By David Kozlowski | 18 August 2017
Welcome to Issue #9 of The Lrm Weekend, a weekly column offering strong opinions about film, TV, comics, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, animation, and anime. We also want to hear from you, our awesome Lrm community! Share your feedback or ideas for future columns: @LRM_Weekend and we'll post your Tweets below!
Previous Issues: 8.11.17 | 8.4.17 | 7.28.17 | 7.21.17 | 7.14.17 | 7.7.17
Hey Lrm Weekenders, this week we're featuring some of the most intriguing, powerful, and successful women in Hollywood. Its easy to become fixated on our male action stars, since that's how Hollywood tends to market their films, so we sometimes fail to recognize the contributions and accomplishments of our female action stars! But first, we want to discuss the elephant in the room: the dwindling audiences at movie theaters -- we'll explore some problems, one potential solution, and hopefully provide some insight into an issue that's only going to get worse if everything remains status quo.
Welcome to Issue #9 of The Lrm Weekend, a weekly column offering strong opinions about film, TV, comics, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, animation, and anime. We also want to hear from you, our awesome Lrm community! Share your feedback or ideas for future columns: @LRM_Weekend and we'll post your Tweets below!
Previous Issues: 8.11.17 | 8.4.17 | 7.28.17 | 7.21.17 | 7.14.17 | 7.7.17
Hey Lrm Weekenders, this week we're featuring some of the most intriguing, powerful, and successful women in Hollywood. Its easy to become fixated on our male action stars, since that's how Hollywood tends to market their films, so we sometimes fail to recognize the contributions and accomplishments of our female action stars! But first, we want to discuss the elephant in the room: the dwindling audiences at movie theaters -- we'll explore some problems, one potential solution, and hopefully provide some insight into an issue that's only going to get worse if everything remains status quo.
- 8/18/2017
- by David Kozlowski
- LRMonline.com
In 1903, Edwin S. Porter‘s short film The Great Train Robbery became one of the first blockbuster films. At just 12 minutes long, it was still a milestone achievement in American filmmaking as it employed production and editing techniques previously unheard of in filmmaking. It’s considered the first ever American action film, and one of […]
The post Lol: ‘The First Pitch’ Imagines How the Second Ever Blockbuster Was Sold appeared first on /Film.
The post Lol: ‘The First Pitch’ Imagines How the Second Ever Blockbuster Was Sold appeared first on /Film.
- 3/10/2017
- by Ethan Anderton
- Slash Film
wiki
A single shot shows a mustachioed cowboy as he stares directly into the eyes of the audience before raising his gun and firing it point blank into the camera. It was 1903, and the release of The Great Train Robbery signalled the birth of the action movie.
Few other movie genres have proven to be quite so enduring; in the century since Edwin S. Porter’s 12 minute silent film action movies have morphed into countless subgenres starring dozens of household names, frequently clearing up at the box office. Netflix certainly delivers when it comes to blockbuster action movies. but if you dig a little deeper you’ll find that there’s more on offer than just the latest crowd-pleaser starring Dwayne Johnson, and Tom Cruise.
There are plenty of straight-to-video 80s action movies available for those feeling nostalgic (or fancy a reminder of just how bad many of these much-loved...
A single shot shows a mustachioed cowboy as he stares directly into the eyes of the audience before raising his gun and firing it point blank into the camera. It was 1903, and the release of The Great Train Robbery signalled the birth of the action movie.
Few other movie genres have proven to be quite so enduring; in the century since Edwin S. Porter’s 12 minute silent film action movies have morphed into countless subgenres starring dozens of household names, frequently clearing up at the box office. Netflix certainly delivers when it comes to blockbuster action movies. but if you dig a little deeper you’ll find that there’s more on offer than just the latest crowd-pleaser starring Dwayne Johnson, and Tom Cruise.
There are plenty of straight-to-video 80s action movies available for those feeling nostalgic (or fancy a reminder of just how bad many of these much-loved...
