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More Than Meets the Mogwai (Free subscription) | 09/25/2008
"I understand there are young people making three-minute, five-minute films to fulfill course requirements in school. In this way the young filmmaker becomes a person withdrawn from his society. He does everything alone. Finally, I don't think you can make a film alone. You need the lab, you need the guy who sells the film, you need the guy who makes the camera. You need your wife and your friends...
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Self-Styled Siren (Free subscription) | 09/09/2008
Because I love you people, I have to point out this listing: On Friday, Sept. 12, at noon EDT, Fox Movie Channel is showing Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life. In letterbox. And if you miss it, it's showing on Sept. 21, also in letterbox, also at noon. The Siren is just a teensy-weensy bit peeved about this, since she bought the movie on DVD in Paris at the current exchange rate. (The Siren sure is glad...
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/09/2008
Nicholas Ray – Nick and Wim’s movie is perhaps flawed, and although it’s distinctly a part of Wenders’ desperately uneven post-German oeuvre, it is also an appropriate sort of tribute to the director. Not a sappy, hermetic work, it is rather, like all of Ray’s best films, a daring high-wire act between improvisation and order, an adventure, and a subtle celebration of Ray’s legacy as a stylist.
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/08/2008
Nicholas Ray –In Rebel Without a Cause , James Dean’s Jim Stark cries out, “You’re tearing me apart!” And with We Can’t Go Home Again , Ray has torn apart the cinematic image. Simultaneously projecting myriad formats – super 8mm, 16mm, and a video synthesizer provided by Nam June Paik – and filming the multiple projections onto a single 35mm image, Ray was able to actualize a sense of both mental...
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/07/2008
Nicholas Ray –There is certainly something apocalyptic in the final image of the screen in flames, as though there is no option left except to obliterate everything and start all over. This remains the sole moment of idealism in the film: Ray’s only hope is to begin again. Ray’s willingness to reject his past and reinvent himself and his films so late in his life and career is both astounding and...
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/07/2008
Nicholas Ray – All of Ray’s prior films about occupation and oppression side with those trampled underfoot rather than the combatants, and his explorations of out-of-the-way (or even simply out-of-the-ordinary) cultures and subcultures, like those of rodeo cowboys or Inuits, nearly always display an ethnographic curiosity for difference. 55 Days at Peking , however, shows no interest in the native...
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/05/2008
Nicholas Ray – Human drama dominates King of Kings ; although the use of CinemaScope is unmistakably enjoyable, Ray manages to imbue a genre that generally thrives on spectacle with intimacy. Avoiding any use of special effects to depict Jesus’ miracles throughout the film, Ray instead gives us only the Roman solders’ reports, and reactions to their retelling of these unimaginable moments. It is precisely...
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Variety.com (Free subscription) | 09/04/2008
Film Reviews: "I'm Gonna Explode" is a punchy exploration of unattributable teenage angst that expands the usually male view of "Rebel Without a Cause"-type dramas.
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/03/2008
Nicholas Ray – As in Scorsese’s films, subtle character interaction provides the ground bass for bursts of surprising violence. These moments are pretty brutal for the era, and Ray is deft in getting in and out of them quickly, never quite letting us get used to the action, yet reminding us that it can flare up at any second. And yet, like Scorsese, Ray isn’t insensitive to less grisly cinematic pleasures....
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/02/2008
Nicholas Ray – Late in Nicholas Ray’s fascinating WWII film Bitter Victory , Captain Leith turns to his colleague Brand and, speaking in a tone of sly insinuation, delivers an accusation that stands at the heart of the picture’s concerns with the metaphysics of war; “We’re all murderers now, aren’t we? Welcome to the club.” Taken by itself, the quotation seems a simple enough observation about the...
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 09/01/2008
Nicholas Ray – Officially a remake of the factually dubious but supremely entertaining 1939 film Jesse James , Nicholas Ray’s take on the notorious outlaw differs wildly from its predecessor in terms of style, narrative structure, and level of historical accuracy. In place of the former film’s easily digestible tale of love and hate, vengeance and reconciliation, Ray attempts a complex character study,...
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notcoming.com | Recent Updates (Free subscription) | 08/30/2008
Nicholas Ray – For all the film’s concerns with the structures of patriarchy, director Nicholas Ray seems less interested in teasing out all the thematic implications of Jesse Lasky Jr.’s screenplay and more concerned with staging a glorious Technicolor extravaganza, delighting in arranging his characters and their variegated costuming across the ‘Scope screen and even staging several dance numbers....
