Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequences, 1913 | Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 2011
Editor’s Note: John D’Amico’s piece, Michael Bay: Futurist, is no longer available on this site because it has been selected for inclusion in a upcoming scholarly print examination of the films of Michael Bay which is slated for release in 2018 via a major publishing house. The book will feature a wide range of new perspectives about Bay’s work from a range of scholars, cinephiles, and filmmakers.
Obviously he’s pretty singular, but is there anything else kinda Weir-y like The Mosquito Coast & The Year of Living Dangerously? — Charles W.
Editor’s Note (12/4/14): We no longer answer movie questions through our advice column. We answer them in the mailbag segment of our podcast. Send them to Cody@SmugFilm.com and we will answer on the show!
Bringing to Smug Film a project I started at Shot Context, in which I offer unusual and enriching double features.
At long last, our troubled protagonist—violent, family-less, unable to conform—shakes loose his pursuers. We lean forward in our seats. The ocean is before us; the black-and-white frame blanches in the unforgiving sunlight. Long a source of comfort for our hero, we are finally here. And the camera tightens on his face. A face defined by captivity, always hemmed in with fences and borders, sees the sea. And then… nothing. That’s it. We can go no further. The journey is over. The end.
It’s a curious, but perhaps not entirely unsurprising fact that little Antoine Doinel—director Francois Truffaut’s alter ego—meets the same end that the Creature from the Black Lagoon did three years earlier. A close look at the films, and filmmakers, might account for this lovely synchronicity.
Continue reading Proposed Double Feature: ‘The 400 Blows’ & ‘The Creature Walks Among Us’
Joan Darling entered show business as an actress on the New York theater scene in the 1960s, then became a fixture of early 70’s television. In 1974, she made the leap from acting to directing and quickly made history as one of the first and most successful women directors in television. She had an instant knack for it—her debut, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a soap opera parody, has become an enduring cult classic for its dark-edged humor and deep understanding of the desperation and sadness of the American home.
Highlights of her career include a Mary Tyler Moore episode, Chuckles Bites the Dust, which, for its deft tightrope-walk between comedy and pathos, TV Guide calls the greatest television episode ever; a classic M*A*S*H episode, The Nurses, which revolutionized the way the show portrayed women; and a leading role in an episode of The Psychiatrist, directed by a pre-Jaws, pre-Duel Spielberg.
These days, Joan teaches acting and directing classes at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab. She agreed to a phone interview, and in about an hour, I learned more about the arts of acting and directing than I ever thought possible:
Continue reading An Interview with Director and Actress Joan Darling, Pioneer of the 70’s
Matt Rager is the co-writer, alongside James Franco, of Franco’s As I Lay Dying, an adaptation of the Faulkner novel. [Ed. note: you can read John D’Amico’s review of the film here.] He’s also the sole writer of the pair’s upcoming The Sound and the Fury, also based on the Faulkner book. Recently, we sat down over banana bread and talked about filmmaking:
Continue reading An Interview with Matt Rager, writer of ‘As I Lay Dying’ and the upcoming ‘The Sound and The Fury’