- 9/19/2015
- by Andrew Dilks
- Obsessed with Film
Hondo (1953), which is set to play June 13 - July 4 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their "3-D Summer" series, was John Wayne's first Western in three years. It was produced by his own Wayne/Fellows Productions (later named Batjac), founded just the year prior by Wayne and producer Robert Fellows. And James Edward Grant, who had already written several Wayne features and had a particular flair for writing classic John Wayne dialogue, penned the screenplay. All told, one gets the sense that everything about this exemplary return to the genre was a carefully conscious decision by the iconic American star. Hondo is a definitive Western. Moreover, it's a definitive John Wayne Western.When Wayne made Hondo, his masculine persona was already firmly established. After viewing the film at one point, Wayne supposedly declared, "I'll be damned if I'm not the stuff men are made of." Such a comment,...
- 6/12/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- MUBI
It's fitting that Clint Eastwood and John Wayne both have the same birthday week. (Wayne, who died in 1979, was born May 26, 1907, while Eastwood turns 85 on May 31). After all, these two all-American actors' careers span the history of that most American of movie genres, the western.
Both iconic actors were top box office draws for decades, both seldom stretched from their familiar personas, and both played macho, conservative cowboy heroes who let their firearms do most of the talking. Each represented one of two very different strains of western, the traditional and the revisionist.
As a birthday present to Hollywood's biggest heroes of the Wild West, here are the top 57 westerns you need to see.
57. 'Meek's Cutoff' (2010)
Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and her frequent leading lady, Michelle Williams, are the talents behind this sparse, docudrama about an 1845 wagon train whose Oregon Trail journey goes horribly awry. It's an intense...
Both iconic actors were top box office draws for decades, both seldom stretched from their familiar personas, and both played macho, conservative cowboy heroes who let their firearms do most of the talking. Each represented one of two very different strains of western, the traditional and the revisionist.
As a birthday present to Hollywood's biggest heroes of the Wild West, here are the top 57 westerns you need to see.
57. 'Meek's Cutoff' (2010)
Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and her frequent leading lady, Michelle Williams, are the talents behind this sparse, docudrama about an 1845 wagon train whose Oregon Trail journey goes horribly awry. It's an intense...
- 5/26/2015
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
The Kickstarter campaign for "Be Natural," a film about pioneer female filmmaker Alice Guy-Blache, has reached its goal of $200,000. Guy-Blache made her first movie at the end of the 19th century, predating iconic early movies like Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" and D.W. Griffith's "Birth of Nation." Filmmakers Pamela Green and Jarik van Sluijs have begun work on a movie that traces the career of Guy-Blache, her role in the development of cinema and her importance for young women who aspire to direct. They turned to Kickstarter to raise money...
- 8/26/2013
- by Lucas Shaw
- The Wrap
(This article contains some minor spoilers for Django Unchained and be warned that most of the clips included are Nsfw)
Like many of Tarantino’s previous films Django Unchained is filled to the brim with film references. Below I’ve attempted to guide you through some of these references and links to other films.
I’ve only seen the film once at a screening and am sure that given the opportunity to sit down with the film on Blu-ray I will undoubtedly find even more, so the following is in no way definitive but hopefully provides some answers to for those wondering what Tarantino was referencing in Django Unchained. Also, most importantly, hopefully it will lead you to check out some of the films in question.
The most obvious film reference in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is right there in the title. Django was a 1966 ‘spaghetti western’ directed by...
Like many of Tarantino’s previous films Django Unchained is filled to the brim with film references. Below I’ve attempted to guide you through some of these references and links to other films.
I’ve only seen the film once at a screening and am sure that given the opportunity to sit down with the film on Blu-ray I will undoubtedly find even more, so the following is in no way definitive but hopefully provides some answers to for those wondering what Tarantino was referencing in Django Unchained. Also, most importantly, hopefully it will lead you to check out some of the films in question.
The most obvious film reference in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is right there in the title. Django was a 1966 ‘spaghetti western’ directed by...
