Posts Tagged ‘one perfect shot’
“In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema”*…
METROPOLIS (1927) Shot by Karl Freund, Günther Rittau, & Walter Ruttmann | Director: Fritz Lang
Honoring cinema’s past, frame by frame: from @TheGeoffTodd, a Twitter feed that delivers “One Perfect Shot” again and again…
* Alfred Hitchcock
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As we contemplate composition, we might recall that it was on this date in 1939 that Stagecoach was released…
Stagecoach was a major shifting point both in terms of the careers of its creators and of cinema as a whole. Ford had long failed to get his adaptation of Ernest Haycock’s short story “The Stage to Lordsburg” off the ground because the studios felt that Westerns were purely B-movie fare, the sort of thing best left to Poverty Row. And while Ford’s name is now synonymous with the genre like no other director, he had in fact not made a Western since 1926. Stagecoach finally got made with the help of independent producer Walter Wanger, who suggested Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper for the leads. However, he ultimately bowed to Ford’s preference for Claire Trevor and a relative unknown (and friend of Ford’s) by the name of John Wayne. All the film’s elements – a smart script by Ben Hecht and Dudley Nichols, the striking setting of Monument Valley, a great supporting cast, the exciting action sequences, Ford’s skilled direction, Wayne’s potent presence – combined to make it a hit not only with critics but audiences two. The film grossed $1 million in its first year, and was up for seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. From that point on, the Western became an important and respected element of American filmmaking, while Ford and Wayne would reteam many times to solidify their position as its seminal director and star. Stagecoach was also apparently used by Orson Welles as the blueprint of a “perfect movie” while making Citizen Kane, and it rightly remains a classic to this day.
“It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen”*…
@OnePerfectShot, a service of @TheGoeffTodd, provides a steady Twitter stream of just that: a series of exquisite shots from great films.
[TotH to Super Punch]
* Anthony Burgess
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As we fiddle with our framing, we might send colorful birthday greetings to Keith Haring; he was born on this date in 1958. Haring dropped out of commercial art school in Pennsylvania, moved to New York City, and became involved in the street art scene in the late 70s. He quickly developed a signature style, and began to get recognition for a series of painting in New York’s subway system that were documented by the photographer Tseng Kwong Chi. By 1982, Haring’s fame had grown, and he’d begun to organize installations at Club 57. Openly gay and an engaged social activist, Haring filled his work with social, political, and gender comment, though largely in a textured, “buried” way. His most overt political statement was his 1989 painting “Silence = Death,” a riff on the 1986 poster that became the unofficial logo of ACT UP. Haring died of AIDS-related complications in 1990.
Haring’s “Silence = Death”
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