Tag: cinephile
Akira Kurosawa: Debating the Way of the Samurai
The second of a two-part debate between CURNBLOG’s Simon Butler and Jonathan Eig on the films of Kurosawa. The question: Are Kurosawa’s Samurai films superior to his contemporary films? See Part One here. I’m no Miniver Cheevy. That is to say, I don’t wish I was born in another century when knights achieved feats of derring-do and…
Akira Kurosawa: Debating the Highs and Lows
The first of a two-part debate between CURNBLOG’s Simon Butler and Jonathan Eig on the films of Kurosawa. The question: Are Kurosawa’s Samurai films superior to his contemporary films? See Part Two here. Simon Butler and I are at it again. This time, we are debating the iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Which were greater, Kurosawa’s Samurai…
Building Time Machines: From La Jetée to 12 Monkeys
In 1962, a brilliant cinephile with a passion for temporal distortion completed construction of his masterpiece – a time machine. His name was Chris Marker, and the machine was La Jetée. This invention, built almost entirely out of black and white photographs taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and a brief piece of footage captured by…
Charlie Kaufman and the Art of Adaptation
Adapting a novel into a film is a sensitive and hazardous process, especially if the novel has already garnered a following of avid readers. When adapting an already existing work the screenwriter may have the leisure of not having to come up with everything from scratch, but they must endure the added stress of wanting…
Debating the Auteur Theory: An Argument Against
The second of a two-part debate between CURNBLOG’s Simon Butler and Jonathan Eig on the legitimacy of the Auteur Theory. See Part One here. Let’s go to the source. Andrew Sarris, writing in the Introduction to his seminal book The American Cinema: “Not all directors are auteurs. Indeed, most directors are anonymous. There is much…