I was thinking the same thing.  In the technical catagories movies seem to win based on the buzz ane hype more than their actual merits.

I saw some clips at Comicon this year and it looks better than what you'd expect.  That said the Tintin concept isn't as well known in the U.S..  It will probably do good but not great bsiness in the States but clean up everywhere else.

For a compelling return to the era, pick up SAVAGE CITY by D.J English, a multi-focal take on racism and police corruption in 1960s New York.

If there is a disconnect its in our definition of "civilized.  The civilizing process doesn't mean the elimination of prostitution, drug addiction and other forms of deviant behavior, just the imposition of some kind of order upon them by forms of organized authority.  As for opium and laudenum— those were certainly…

In general Western towns and villages were settled rather quickly, after a certain rough transitional period.  The code of masculine self control celebrated in Western popular culture presents a rather selective vision of what it took to bring civilization to the frontier.  In fact, those wilder elements of Western…

Various parts of the West, when originally settled, had their wild elements, but those elements were tamed relatively quickly.  The honor codes of masculine self possession romanticized in Westerns survived longer in the streets of major cities than on the frontier. The concept of  individualism fostered by George W.…

A collection of films such as these reminds us that the Western is an evolving narrative concept, and that the purpose of early cinema was more versatile before the advent of the studio sytem.  As a big fan of the Western film in most of its guises, I'm really looking forward to seeing this.

I don't know if they re recycled, but in my sideline on spying on movie theaters in order to verfiy their patron counts, they are usually very proactive when it comes to collecting the glasses.  I take it that glasses have to be returned after a 3D engagement.  I have seen staff windex them on occasion, but that's it…

I've said this before, but this type of film (the gritty 70s policier) needs a more thorough critical re-evaluation.  As a genre, it is just as culturally expressive as film noir, and uses much of the technology developed in documentary films in the service of creating a new aesthetic for representing the city and its…

That's an interesting point about the kabuki influence.  Its always struck me that Kurosawa was interpreted as being more of an international filmmaker working in Japan, than a Japanese filmaker per se.  I'm not sure if the highly emotive level of the performances in movies like RASHOMAN is really connected to an…

Christ, I was stuck there on opening day.  You know you're in trouble when the BBC story on the Jumbo-Tron in your terminal is being shot less than 500 feet from where you are sitting.

The Klan was seen by certain forces in the the community as a defender of white Protestant American values, doing what "the law" couldn't (or wouldn't)do and gaining sanction in some quarters,  like the Minutemen a few year ago. The staging is a bit over the top, but the actions of the K.K.K., and the loss of its…

Chaplin owned his features and kept pristine prints in his own vault.  Granted, they've been digitally cleaned up for DVD but the original elements are better than what you usually find in movies from the era.  As THE KID was released in 1921, prints were made from original, not duped negatives used in the prints they…

The people I was hanging out with at the college radio station in the mid eighties were a contentious bunch, but there was a general concensus regarding the coolness of R.E.M.  There was even one really annoying girl in the group who became instantly tolerable because she had a cousin from Athens who knew "the boys". …

Glad to hear it.  I've been trying to find some of the early Heller books for a while.

It's a decent, though slimmed down adaptation.  Not a bad gateway into Monte Hellman either, though not his best.

His prose is adaquate but the research in his historical crime novels makes for some moderately compelling reading.  He's quite a blast at writer's panels though.

Hughes' IN A LONELY PLACE is also really interesting.  It's much darker than the movie.

I'd like to throw in Charles Willeford (THE BURNDT ORANGE HERESY, COCKFIGHTER, and the Hoke Mosley quartet) and David Goodis into the mix.

Big secret:  Professors teaching film history or criticism on the university level don't like the medium that much, hence know few facts about it.