Film & Art Theory

The Limits of Fiction

Today, Wheaton College professor and writer Alan Jacobs describes his views on the powers and limits of literature over at The American Conservative. What do you think?

So yesterday Teju Cole posted this reflection on …

A Contraction of Ideology

Camille Paglia writes about capitalism and art in the Wall Street Journal.

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts …

Photography and Time

Susan Sontag, from On Photography (1973)

It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being …

The Rule of Six

A preview of oscar-winning editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient) talking at an NFTS post-production symposium, introducing his ‘Rule of Six’, for the Imaginox Online Creative Academy of Film and Television.…

The Worlds of Wes Anderson

A lovely essay by Michael Chabon on director Wes Anderson.

The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it …

Hitchcock: Master of Suspense

The master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock explains his process of working with actors, the fundamentals of suspense, humor in his films, the nature of villains, the influence of German expressionism on his work and much, much …

Walter Murch on Editing, Cinema, and Final Cut Pro

In this comprehensive talk at the Boston FCPUG SuperMeet, acclaimed editor and sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti, author of In the Blink of an Eye) begins by discussing some …

Superheroes Movies Should Not Be Scorned

The Guardian connects today’s spectacle-filled comic book films to the earliest cinematic experiments in the article “Superhero Movies Like ‘Avengers Assemble’ Should Not Be Scorned” (April 19, 2012)

“Superhero movies also represent the pinnacle of cinema …