don’t always agree with Roderick, but this is one time that I absolutely do. His descriptions here of what director Joe Wright is doing with genre and his praise for all the actors and other talent involved are spot-on. I even agree with his offhanded remarks about Atonement! Reading this review makes me that much more anxious to rewatch Hanna, and soon.

Jim Henson: Master of Muppets by Mercurie at A Shroud of Thoughts

I have to admit to ignorance about a lot of Muppet-related things. I didn’t even really grow up with Sesame Street, I’ve only seen a few of the movies, and I’ve only seen a few episodes of the show that I started getting on DVD before I canceled my Netflix DVD plan. So this little journey through the life and work of Jim Henson was really great for me to see a bit about his story, how the Muppets got started, and the enormous impact that he’s had on generations of TV viewers and moviegoers. It’s a legacy I’m very much looking forward to getting more into soon.

Blu-ray Consumer Guide: September 2011 by Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running

I think I didn’t link Kenny’s previous Blu-ray guide, but it wasn’t because it wasn’t awesome. They’re all awesome. Either I just forgot or the timing was weird on my links post or something. Probably I shouldn’t keep linking to the same series every time, but highlight other bloggers doing other things, but these posts is just so great – he grades on the quality of the blu-ray disc itself, which is info sometimes hard to find on other sites, but also throws in plenty of brief insights into the films. It’s a good read every month. I’m really glad he’s continuing to do it.

Treasures 5: The West 1898-1938 by The Self-Styled Siren

At some point I need to manage to get a LOT more money somehow so I can buy all these sets being put out by the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF); I’m lucky in that I get to see some stuff like this at Cinefamily and elsewhere around Los Angeles, but there are so many more riches available that I want to see and will likely never be available for renting anywhere. Gotta buy them. :) This set contains two films that were supported by the For the Love of Film blogathan last year – a blogathan that I hope continues annually so I can get in on it more next time!

The past couple of weeks have seen some nicely varied activity on Row Three. The series posts seem to be going well, and generating the hoped-for interaction, so we’ll try to keep that up. As far as regular reviews, I got one up for Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, and only a week or so after it was released! That’s a major triumph for me…I need time to mull things over. I’ll never make it as a weekly trade reviewer. Good thing I don’t really want to be that. In any case, I liked the movie a good bit, and I’ve already talked about it in my September Scorecard, so I’ll just leave you to read that and/or the full review at Row Three.

I’ve been idly figuring out which directors I’ve seen the most films by, and Billy Wilder came out fairly close to the top, with fourteen. Not surprising; he’s a fantastic writer/director and I went through a period as a teenager just gobbling up everything of his I could find. In fact, I’d say he’s probably one of the first directors I actively knew by name and sought out their films. So I decided to do a Rank ‘Em entry and see how his filmography stacks up. I threw in films he wrote but didn’t direct, too, for good measure, bringing the total up to eighteen. It was challenging near the top simply because his top four or five films are all top-notch and difficult to choose between, but I’m fairly content with my placement. Meanwhile, Marina ranked Guy Maddin films, Domenic ranked Steven Soderbegh films, and Ross ranked Brad Pitt films. We like lists, yes we do.

Along with our ongoing post series, we’re also going to try to participate a little more in blogathons and other events across the blogging community, and what better way to get our feet wet than with a few posts about Canadian maverick Guy Maddin, a favorite among many Row Three contributors, for a blogathon hosted at the Keyframe blog over at Fandor (a streaming video site you should really check out if you like non-mainstream film). Kurt talked about his favorite Maddin film Careful, Colleen posted a 3×5 review of Tales of Gimli Hospital, Marina ranked her top five Maddin films, and I wrote a bit about my early experiences with Maddin, since I’ve only just started looking at his filmography this year.

For my latest MorePop entry, I threw together a list of some music I’ve been checking out in September – there have been a LOT of indie releases this month, including some I haven’t even had a chance to get to yet! So this is just a sampling of what’s been filling up my Spotify, along with videos and streams of songs for each one. Including the new Mates of State album Mountaintops, which is earworming me right now. This week, Marina says goodbye to R.E.M. and gives us her top ten R.E.M. songs.

