Films @ Dave’s Info Cafe
Random observations on movies
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Continuity Editing
I just reread my previous post on Continuity vs Montage Editing and thought that I undervalued continuity editing and concentrated too much on the montage end of the spectrum. I just want to rebalance the equation a little bit. Continuity editing is very much Hollywood in that directors wanted to tell stories that were relatively [...]
Continue reading...The New Epics
Thursday, August 4, 2011
I thought I would just put down a few thoughts about what I call “The New Epics” – films with scope, ambition, flair, scale, and energy – that tell gripping stories of the human condition in a way that grabs the eyes and senses. You won’t find these at the cinemas regrettably but on TV. [...]
Continue reading...Feature Film on the IPhone?
Monday, February 14, 2011
I read recently that the celebrated Korean director, Park Chan Wook, previously mentioned in posts is to shoot his next feature film using the IPhone. Or more properly IPhones. His idea is to test out the technological capabilities of the IPhone and the immediacy it brings to shooting scenes. However, this will be no YouTube, [...]
Continue reading...Unforgiven – Screenplay Excellence
Friday, July 16, 2010
I watched Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” last night again and marvelled at the screenplay by David Webb Peoples. There are many things to admire about it. As most of you will know the premise of Unforgiven is that a killer comes out of retirement after 11 years to do one last killing for money when he [...]
Continue reading...Elizabeth – The Ultimate Political Thriller
Thursday, March 18, 2010
I watched Elizabeth on the TV the other night. Again. It must be the third or fourth time that I have seen the film. It never ceases to amaze me. It is the ultimate political thriller and still manages to rack up the tension even though you know she survives and thrives in the final [...]
Continue reading...Westerns – Part 5 – Rebirth
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The western as a genre was dead until 1989 but was revived by, of all things, a made for TV mini series directed by an Englishman. That series was Lonesome Dove, a four part drama, that rekindled an American love for the western. It was made for the small screen but it had epic ambitions [...]
Continue reading...Westerns – Part 4 – Demise
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The western died out in the early 1980s following the monumental disaster of Heaven’s Gate (1980). Not only did it bring a film studio to its knees financially but it made other studios extremely wary of investing in the genre. The underlying reasons though are not so much about the financial profligacy of the film [...]
Continue reading...Westerns – Part 3 – Easterns
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
John Ford’s westerns have influenced so many directors throughout the world so it was not so much of a surprise when “westerns” started being made outside the Hollywood system. The most famous mutation of the traditional western was the spaghetti western. These were films made largely in Europe (Spain being the most believable location to [...]
Continue reading...Westerns – Part 2 – John Ford
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Westerns have been around since the era of silent film. They have been the staple of early cinema and early TV. I can remember watching many western series on the box during the sixties such as Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Rawhide and many more. But the western started to become more of an art form in [...]
Continue reading...Westerns – Part 1
Monday, February 1, 2010
I haven’t really posted anything about genres so far so I thought I would start with one of my favourite genres – the western. Genres are a way of categorizing films that have a loose set of similar characteristics. They are inevitably vague with flexible boundaries but include sets of conventions that recur in many [...]
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Saturday, August 6, 2011
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