Month: May 2004

The Internet is often characterized as being an ethereal jumble of opinion and interaction without consensus. And while this can be true–particularly in chat rooms or Usenet free-for-alls–I’ve enjoyed consistent interaction with people across the country and the globe over the past few years whose tastes in film are remarkably similar to my own, and who continue to suggest new films to discover with a genuine degree of certainty regarding shared cinematic values. Whether we all have similar tastes because we’ve spent so much time interacting online or whether we’ve spent so much time interacting online that our tastes have …

I don’t have cable TV, so I was surprised to discover an impressive collection of original trailers and movie clips provided by Turner Classic Movies on their website. Check out the tracking shots in Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, Robert Wise blithely justifying his recutting of Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (“people were laughing at the film”), Robert Mitchum pursuing the children in Night of the Hunter, the charming repartee in The Philadelphia Story, or a featurette on one of my supreme guilty pleasures, George Pal’s The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, among scores of other clips. (Real …