Still from Rio Bravo Chris Forrester details how Rio Bravo exemplifies the term of “the hangout film” with its affable characters, softened masculinity, atypical genre tropes, and more. The films of Howard Hawks offer a sampling of many of the cinema’s great genre pleasures — film noirs, musicals, westerns, dramas, comedies, romances, war films. Were… Read more »
What ever happened to George Stevens? The director of such classic Hollywood titles as Swing Time (1936), The More the Merrier (1943), A Place in the Sun (1951), and Shane (1953), Stevens was one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his day, winning the Academy Award for Best Director on two separate occasions. These days,… Read more »
“The western is always the same, which gives the director tremendous freedom,” Jean Renoir, a director who never made a western, once opined. In this regard, the classical American western film, which reached its fullest peak of maturity and creativity in the 1950s, represents one of the greatest playgrounds that cinema was ever offered. Many… Read more »
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… Read more »
Though I regard Howard Hawks as one of the greatest American filmmakers and have written about the use of amorality or nihilism as a fundamental structuring principle in his comedies, the Hawks film that I might regard as his absolute greatest (on certain days, it’s my favorite) remains a very neglected title: his sublime and… Read more »
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… Read more »