Roll on, reels of celluloid, as the great earth rolls on!
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La Dolce Vita 1960
“Our parties are famous for being first-class funerals.”
A disloyal tabloid journalist desiderates a life as a man of letters but instead further degrades himself by becoming a press agent (shades of Sidney Falco) upon the realization that he is incapable of moral or intellectual progress.
Imagine an utterly despairing foreign language film shot in black and white that runs for nearly three hours and elides classical three-act structure in favor of episodic revelation of character (non)development being released theatrically…
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Nashville 1975
"This isn't Dallas!"
What ended up becoming my favorite film began life in its amoeba form as Greatest Showman-style pap intended as a vehicle for Welsh crooner Tom Jones. This is what United Artists had in mind when they approached Robert Altman to direct the project (then titled The Great Southern Amusement Company) in 1972. Altman had no interest in the script or in country music and had never visited Nashville, but he agreed to make a different film about…
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Dog Day Afternoon 1975
"See I'm with a guy who don't know where Wyoming is. You think you got problems?"
On the 22nd of August in 1972, John Wojtowicz, Salvatore Naturile and (briefly) Robert Westenberg strove to rob a Chase Manhattan bank branch in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Antsy from the onset, Westenberg fled the holdup in its initial stage after seeing a police car drive by. While Wojtowicz had some background working as a teller and Naturile (though barely an adult) was a repeat criminal…
