I had the same reaction when I first saw this sometime in the mid 70s.  I get that, objectively, the quasi-documentary look of the photography, aggressive editing and the heightened, often grating amplification of ambient sound broke down studio artiface afflicting hard boiled police procedurals—just look at the…

I've seen Friedkin do Q & A's on numerous occasions and I'm convinced that everything he says contains a great amount of embellishment.  He's a terrific storyteller though, on the level of Bob Evans, and just as reliable.

It also takes place over an actual geographical space between Long Beach and Carson, and it doesn't skip all over the place as most chases do

Seventies urban crime films are kind of a genre onto themselves, as distinctive in their aesthetics as film noir in the 40s, albeit without the same love or nostalgia.  Someone here ought to do a primer or gateway article on this.

Vertigo's reputation makes it enticing as a gateway, but one should really get a good grasp on Hitchcock before trying to appreciate it.  The deliberate pacing, and the sometimes uncertainty in tone when handling the more melodramatic aspects of Scotty's descent into insanity, aren't really typical of Hitchcock's…

This movie was my gateway to black comedy, but, in an inverse move to this inventory, the movie hasn't held up for me as well, as I'd have liked.  Too many monologues and a tendency to inscribe its themes and ideas in stone get rather boring after a while.

Musicals were the only "classics" my parents were into, and they genre was my introduction to classic movies by osmosis.  Consequently I have a fondness for GIGI and THE MUSIC MAN in the same proportion as Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah movies that I discovered on my own when I was finding my own tastes.

Gentleman Prefer Blondes is probably the best gateway—It's fast, brutal, self knowing, and funny besides.  If you watch Carousel expecting a light, frothy love story in a quaint New England setting you will be traumatized.  I saw it as a kid and cried through the whole last half.

Also:  Only Angels Live in my Town, of which a tee is worn by none other than Philip Seymour (see-more) Hoffman in a Michael Penn video.

If the question as to the focus on this subject relies on the increased incidents of bullying that seem to be occurring at this point in time, it actually is.  Since the 1980s special needs students have been mainstreamed into traditional classes where their psycho-social needs are not understood by their peers, and…

Removing the Greek chorus kept the story within the characters point of view and eliminated the Brechtian stagecraft that would have collided with the cinematic sensibility of the film.  Removing "Kiss Me" however, seemed done because Burton can't do sentimental romantic comedy.  Overall a better adaptation than I…

In the novel Westerby provides some exposition that was eliminated in the film.  The expository material given by Graham in the film was originally from another character.  I guess this means that they won't be doing The Honorable Schoolboy as WEsterby is entirely different in TTTS

I appreciated that the adaptation was faithful to a point, but what couldn't be explained because of the cutting was simply changed so the plot would make sense, particularly in the last half .  It was Ellroy's story, but the film took on a personality of its own that worked largely because it remained coherent.

Most of Hitchcock's films were adaptations that invented whole passages that diverged from their source material and reflected the director's own tastes and proclivities.  Few would argue that THE 39 STEPS is a greater classic in film than it is as a novel, and the same for REAR WINDOW.  STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is up for…

Fun Fact:  Mitt Romney saw HUNGER GAMES with his family last Saturday in Del Mar, flying low while his ass was being handed to him in Louisiana.  Being Mitt Romney, he attended a ritzy luxury theater with plush leather seats and table service with a 20 dollar price tag for asmission.  The Kicker:  He tipped the waiter…

I couldn't agree more.  With Ford you have a very big catalogue filled with terrific movies that seem a bit dated without being prepped to the overall style of genre movies of the period (and  THE SEARCHERS is definitely in there).  I'd begin with the black and white masterpieces, which seem less awkward.  VERTIGO  is…

There also aren't all that many films that make the choice of which ones to see first all that daunting.  Perhaps the topic should have focused on a specific period of Italian or European classic art house cinema.  Over time the high end art house cinema between ROME:  OPEN CITY and WEEKEND seems like a distinctly…

The notion that documentaries strive for authenticity seems to be more post 1965 with the Cinema verite movement.  Movies like the ones described were more or less the norm.

I wouldn't say that the story was drug induced.  The ending, bringing Noodles back to where the movie "started", seems to be resetting the memory loop by which we've experienced most of the action, mostly from his perspective.  It conveys the notion that Noodle's "reality" is lost in a circular pattern of memory…

My vote for what was left off is Jim Thompson's POP 1280, where the narrator just collapses under the weight of the shit he stirs up.  Come to think of it, almost all of Thompson's books qualify.