When I'm not busy being a humorous/less feminist on the Interwebs, I also teach the yout'. This week's proud moment comes from favorite former student X's Facebook status update regarding his pal, fellow former student Y:
X:
Taking Y's Blues Brothers cherry tonight. Hard.
They grow up so fast!
The cinetrix also finds herself in the unfamiliar state of being sad the semester's over before the grading's done. Mostly cuz it'd be sweet to share the following from Manohla Dargis's review of Johnny To's Vengeance with the young'uns, so they'd know my yammering on about blocking and the frame etc. wasn't just something I made up:
If you want to know what great filmmaking looks like, watch how he aligns people inside his frame, creating first visual interest through their arrangement — he often places the three assassins in a triangle — and then visual excitement when they start to move. He likes fast edits and restless cameras, and dynamically mixes long shots with close-ups, but his images bristle with tension before he makes a single cut. There’s a near-geometric aspect to his mise-en-scène, even when bodies start flying across the screen amid the clouds of gun smoke and arterial sprays. It’s evidence of a rigor that was common in the old Hollywood studio system, when base levels of craft and technique were givens even in B movies.
More like, "if you want to know what great film criticism looks like," amirite?
