MovieMan0283

This is a collection of my strongest work. It will top the blog as I take a break from the site.   Welcome (or welcome back) to The Dancing Image. There are several ways to explore the site, beginning with the video clip series "32 Days of Movies." With selections from my collection, I created a tour through a century of cinema, from The Cameraman's Revenge (1912) to Antichrist (2009). Click on this icon to browse the films included, or visit the video gallery to peruse chapters. As for the... Read Full Story

This concludes  "The Big Ones,"  a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image.  There are spoilers. I was very lucky with Vertigo . Psycho had been spoiled for me when Iwas far too young to see it; by my first viewing, I’d already seen clips of not onlythe shower scene but the climax. A schoolmate told me who Luke Skywalker’sfather was after I’d viewed the first StarWars , a friend’s father revealed Rosebud’s identity a minute or so beforeit appeared onscreen... Read Full Story

These are not necessarily the movies I consider "greatest;" they're closer to being personal favorites I would be most compelled to watch at a given moment. I've ordered them roughly by preference, though looking at the list it feels rather arbitrary...and of course, it could change in a minute or two. Links are to my reviews of the given film. 1. Masculin Feminin (1966/France/dir. Jean-Luc Godard) I just respond to the style here above all else - it's so restrained yet burning with intense... Read Full Story

Tonight or tomorrow, my final piece for "The Big Ones" goes up, on Vertigo , one of my two or three favorite movies. It will also be my last regular post for some time. On New Year's Eve, I will put up a revised version of my Top Posts to serve as the front page for this blog during a time of inactivity, a reminder to readers old and new of the site's potential as an archive. Before I get there, I wanted to take a moment to do two things. One, as I did a few weeks ago, to highlight some... Read Full Story

This is an entry in  "The Big Ones,"  a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image.  There are spoilers. In discussing Rear Window , I wrote of Hitchock’s peculiar and attractive visual style, appealingly voyeuristic as we watch characters from afar, unable to see them closely yet fascinated as if by a child gazing on an ant farm or a dollhouse. I noted that the style was rare, although imitated or echoed at times by Jacques Tati, Jerry Lewis, and Wes Anderson... Read Full Story

This is an entry in  "The Big Ones,"  a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image.  There are spoilers. Shukishi and Tomi do not need money from their children. They don't need a place to live. They have their own home, and they seem comfortable enough in it - they even have a young daughter, an unmarried schoolteacher, who still lives with them. There is no crisis in their lives - no overt crisis anyway. This is, in a sense, the tragedy of Yasujiro Ozu's  Tokyo... Read Full Story

This is an entry in  "The Big Ones,"  a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers. "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend," E.M. Forster once wrote, "I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." Albert Camus, faced with the possibility of his mother being killed by terrorists in the struggle for Algerian independence, said, "If that is justice, I prefer my mother." The circumstances in The Third Man... Read Full Story

This is an entry in  "The Big Ones,"  a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image.  There are spoilers. The following was written in the fall of 1999, when I was 15 years old, just for the hell of it (not a school assignment). I'm including it because a) this title wasn't even originally scheduled in the series, but was added at the last minute, b) this series is in part about my personal relationship to these movies, and c) this film has a certain adolescent... Read Full Story

This is an entry in  "The Big Ones,"  a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image.  There are spoilers. In the Valhalla of cinematic images, alongside Orson Welles grinning through one doorway and John Wayne gripping his arm on another, next to Mickey Mouse conducting a symphony of waves or King Kong hanging from the Empire State Building, there must be a spot for a black-cowled, white-faced Death leaning over a chessboard opposite a stoic Crusader, against the... Read Full Story

This is an entry in  "The Big Ones,"  a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image.  There are spoilers. The ethos of Seven Samurai – the values it stands for, or at least represents – is compellingly divided. On the one hand, there is a definite communitarian spirit: characters are scolded for striking out on their own, for seeking their self-advantage instead of playing a role that serves the group. Whether they are seeking cowardly self-protection or... Read Full Story