This post is my belated, modest tribute to Gene Hackman (1930-2025), a great actor whose versatility and effortlessness on screen will continue inspiring generations to come. The scene I chose to focus on is from Alan Parker’s drama Mississippi Burning (1988), that concerns two FBI agents, Rupert Anderson and Alan Ward, played by Gene Hackman…
Category: Miscellaneous
John Corigliano: The Red Violin
Today, 16th February, American composer John Corigliano is 87 years old (1938-), and to celebrate the occasion I am sharing his supremely beautiful score for film The Red Violin (1997). This is one haunting score performed by violinist Joshua Bell, and in the film plot that has a five-card Tarot reading at its heart! 🎻 🎵 ♦️…
John Williams: Hook
To celebrate the 93th birthday of the legendary film composer John Williams, I would like to share his film score for Hook (1991) directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman in the lead roles. I believe this score is quite underrated and underappreciated in comparison to his better known work. Born on…
Maya Deren: At Land (1944)
Maya Deren (1917-1961) was an influential experimental filmmaker whose short film Meshes of the Afternoon helped pave the way for other surrealist filmmakers, most notably David Lynch. Deren’s short film At Land follows an unnamed young woman who finds herself stranded somewhere on a beach. Her exploration of this land and journey through the island’s…
Films of the Century
What are “the films of this century”? Perhaps it is the best films of any given year, or those that experimented the most with cinematic genres, techniques and styles? Perhaps it is the ones that dived the deepest into their subject matters or explored previously unexplored subject terrains? Inspired by Sight & Sound magazine’s list…
Remembering Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini (16 April 1924 – 14 June 1994) was a prolific American composer and pianist, creating scores for such films as Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Charade (1963) and Touch of Evil (1958), and writing such well-known songs as “Moon River” and “Days of Wine & Roses”. Below is his “The Pink Panther Theme” from…
Short Animation: Le Retour des Vagues
Loving home is a place you always carry in your heart. Le Retour des Vagues (The Return of Waves) is a French short animation about a young man who returns to his hometown and finds that time has stopped there. It is a 2020 graduation project work by three students (Manon Cansell, Alejandra Guevara Cervera…
Film Scene Spotlight: Joel Schumacher’s Cousins
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my followers! In spirit of all the onscreen love and its lovers, today’s highlighted film scene is from Joel Schumacher’s romantic comedy Cousins [1989], which is a remake of French comedy Cousin Cousine [1975]. Now, this film is no masterpiece by any stretch of imagination, and suffers on almost all fronts,…
Short Animation: Dinner for Few
This highly thought-provoking animation of 2014 is from animator Nassos Vakalis. It presents a powerful allegory of a society, from the use of resources and corruption to the control of the masses and revolution.
Short Animation: Happiness
Steve Cutts is a London-based illustrator and animation, and this is his short animation Happiness, where he satirises the modern society and its activities, including the goal to “find happiness” in material things and capitalistic culture. It is set to Georges Bizet’s aria Habanera from the opera Carmen.
Spotlight on Editing & Directing: Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987)
With its “body-horror” preoccupation, excessive violence, and tongue-in-cheek dialogues, RoboCop (1987) is a quintessential 1980s film, inspired by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and made on the back of the success of The Terminator (1984). There are many things that made it good, including its cinematography provided by Jost Vacano (Das Boot (1981)), its unusual…
Film Scene Spotlight: Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata
As seen from a number of his other films, Ingmar Bergman was very interested in the relationship between two women (one dominant and another submissive), but, in Autumn Sonata, he presented something truly complex and sublime.
Soviet Winter Animation: The Mitten (1967)
This sweet stop-motion animation from the Soviet Union titled The Mitten (“Варежка“) was directed by Roman Kachanov (director of The Mystery of the Third Planet (1981), but who also worked on such animations as The Snow Maiden (1952) and The Scarlet Flower (1952)). The 10-minute silent animation is about a girl who longs to have…
Actor Spotlight: Montgomery Clift
Clift was one of the most talented American actors and, unfortunately, one of the most misunderstood ones, who valued the craft of acting above financial success or even critical/public opinion…
When Film Posters Mean Art: 10 Eye-Catching Alternative Designs
Designing film posters is an art in its own right and some films come up with rather ingenious ways to entice the public to watch their films. Cinematic fan art is also making some amazing contributions, and below I present ten film posters that have captured my attention recently; see also my posts Alternative Film…
Salvador Dalí-Disney’s Short Animation “Destino”
Destino is a Salvador Dali-Disney (John Hench)’s collaboration on an animation that first started in 1945 and only finished in 2003 when Walt Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney found the unfinished project materials in 1999. The surrealist animation was eventually directed by Dominique Monféry, and the music was written by Armando Domínguez and performed by Dora…
Short Animation: My Love (2006)
My Love, based on a novella A Love Story (1927) by Ivan Shmelyov, tells of a sixteen year-old boy’s sexual awakening one summer in the nineteenth-century Russia. Longing for a “spiritual union” and “pure love”, the boy becomes torn between a young and pretty servant girl Pasha and an older and richer woman living next door. There…
David Lynch: “Rabbits” (2002)
Rabbits is a series of short surreal films with the overall running time of forty minutes. It features three humanoid rabbits (two female and one male) in one single room. They sit on a sofa, enter and go out of the room, talk to each other and recite poetry. Through eerie music, rabbits’ nonsensical dialogue…
Alternative Film Posters
Below I am presenting some of my favourite alternative film posters, which also includes a poster to Home Alone, a quintessential Christmas film. Do you like “film art”? What are your favourite alternative film posters? I. The “House Architecture” Posters These are some of my favourite alternative film posters and they often get quite intricate….
Spotlight on Film 