…we denizens of the third millennium ce make constant recourse to specialists whose art has no basis in empirical discovery or other Enlightenment values. We shape our moral and aesthetic imaginations through reading Lord of the Rings or watching The[…]
Before 1930, moving picture aspect ratios were all over the place. But mass distribution requires standardization, so influential filmmakers met in Hollywood that year to talk. They settled on the horizontal shot. Things pretty much[…]
Back before Buffy and Katniss, Besson was one of the only directors championing stories with women as action leads. He’s a little cagey about this. “I pay the same attention to the girl and the[…]
Hollywood loves to revisit hits in ways that can be maddening — oh, that old script was wonderful; we’ll change everything — and Disney has a particular tradition of mining and remining the same stories.[…]
Star Wars has always been about the unknown and the unknowable, the instinct to seek answers where none might exist and the faith in that galaxy to have an underlying logic and integrity. By jumping[…]
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Star Wars used to just be one movie. Before the novels, the comic strips, the video games, the television shows, and all the sequels and prequels, there was just[…]
For A New Hope, the crew scavenged interesting-looking spare parts from model kits and junkyards to make the ships and vehicles. Tomkins works the same way now. “It’s found items, you know, be it parts[…]
Hollywood is not only a fun factory of vapid entertainment. At times, Hollywood plays an important role. The role of the ancient storyteller. Hear its stories and draw from its wisdom. If we believe that[…]
A sequel like last May’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” from Marvel, is less a self-contained film than a loose amalgam of ongoing stories. The film lays track for two future sequels and allots significant screen[…]
Disney owns the three biggest storytelling platforms in the world. They own Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar. To me, that’s like owning the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Quran. Primarily, these platforms tell[…]