Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002-2012
"We watch what is moving fast from a platform that is also moving fast," writes Geoffrey O'Brien in the beginning of Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows. This collection—gathering the best of a decade's worth of writing on film by one of our most bracing and imaginative critics—ranges freely over the past, present, and future of the movies, from the primal visual poetry of the silent era to the dizzying permutations of the merging digital age.

Here are 38 searching essays on contemporary blockbusters like Spider–Man and Minority Report; recent innovative triumphs like The Tree of Life and Beasts of the Southern Wild; and the intricacies of genre mythmaking from Chinese martial arts films to the horror classics of Val Lewton. O'Brien probes the visionary art of classic filmmakers—von Sternberg, Fod, Cocteau, Kurosawa, Godard—and the implications of such diverse recent work as Farenheit 9/11, The Passion of Christ, and The Sopranos. Each of these pieces is alert to the always–surprising intersections between screen life and real life, and the way that film from the beginning has shaped our sense of memory and history.
1113749201
Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002-2012
"We watch what is moving fast from a platform that is also moving fast," writes Geoffrey O'Brien in the beginning of Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows. This collection—gathering the best of a decade's worth of writing on film by one of our most bracing and imaginative critics—ranges freely over the past, present, and future of the movies, from the primal visual poetry of the silent era to the dizzying permutations of the merging digital age.

Here are 38 searching essays on contemporary blockbusters like Spider–Man and Minority Report; recent innovative triumphs like The Tree of Life and Beasts of the Southern Wild; and the intricacies of genre mythmaking from Chinese martial arts films to the horror classics of Val Lewton. O'Brien probes the visionary art of classic filmmakers—von Sternberg, Fod, Cocteau, Kurosawa, Godard—and the implications of such diverse recent work as Farenheit 9/11, The Passion of Christ, and The Sopranos. Each of these pieces is alert to the always–surprising intersections between screen life and real life, and the way that film from the beginning has shaped our sense of memory and history.
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Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002-2012

Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002-2012

by Geoffrey O'Brien
Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002-2012

Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 2002-2012

by Geoffrey O'Brien

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Overview

"We watch what is moving fast from a platform that is also moving fast," writes Geoffrey O'Brien in the beginning of Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows. This collection—gathering the best of a decade's worth of writing on film by one of our most bracing and imaginative critics—ranges freely over the past, present, and future of the movies, from the primal visual poetry of the silent era to the dizzying permutations of the merging digital age.

Here are 38 searching essays on contemporary blockbusters like Spider–Man and Minority Report; recent innovative triumphs like The Tree of Life and Beasts of the Southern Wild; and the intricacies of genre mythmaking from Chinese martial arts films to the horror classics of Val Lewton. O'Brien probes the visionary art of classic filmmakers—von Sternberg, Fod, Cocteau, Kurosawa, Godard—and the implications of such diverse recent work as Farenheit 9/11, The Passion of Christ, and The Sopranos. Each of these pieces is alert to the always–surprising intersections between screen life and real life, and the way that film from the beginning has shaped our sense of memory and history.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781619022225
Publisher: Catapult
Publication date: 06/01/2013
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 288
File size: 822 KB

About the Author

Geoffrey O'Brien is editor-in-chief of the Library of America and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His latest books are Early Autumn and The Fall of the House of Walworth. He is a widely published poet, critic, editor, and cultural historian and has been honored with a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Institute for the Humanities. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Popcorn Park: (Sam Raimi's Spider-Man) 1

Learning to Argue with Pauline Kael 9

This Is How It Happens: (Eric Rohmer's The Lady and the Duke) 13

Prospero on the Run: (Steven Spielberg's Minority Report) 17

Minister of Fear: (Fritz Lang) 27

An Artisan of the Unseen: (Jacques Tourneur) 33

Devotional Furies: (Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill: Vol. 1) 41

Getting Medieval at the Multiplex: (Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ) 47

Was It All Just a Dream?: (Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11) 55

The Return of the Shaw Brothers 67

The Man in the Smoking Jacket: (Cary Grant) 75

Gangsters with Toothbrushes: (Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi) 89

Calligraphy in Blood: (Kihachi Okamoto's The Sword of Doom) 93

The Comfort of Martians: (Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds) 97

A Memory of Columbo 109

Hero in Waiting: (John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln) 115

The Gleam of Luminous Water: (Val Lewton) 121

The Labyrinth of Adulthood: (Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol) 133

Meditations at the Cinema Café 139

All Aboard: (Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes) 151

The Guy with the Sax: (Edgar Ulmer's Detour) 157

A Northern New Jersey of the Mind: (David Chase's The Sopranos) 159

Between Heaven and Hell: (Akira Kurosawa's High and Low) 175

Redoubled Obsessions: (Magnificent Obsession by John Stahl and Douglas Sirk) 185

A Persistent Immediacy: (Eric Rohmer's The Romance of Astrea and Celadon) 193

The Old Frontier: (John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) 205

A Great Book of Instances: (Frederick Wiseman) 217

The Invention of the World: (Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless) 225

Dreamland: (Josef von Sternberg's Underworld) 231

Left Alone: (Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow) 239

Dark Magic: (Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast) 247

The Variety of Filmic Experience: (Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life) 253

The Secret Life of Objects: (Olivier Assayas's Summer Hours) 263

The Rapture of the Silents: (Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, Martin Scorsese's Hugo, Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage) 271

Dreaming of Water: (Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, Wes Andersons Moonrise Kingdom) 281

A Drifter and His Master: (Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master) 291

Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012 301

Acknowledgments 303

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