“Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave,” intones Sam Elliott’s character in A Star Is Born. “It’s the same story, told over and over. All any artist can offer the world is how they see those 12 notes.” That nugget of wisdom extends to the realm of cinematography, too, where the artists toil within an “octave,” using notes comprised of medium shots and close-ups, push-ins and tracking shots. But like great musicians, great cinematographers make audiences forget the basics of cinema grammar and lose themselves inside a rush of images, which DP Matty Libatique certainly compels them to do […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 17, 2018Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star is Born, is the kind of movie that feels as though it contains decades’ worth of saved-up ideas and feelings, yet never strains under the weight of its ambition. It’s simultaneously sweeping in its scope and razor-sharp in its clarity, passionate and exuberant but restrained and confident. Although the tale has been told several times before, most memorably in George Cukor’s 1954 CinemaScope extravaganza, Cooper (who collaborated on the screenplay with Eric Roth and Will Fetters) makes it his own by using the basic premise as a springboard for a sophisticated meditation on fame […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 17, 2018I haven’t done one of these in a while — a roundup of a few things I’ve stored in my Instapaper for weekend readings. As the year goes on, Melancholia is emerging as my favorite film of 2011. Part of the reason, I think, is that the discourse about it is becoming more and more interesting. Whereas Von Trier’s Cannes comments dominated the dialogue following its opening, now not just critics but viewers are grappling with the film’s meanings. From the Occupied Territories Tumblr comes “Depression, Melancholia, and Me: Lars Von Trier’s Politics of Displeasure,” an extraordinary essay in which […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 4, 2011Most of the time when I come across interesting articles or video on the web I clip them to my Evernote reader and check them out later on my Blackberry or iPad. Here, then, are a few things I’ve clipped that might interest you too. From CNN Money: “One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010.” What are the implications for online content creators? In Spring 2008 I wrote about Alix Lambert’s Crime book for Filmmaker. (The piece is not online, but you can check it out on her site.) Here, at The Graveyard Shift, she discusses […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 2, 2010