- 1/18/2013
- by Craig Skinner
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
The Western was a movie staple for decades. It seemed the genre that would never die, feeding the fantasies of one generation after another of young boys who galloped around their backyards, playgrounds, and brick streets on broomsticks, banging away with their Mattel cap pistols. Something about a man on a horse set against the boundless wastes of Monument Valley, the crackle of saddle leather, two men facing off in a dusty street under the noon sun connected with the free spirit in every kid.
The American movie – a celluloid telling that was more than a skit – was born in a Western: Edwin S. Porter’s 11- minute The Great Train Robbery (1903). Thereafter, Westerns grew longer, they grew more complex. The West – hostile, endless, civilization barely maintaining a toehold against the elements, hostile natives, and robber barons – proved an infinitely plastic setting. In a place with no law, and where...
The American movie – a celluloid telling that was more than a skit – was born in a Western: Edwin S. Porter’s 11- minute The Great Train Robbery (1903). Thereafter, Westerns grew longer, they grew more complex. The West – hostile, endless, civilization barely maintaining a toehold against the elements, hostile natives, and robber barons – proved an infinitely plastic setting. In a place with no law, and where...
- 1/3/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
You generally don’t see them in theaters, and if you do, they are often a tacked on as a bonus, or come packaged as a group deal. They make up one of the categories that most tend to close-their-eyes-and-point-to when it comes to the office Oscar Pool. They are where film began, in the experiments of Edison Manufacturing Company, or, perhaps more officially, with Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery.” They’re also often where filmmakers begin, and in the case of many great filmmakers (Kurosawa, Godard, Altman, Soderbergh, and so on) at some point return to. They are short films. While today the short form is often considered a calling card or stepping stone, they’re also an opportunity to test narrative waters, or to try a new technique, and as video-sharing sites grow and improve, so does a short's potential for a much wider audience.
- 10/29/2012
- by Leah Zak
- The Playlist
Dear Fern,
I'm glad you caught Oliveira's Gebo and the Shadow too, and inadvertently placed it next to To the Wonder. I felt like those were inverse films of each other: one constantly floating, the other firmly rooted; one whose spoken words are all offscreen, the other who's words are all stringently, theatrically on camera; the Malick repeating abstractions on light and love, the Oliveira on loss and misery. And each resolutely, repetitiously dedicated to these methods of presentation, fluid, searching philosophy in flitting figures vs. the concrete weight of bodies, age, poverty. Gebo, based on a play by Raul Brandão, saves its magic for outside of its single setting house, a glimpse of a Virgin Mary on a street corner, the flat, computer generated harbor you mention that opens the film, hands coming out of the shadows to grasp at the audience like the gunfighter who ends Edwin S. Porter...
I'm glad you caught Oliveira's Gebo and the Shadow too, and inadvertently placed it next to To the Wonder. I felt like those were inverse films of each other: one constantly floating, the other firmly rooted; one whose spoken words are all offscreen, the other who's words are all stringently, theatrically on camera; the Malick repeating abstractions on light and love, the Oliveira on loss and misery. And each resolutely, repetitiously dedicated to these methods of presentation, fluid, searching philosophy in flitting figures vs. the concrete weight of bodies, age, poverty. Gebo, based on a play by Raul Brandão, saves its magic for outside of its single setting house, a glimpse of a Virgin Mary on a street corner, the flat, computer generated harbor you mention that opens the film, hands coming out of the shadows to grasp at the audience like the gunfighter who ends Edwin S. Porter...
- 9/16/2012
- MUBI
Second #6862, 114:22
In an unnervingly comic touch Frank approaches the closet where Jeffrey hides loaded up with his props, which include Dorothy’s blue velvet gown and his gas mask. He is the exterminator now, inhaling his chemicals, approaching Jeffrey and, ominously, the camera. For Frank has seen us, now. The invisible camera has been called out, hailed, interpolated. Frank stares back at us, returning our gaze, just as the bandit, gun in hand, did in Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 film The Great Train Robbery:
Out of the shadows he comes, Dorothy’s tortured, neck and wrist bound husband at his side like a soft wax museum figure from an imaginary film lightning-bolted from black-and-white into anamorphic Technicolor. In your dream, Frank is successful; he dispenses with Jeffrey, and then hunts down Detective Williams and Mrs. Williams (sparing Sandy), and, upon returning to Ben’s place, reloads his gun,...
