Establishing Shot

The Muppet Christmas Carol: Practicing Joy

Posted on December 4, 2025 by Alex Brannan

An older man and a group of puppets share a large holiday meal of turkey.

Michael Caine (center) stars as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Alex Brannan gives into the holiday spirit and praises the undeniable exuberance of a yuletide classic.

Most of the articles I have written in this forum over the last six months have been invested, at least in part, in analyzing the politics and ideology of a given text. This seemed appropriate, given the films, but also given that we are living in a politically turbulent time. When the stopwatch started on this “time” is up for debate; the pessimist in me thinks 2025 is a record-breaking lap in our long-running marathon toward cataclysm…

Considering this is my attempt at writing an article that champions the joys of life, I’ll admit that I am not off to the strongest start. Please allow me to digress.

I find personal joy in dissecting the political valences within a film, just as I enjoy seeing an establishing shot of a landscape captured during golden hour whose aura feels impossible to convey on a screen, and yet, Benjamin be damned, I feel something. Even a film like Mickey 17, which I don’t particularly love (it is currently my 19th favorite movie of the year), has intriguing concepts in it which I feel are worthy of exploration. In this case, the exploration involves turning over rocks with labels like “capitalism,” “exploitation of labor,” and “fascism” and picking up the skittering pests that live underneath.

A difficulty for me is the antithesis of this sort of film. How do I write about a film whose primary reason for being is to be apolitically life-affirming, aside from simply using the cliché “life-affirming?”

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“Empty Husk:” The Use of Black-and-White Cinematography in El Conde (2023)

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Jesse Pasternack

Original black-and-white poster for El Conde

Jesse Pasternack explains how the cinematography of Pablo Larraín’s dark satire works so well in the context of the film.

El Conde (2023) is a great example of Stephen Sondheim’s principle that “content dictates form.” The content of this film is, despite its sprightly satire and imaginative take on one of the most iconic creatures of the horror genre, grim. Therefore, writer-director Pablo Larraín and cinematographer Ed Lachman use black-and-white cinematography to create a (literally) dark portrait of how power, violence, and desire can corrupt anyone. Their delightfully desolate imagery perfectly captures the qualities which make their narrative so interesting.

This movie begins with voiceover by a mysterious British female voice (Stella Gonet), though it will sound familiar to anyone who lived in the United Kingdom during the 1980s. She recounts how a French royalist soldier named Claude Pinoche (Clemente Rodríguez) discovered he was a vampire and traveled the world. He eventually became the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) before faking his death. Now 250 years old, he is eager to die as his children squabble over who will get his riches. But he gets a new lease on being undead after he meets a young nun named Carmen (Paula Luchsinger). His happiness is short-lived, however, when the most important person from his past confronts him.

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Peter Hutton: Sculpting with Light

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Establishing Shot

Filmmaker Peter Hutton

Underground Film Series curator Richard Jermain contextualizes the undersung directorial work of the quietly influential Peter Hutton.

Peter Hutton (1944-2016) was a prolific experimental filmmaker of landscapes and cities. Like Derek Jarman, his images are often evocative of paintings, but his silent portraits retain a uniquely hypnotic feeling. In color, his landscapes have an arresting hazy iridescence, and in black and white the images have an organic murkiness. While clearly constructed and evocative, his more than 30 short films have a prevailing lack of artifice.

As a teacher, Hutton inspired many young filmmakers, including his student Ken Burns. In fact, while I was working on this essay, I met a musician who incorporates found sounds from field recordings in impressionistic, introspective soundscapes. He was also inspired by Hutton in his approach to the medium. Despite Hutton’s exclusive use of silent film, it makes sense that his visual style could translate so well to other media, as Hutton’s own outlook incorporates a multi-media aesthetic that looks every bit as informed by painting as it is by film practice. Although he had an impact on modern practice, his films seem to capture life from an older, almost timeless vantage point.

