John Carpenter - They Live

Remembering John Carpenter’s "They Live"Do any of the great movie fight scenes stick in the memory as much as Nada taking on Frank in an alleyway in 1988's They Live? Is Roddy Piper and Keith David’s epic fight scene in John Carpenter’s They Live the greatest of all time? Granted, there have been some epic one on ones over the years: Neo versus Agent Smith in The Matrix, Indiana Jones versus The German Mechanic in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Bruce Lee versus Han in Enter the Dragon. But do a...

Somebody’s Always Listening

Paramount Pictures/Ringer illustration            As the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded, $100 million extravaganza ‘Megalopolis’ nears, it’s worth revisiting ‘The Conversation’ from 50 years ago as a reminder of what it looks (and sounds) like when a master is at work"At my age, I can afford for film to be a passion and not a business." That’s what Francis Ford Coppola told me 15 years ago during an interview about his 2009 film, Tetro, a glossy, quasi-autobiographical melodram...

Brawniest Remake of 2024 is of worst Hollywood trend

— Prime Video It’s uncertain whether or not a remake of Road House was necessary, but Doug Liman’s retelling of the 1989 Patrick Swayze cult classic is surprisingly instructive. It captures, for better and worse, everything about the current era of Hollywood filmmaking, resulting in a movie that’s often riotously funny, but ends up lacking in every way that the original succeeded — including being a completed production ready for release.The 2024 Road House follows Jake Gyllenhaal’s Elwood Da...

Hollywood Types - THE MODERNS

From the Chicago Reader (May 13, 1988). — J.R.THE MODERNS *** (A must-see)Directed by Alan RudolphWritten by Rudolph and Jon BradshawWith Keith Carradine, Linda Fiorentino, Geneviève Bujold, Geraldine Chaplin, Wallace Shawn, Kevin J. O’Connor, and John Lone.For its first hour, at least, The Moderns gives us an Alan Rudolph very nearly back at the top of his form, on a level that approaches that of his two masterpieces, Remember My Name and Choose Me. The effort isn’t sustained — and the movie...

Say Goodbye to Hollywood: John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust (1975)

By Jeremy Carr. There has never been a self-referential Hollywood feature quite like 1975’s The Day of the Locust, a twisting and twisted tale of sullied lives, desperation, and, ultimately, sheer madness." Hollywood has always been rather good at building itself up, generating films that flaunt the glamour of Tinseltown, the glory of sun-kissed stardom, and the charm of movie magic. At the same time, and particularly in the hands of more iconoclastic filmmakers, Hollywood has a...

Nuclear Transparency

Some secrets are difficult to see passively, but easy to see as a few "coincidences" are lined up. For example, did you know the Bikini was named after Bikini Atoll Nuclear testing? 07/01/1946 Bikini Atoll: First Post War Nuclear Detonation07/05/1946 Bikini Debut: named after Atomic tests. It was so obscene for the time they had to hire a stripper to model it! It became normalized after Playboy, Hollywood, and beauty pageants kept them in the public eye. By itself...

Hollywood Studio System

Near Matches Ignore ExactFull Text Everything2 Hollywood Studio System (thing) See all of Hollywood Studio System, no other writeups in this node. (thing) by mustard_monkey Tue Nov 19 2002 at 20:34:32 "The American Cinema is a classical art so why not admire what is most admirable. Not only the talent of this or that film maker but the genius of the system" The Hollywood Studio System 1930-59 The studio system had an equilibrium of components that is rare in the film industr...

STORY ESSENTIALS 9 - Transformation

STORY ESSENTIALS No. 9: Transformation - Michael Hauge Site Clip source: STORY%20ESSENTIALS%20%239%3A%20Transformation%20-%20Michael%20Hauge%20Site https://storymastery.com/STORY ESSENTIALS #9: TransformationYou are here:Home/Articles for Marketers/STORY ESSENTIALS #9: TransformationThis series reveals what I consider to be the ESSENTIAL components of any great story. These are the principles you must master if you want to impact people’s lives – and increase your revenue – whether you’re cre...

Morning in Hollywood

On June 20, 1975, two cinematic movements were born on the fins of one mighty fish. The latter was, of course, a great white shark, and the first movement was the invention of the blockbuster. Some might argue that happened three years earlier with The Godfather, but the majority opinion still holds for Jaws. And if Spielberg’s marine thriller loosened the hinges, George Lucas blew the doors off two years later with Star Wars. It’s a legendary start to a fascinating st...

First person to turn down an Oscar

Who was the first person to turn down an Oscar?Fri 3rd Mar 2023 17.30 GMT          The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science was formed in 1927 by Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM. Initially designed to give the blossoming film industry a respectable image and discuss labour disputes, the organisation began to consider handing out awards the following year. In 1929, the first Academy Awards ceremony occurred at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, hosted by the actor and filmmaker Douglas Fairb...

The creepy Pennywise reference in Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’

Since the 1970s, Hollywood has looked to Stephen King’s work as a go-to source of adaptation material. As a writer of horrors, thrillers, supernatural fiction, crime and sci-fi, King’s work has proved to be the perfect fit for the big screen, with over 50 of his stories receiving cinematic treatment. Some of the most successful adaptations of King’s work include Carrie, The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, and The Green Mile. However, none are as belove...

