Really cool interactive digital presentation here
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Cut Piece 1965
Great film of a great work –– another approach might have been to have the camera remain fixed throughout, mirroring Yoko's stasis. But instead the Maysles' camera is (unsurprisingly, given their formal ethos) quite active, constantly in motion. It drifts around, lingering briefly on different parts of Yoko's body, on the scissors laying beside her, and, in a pivotal moment, zooming in to frame her face in close-up. And indeed, these movements are crucial, given the piece's emphasis on active spectatorship; in its restless activity, the camera aligns the cinematic spectator not with Yoko, but with the nervous energy of the live participating audience.
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Gemini Man 2019
Ang Lee knows exactly what he's doing opening on a train station. He's not merely positioning himself on a cinematic continuum that begins with the Cinematograph, but explicitly aligning himself with the technological innovation of the Lumiere's. They freed cinema from the confines of Edison's Kinetoscope, and now Lee presents us with a work that 100+ years of developing projection technology is still literally unable to contain. Theirs' was a train arriving at the station –– his is departing. Consider…
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Honkytonk Man 1982
"We can see some of these ideas playing out in another of his films, 1983’s Honkytonk Man. This is the only time Eastwood cast himself as a musician, though here he steps outside of the realm of jazz, returning to the role of country-western troubadour. Still, it’s hard to consider the film now without thinking of that bridge between jazz music and the mythic freedom of the American West. Much like the titular hero of another underappreciated ‘80s film of…
