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The Big Picture (1989)
Film school prepared Nick for everything... everything but Hollywood.
Filmmaker(s): Christopher Guest

Hollywood beckons for recent film school grad Nick Chapman, who is out to capitalize on the momentum from his national award-winning student film. Studio executive Allen Habel seduces Nick with a dream deal to make his first feature, but once production gets rolling, corporate reality begins to intervene: Nick is unable to control a series of compromises to his high-minded vision, and it's all he can do to maintain his integrity in the midst of filmmaking chaos.

Guest Travels in Search of an Ironic Formula As the child of intelligent film critics, Guest was poised to start a career in midstream, already aware of the dominance of irony in film. He would go on to develop and shamelessly exploit a specific, detailed formula...


Published July 27, 2023
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Big Daddy (1999)
Nature called. Look who answered.
Filmmaker(s): Dennis Dugan

A lazy law school grad adopts a kid to impress his girlfriend, but everything doesn't go as planned and he becomes the unlikely foster father.

The Goof It is always been an American film staple to have a simpleminded but purehearted hero. Chaplin invented the image. He would be appalled at how the notion has been appropriated by the US Republican party. An excellent character is all that matters, especially compared...


Published July 27, 2023
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The Big Clock (1948)
The Strangest and Most Savage Manhunt in History!
Filmmaker(s): John Farrow

Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor has to post-pone a vacation with his wife, again, when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss Janoth to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence (albeit wrong) that he is the killer.

Gears This has a crackerjack beginning: you zoom into a city through a window (common today but rare then) tracking a man going into the inner workings of a giant clock, then we zoom from the inside of the clock top the outside, then focusing on...


Published July 27, 2023
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Bicycle Thieves (1948)
The Prize Picture They Want to Censor!
Filmmaker(s): Vittorio De Sica

Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.

Stolen This is a film about a child, one who is both IN the film and watches it. Hard as it is to imagine today, the world of film was had ideas on the surface, and lively controversies. Men took risks and sometimes survived. Here is an experiment...


Published July 27, 2023
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Beyond the Sea (2004)
In the era of cool, Bobby Darin was the soundtrack.
Filmmaker(s): Kevin Spacey

Based on the life and career of legendary entertainer, Bobby Darin, the biopic moves back and forth between his childhood and adulthood, to tell the tale of his life.

Keyser’s Desire Like it or not, watching film is an accretive process: each film provides a context and more for the next. One of those threads of continuity is the unfortunate fact that we see the same faces in many presumably different roles, as if there...


Published July 27, 2023
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Bewitched (2005)
Be warned. Be ready.
Filmmaker(s): Nora Ephron

Thinking he can overshadow an unknown actress in the part, an egocentric actor unknowingly gets a witch cast in an upcoming television remake of the classic show "Bewitched".

Tricky Folded narrative is all the rage among Hollywood writers now. And the Ephrons are hip, so they go along and here we have a simply folded story. Simple folding, the kind anyone can do, is based on the simple device of a show within the show,...


Published July 27, 2023
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Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party (1933)
Filmmaker(s): Dave Fleischer

Betty Boop hosts a Hallowe'en party with a few uninvited guests.

Underaware I really like some of these Betty Boop cartoons. Many of the early ones deal with the overlap of evil, sex and hallucinogens, often mixed with jazz and Black men. This is one of the tamer ones in terms of the evil tone: she’s in...


Published July 27, 2023
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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)

Broken Cosmologies These come to me already broken. For me to enter the world of a film, I have to have some understanding of the world. But over many decades the origins have been confusing. Each movie tosses the cosmology of the previous one and substitutes...


Published July 26, 2023
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No Bears (2022)

Religions All religion is about sex, all tribalisms about religion, and all film about tribalism. This is the form of how I approach things these days, with three layers of introspective epiphany, and a token from the film for each layer. In this case, I thought to share...


Published July 14, 2023
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Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)

Self with Shoes On As I understand it, this was conceived in the breakup of a marriage. The voice and most of the script is by the disappointed wife, and the surrounding framing by the presumably inadequate husband. The actual events had some videos posted to YouTube,...


Published July 14, 2023
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