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Meta
Category Archives: cinema
The Curious Case of the Catchy but Inappropriate Title
In Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Joe, for a genius, is a bit stupid. Maybe he hasn’t watched enough movies. Jimmy tells Joe to “bring the Process” to their meeting in the park. Joe never mentioned that word to Jimmy. … Continue reading
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cinema 2012
This week I watched two movies that coincidentally opened in the same week in 2012. Neither delighted me. In Looper, the terrible threat to be averted is a gangster bent on — gasp — wiping out a group of retired … Continue reading
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love or nothing
In Watch on the Rhine (1943; screenplay by Dashiell Hammett from a play by Lillian Hellman) the penniless Count remarks, Blecher, we do not like each other. The Nazi to whom he hopes to sell information replies, But that will … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, ethics
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late antiquity
An argument is offered that New Zealand is the wrong place to film Tolkien’s works: One of Tolkien’s great accomplishments was making Middle-earth seem vividly old. Wherever the reader looks, ruins and crumbling statues poke through the lichen. […] To … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, prose
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a shifting role
The original Nikita (1990) and the American remake Point of No Return (1993) had a minor character called Victor the Cleaner — played by Jean Reno and Harvey Keitel respectively — whose specialty was making evidence, such as bodies, disappear. … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, language
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has self-parody always been a thing?
The movie Taras Bulba (1962) opens with a narration. I thought: Have I heard that narrator before? Have I heard a parody of that narrator? Yes and yes. It was Paul Frees, who also narrated Dudley Do-Right.
pass the time by tracing rays
I had assumed that Pixar did not use ray-tracing because it could not provide certain desired lighting effects. Now Dad tells me that Monsters University is Pixar’s first ray-traced feature, which implies that the speed wasn’t available until now.