In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) by Jim Emerson at scanners::blog

Jim Emerson has been writing about his distaste for Christopher Nolan’s action scenes for years now (if you dig through his archives, there are a whole bunch of posts niggling at The Dark Knight), and now he’s put up a series of video essays talking about incoherence in action scenes, taking them apart shot by shot to show what he means when he says an action scene is incoherent. He starts with a chase sequence in The Dark Knight, but moves on to Salt and others in subsequent chapters. I tend to agree with him; when scenes are edited the way this one is, I check out pretty quickly and just wait for it to be over before paying attention again. Not only do I find them confusing because of the lack of master shots and adherence to conventions like the 180 degree and eyeline rules, but they get pretty boring for me, too. For the counterpoint, here’s a response that argues, just as technically, that Nolan’s choices make perfect sense and are, in fact, forging a new style of editing that uses cues other than the 180 degree and eyeline rules to establish space.

TIFF Coverage by Ryan McNeil at The Matinee

There’s a lot of TIFF coverage going on right now, of course, but I’ve really been enjoying Ryan’s – he’s not only got reviews that focus nicely on the experience of the film, but recaps of the festival-going in general (meet-ups, hangouts, etc.) that give a good feel for what it would be like to be there, and also episodes of his podcast going up covering the festival. I’m jealous, but I’m grateful for people like Ryan who bring a bit of the fest to us.

The Story State of Orson Welles on DVD by Jeffrey M. Anderson at Movies.com

As canonized as Orson Welles is in the history of cinema, it’s mostly based on Citizen Kane, and to a lesser extent Touch of Evil and The Magnificent Ambersons. At least part of his lionization is certainly his legendary problems with studio intervention, having nearly all of his post-Kane films taken out of his hands to one degree or another. But the fact is that most of his films aren’t easily available to see at all. Even Ambersons had never been on DVD until last week, when it was released ONLY as part of a set with the Citizen Kane re-release. Jeffrey M. Anderson runs through all of Welles’ filmography and discusses the DVD availability or lack thereof of each film.

DC’s New 52, Week 1 by Ed Howard at Thinking in Panels

Ed Howard of Only the Cinema, one of the most considered and erudite film blogs around, posted a piece last week that wasn’t about cinema at all, but about comic books – DC is rebooting their entire line, and Ed is starting out reading every issue (some 13 a week!) to get into the series. I’ve never been a serial comic book reader, but I’m thinking about jumping into these. Ed has since moved the comic book talk over to a new blog, Thinking in Panels, and has the second week’s post up as well.

Fashion in Film: All About Eve by Angela at Hollywood Revue

Angela’s gearing up a little early for her September 24th Fashion in Film blogathon with this absolutely wonderful piece on the costuming in All About Eve and how the very clothes that the characters are wearing play into character development and story progression. I’m admittedly very fashion backwards, so I rarely notice this stuff beyond “hey, that’s a really pretty dress” (if that, even!). This is a thoughtful and very helpful analysis. And she’s done one on Top Hat now, as well.

Pre-Code Gams and Damsels by Carly at the Kitty Packard Pictorial

A glorious picspam post with tons of screencap and glamour shots of lovely 1930s ladies…and their legs. A shapely gam is pre-Code heaven, and these ladies are the top of the heap. Thanks to Carly for putting this post together! Sometimes a good set of pictures is all you really need, and she excels at that at the aptly named Pictorial.

Anita Loos at the Mythical Monkey Talks About Film

This week the Mythical Monkey looked back on one of the best screenwriters of the silent and early sound eras – Anita Loos. With a bright wit and a way of making title cards not just informative but fun to read, Loos was one of several female screenwriters who formed the backbone of silent Hollywood writing. She made the jump into sound perfectly well, too – her screenplay adaptation of Clare Booth Luce’s The Women is one of my all-time favorites (I even chose it as the best-scripted movie I’ve seen in the 50 Day Movie Challenge). I learned more about her from this post and now respect her even more, for which I thank the Monkey once again. :)

