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…
Category: Miscellaneous
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
This will be the first in my series of posts where I discuss individual scenes in films. Ingmar Bergman’s film Autumn Sonata [1978] centres on the relationship between a mother, a self-centred concert pianist Charlotte Andergast (Ingrid Bergman), and her already grown-up and married daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann). One of the greatest film scenes in…
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
Today, 17 October 2021, marks 101 years since the birth of American actor Montgomery Clift (1920 – 1966). This talented actor was a four-times Academy Award-nominee and is known for such films as The Search (1948), From Here to Eternity (1953) and Judgement at Nuremberg (1961). He often played smooth-talking, melancholy and mysterious men who…
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)
Since my previous post was about Russian animations, I thought I would share this 2006 animation coming from Russia. 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.
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
I would like to wish all my followers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! (Let 2021 be a happier and less stressful year for all of us!); 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…
Maya Deren: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 experimental film by Maya Deren. It is known for its sense of unease, eeriness and mystery – all accomplished using a minimum number of objects and a single location. In this 14-minute film, the most commonplace and everyday objects take sinister contours as the director plays impressively with…
Too Much “Let It Go” and Not Enough “I’m Sorry”? Disney’s Frozen (2013) Teaser Trailer Is The Definition of Plagiarism On Screen
Christmas is getting nearer, and I hope everyone is excited! People are probably also excited about Disney’s Frozen II, and, for those who do not know, I want to draw attention to the plagiarism case below, concerning the Frozen (2013) teaser trailer (the first video below) and the short animation titled The Snowman by independent…
Unpopular Opinion Tag (Films) II
Last year, in August, I posted a similar post – Unpopular Opinion Tag (Films), where I talked about three movies that people generally love, but I hated. Now, it is time to do a “reversal” post. Here, I will be talking about three films that people or critics do not like much, but I actually…
“The Handmaid’s Tale” Series Review
The Handmaid’s Tale [2017] “There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.” (Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1985: 34) “Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing…
Plagiarism: Jean-Pierre Jeunet accused Guillermo del Toro of copying his scene from “Delicatessen” and his concept from “Amelie” for “The Shape of Water”
**SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FILM “THE SHAPE OF WATER”** A number of newspapers and news sources reported that French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet accused Guillermo del Toro of copying one of his scenes from his movie Delicatessen (1991) for del Toro’s latest film The Shape of Water. Moreover, Jeunet accused del Toro of copying the character…
Spotlight on Film 