In an unnervingly comic touch Frank approaches the closet where Jeffrey hides loaded up with his props, which include Dorothy’s blue velvet gown and his gas mask. He is the exterminator now, inhaling his chemicals, approaching Jeffrey and, ominously, the camera. For Frank has seen us, now. The invisible camera has been called out, hailed, interpolated. Frank stares back at us, returning our gaze, just as the bandit, gun in hand, did in Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 film The Great Train Robbery:
Out of the shadows he comes, Dorothy’s tortured, neck and wrist bound husband at his side like a soft wax museum figure from an imaginary film lightning-bolted from black-and-white into anamorphic Technicolor. In your dream, Frank is successful; he dispenses with Jeffrey, and then hunts down Detective Williams and Mrs. Williams (sparing Sandy), and, upon returning to Ben’s place, reloads his gun,...
- 8/3/2012
- by Nicholas Rombes
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Quentin Tarantino will likely have hundreds if not thousands tips of the cap to films of old in his upcoming Django Unchained. As one person said to me on Facebook when I posted the trailer yesterday, "I hope there's a coffin with a Gatling gun in it somewhere in the movie. Django and The Good the Bad and the Ugly are my favorite westerns." Well, I haven't read the script so I don't know if Franco Nero's Gatling gun will make the film, but for anyone that saw the trailer Nero is in the film getting a grammar lesson from Jamie Foxx at the tail end of this first trailer. Yet, that isn't the only nod thrown in there as a keen Reddit user noticed the above screen capture in the first trailer for the film. For those that don't recognize the name, Edwin S. Porter was the director of The Great Train Robbery,...
- 6/7/2012
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Before we get further, this article was made for both diehard film fanatics and those just discovering the wonder of early cinema. If you fall into the former category, I suggest bookmarking this and returning after you see Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo. The director has included endless nods to the films that made him who he is and it is a joy to see their inclusion in his adventure film.
If you fall into the latter category, get caught up with my rundown of the classic films most prominently featured in his magical ode to the beginnings of the medium. Check them all out below where they are also free to stream in their entirety, unless otherwise noted.
Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor; 1923)
Not only is the homage directly on the theatrical poster and in the actual film, but our lead characters go see this silent classic featuring...
If you fall into the latter category, get caught up with my rundown of the classic films most prominently featured in his magical ode to the beginnings of the medium. Check them all out below where they are also free to stream in their entirety, unless otherwise noted.
Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor; 1923)
Not only is the homage directly on the theatrical poster and in the actual film, but our lead characters go see this silent classic featuring...
- 11/23/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Note: Hugo was screened at the New York Film Festival as a work-in-progress with color correction, sound mixing, titles, 3D and visual effects not fully complete. Check out my detailed impressions below, but look for a full review on the final film when it releases next month.
Being a film lover and director go hand in hand, but it is difficult to find a more passionate, well-educated cinema historian than Martin Scorsese. The director of classics such as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull has a seemingly endless knowledge of the medium, frequently noting the influence that filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Italian neo-realist pieces such as The Bicycle Thieves have had on him. One can see the profound effect in his filmmaking, with such a firm control on and expertise in the medium coming through his frames. By presiding over a film preservation foundation, the auteur also hopes the profound...
Being a film lover and director go hand in hand, but it is difficult to find a more passionate, well-educated cinema historian than Martin Scorsese. The director of classics such as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull has a seemingly endless knowledge of the medium, frequently noting the influence that filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Italian neo-realist pieces such as The Bicycle Thieves have had on him. One can see the profound effect in his filmmaking, with such a firm control on and expertise in the medium coming through his frames. By presiding over a film preservation foundation, the auteur also hopes the profound...
