You are currently browsing all entries tagged with 'Alfred Hitchcock'

Rear Window Time Lapse

  • April 3, 2012 8:13 pm

Man, technology today… The possibilities of doing super cool things if you’re well skilled in After Effects. Case-in-point: Filmmaker and artist Jeff Desom meticulously and digitally reconstructed L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies’ view (played by Jimmy Stewart) from his window in the Hitchcok’s Rear Window and pasted all the little events happening in the various apartments and time lapsed it. In other words, all the binocular shots of Jefferies’ voyeurism P.O.V were then shrunken down and digitally pasted to their accurate apartment window. The result is just simply stunning. Check it out yourself!This is nothing short of pure genius. I can watch this all day.

Homage or Plagiarism?

  • March 27, 2012 3:12 pm

Battle Royale

According to Wikipedia, “plagiarism is defined as… the ‘wrongful appropriation.’ ‘close limitation,’ or ‘purloining and publication’ of another author’s ‘language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,’ and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” Wikipedia further adds that “plagiarism is not a crime per se but is disapproved more on the grounds of moral offence, and the cases of plagiarism can involve liability for copyright infringement.”

Seriously, if you have gone to college, you should know what plagiarism is. I remember on the eve of our Yale graduation, a fellow MA student sent an anonymous letter to the English department accusing another student of plagiarism and “lowering Yale’s academic standards.” Apparently that student plagiarized himself by turning in the same paper to two different classes under two different titles. Even that was frowned upon at the tip of the ivory tower. I’d let him go.  Read more...

1,001 Reasons I Love Movies: (#26) Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ and the Space-Time Bending Kiss

  • March 12, 2012 9:05 pm

Today is National Alfred Hitchcock Day so on the day when we celebrate the work of one of America’s greatest film directors, I thought it only fitting that I pay tribute to my favorite moment from my favorite Hitchcock film. Yeah, the shower scene from Psycho is awesome, as are moments like Cary Grant’s escape from the attacking crop-dusting plane in North by Northwest or the long tracking shot into the key in Ingrid Bergman’s hand in Notorious, but nothing beats Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak’s kiss in the hotel room from 1958′s Vertigo.

In the film, due to his crippling fear of heights, Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson is unable to save the love of his life Madeline (Novak) when she falls to her death from a bell tower. But later, Scottie meets Judy (also played by Novak) who bears a striking resemblance to the deceased Madeline. So Scottie does the only thing one can do in a Hitchcock film—he gives Judy an extreme makeover until she looks exactly like his dead love; culminating in the scene you are about to see below.  Read more...

10 Romantic Films You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

  • February 3, 2011 12:01 am

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us and perhaps you’re looking for a romantic movie to share with that special someone, but you want to find something off the beaten path. As great as they are, there are just so many times you can watch Casablanca or When Harry Met Sally or Titanic or any number of your usual stand-bys. Well, here are ten romantic films (in no particular order) that you may be unfamiliar with, but that are all worth a look.

1) IL MARE (2000)
Director: Hyun-Seung Lee

Forget the American remake of this Korean sci-fi romance (The Lake House with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves) and stick with the far-superior original. My Sassy Girl’s Jun Ji-Hyun and Lee Jung-Jae are the ultimate star-crossed lovers: they both reside in the same lake house, but while he lives in the present, she lives two years in the past. The two can only communicate via letters left in their “time traveling” mailbox. As their timelines are about to converge and it looks like the lovers will finally meet face-to-face, a tragedy strikes unless…well, let’s just say that this is a time travel story so anything is possible, especially for a movie that believes that even time or death can’t get in the way of true love.

 Read more...

Ernest Lehman On Screenwriting

  • April 9, 2010 1:17 am

I previously wrote about how I decided the best way to learn about filmmaking was to seek out the old masters who were still living at the time and about the advice I got from legendary writer-director Billy Wilder. As a writer, I especially wanted to meet the great screenwriters and at the top of my list was Ernest Lehman.

Lehman was nominated for 6 screenwriting Academy Awards and was the first writer to receive an honorary Oscar in 2001 (he passed away in 2005). Aside from Wilder, I can’t think of another film writer whose body of work includes so many classics. I’d be happy if I could die with just one of the following credits on my resume, but he had them all: The Sound Of Music, North By Northwest, Sweet Smell Of Success, West Side Story, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Sabrina, The King And I, Black Sunday and many others.

I tried many times to try to meet him but it never worked out. My usual charming personality seemed to have no effect on Mr. Lehman. I remember thinking I’d probably have more luck trying to convince Salma Hayek to have sex with me. However, I don’t give up easily and I managed to eventually wear down convince a producer I knew to give me Mr. Lehman’s phone number and one Sunday afternoon I gave him a call. And he picked up. I couldn’t convince him to meet up with me (I guess he had no way to know I wasn’t a nut), but he said I could call him the next afternoon and he’d give me a few minutes of his time. Mr. Lehman, who was 83 at the time, did more than that. He talked to me for the next two hours and patiently indulged my questions, which I’m sure he’d heard millions of times before. And now I’d like to share some of his advice and stories below.  Read more...

1,001 Reasons I Love Movies: (#11) The Shower Scene In ‘Psycho’

  • February 21, 2010 2:14 am

My fellow Offenders Iris and Elaine have been blogging this month about the films they think should have been nominated for Oscars (see examples here, here and here). Of course there were also many deserving individuals who never won the gold statuette and I think none of the “losers” were more deserving than director Alfred Hitchcock. Known as the “Master of Suspense,” Hitchcock helmed such classic thrillers as Notorious, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Rope, The Birds and, of course, Psycho.

In fact, the shower-murder scene in Psycho may not only be the most famous sequence in all of Hitchcock’s films, but one of the most famous in all of cinema. In an era of extreme horror films like the Saw series, this scene may no longer have the same power to shock audiences like it did when it was released in 1960, but it still retains its power 50 years later. Hitchcock should have won a directing Academy Award for this sequence alone. But since he didn’t, I’d like to pay homage to it as part of our Oscar “flavah of the week” by examining what makes Psycho’s shower-murder one of the most effective moments to ever be captured on celluloid.  Read more...