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Establishing Shot Indiana University

Succumb to the Big Screen

Posted on by Establishing Shot

A woman is suspended in the air as she looks at the shadow of Nosferatu behind a curtain

Still from Nosferatu (2024)

IU Cinema Director Dr. Alicia Kozma reveals the Cinema’s connection to Robert Eggers’s latest hit.

We all know that IU Cinema is the best place to see a film on the big screen — our projection technology, rigorous quality control, and theatrical experience standards are well known on campus and in our broader community. But it’s not just our physical infrastructure that makes this possible; it’s the dedicated staff — our technological experts — who make our screenings come to life. We’ve all been the beneficiaries of the collective knowledge and care of Elena, Seth, Ryan, Grayson, and Monisha, and now thousands of others across the country are also the recipients of the IU Cinema standard, as our reputation for theatrical excellence has spread far and wide.

This past summer Elena Grassia, our director of cinema technology, was tapped by Focus Features/Universal to be the cinematic expert responsible for preparing, inspecting, and managing the 35mm celluloid prints for Robert Eggers’s critically and audience acclaimed film Nosferatu. In the fall, Elena spent multiple days in Los Angeles doing exactly that: prepping eleven 35mm prints of the film for exhibition across the country. During her time, she inspected 130,680 feet of film and liaised with venues in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Texas, Nashville, Boston, Portland, Chicago, greater Los Angeles, and Hollywood on receiving their prints and presentation specifications, bringing the IU Cinema screening standard to show after show of enraptured audiences.

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Monthly Movie Round-Up: December 2024

Posted on by Establishing Shot

Teri Garr and Raul Julia embrace in front of an artificial seascape
Hugh Grant looks suspiciously at two young women standing in front of him
Close-up of the leading man in Apur Sansar
Left to right: One from the Heart: Reprise, Heretic, Apur Sansar

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.

Ed. note: Establishing Shot will be “dark” throughout the rest of December and the beginning of January as the Cinema takes a short break, but we’ll be back soon with all of the great, original writing you know and love!

Jesse Pasternack, contributor | One from the Heart: Reprise (2024)

One from the Heart: Reprise is one of legendary writer-director Francis Ford Coppola’s more underrated films. While it didn’t do well financially when it first came out, time has been kind to its critical reputation. Today, those who seek it out (or at least the version I saw which Coppola recently re-edited) will be rewarded with one of the most visually dazzling and unconventional musicals I have seen in a long time.

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Twinkle Lights and Gun Fights: Watching The Godfather on Christmas

Posted on by Establishing Shot

A man with his back to the camera speaks to another man in a tuxedo

Marlon Brando in The Godfather

IU Cinema Director Dr. Alicia Kozma shares her history with the Godfather trilogy and her recommendations for when to watch the films.

As long as I can remember, the Godfather films have been a part of my life. Growing up in an Italian American family in New York, the films were just part of the ether. I knew the line “I know it was you, Fredo, you broke my heart” before I had even seen Godfather Part II, let along the first film. I knew that the causeway where Sonny was shot was supposed to be the highway between the city and Jones Beach, that the pinnacle of acting as a craft was assumed to live somewhere between Brando in The Godfather and Pacino in Godfather Part II, and somehow it was just assumed knowledge that when you spoke about The Godfather films, you weren’t including the third entry into the trilogy (it’s not actually as terrible as it’s made out to be, and I do suggest watching it — or watching it again). It was, as far as I knew as a kid, the peak of what cinema was.

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Skeletons are Relatable Too in The Nightmare Before Christmas

Posted on by Noni Ford

Henry Selick and Tim Burton on set of Nightmare

Henry Selick and Tim Burton on the set of Nightmare Before Christmas

Noni Ford discusses the endearing outcasts and sympathetic mindset of Jack Skellington in the animated classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Tim Burton loves a misfit. It’s easy to trace this affinity through the central figures of many of the films he’s penned or directed.  From Frankenweenie to the Netflix show Wednesday, nearly all of Burton’s work has a distinctive lead who we see carving out a place for themselves within the more conformist world he puts them in. As a young fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which I consider both a Halloween and Christmas classic, I loved the world he and co-writer Michael McDowell built. And I loved the way he allowed Halloween Town with its monsters and beasts to be a place where people could find delight in one of my favorite holidays. He made Sally, a Frankenstein-like creation, and her ability to sew back her limbs quaint, Zero the ghost dog just as lovable as any dog in a kid’s movie, and the iconic backdrop of the Henry Selick film, which is a pumpkin patch graveyard, romantic and dreamy.

Yes, Christmas Town is enchanting too and when Jack falls into this other world we can understand why he’d love it. It’s the opposite of Halloween Town in seemingly every way to him, although by the end of the film we soon recognize some of the similarities between these two places. However, it is still Halloween Town and its occupants that really captured my heart. When we meet Jack Skellington, he is discontent with his life and the repetitive nature of his role in Halloween Town. He feels that Christmas Town is superior due to it being both new to him and because its focus is on bringing happiness instead of scares. As Jack attempts to force his way into the traditions of Christmas, chaos ensues, and he has to confront his place in life and his desires for the future.

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“Flung Out of Space”: What Makes Carol (2015) a Perfect Example of a Todd Haynes Period Piece

Posted on by Jesse Pasternack

Cate Blanchett looks at Rooney Mara over a department store counter

Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in Carol

Jesse Pasternack describes why Todd Haynes’s 2015 classic is a paragon of the filmmaker’s work with period pieces.

When I first saw Carol, I thought it would be a perfect film to watch on TCM in a few decades. Everything about that film’s technical style felt like it harkened back to an older age of cinema. But at the same time, it felt like it was contributing something relatively new to mainstream American cinema by telling a story of a love affair between two women, which never would have been possible during the era which the film so lavishly recreates. That combination of luxurious aesthetics and a somewhat radical narrative is a hallmark of this film’s director Todd Haynes, who has repeatedly excelled at directing period pieces. 

Carol is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt (1952). It tells the story of Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), who bonds with a wealthy woman named Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). But their increasingly romantic relationship will have consequences, especially for Carol’s custody battle with her soon-to-be ex-husband Harge (Kyle Chandler).

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The Space Between: Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas

Posted on by Chris Forrester

A man stands in a parking lot with a sunset in the distance

The lonely poetry of Paris, Texas

Chris Forrester rhapsodizes about the overwhelming emotionality and breathtaking imagery of Wenders’s 1984 masterpiece.

When Wim Wenders — then known for his contributions to the New German Cinema, in particular a string of road films through which he formed a close collaborative relationship with legendary cinematographer Robby Müller — set out to direct his first* American feature, he did so with intent to “tell a story about America.” That film, Paris, Texas (1984), was co-written by Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970, another stellar film about the American landscape) co-scribe Sam Shepard and newcomer L.M. Kit Carson (whose sole prior screenplay credit was for the 1983 remake of Godard’s Breathless) and suggests a divided national identity in both name and premise: a lovelorn loner (Harry Dean Stanton, in a performance of such quiet majesty that words can hardly do it justice) wanders the countryside after suffering an at-first-unspecified loss that we’ll slowly come to understand as he pieces himself back together and crawls back toward the life he left behind. When we meet him, wandering the West Texan desert, we’re privy to little more than his wary demeanor and tattered clothes, but we come to know that his name is Travis and he’s been missed by a brother and son who assumed him dead in his four-year absence.

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