It’s Going to Be Epic - The Oral History of James Cameron

Skip to main content Filed under: Oral History "It’s Going to Be Epic": The Oral History of James Cameron From his early days as a special effects assistant to revolutionizing...

Commenting on Hollywood From Within Hollywood

Universal Pictures/Ringer illustration The new movie documenting two female journalists’ investigation into Harvey Weinstein is thorough and at times even powerful. But how do you reconcile the fact that Weinstein’s behavior was enabled by the silence of Hollywood with that same industry’s impulse to make a film about his demise? Once Harvey Weinstein’s crimes—and the larger picture of a system that allowed them to persist—became public, the film industry didn’t wait long to sta...

When Hollywood stars tried to free Roman Polanski with a 2009 petition

Back in 2009, Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland after a request from the United States authorities to do so. However, a year later, the Swiss government and police rejected the US’ request and released Polanski from detention in Zurich. The reason was partly due to a petition signed by several high-profile members of the Hollywood film industry.The petition read: "We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski. Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the ...

Safe sex scenes | Modern Times Review

Safe sex scenesSEX: Exploring the female body in Hollywood by tracing the making of sex scenes, the toll it takes on those involved, and what it means for women in the real world.Review written by Lauren WissotJuly 7, 2022For most of its history, Hollywood has been globally gaslighting the world, exporting the lie that the male gaze is somehow always benign or «neutral,» when of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Fortunately, we now have Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s (Wonder Women! ...

Digital Rocks - Issue 42 of N+1

Digital RocksHow Hollywood killed celluloid David Maljkovic, Temporary Projections (version 2). 2012, inkjet print on archival paper with collage element. 39 × 59". Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers.Hollywood is to the cinema what the United States is to the world. Its power is outsize. India, China, Nigeria, Russia—among many other countries—each release more movies annually than the five-member studio syndicate based in Los Angeles. But no other film sector carries more influence, ge...

The Bob Dylan connection in ‘The Big Lebowski’

As the City of Angels rises out of the desert and pans into view during the opening sequence of the Coen brothers’ masterpiece The Big Lebowski, we hear a conversational ode of sorts to ‘The Dude’. Within that opening stanza, in tones incongruous with the gaudy glow of the desert metropolis, Sam Elliot’s timeless timbre drawls out the following: "Sometimes there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place, he fits right in there."  Throughout their career the oddball brothers of ...

Screwball Comedy - history

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history. Twentieth Century A common misconception about 1930s Hollywood cinema is that escapism was the trend du jour. The ubiquity of genres like historical melodramas and musicals indicates that rationale may be true to an extent, but even the most fantastic films were grounded in some semblance of social realism. And how could they not be? With ...

Drive My Car named LA film critics best film of 2021

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car maintained its strong awards season form as it was named Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s (LAFCA) best film of 2021 while Jane Campion was anointed best director for The Power Of The Dog. It’s the second major critics award for Hamaguchi’s Japanese Oscar submission after New York Film Critics Circle honoured the drama earlier this month. The LAFCA, which announced its winners live on Twitter on Saturday (December 17), also awarded Hamaguchi and Tak...

Esoteric Hollywood Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film

The Paradox of Suspense - RSS

[Revised entry by Aaron Smuts on October 26, 2021. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] The ultimate success of Hollywood blockbusters is dependent upon repeat viewings. Fans return to theaters to see films multiple times and buy DVDs so they can watch movies yet again. Although it is something of a received dogma in philosophy and psychology that suspense requires uncertainty, many of the biggest box office successes are action movies that fans claim to find suspenseful on repeated viewings....

Wallace Wood - Lambiek Comiclopedia

Also "Wally Wood" c.f. Hollywood and Wally World in the film 'Vacation' with Chevy Chase. -zas Lambiek Comiclopedia Weird Science #14. Wallace Wood was a versatile American comic artist, who excelled both in high-tech science fiction artwork and in humorous satire. He is also referred to as "Wally Wood" (although the utterly disliked the nickname "Wally"), while he signed some of his work with "Woody". His work for EC "New Trend" comic books such as 'Weird Science' and 'Weird Fantasy' ear...

Sunday Reading: Adaptations

In 1998, the novelist Michael Cunningham published a short story in The New Yorker about a woman living in postwar Los Angeles who feels dissatisfied with her incomplete marriage. On the day of her husband’s birthday, she peruses Virginia Woolf’s novel "Mrs. Dalloway" and starts reflecting on the trajectory of her own life. "A Room at the Normandy" is an excerpt from Cunningham’s novel "The Hours," which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film, in 20...

Once upon a time in Hollywood, again: Tarantino revises his fairy tale

Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood (2019).I guess what I’m always trying to do is use the structures that I see in novels and apply them to cinema.–Quentin TarantinoDB here:Tarantino has often embraced print-based texts that revise or complement his films. He’s shared screenplays that differ sharply from the finished product, and written graphic novels derived from Django Unchained. Now he’s gone farther. He’s published a novelization that playfully modifies the  film’s title: Once Upon a Ti...

CITIZEN KANE: T for Technique and T for Tragedy

Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made, but it’s not the greatest movie Orson Welles ever made. In his lifetime, he described the movie as a millstone around his neck. No one could ever appreciate anything else he made because it was always held to that impossible standard. With some distance and critical reappraisal behind us, now we can see that he never really failed to live up to the promise of Citizen Kane. If anything, he surpassed it. Kane reinvented filmmaking, but it looks down...