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Monthly Movie Round-Up: November 2025

Posted on November 24, 2025 by Establishing Shot

A little boy looks out the window of a subway car while three men sit near him — **First row: *Eternity and a Day, Pictures of Ghosts*. Second row: *Reflection in a Dead Diamond, The Bob’s Burgers Movie*. Third row: *Knives Out*.**

A group of people in Halloween costumes and masks pose on the street — **First row: *Eternity and a Day, Pictures of Ghosts*. Second row: *Reflection in a Dead Diamond, The Bob’s Burgers Movie*. Third row: *Knives Out*.**

Every month, Establishing Shot brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.

Chris Forrester, contributor | Eternity and a Day (1998)

Have the movies ever given us a better shepherd across the veil between life and death than Bruno Ganz? Wistful enough to look saddled with knowledge of the unknown, wizened enough to appear always just a few days from laying down to die, and kind enough to ease the fear of the journey, he was first the invisible angel who relinquished immortality for love in Wings of Desire and later Virgil guiding the serial killer of The House That Jack Built plaintively into hell. And in between, he was Alexandros, the middle-aged writer of Eternity and a Day, who, having been diagnosed with a terminal illness, wanders about to remember his past with a wife he loved but never quite let close to him, visit family he’s grown distant from, and sort his affairs before checking into a hospital the following day.

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“Without Questioning:” The Role of Disobedience in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Posted on November 17, 2025 by Jesse Pasternack

Original poster for Pan’s Labyrinth

Jesse Pasternack explains how Pan’s Labyrinth develops one of filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro’s most frequent themes.

There are some films which wash away the years when you revisit them. Every time I return to Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), writer-director Guillermo Del Toro’s midcareer masterpiece, I feel like I’m sixteen again. That’s how old I was when I first saw it in a high school Spanish class. At the time, I was blown away by its mixture of fantastical production design and sense of real danger. But, even though I retain the sense of childlike wonder I felt when I first saw it, I now view this film mostly through the lens of one of Del Toro’s favorite themes: disobedience.

It’s a word that, for many, has negative connotations. For centuries, parents have taught their children to obey them. It’s a quality which they try to drum into them through cultural products like nursery rhymes or even brute force. But obedience for its own sake, to follow someone even if they are ordering you to inflict horrors against other people, is not something to which people should aspire. To disobey is also to question, to think for yourself, and resist getting embroiled in atrocities. It is, in a way, a key value of a democratic society, and Del Toro’s understanding of its positive potential is important to understanding this anti-fascist fairy tale.

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An Interview with Composer Jamey Guzman

Posted on November 13, 2025 by Noni Ford

Charles Gilpin in Ten Nights in a Barroom

Noni Ford speaks with composer and Jon Vickers Scoring Award winner Jamey Guzman about her new score for the 1926 film Ten Nights in a Barroom, her advice for aspiring composers, and more.

On November 15th, the IU Cinema will be screening Roy Calnek’s Ten Nights in a Barroom accompanied by a new composed score from Jon Vickers Scoring Award recipient Jamey Guzman. Prior to the screening, I got the chance to ask her some questions about her beginnings in music composition, her process with this movie’s scoring, and inspiration.

Noni Ford (NF): What drew you initially to composing music?

Jamey Guzman (JM): Music is woven throughout my childhood memories, from my earliest recollections of singing with my grandma and her teaching me how to play piano — I was so stubborn and wanted to play everything by ear! — and the most magical moments singing with my whole family around the campfire with my uncle on his guitar every summer. Getting to see musicals at the Woodland Opera House planted the seed for song-as-storytelling in my young mind, and it really never left.

I soon started singing in my church’s children’s choir, and playing flute in school, all the while facing the growing feeling that I never wanted this amazing feeling of being in what I called the “music world” to end. The community that I stepped into whenever I got to play for an honor band¹, in the pit for the school musicals, or masterminding plans for our jazz combo with my best friends… I felt at home, and seen, in a deeply profound way. Now, when I write, I call on all those worlds I found as a child, and hope that in some small way I can create music that will form the soundtracks for others’ memories of their chosen world, whether that be in a community choir, high school concert band, or anywhere in the professional sphere.

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