Fall 2019 provided us with a massively budgeted 35mm feature in the form of J.J. Abrams’s The Rise of Skywalker (shot by Dan Mindel and colored by Stefan Sonnenfeld at finishing house Company 3) and a surprisingly visible A24 mid-budget art film in the Safdie brothers’s Uncut Gems (shot by Darius Khondji and colored by Damien van der Cruyssen at The Mill). In each case, the choice to shoot on celluloid was rooted in what could be termed (charitably) as a nod to film history or (uncharitably) a nostalgic gesture. I make no claims as to which it is, nor […]

I was reading Room to Dream, David Lynch’s memoir-of-sorts, on the way to Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker. For Lynch, writes his biographer/interlocuter Kristine McKenna, “The 1950s have never really gone away […] classic rock ‘n’ roll; diner waitresses wearing cute little caps; girls in bobby sox and saddle shoes, sweaters and pleated plaid skirts—these are elements of Lynch’s aesthetic vocabulary.” It then occurred to me to check whether Lynch and George Lucas are contemporaries, which they are (born 1/20/46 and 5/14/44, respectively). For Lynch, these images are eternally recurring, whereas Lucas got them out of his system exactly once, in American […]