Creating suspense through film form
In Film Art: An Introduction (Chapters 1-3) we argue that a movie’s form engages the viewer actively. As a result, we try to show how formal choices can shape the viewer’s response. For instance, a...
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This is your brain on movies, maybe
United 93. From DB: Normally we say that suspense demands an uncertainty about how things will turn out. Watching Hitchcock’s Notorious for the first time, you feel suspense at certain points–when the...
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It was a dark and stormy campaign
How do you get people to believe that if you can’t get the press to make an honest assessment of it? You tell a story. “When it came down to a choice between my very life and my country, I chose my...
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Forking tracks: SOURCE CODE
Source Code. DB here: Who cares if the Source Code software is junk science? The muzzy premise forms the basis of an agreeable little thriller from the tail end of this year’s Dead Zone. Even if you...
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I Love a Mystery: Extra-credit reading
Thornton Utz illustration for Rex Stout novella from American Magazine, 1951. Obtained from the excellent site Today’s Inspiration. DB here: Over the next few months, I’ll be traveling with a talk on...
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Clocked doing 50 in the Dead Zone
DB here: August’s final weekend fizzled. Ray Subers of Box Office Mojo writes: The Expendables 2 repeated in first place on what was easily the lowest-grossing weekend of 2012 so far: the Top 12...
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SIDE EFFECTS and SAFE HAVEN: Out of the past
Safe Haven; Side Effects. DB here: Occasionally someone will ask me how I watch a movie. Here’s a stab at an answer. If the film presents a story, fictional or nonfictional, I try to get engaged by...
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The 1940s, mon amour
The Dark Mirror (1944). DB here: With the indispensable assistance of our web tsarina Meg Hamel, I’ve just put up an essay on Hollywood film of the 1940s. It’s called “Murder Culture: Adventures in...
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David Koepp: Making the world movie-sized
Stir of Echoes (1999). DB here: For a long time, Hollywood movies have fed off other Hollywood movies. We’ve had sequels and remakes since the 1910s. Studios of the Golden Era relied on “swipes” or...
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Hitchcock, Lessing, and the bomb under the table
DB here: Every good cinephile knows Alfred Hitchcock’s famous distinction between suspense and surprise. In articles and interviews from the 1930s on, he explained that situations are more...
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Hitchcock again: 3.9 steps to s-u-s-p-e-n-s-e
Henry Edwards; Alfred Hitchcock. DB here: My previous entry reminded you that Hitchcock was notorious for distinguishing between suspense and surprise. To achieve suspense, he maintained, the...
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Talking THE WALK
Kristin here– David and I saw Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk the day after it opened. The screening was 3-D Imax, since the film originally opened only in Imax theaters and went wider on October 9, already...
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Deadlier than the male (novelist)
DB here: It’s about time! Sarah Weinman, editor of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (already praised in these precincts) has brought out a two-volume set devoted to women crime writers of the 1940s...
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Open secrets of classical storytelling: Narrative analysis 101
Premium Rush (David Koepp, 2012). DB here: After nine years, over 700 entries, and many essays and other stuff, this contraption of a website has started to intimidate us. If we’re intimidated, you...
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Replay it again, Clint: Sully and the simulations
Sully (2016). What happens in the Forties doesn’t stay in the Forties. That’s one motto of the book I’ve just finished on Hollywood storytelling in the period 1939-1952. The argument is that several...
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DUNKIRK Part 1: Straight to the good stuff
Kristin here: All kinds of spoilers ahead. The last time I wrote about a Christopher Nolan film on this blog, I was defending the unusual use of protracted exposition to explain Inception’s...
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DUNKIRK Part 2: The art film as event movie
Dunkirk (2017). DB here: In some ways Christopher Nolan has become our Stanley Kubrick. Many directors have found ways to turn genre movies into art films; think of Wes Anderson and comedy, or Paul...
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Who got played? A guest post by Jeff Smith on THE PLAYER
The Player (1992). Jeff Smith, our collaborator on Film Art: An Introduction just recorded an installment of our Observations on Film Art series for the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck. Here’s a...
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Wisconsin Film Festival: Confined to quarters
12 Days (2017). DB here: I try to watch any film at two levels. First, I want to engage with it, opening myself up to the experience it offers. Second, I try to think about how the film is made, why...
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The eyewitness plot and the drama of doubt
Looking is as important in movies as talking is in in plays. Thanks to optical point-of-view shots (POV) and reaction-shot cutting, you can create a powerful drama without words. Everybody knows this,...
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