There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.” Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing. Act 1. Scene 1 “Your ego is absolutely colossal” “Yeah, yeah, not bad, hows yours?” Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in It Happened One Night
Entries by Aja Essex
The Originality and Harmolodics of Ornette: Made in America
There’s a scene right at the beginning of Ornette: Made in America that features a group of actors dressed up in old west clothing, doing a reenactment or performance of some sort for the onlooking crowd of Fort Worth, Texas natives. Guns are drawn quickly, and bodies hit the dusty streets like 10 pound bags… Read more »
Stop Making Sense: The Strange Auteurism of Stephen Chow
Auteur theory is a complicated subject to broach, seeing that the debate to place a definition on the term “auteur”has been ongoing since the 1940s. Everyone has their own variation and take on the term that gets assigned to monolithic and specific directors. To me, however, an auteur is a director with a singular and… Read more »
In the Mood for Love: Nostalgia and Memory
“To those who remember fondly” — Wong Kar Wai From the short film: Huay Yang De Nian Hua Nostalgia feels inherent to period pieces. Filmmakers tend to try to capture different angles on this fleeting remembrance of the past. The angle could be autobiographical, in the way Spike Lee’s 1994 film Crooklyn, set in 1973, recalls… Read more »
Sundance 25 Years Later: A Look Back on the Making of Reservoir Dogs
At the time of this writing, the 2017 Sundance Film Festival is in full swing in Park City, Utah. One of the things Sundance is known for is helping to launch the careers of talented young filmmakers. Among this prestigious list of talent was a filmmaker whose style, interests and background were slightly different from… Read more »
“What’s past is prologue”: Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust, and building a solid foundation for the future
Many names get tossed around by cinematically savvy people when you bring up great American ’90s independent cinema. You have the usual suspects: Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, Quentin Tarantino, and Spike Lee. Maybe next you’d get to some deep cuts like Hal Hartley, Jamie Babbit, and Whit Stillman to round off the conversation. One name,… Read more »