Screen
Make way for yesterday
The movies started small. So small that only one person at a time could watch them. The year was 1892, and Thomas Edison and his colleague William Kennedy Laurie Dickson discovered that if you spun sequential photographs in a small box, you could create the illusion ...
Hard not to Laika
"Show your work.”
That statement is both an admonition given by rigid mathematics instructors and part of the reason why stop-motion animation continues to captivate....
Meet the new boss
Dior. The name itself invokes the very highest of French fashion. One of the original members of haute couture, Christian Dior opened his Parisian house in December of 1946 when he was just 41. By February 1947, Dior launched “The New Look,” as Harper’s Bazaar editor...
Hardly dying
John McClane (Bruce Willis), the hyper-violent man perpetually wrong in place and time, has always been Rambo by way of “grumpy cat.” The only thing that makes Die Hard actually Die Hard is the surly sense of humor McClane spouts while committing copious homicides. ...
Home viewing: Palme d’Or winners
The origins of France’s Cannes Film Festival lay not in La République, but neighboring Italy. Specifically, 1937’s Venice Film Festival, when Benito Mussolini stuck...
What is this, a space race for snails?
Obviously, the most exciting part of retelling humanity’s mad dash to set foot on the moon is Ryan Gosling quietly rage blinking. First Man...
Quirking on something different
To alter a phrase from Twain — who probably won’t mind because he’s dead — writer/ director Wes Anderson repeated history until he figured out how to rhyme. Barring a brief foray into stop-motion animation, Anderson’s oeuvre for the last decade redundantly hit the ...
Grindhouse ground out
I have a friend who tells this one joke where it takes an eternity to get to the punch line. And that’s the real joke: that you donated so much of your time for such a small amount of pleasure. The psychology behind my friend’s “humor” has apparently become writer/...
‘Bright Star’ pretty, but lacking substance
Certain images in Jane Campion's Bright Star are beautiful, as opposed to merely attractive, and only a major talent could've produced them. My favorite is a sundrenched shot of Abbie Cornish's Fanny Brawne, her head and heart newly opened to the intoxication of love...