Towards a New Film Criticism by Willie Osterweil at The New Inquiry

This article calling for the end of auteurism and the end of criticism has been making the blogosphere rounds for a few weeks now, even to the point that Kevin B. Lee interviewed the author on the Keyframe blog for further details on his position. Well, I finally got around to reading it myself, and I have to agree with Glenn Kenny, this is a load of bull. I’m certainly interested in discussing the value of auterism in modern film production, and I certainly agree that discounting the work of thousands of people who work on films to solely credit the director is invalid. But here’s the thing – no film critic worth their salt does that, and Osterweil has very little understanding of the auteur theory in general, historical film production, or the history of critical thought. He’s a reactionary Marxist using the film industry as a scapegoat in his call for the end of capitalism (he says exactly that in the Lee interview). He quotes only one critic in his entire diatribe – David Edelstein, who, as Kenny and his commenters point out, is a disciple of Pauline Kael, an outspoken attacker of auterism, and thus quoting Edelstein as an auteurist is disingenous at best and outright ignorant at worst. To his main point, there’s nothing wrong with analyzing the means of production and applying Marxist theory to film – you can get some really salient readings that way. But you don’t have to eliminite every other approach, especially when you don’t even understand what they mean.

It’s been a busy week or so over at Row Three. We’re trying to get some weekly columns in place, including three I posted in over the past ten days. Rank ‘Em does just what it says, takes an actor or director and ranks them in order of the author’s preference. It often ends up in some surprises, like when I did Milla Jovovich last week and put the much-loved Dazed and Confused almost at the bottom of my list. What can I say, I don’t care for it very much. I ended up with twelve Milla films altogether that I’d seen, including all the Resident Evil films as well as tonier fare like The Claim and Stone.

The Finite Focus series highlights a particular scene, including a clip of it if at all possible and discussing it, sometimes with quite in-depth analysis, other times just to gush about how much we love it. This series has been in place sporadically since long before I joined Row Three, and it’s always one I love. Hopefully setting it every week will encourage me to write more things for it. Goodness knows I have enough scenes I love! This week I chose to do one that’s been on my mind for quite a while – the brief but powerful dinner scene in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, when Joseph Cotten reveals his true inhumanity.

And we’re finally calling the demise of our sister site MorePop, which hasn’t really been active for several months/years, even. But, phoenix-like, MorePop arises as a column on the Row Three main site, where we can talk about pop culture things NOT film-related. The first of those went live this week, as I talk about Portal 2, the game that has eaten my life for the past three weeks. Hopefully lots more awesome stuff to come from all of us in these columns, and that’s not even all we have in store!

Nicholas Ray Blogathon, hosted by Tony Dayoub at Cinema Viewfinder

I noticed Jake Cole doing a bunch of Nicholas Ray posts over the past week or so, and turns out they’re part of a much larger blogathan celebrating the great director (Rebel Without a Cause, In a Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar, etc.). Ray would’ve been 100 years old this year, so it’s fitting to see a great turnout for the blogathon, and a variety of people participating. I haven’t had time to look through everything yet, but this should be some very good reading.

Too Much Madness to Explain in One Text by Oliver Lyttelton at The Playlist

Only a few weeks after Joe Cornish’s excellent genre film Attack the Block was released in US theatres, we started hearing reports of riots in London perpetrated by “hoodies,” gangs of kids wearing hooded sweatshirts from the poorest part of London. Hoodies also happen to be the main characters and indeed, the heroes of Attack the Block. Far-removed from both the real-life riots and the setting of Attack the Block in the US, it’s impossible to see one and not think of the other. The rioting has died down now, but this article from Oliver Lyttelton (residing in South London) is still an excellent reading of the two against each other. He wrote it on time; blame me for the delay in recommending it. :)

How to Make an Intelligent Blockbuster and Not Alienate People by Mark Kermode

This article (excerpted from Kermode’s newest book) has been stirring up discussion and controversy since it was posted a week or so ago. The basic premise is that people go to see movies based on hype and are often disappointed and don’t like the tentpole blockbusters even though the box office receipts prove they paid to see them. Kermode argues, if people are going to see a tentpole release because it’s a tentpole release, then they don’t have to be dumb to succeed – you can make intelligent blockbusters ike Inception and make a ton of money AND have audiences who are better satisfied at the end of it all. I think his argument is a bit facile (there are plenty of tentpoles that fail despite hype, and Inception is a fringe case based on Nolan’s name that’s not easily repeatable), but his general stance that we shouldn’t settle for whatever dumb tripe the studios throw at us even if it’s shiny and glossy I can get totally get behind.

