TCM will begin airing the 15-part documentary THE STORY OF FILM tonight. It’s a fascinating ride through the history of film by historian Mark Cousins, and you’ll end up with a long, long list of movies on your watch list. I loved the first episodes the best. From my Home Projectionist blog posts about the series: […]
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THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011) is indeed a journey. Clocking in at 900 minutes (via 15 one-hour segments), it’s a labor of love by both the filmmaker and the audience — and very well worth the ride, for both the cinephile and the fan-on-the-street. (I’m a fan-on-the-street type, by the way.) Like any memorable […]
The last episodes of the 15-part of THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011), filmmaker and narrator Mark Cousins continues to explore the constancy of change in cinema as it moves from celluloid to the digital era. Throughout the 1990s and onward, authenticity and artifice weave in and out of the picture as directors all over […]
When I think of the blockbusters of the 1970s, I think of Spielberg gems like JAWS (1975) and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977); Freidkin’s THE EXORCIST (1973); and Lucas’s STAR WARS (1977) masterpiece. According to Mark Cousins, narrator and filmmaker of THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011), these innovative films were the candy […]
Ten hours into THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011), my head was reeling with “begats,” such as this-scene-was-influenced-by-this-scene-which-was-influenced-by-this-scene etc., etc. In sum, like all art — and life itself — filmmaking is influenced by what has come before, the impact of cultural and political changes, and what technology allows. As this history of film […]
After the plethora of sweeping, epic melodramas in post-WWII films, the next era of innovation in moviemaking took the opposite road: exploring the “profoundly personal” experience.In Part IV of the 15-hour documentary, THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011), filmmaker and historian Mark Cousins delves into the work of cinema’s great New Wave innovators of […]
Like life, film never stops changing. With STAGECOACH (1939), John Ford introduced a new cinematic vision using deep staging and deep focus “that allowed the audience to choose where to look” on the screen. This innovation, according to Mark Cousins, creator of THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY, changed film forever, influencing Orson Welles to take “deep […]
Sitting in a cab the other day, I glanced at the odd image that appeared on the small television screen mounted on the back of the front seat. “What in the world is that?” I wondered as I looked at the closeup of some beige and bumpy blob. Was it a meteor? an enlarged fat […]
Today I learned that the first real movie star, Florence Lawrence, committed suicide with ant poison, that the first close up in cinema featured a sick kitty, and there was some hot erotic dancing going on in the silent movies. Of course, the history of cinema is comprised of much more than the stuff of […]
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