Storytelling

Stepping Back: The Key to Star Wars

“One of the things that I’m doing in these films, to give it a little bit of a reality, is to give the shots a kind of documentary feel, where things float off the shot. I …

Scholars on "The Great Gatsby"

Over at The Millions, five English scholars weigh in on Baz Luhrmann’s new film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, including HBU’s own Doni Wilson:

Doni M. Wilson, Houston Baptist University…

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

Nate Marshall writes on Koyaanisqatsi (1982) over at The Examined Life:

It isn’t a narrative drama, it isn’t a fiction, and it’s only reluctantly categorized as a documentary (because it’s not at all a documentary, …

The Warmth of “Parks & Rec”

Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture on Parks & Recreation:

More than any network sitcom since The Andy Griffith Show, Parks and Rec catches the spirit of Preston Sturges’s small-town comedies (Hail the Conquering Hero, The Miracle …

Oblivion: Obliviously Obvious

Near the beginning of Oblivion, Tom Cruise stands in the middle of a destroyed stadium and eagerly recounts the climactic moments of a big football game to his colleague. Despite his enthusiasm, she doesn’t seem …

Exploring Intuition

from Marilynne Robinson’s When I Was a Child I Read Books

For me, at least, writing consists very largely of exploring intuition. A character is really the sense of a character, embodied, attired, and given voice …

Spitballing Indy

The New Yorker highlights early story meeting transcripts for Raiders of the Lost Ark:

Over the intervening decades of enormous wealth and success, both Lucas and Spielberg have carefully tended their public images, so there is …

The Underrated “You’ve Got Mail”

Tina Hassannia on You’ve Got Mail (1998):

Considering how much technology has permeated our culture in the last decade and how much it continues to evolve through transient shibboleths, a film like You’ve Got Mail seems …

Whit Stillman Interview

The Seventh Art recently produced this in-depth video interview with filmmaker Whit Stillman (Damsels in Distress, Metropolitan, Last Days of Disco, Barcelona).

Whit Stillman is an American filmmaker whose four films are comedic investigations …

“Anna Karenina” Interview

At the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012, DP/30 filmed this video interview with Anna Karenina director Joe Wright and cast members Keira Knightley (Anna Karenina), Jude Law (Karenin), and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Vronsky).…