Alain Resnais film season

As a prelude to a season of Alain Resnais films that will get under way in earnest next week, Michel Ciment (editor of the French film journal Positif) gave an introduction to Resnais’ fifty year career, followed by a screening of Providence. Ciment’s overview of Resnais’ work and practice was erudite in nailing his unique […]

Impact of DVDs on film aesthetics

There’s a very interesting article by Mark Cousins about the implications of the ‘DVD revolution’ on the film industry in the March issue of Prospect. DVDs are apparently the “fastest growing entertainment technology of all time,” and Cousins suggests some reasons why this technology has been embraced when the introduction of CDs took much longer. […]

More Werner Herzog Quotes

I recently read Paul Cronin’s Herzog on Herzog and collected a few choice quotes about filmmaking and the perspectives that inform it. I’ve added these to my page of Herzog quotes — which seems to meet some kind of demand, if the number of Google searches it attracts is anything to go on. The page […]

Digital versus analogue

This article reports how the American Society of Cinematographers is responding to digital cinema (with thanks to the E-cinema Alert for this link). While they seem to be embracing digital cinema, it’s interesting to read the comment that ‘major’ movies are expected to be shot on film for many years yet: “The studios are not, […]

Notes and resources on digital cinema

Here are some extended notes and links on digital cinema (aka D-cinema, aka E-cinema). I’m not an expert in this field, but I dip into it occasionally, and what follows is principally an exercise for my own benefit in collecting my notes and thoughts — if anyone else finds this of interest, so much the […]

Gloria Grahame’s Eyebrows

Lucy and I went to see A Woman’s Secret yesterday, which was better for its sharply scripted dialogue than its plot. I’ve always liked Gloria Grahame in the past (especially in In a Lonely Place, The Big Heat and Human Desire), but I’ve never seen her use her eyebrows quite so egregiously as she does […]

Digital cinema and changing film aesthetics

Thanks to planning my move of home/office, it’s taken me over a week to collect my thoughts on a debate on the impact of digital technologies on the film industry, which was organised by Cass Creatives. Happily this delay has saved me time, since Interactive KnowHow has now posted a comprehensive eight page report on […]