Category: The Auteurs
Four Uniquely American Directors
Every year during the Fourth of July, American cable and movie channels never fail to make an effort to run a slate of films perceived as ideal in representing the American brand. These range from war movies dripping with nostalgia … [Read the Rest]
“They’re Blowin’ This Town All To Hell!” — Sam Peckinpah And The Wild Bunch
Curiously, with all the bold, ambitious, fresh talent storming into Hollywood in the 1960s/1970s – directors who’d cut their teeth in TV like Sidney Lumet and John Frankenheimer; imports like Roman Polanski and Peter Yates; the first wave of film … [Read the Rest]
The Cinematic Poet: Terrence Malick
There are certain films that seem to sustain on a life of their own. There is a pulse that beats consistently throughout, constantly reminding us of the fragility of life. We feel as though the dramas of life are being … [Read the Rest]
Titans: George Lucas v. Steven Spielberg (part 1)
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Three and a half decades after their breakout successes, they remain arguably two of the most potent brand names in American entertainment and understandably so. Probably more than any other two individuals, they have been … [Read the Rest]
Titans: George Lucas v. Steven Spielberg (part 2)
Like Lucas, much of Spielberg’s work references the TV shows and movies he saw as a youngster, but where Lucas had spent several years in the intellectual hothouse of USC’s film program, Spielberg had, in essence, gone straight from watching … [Read the Rest]
Peter Yates, Remember Me
Peter Yates, who died this past weekend at age 81, was one of several British directors invited to make movies in The States in the 1960s, all of whom had a particular and rare filmmaker’s gift for capturing a sense … [Read the Rest]
Mr. Cool – Blake Edwards
When the news of Blake Edwards’ passing at age 88 broke earlier this month, it stood to reason his obituaries would mandatorily lead off identifying him as the writer/director behind the “Pink Panther” movies and as a “master of sophisticated slapstick … [Read the Rest]
The Studio Auteur: Stanley Kubrick
Throughout the 1960s-early 1970s, a combination of financial desperation, creative daring, and an adventurous movie-going public had produced a creative detonation in mainstream American movies not seen before or since. Each year of the period seemed to bring at least … [Read the Rest]
The Rise And Fall Of The Hollywood Auteur
PART II: THE PRODUCERS TAKE BACK THE REINS By the late 1970s, the tremendous creative license the major studios under a new generation of production chiefs had granted the young tyros of the 1960s – Coppola, Scorsese, et al – … [Read the Rest]
The Rise And Fall Of the Hollywood Auteur: Part 1
PART I: SUPER CHIEFS — Calley, Evans, Zanuck and the Passing of the Studio Torches From the 1960s into the 1980s, one by one, the legendary studios of old – MGM, United Artists, Warner Bros., Paramount, Columbia, 20th Century Fox … [Read the Rest]
The Career Of Robert Evans
“The producer is like the conductor of an orchestra. Maybe he can’t play every instrument, but he knows what every instrument should sound like.” Zanuck The producer can be an enigmatic presence in the film making process. It is a … [Read the Rest]
Claude Chabrol Retrospective
Film School Rejects recently posted a list of the best — and worst — movie collaborations between directors and their spouses. It seems those capricious movie gods have decreed that for every Oscar-winning gem like Fargo (Joel Coen directs Frances … [Read the Rest]
Under The Radar: On Roger Corman
There have always been moviemakers who operated just outside the major studio spotlight; showmen, hucksters, exploiters working on small budgets. Before the advent of home video and the multiplex, they could sometimes be found hand-carrying their single print from one … [Read the Rest]
Throwback: Clint Eastwood
There are two timely justifications for revisiting the career of Clint Eastwood at this particular moment. The most obvious is the premiere of Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, Hereafter, at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. The other is … [Read the Rest]
The Master: Alfred Hitchcock
There have been enough books and articles on Alfred Hitchcock and his work to fill a library wing. Doubtless little can be said here about one of the most examined careers in movies which hasn’t already been said several times … [Read the Rest]
