classic

Playtime

June 2, 2010 Architecture
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Since its release almost four decades ago, Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967) has aged like a fine wine. It started life as a crit­i­cal punch­ing bag and slowly gained recog­ni­tion as an exquis­itely detailed (and very funny) vision of a bland and ulti­mately bleak mod­ern distopia.

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Easy Rider

May 29, 2010 Film
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I was sad­dened to read that Dennis Hopper died today at the age of 74. Obituaries are start­ing to appear here and there, and most share a view of his career as erratic and uneven.

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Mulholland Drive

May 28, 2010 Film
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I first saw Mulholland Drive with my friend Rana in her tiny Tokyo apart­ment. The film ended at mid­night and by the time we grew tired of ana­lyz­ing its many twists and turns, we real­ized day­light had already crept in through her curtains.

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Psycho

May 24, 2010 Film
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When Psycho was released in 1960, it was crit­i­cized for twist­ing and bend­ing the con­ven­tions of the pre­ced­ing decades of cin­ema com­pletely out of shape. Then bit by bit it was revealed that direc­tor Alfred Hitchcock was cor­rect at every bend.

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The Godfather

May 16, 2010 Film
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From start to fin­ish, The Godfather (1972) is a mas­ter­piece of pac­ing and mood, and an excel­lent exam­ple of how the estab­lished rela­tion­ship between cin­ema and archi­tec­ture can be upheld while being used in com­pletely fresh and excit­ing ways.

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Taxi Driver

May 14, 2010 Film
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Martin Scorsese is widely con­sid­ered the most influ­en­tial American film­maker of the last thirty years, and this is due in large part to his abil­ity to cap­ture the hec­tic energy of the city in which he grew up. In many ways, Taxi Driver (1976) is his most effec­tive movie: an unre­lent­ing por­trait of angst, nihilism, and the debil­i­tat­ing effects of urban life on the psyche.

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