One of the more interesting periods in the history of Italian cinema is the era of international co-productions that followed neorealism; kicked off by the massive success of MGM’s 1951 extravaganza Quo Vadis, the Italian film industry entered a boom age in which the location shooting, social consciousness, and limited resources of neorealism gave way to spectacular sets, glamorous Hollywood stars, and lavish budgets thanks to the country’s abundance of breathtaking scenery and attractive production incentives. One of the most expensive and entertaining of the 1950s historical epics was Ulysses (1954), a gorgeously photographed and cleverly written adaptation of Homer’s […]
by Jim Hemphill on Nov 25, 2020Here, for your Sunday reading pleasure, are a number of artices and videos I took note of this week. Novelist Helen DeWitt retreats to a family-owned cabin in the woods to make an important writing deadline. She winds up, as she describes in the London Review of Books, being stalked: One neighbour says if she saw him by the road at night she would run him down. Others tell me to get a gun and shoot on sight. Look at it this way: if there were a high risk of attack I wouldn’t be staying in a cottage in 11 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2014