- 10/11/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Chances are that unless you're at least an amateur film scholar, you've never heard of Edwin Stanton Porter. When it comes to legendary early silent film pioneers, George Melies or the Lumiere Brothers seem to steal all of the love. Porter worked for Thomas Edison's film company at the turn of the 20th Century and he's credited with being one of the creators of the editing dissolve. Fortunately, he did not create the star-wipe. He's also credited with pioneering the use of cross-cutting to create tension. [Thanks to the awesomeness of YouTube, you can check out 1903's "The Great Train Robbery"...
- 11/22/2010
- by Daniel Fienberg
- Hitfix
One hundred-plus-years ago, a bandit played by Justus D. Barnes pointed his revolver straight at the camera and fired off six shots sending audiences for the silent Western "The Great Train Robbery" into panic. Since those early years, movies have continued to be just as powerful. A woman collapsed recently at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles during the premiere for the new Danny Boyle film "127 Hours." In the drama, James Franco played mountain climber Aron Ralston who's pushed to the limit in order to free his right hand trapped from a boulder. In the film's harrowing climax, when Ralston cut himself free with a knife and pliers for a chance to survive, audiences insisted they felt Ralston's pain. The same was true for the woman at the Los Angeles premiere. She was taken away by ambulance to a nearby hospital and recovered later that night.
- 11/12/2010
- Upcoming-Movies.com
One hundred-plus-years ago, a bandit played by Justus D. Barnes pointed his revolver straight at the camera and fired off six shots sending audiences for the silent Western "The Great Train Robbery" into panic. Since those early years, movies have continued to be just as powerful. A woman collapsed recently at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles during the premiere for the new Danny Boyle film "127 Hours." In the drama, James Franco played mountain climber Aron Ralston who's pushed to the limit in order to free his right hand trapped from a boulder. In the film's harrowing climax, when Ralston cut himself free with a knife and pliers for a chance to survive, audiences insisted they felt Ralston's pain. The same was true for the woman at the Los Angeles premiere. She was taken away by ambulance to a nearby hospital and recovered later that night.
- 11/12/2010
- Upcoming-Movies.com
First, the good news. A thousand hours ago, before Avatar won its Golden Globes, when the picture was only a hit-to-be, people had already begun to speak in wild, sweeping terms about the revolutionary effect it was destined to have on the future of Hollywood film making. In those early weeks, we all reveled in the thrilling swell of communal enthusiasm that seemed to come from everywhere. Avatar was necessary viewing. At first, I was one of the heretics. I didn't want to see what looked like an action adventure starring the Las Vegas contingent of Blue Man Group. But that was then. I see now that Avatar represents the next step in a tradition of immersion cinema that began all the way back in 1903, with Edwin S. Porter's film, The Great Train Robbery. It's a famous story: some who saw...
- 1/20/2010
- by Sam Wasson
- Huffington Post
There have been westerns almost as long as the medium of cinema has existed. The first ever-narrative film, Edward Porter’s 1903 twelve-minute milestone The Great Train Robbery was a western. In terms of sheer cinematic proliferation, the western simply stands unmatched and there is a very good and very simple reason – they’re bloody cheap. A couple of guys, a couple of horses and some wide-open space and you’ve essentially got yourself a western. But just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should nor that there is value in doing that thing.
With that in mind we arrive at Come Hell or High Water, writer-director Wayne Shipley’s Dv, no-budget, horse opera where, at first glance, a Maryland amateur dramatics society comes together to chart the vast outreaches of incomprehensible thespian inadequacy. Coming across like some bizarre hybrid between a civil war reenactment, a wild west...
With that in mind we arrive at Come Hell or High Water, writer-director Wayne Shipley’s Dv, no-budget, horse opera where, at first glance, a Maryland amateur dramatics society comes together to chart the vast outreaches of incomprehensible thespian inadequacy. Coming across like some bizarre hybrid between a civil war reenactment, a wild west...
- 4/7/2009
- by Neil Pedley
- JustPressPlay.net
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