Guest post by Abby Carmichael. When I first saw WALL-E in summer 2008, I was at a drive-in theater in Door County, Wisconsin, lying under the stars. Onscreen, I saw fantastical sequences of robot romance unfold in an animated outer space, but just behind WALL-E and EVE’s (or, as our hero says, Eve-ah) tale, I… Read more »
If I had to describe Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1966 version of War and Peace in one word, it would be “big.” Almost everything about it — from its seven-hour running time to its famous battle sequences — conveys an epic scale the likes of which few films attempt, much less achieve. But while it remains famous… Read more »
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), which turns 55 on June 22nd, is best known for its performances. It features Academy Award-winning turns from Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis, as well as very effective work from Richard Burton and George Segal. But to view this film as merely a collection of great acting is to… Read more »
You might expect Pygmalion, the adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s classic play, to not make great use of the formal potential of cinema. Its theatrical roots, as well as Shaw’s role in writing the screenplay, might lead you to think that the filmmakers would create a filmed version of the play that would be so… Read more »
Federico Fellini is famous for inventing the “self-portrait” genre of filmmaking. His 1961 masterpiece 8 ½, which is about a director modeled on Fellini himself, led other filmmakers to make films about themselves. Examples include but are not limited to Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973), Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979), and Pedro Almodóvar’s… Read more »
Julie Dash’s films frequently meditate on history. Daughters of the Dust (1991) brings us into the unique culture of a Gullah family on the precipice of change in a new century. Illusions (1982) imagines if a Black woman passing as a white woman had become a film executive in the Classical Hollywood era. The Rosa… Read more »