I’m packing my bags and heading for Sundance. If it seems a bit early (the festival runs from January 15 – 25), that’s because I’m first going to a three-day Art House Convergence event that is being held in Salt Lake City’s Peery Hotel. The Art House Project was spearheaded by Sundance in 2006 to “celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Sundance Institute and pay tribute to to Art House theatres nationwide.” My organization was one of twelve selected, but this year six new theaters have been added to the fold – thus bringing the AHP up to 18 members. Here’s an overview of the participating theaters, in alphabetical order: READ MORE

How is it that one of the most distinctive and influential film composers of his generation is practically unknown today and almost all of his records out of print and unavailable in any reissue format? Of the many scores listed in his filmography only BABY DOLL has recently been re-released on CD but what of the rest? – THE HUSTLER, 12 ANGRY MEN, WILD RIVER, LILITH, THE STRANGE ONE, MISTER BUDDWING, THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, THE YELLOW CANARY, THE FUGITIVE KIND, etc.….and we haven’t even mentioned the space age bachelor pad music he created with the Creed Taylor Orchestra – SHOCK Music in Hi-Fi, PANIC: The Son of Shock and NIGHTMARE and more.    READ MORE

Jack Arnold’s THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) can be read and appreciated on a number of different levels – as a straight-ahead fantasy, as a relic of Cold War paranoia, as a warning about the dehumanization of existence coincident with advances in science and technology, as a “surreal Outward Bound program for little people” (as Stephen King put it) or as an affirmation of a  God-centered universe – but the more I watch and re-watch it these days the more it strikes me as an answer to the dilemma of trying to live a modest life in a world increasingly obsessed with fame, celebrity and hyperbolic notions of importance and greatness.  READ MORE

Yes, I realize I haven’t seen all the performances of the actors nominated in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama category at the Golden Globes, and I’ll admit that you really should before you make a judgment.  But, you know, I’m just going to go with my heart on this one.  The nominees are Leonardo DiCaprio for Revolutionary Road, Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, Sean Penn for Milk, Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler.   I’ve seen the last three, and maybe I can get to the other two by Sunday, but honestly, I don’t think I’m going to change my mind.  Somestimes the best things are so simple, sublime and heartbreaking that you need not search any more.  You have found it.

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The Fallen Idol (1948)

Among the plethora of Warner Bros. Home Video DVD released last fall, the timing of their new and Blu-ray versions of Cool Hand Luke (1967) was ironic given its story:  featuring Messiah-like hero worship of its title character, played by the late great Paul Newman.  But unearned and irrational praise – especially absent any fundamental substance – inevitably turns to disillusionment.  In the movie, it happens when Luke is made to face the reality of his situation by ‘the man’.  The moment he succumbs, his ‘followers’ desert and turn on him.  Even though a subsequent event brings about some redemption, it ultimately leads to his downfall (and death).

So “unmerited hero worship in the movies” is the topic of my blog post this week.

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Since movies like THE GRADUATE (1967), THE HARDER THEY COME (1972), AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) and THE BIG CHILL (1983) changed the landscape of movie music, popularizing a trend towards scrapping classic orchestral or electronic scores in favorite of a hit list of chart toppers or nostalgic curios, movie soundtracks have suffered immeasurably.  Hoping to triangulate their ticket sales, producers nowadays lard their releases with wall-to-wall tunes that too often ride roughshod over the action or, even worse, telegraph the exact emotion of the scene unspooling (e.g., Nazareth’s cover of “Love Hurts” supports the message of Rob Zombie’s 2008 HALLOWEEN reboot that love hurts).  It’s all so much overkill, resulting in soundtrack albums and CDs that are often better than the movies they support… but even though my preference is for old school film scoring, I do thrill to a pop song used not to pander but placed precisely to surprise and delight the viewer.  READ MORE

I really do enjoy visiting the sites or locations where movies have been  shot, whether they are classic award-winning dramas or forgotten little b-movies. Apparently so do a lot of other people, because movie tourism accounts for the latest trend touted by the travel industry. [Okay, I confess, I actually co-wrote a book about movie tourism in Florida called FLORIDA ON FILM, published by the University of Florida Press in 2007, but even before that, I was drawn to visiting movie locations.] 

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For me, and many other film history students, Chris Marker’s short film La Jetée (1962), a film about post-nuclear war and time travel told via a photo-montage, along with his poetic ruminations on culture, memory, and travel in Sans Soleil (1982), were both required viewing. La Jetée got a bit more traction when it later inspired Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys (1995), but… READ MORE