By Geoff Carter In The New Wave 2.0 series, The Pen in Hand Blog will be considering the work of today’s best and most influential filmmakers, artists whose singular visual styles and visionary senses have stretched the boundaries of cinema. Drawing upon Francois Truffaut’s definition of an auteur, these pieces will be looking at writer/directors whose …
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Category:Movies
Triumph of the Will
Photo: Harry Wad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter The now infamous moment when Will Smith lost his cool and slapped Chris Rock in front of half the world (or more) at the Academy Awards has already been etched into the bedrock of our cultural mythology. Smith has been painted as everything from a …
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Cinema Today: The New Wave 2.0
Dziga Vertov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter In his seminal work “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema” from Cahiers du Cinema, Truffaut coined the term “auteur” as he thought it should apply to the art of filmmaking. Cinema, he maintained, should consist of personal autobiographical chronicles, and be the product of one mind …
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Old School Cinema: The Way We Were
Siebbi, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter In his recent Harper’s article “Il Maestro”, Martin Scorsese laments that today’s film industry has become so centered on profiteering that—in the world of marketing algorhythms and streaming platforms—cinematic art has been relegated to the same level as any type of streaming content, be it a commercial, …
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A Dog Eat Dog World
FLC001, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Film Review of The Power of the Dog By Geoff Carter Chronicling the inner world of fictional characters is part and parcel of literature. Since the days of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and the modernistic stylings of Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce, novelists have sought to explain the foibles of …
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You Can’t Go Home Again
Kenneth BranaghGiorgia Meschini, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Film Review of Belfast By Geoff Carter As a medium, narrative film is a palimpsest that draws the best from other art forms; like literature, it can convey the impression of a time and place through dialogue, characterization, and setting. Like two-dimensional art, it can frame an …
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The Couch Potato’s Guide to Hollywood: The Legacy of Matt Damon
nicolas genin from Paris, France, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter He is a brilliant actor, writer, and producer whose charming manner and boyish good looks have cemented him as one of the most likable actors working in the cinema today, but that engaging smile and affable manner are often the tools this …
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Kickass and Kyle’s Movie
Photo by Lê Minh from Pexels By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis got a fascinating exposure to the complexity and difficult of movie making from nephew Kyle Hauseman-Stokes when Kyle and the keeper’s brother Orville visited; and Kyle showed a preliminary version of his movie about the heart-rending relationship between two …
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The Couch Potato’s Guide to Old Hollywood: The Legacy of Burt Lancaster
Hal Wallis Productions, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter Burt Lancaster started his show business career as a young circus performer in the acrobatic duo of Lang and Cravat, but soon graduated to theater and, finally, the movies. His dominating screen presence landed him in tough-guy roles in films like The Killers and Brute Force where his …
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The Couch Potato’s Guide to Old Hollywood: The Legacy of Robert Redford
NBC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter During his storied career, Robert Redford was not only known as one of the great leading men of his generation, but also as a gifted director, producer, and outspoken advocate of independent film. Founder of the now internationally renowned Sundance Film Festival, Redford has been …
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One Summer: Two Worlds
Film Review of Summer of Soul Gind2005, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons August 15, 1969, marked a number of turning points in American culture. It was a watershed moment for the youth counterculture. The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival began near the tiny town of Bethel, New York. Over the next four days, more than …
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The Couch Potato’s Guide to New Hollywood: The Legacy of Al Pacino
Al Pacino in Serpico Paramount Pictures, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Geoff Carter He’s been a major icon of American cinematic landscape for decades, known mainly for his seminal portrayal of crime boss Michael Corleone in The Godfather, a performance some have called the best in movie history, but Al Pacino has demonstrated a range in …
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