Adapted from Larry McMurtry’s bittersweet 1966 novel of the same name by McMurtry and director Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show delineates the quiet, desperate lives of the citizens of Anarene, Texas, from November 1951 to October 1952. The film is a pure Janus-headed product of the New Hollywood. Bogdanovich pours the new wine of sexual frankness available to filmmakers after the inauguration of the MPAA ratings system into old bottles borrowed from the cellars of classic Hollywood cinema, namely those older films’ expressive visual grammar and obliquely suggestive dialogue.
As an erstwhile film critic and historian, Bogdanovich drew formal and technical inspiration from his years spent programming films from Hollywood’s Golden Age at MoMA. He also solicited advice from houseguest Orson Welles when it came to shooting the film in black and white, and employing long, unbroken takes rather than break up important scenes. As Welles reportedly put it:...
As an erstwhile film critic and historian, Bogdanovich drew formal and technical inspiration from his years spent programming films from Hollywood’s Golden Age at MoMA. He also solicited advice from houseguest Orson Welles when it came to shooting the film in black and white, and employing long, unbroken takes rather than break up important scenes. As Welles reportedly put it:...
- 11/15/2023
- by Budd Wilkins
- Slant Magazine
Congratulations to Johnnie To, whose achievements are such that almost anything else is pat. Yet he now has one of the best films in the Criterion Collection: his action-fantasy masterpiece The Heroic Trio––starring Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, and Anita Mui––will retire its hard-subbed laserdisc rip for a 4K Uhd arriving in February, its sequel Executioners (perhaps not one of the best films in the Criterion Collection but welcome all the same) included as a two-feature set. (With appreciable credit given to co-director Ching Siu-tung.) Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties is likewise joining the collection in 4K, while 2016’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller disc gets an upgrade.
Arguably most eventful, though, is the long-awaited release of Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, which Janus toured virtually and physically throughout 2021. And not to be discounted even slightly is Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man––arguably, it so happens,...
Arguably most eventful, though, is the long-awaited release of Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, which Janus toured virtually and physically throughout 2021. And not to be discounted even slightly is Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man––arguably, it so happens,...
- 11/15/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Above: 1973 New York Film Festival poster designed by Niki de Saint Phalle.The 61st edition of the New York Film Festival, which opens tonight, has 32 films in its Main Slate, fifteen films in its Spotlight section, ten films and seven collections of shorts in the Currents sidebar, and eleven revivals. That's over 60 feature films. Fifty years ago, in 1973, the 11th edition of the festival had just eighteen feature films and nineteen shorts. Just like this year’s opener—Todd Haynes’s May December—1973’s opening night film, François Truffaut’s Day for Night, had premiered four months earlier at the Cannes Film Festival. And as with this year’s festival, the 1973 edition opened, fifty years and one day ago exactly, in the shadow of an artists' strike. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians had been picketing the New York Philharmonic outside Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where the festival was taking place,...
- 9/29/2023
- MUBI
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.