Good point but you really can't argue that slavery was the vehicle through which this sentiment was expressed. White supremicist assumptions were also prevailent in the North, and the rather lukewarm federal response to the implimentation of segregation in the late 19th century was largely based on the assumption…

I think he also used cameras usually reserved for credit sequences and rebuilt the NASA lenses so that they'd fit, although I don't know how that created the effects that they did. While BL is gorgeous the depth of focus that Kubrick usually employed isn't as prevalent, perhaps because of his insistence with shooting…

Capra's earlier Columbia films show a greater versatility than what is considered the "Capra" touch. THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN is a very emotionally complex bit of Hollywood exotica with Barbara Stanyck, who also played an Aimee Semple McPherson type for him in a film whose title I'm drawing a blank on right now.…

NOTORIOUS, I think, is Hitchcock's most creative movies when it comes to visual composition, camera movement and editing in his American period. I appreciate how the formal discipline of REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO contributes to a self conscious meta-narrative of film watching., Every creative decision in NOTORIOUS,…

The comic timing in HOLIDAY seems so modern, and the tone has this rather melancholic undercurrent, particularly when you realize how grim the futures of Hepburn's siblings are. I'm surprised it's not better known.

I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE might not be a great entry, but it is a consistently charming comedy of emasculation, and Ann Sheridan holds her own as Grant 's equal. SUSPICION doesn't completely work, but it does illuminate the dark side of Grant's persona.

I'd like to give a shout out to Marie Windsor in this too. Her dry, sarcastic line delivery in this and THE NARROW MARGIN is really unique in the noir canon.

Also CUL-DE-SAC, which was also a shorter version.

Glad to see you back. In evaluating and discussing Altman in the past I've expressed an ambivalence towards his satirical disdain for American culture. It allowed him to define his relationship with Hollywood as an intellectual outsider in a lazy, cliched fashion, kind of like Woody Allen. Generally, Altman's more…

I see Spacey as Hoover more than Littell, who should be cast a bit younger. I'd go with B.J. Novak for the role, based on his ability to capture the tortured essence of Robert Sherman in SAVING MR. BANKS without any help from the script or director.

Apparently after Tom Hanks/Brian Glazer or whoever loose their option. They've apparently decided to sit on it so as to not distort the historical record.

I wish there was mini-series version of this fleshing out the other characters, all of whom present thematic ties to other films in the Fuller canon.

Overall I think you'll love the reconstruction. It feels more thematically developed, and the last 2/3rds flow much better.

My main complaint regarding AMERICAN HUSTLE is that the movie phases out her characters point of view pretty much entirely by its last third. The movie never ceases to be entertaining but it kind of looses its balance over the course of its running time.

i meant to express that West Coast musicians had great admiration with Country music and its artists, but the commercialism and marketing mentality of the business end was quite at odds with their countercultural ethos. Many, like Parsons, felt quite pained by the fact that the Nashville "gatekeepers" dismissed their…

Altman was trying, I believe, to depict what Nashville, and Country music, was becoming, not particularly what it was, and thus NASHVILLE employed a certain amount of satirical hyperbole. Altman, arguably, could have fashioned a film about the dialectics of artistic creation through the music, but that would have been…

While I agree with Christgau's assessment of 70s Country music, I don't think his criticism is relevant to interpreting the film. NASHVILLE is more about place than it is about artistic struggle. It documents the transformation of a city moved by commercial interests and the impact that its new values have on the…

My gut tells me if you hated NASHVILLE than Altman might not be your type of filmmaker, at least for the moment. That said, if you are interested in developing your taste in cinema, you should hunker down, read up on the things that people think find exciting about Altman's work, bone up the context of the time that…

I first saw it in '83, and Walker's populism and the violence directed at pop stars seemed prophetic from that vantage.

I was thinking the other day of comparing Altman to Lang, specifically in their use of architecture and urbanism to explore issues of power and paranoia in their respective eras.