Once again the crack staff here at Mid Century Cinema is getting ready to teach “The Politics of the Seventies Film,” (new bat time, new bat channel). Long time listeners will recall that we’ve followed along with the class in previous incarnations, with posts under the headings of “A Semester of Seventies Films” and then…
Author: MidCenturyCinema
News and Commentary – 2018 Roundup: The Best New Home Video Releases
It’s that time of year – the season of “best of” lists – and our now-emerging tradition is to play along with a selection of our favorite home video releases. A reminder of the ground rules: this is an appreciation of favorite home video releases, not favorite movies, so there is an emphasis on discs…
News and Commentary – Bertolucci and Roeg Leave the Building
Days apart in the last week of November, filmmakers Nicholas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci left us. The turn–the-page pairing of two representative-of-something artists sounded echoes of July 1997, when Robert Mitchum and Jimmy Stewart died on the first and the second of the month—quite the “they don’t make them like that anymore” farewell to the…
News and Commentary – Rare from Us: A Negative Review
So, we don’t really write negative reviews here at Mid Century Cinema, for two reasons. First, we’re not in the review game. In fact, we’re a little wary of that enterprise, in which creative people work long and hard to produce something they value, and then someone else wanders by and passes summary judgement on…
News and Commentary – The “Three Screenings Rule”
On a number of occasions here we have invoked something we dubbed the “three screenings rule”—that it is hard to fully come to grips with a movie until you have seen it three times. Thus although we will often, even with great enthusiasm, share a few words about a movie seen only once, we nevertheless…
News and Commentary – First Thoughts on Olivier Assayas’ Double Lives
MCC favorite Olivier Assayas has a new film out—the French title is Doubles Vies (Double Lives). We were not able to see it at the New York Film Festival (especially sorry to have missed the Q&A that followed there), but thanks to the new branch office we did catch the screening arranged by the Boston…
50 Years Ago This Week – Bullitt
Bullitt, directed by Peter Yates and starring Steve McQueen, premiered on October 17, 1968. A much beloved film that invariably brings a smile to the face of its enthusiasts—mostly for its legendary car chase. It lasts over ten minutes! Steve McQueen did much of his own dangerous high-speed driving! That streets-of-San-Francisco sequence (the big hills…
News and Commentary – First Thoughts on Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind
Orson Welles’ final film, The Other Side of the Wind, was shot in early 1970s—but left unfinished at the time of the great man’s death in 1985. In the decades that followed, the fate of the hundred hours of footage Welles shot was entangled in impossible legal and financial complications. But against all odds, and…
50 Years Ago This Week – Shame
Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Shame had its premiere on September 29, 1968. In the U.S., the National Society of Film Critics would name it the best film of the year, and Liv Ullmann as best actress. A visceral film about a terrifying war with harrowing action on-screen, it is unlike any other Bergman film, in both…
News and Commentary – Elliott Gould: The New Hollywood Years
Elliott Gould recently celebrated his eightieth birthday, which presents a fitting moment to appreciate his contributions as one of the notable participants in the New Hollywood. From 1968 to 1977 (stretching slightly here to include Capricorn One, a ridiculous movie that we have a tremendous fondness for), Gould appeared in a score of feature films….