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Django Unchained

Directors · Historical & Epic · Reviews

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Tarantino and Spielberg: Two Visions of America

  • July 31, 2013

“In Lincoln, the abolition of slavery is the goal of the narrative; the closing scenes are intended to confirm our notion of a historical trajectory that moves from injustice to justice. In Django Unchained, the narrative is simpler, but the notions of justice and history are more complex. The story gives no hint that slavery will ever be abolished. It presents an America that has yet to escape its foundational sin, and may never be able to.”

Actors & Personalities

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Play-Actor: On Trevor Howard

  • July 31, 2013

“The whole point of Howard’s screen persona was surely its combination of the ramrod-straight and the slyly subversive, and its creation of a façade that was eternally gruff yet perpetually seemed to be in on some wonderful joke.”

Jurassic Park

Directors · SF & Fantasy

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The Man Who Shot John Ford — in 3D: Spielberg Retrofits Jurassic Park with Mixed Results

  • April 30, 2013

“As cold and insincere as it may be for Spielberg to flush an ‘updated’ version back into theaters as a marketing blitz for the forthcoming 3D sequel, Jurassic Park still exemplifies, for better and worse, the staying power and effectiveness of Spielbergian theme park ride filmmaking, independent of the fact that it is actually about a theme park, and its success is a testament to how skilled he can be at showing an audience what it wants to see.”

Actors & Personalities

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The Strange Case of Basil Rathbone: The Life and Work of the Man Who Made Olivier — and Audiences — Swoon

  • April 30, 2013

“That God-damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in — a great money success — it ruined me with its promise of an easy fortune. I didn’t want to do anything else, and by the time I woke up to the fact I’d become a slave to the damned thing and did try other plays, it was too late. They had identified me with that one part, and didn’t want me in anything else. They were right, too. I’d lost the great talent I once had through years of easy repetition, never learning a new part, never really working hard. Thirty-five to forty thousand dollars net profit a season like snapping your fingers! It was too great a temptation.” — James Tyrone, Long Day’s Journey into Night

BLFJ News · Writers & Critics

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Bright Lights on Bright Lights!

  • April 8, 2013

EDITOR’S NOTE: Our innate modesty and abhorrence of insularity, self-referencing, self-reflexivity, and, well, self-everything would normally prohibit us from publishing this piece. But we were so captivated by this tribute[…]

La Petite Marchand

Directors · Reviews · Silents

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From La Fille to Dr. Cordelier: Character and Environment in the (Mostly) Early Works of Jean Renoir

  • January 31, 2013

“Renoir’s static images contain a great deal of emotional intensity — like that last lyrical shot of the sun setting in La Fille — and the sheer beauty of his two-dimensional compositions generates an emotional involvement within the viewer (like that in the viewer of a painting) and a sense of emotional treatment of the romantic material within the frame, yet preserves an awareness of the existence of a larger world beyond the borders of the frame.”

Erich von Stroheim at the editing table

Editors · Essays

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Cutters’ Way: The Mysterious Art of Film Editing

  • October 31, 2012

“The basic rules of film editing, first established in the silent era, still govern the industry today: maintain your eye lines, preserve continuity, respect planarity (the rules governing the transposition of three dimensions onto a two-dimensional plane), find a good rhythm, and, most important, always advance the story.”

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