Top Blog Posts of 2011

Our final blog post of the year... Here's a look back at the top ten most popular blog posts of 2011...

#1 -- Sunday Screening
Some snapshots from last week's screening of Under Jakob's Ladder at the Manhattan Film Festival on Sunday, July 24th... Read more

#2 -- Monday Screening
Another round of snapshots from last week's screening of Under Jakob's Ladder at the Manhattan Film Festival on Monday, July 25th... Read more

#3 -- Porky Pig was a Method Actor
There are all sorts of actors out there. One type is the method actor. That's the actor who becomes the character they are playing... Read more

#4 -- What's the Buzz, Jeff?
Jeff Stewart's been getting a lot of press recently for his award win at the Manhattan Film Festival for the role of Jakob in Under Jakob's Ladder... Read more

#5 -- The Backstory of Star Wars
If you think about it, the Star Wars prequels are basically just backstory... Read more

#6 -- Drama and the Third Show
Yes, we've always known that Under Jakob's Ladder is a drama. But we never planned to have all this drama surrounding the third screening... Read more

#7 -- When Surprise becomes Dramatic Irony
In an earlier blog post, we talked about the use of surprise in filmmaking. We mentioned that maybe surprise isn't all it's cracked up to be. Surprise is related to mystery. Think about a birthday package... Read more

#8 -- The Camera Lies, You Know
When it came to understanding the camera, Hitchcock was a master. He had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve. But sometimes the people working with him didn't understand his "sleight of hand"... Read more

#9 -- Chaplin's World of Sound
Charlie Chaplin became world famous in the era of pantomime. When movies were silent. (Even now, most people would probably be able to recognize his "Little Tramp".) But, Chaplin had trouble when the reality of sound came to the movies... Read more

#10 -- Marta
Jakob's granddaughter was present the night Jakob was taken in 1938. She never saw him again. One of her greatest wishes was to be reunited with her grandfather. At the age of 84, she has finally made that journey... Read more

Here's to the coming new year...

[Photo by M.V. Jantzen]

From Flop to Christmas Classic

You'll be hard-pressed to find a Christmas Top Ten movie list without It's a Wonderful Life on it.

However, when It's a Wonderful Life first came out in the theatres in 1946, it didn't do very well at the box office. (Okay, it wasn't really what you'd call a flop. It did make over $3 million, but that was not enough to recoup what it cost to make the movie.)

Blame it on the Christmas weather (it was released on Dec 20th). Blame on the people who thought it was "too dark" for a Christmas movie (the movie does open with an attempted suicide).

It's one of those films that would have been lost in some film vault.

Except for one thing.

The film fell into the public domain. Television picked it up and played it every Christmas season in the 1970s and 80s...

Making the movie a Christmas classic.

Ray Bradbury's Interpretation

When it comes to storytelling, everybody's an expert.

That's what author Ray Bradbury found out. And he didn't particularly like it when others began telling him what his stories meant. Or what they should mean...

The occasion was an assembly at UCLA where Bradbury was asked to speak. When the students began to insist that his book, the famed Fahrenheit 451, is about government censorship, Bradbury just got up and walked out.

Anyone in creative work deals with interpretation. What does the shark represent in Jaws? What about the feather in Forrest Gump? Or the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird was filmed in black and white?

Bradbury's reaction to those students was basically to dismiss the reader's interpretation. (Or at least dismiss such interpretations when the readers are so egotistical to insist to the author's face what the author meant, when said author denies trying to convey that message.)

The question is, can someone get something out of a movie that the filmmaker didn't intend? Well, it's done all the time. Probably because different things don't always mean the same to everybody. Director Spike Lee is often quoted as saying: "A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there."

That just the way things are.

[Photo by pcorreia]

Plot Holes and the Icebox Syndrome

Ever heard of the Icebox Syndrome?

Alfred Hitchcock talked about it in this way: It has to do when a movie has a plot hole. In other words, something in the plot doesn't really make sense.

Here's how Hitchcock explained it all:

"I leave [plot] holes in my films deliberately, so that the following scenario can take place in countless homes. The man of the house gets out of bed in the middle of the night, and goes down stairs and takes a chicken leg out of the icebox. His wife follows him down and asks what he's doing. 'You know,' he says, 'there's a hole in that film we saw tonight.' 'No there isn't' she says, and they fall to arguing. As a result of which they go to see it again."

This explanation is the filmmaker's dream, right? (That way, there's no need to worry about plot holes ever again!)

Of course, this tongue-in-cheek "Icebox Syndrome" was really just classic Hitchcock deflection of criticism toward his movies. But, if you think about it, every film has some sort of plot hole... Even if it's just part of the back story behind the movie being watched. These are information "holes" the audience has to fill in themselves. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's just that some holes are just bigger than others. The key is to make sure the plot holes that do exist don't detract too much from the movie. What Hitchcock had going for him is that, even with plot holes, people still enjoyed his movies.