Play It On the G Strong by Brandie at True Classics

Starting off with a general history of burlesque, then moving on to its most famous practitioner Gypsy Rose Lee, then on to Lady of Burlesque, the film version of Lee’s novel The G-String Murders, this post is entertaining from start to finish. Lee was originally meant to star in the film adaptation of her novel, but the role eventually went to Barbara Stanwyck instead, and Brandie reviews the film, recognizing Stanwyck’s contribution to what it otherwise a relatively routine film. I’ve seen the film, but finding out about the background of burlesque and the project’s history was really interesting.

Looking Different Today by David Bordwell at Observations on Film Art

Here Bordwell talks about editing trends in the 1910s, showing the very birth of mature continuity editing as editors start cutting to closeups and insets to add emotional and thematic content to the story. He also looks at some very early 1910s compositions, noting that they often have a lot more going on in the frame than later films – sometimes too much for us to easily figure out what’s going on, as our attention is distrated to different parts of the frame. (Note this is a different thing than using deep focus – a good deep focus shot will have everything available to see, but still be able to draw our attention as necessary for the narrative.) His hypothesis is that people actually understood images differently then, and we have lost the ability to understand compositions like that. Based on my own experiences with certain styles of painting and stained-glass windows, I think it’s an intriguing possibility.

Remember My Forgotten Man by Lara at Backlots

An exposition and appreciation of one of my all-time favorite musical numbers from one of my all-time favorite musicals. I love Gold Diggers of 1933 to bits, and the musical numbers are some of the best Warren and Dubin ever wrote, or Busby Berkeley ever filmed. The film is notable for its very head-on approach to the Depression, and nowhere is that more evident than in this number, as Lara indicates very well.

Chaos Cinema by Jim Emerson at scanners::blog

Jim Emerson has made no bones of his dislike for incoherent action scenes (and I agree with him upon this point), and here he goes into again, discussing the current trend toward what he calls “chaos cinema” and going back and forth on what filmmakers have said about it themselves and then what they actually do in their films. Hint, they’re not always consistent. He also includes a video from Matthias Stork that details, with video clips, the kind of thing they’re talking about. It’s a really good video, and a good article.

Yes, Really with Wilde.Dash #23: Love Story by Wilde.Dash at Love and Squalor

A genuinely hilarious review of the film that has, in some ways, become the template for romantic dramas. And yet, does it deserve to be? I haven’t actually seen Love Story myself, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the hell out of Wilde.Dash’s approach to reviewing it. I literally laughed out loud a few times, and it’s rare that I read reviews that are that engaging.

What’s on TCM September 2011 by Angela at Hollywood Revue

Angela runs down the whole month of TCM programming, with some excellent recommendations. I do this weekly in my Film on TV posts, but Angela’s focus on TCM means her coverage of their programming is even better than mine, and has more of a focus on classic Hollywood fans. She especially highlights The Story of Temple Drake (Sep 14) and The Constant Nymph (Sep 28), two films that haven’t been seen basically since their release due to censorship and copyright issues, until TCM worked with restoration teams at MoMA and the Library of Congress to bring the two films to the TCM Film Festival. This month is the first time the two films have played on the channel, though, and believe me, they’re both worth it.

Movie Titles That Deserve Their Own Hall of Fame by Jeff Stafford at Movie Morlocks

A really fun post from the Morlocks, highlighting a whole bunch of bizarrely-titled films – some of the usual suspects like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, but also a bunch that I have never heard of before and definitely gave me a good laugh. Not to mention the posters that go along with them are usually priceless as well.

This week on Row Three I posted a list of eleven tracking shots I love (counting tracking, crane, dolly, and steadicam all together – just as long as there’s camera movement involved). Well, it’s actually thirteen, but two of them aren’t single-take, so I added them on as bonus. A lot of them will be familiar to film buffs, but I tried to get some variety in there. Plus there are a lot of other good suggestions in the comments. Here’s just one, of course the iconic opening shot of Touch of Evil:

Touch of Evil, Orson Welles – 1958 – 3:20

The granddaddy of tracking shots opens Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, following a car with a bomb in the trunk all the way across the border into Mexico, always in the background even when we’re being introduced to our main characters in the foreground. There were tracking shots before this, of course, but Welles set a new bar with the complexity and suspense of this one.