08/2/2012



2 notes

Text

My Thoughts On…Network

neitherfamenorfortune:

Showed this to my students and they really got it (some of em). They really responded to the caustic tone and message. It’s a brilliant piece of work, full of insane dialogue and bravura performances, great speeches and all guided by the wonderful hand of Sidney Lumet.

I have just started reading Lumet’s ‘Making Movies’ book and it’s already (two chapters in) one of the best books on filmmaking I’ve ever read.

Lumet is an invisible tower in American cinema. Never at the forefront of lists or chatter but look at that body of work. 

Network is easily as good as anything he made, any film on the business of media, or any movie of that golden American era of the 1970s.

Powerfully written by Paddy Chayefsky it just oozes menace, style, power and truth. It’s hard, but cinematically warm and tight. Powerful, wonderful stuff.

I second EVERYTHING in this post. Will check out the Lumet’s book. Thanks.

Tagged: film, 1970s, hollywood, media, tv, sidney lumet, ned beatty, robert duvall, faye dunaway, william holden, peter finch, lance henriksen, paddy chayefsky, making movies,

27/1/2012



827 notes

Photo

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976, dir. Nicolas Roeg) (via) Roeg: “We really didn’t need to talk about the role at all; he was the part the moment he stepped on to the set. During the first week of shooting, there were some studio folks lurking about—more to meet David Bowie than anything else, I’d imagine—and they expressed a few reservations. ‘He seems a little…odd, don’t you think?’ And I told them, ‘The character is an alien; how is he supposed to act? Like he’s Gary Cooper?’  It wasn’t like David was unfriendly—we had dinner together numerous times, and he ran a lending library out of his trailer, which was full of books on every subject imaginable—but he kept himself separate to the point that others started to think of him as this mysterious ‘other,’ you know? So much of that performance is simply Bowie being himself—and that’s what’s so brilliant about it.” (via)

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976, dir. Nicolas Roeg) (via)

Roeg: “We really didn’t need to talk about the role at all; he was the part the moment he stepped on to the set. During the first week of shooting, there were some studio folks lurking about—more to meet David Bowie than anything else, I’d imagine—and they expressed a few reservations. ‘He seems a little…odd, don’t you think?’ And I told them, ‘The character is an alien; how is he supposed to act? Like he’s Gary Cooper?’

 It wasn’t like David was unfriendly—we had dinner together numerous times, and he ran a lending library out of his trailer, which was full of books on every subject imaginable—but he kept himself separate to the point that others started to think of him as this mysterious ‘other,’ you know? So much of that performance is simply Bowie being himself—and that’s what’s so brilliant about it.” (via)

(Source: oldhollywood)

Tagged: The Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie, Nicolas Roeg, 1970s, Sci-fi,