A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974)

Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, and Lynne Frederick in Phase IV

Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton. Screenplay: Mayo Simon. Cinematography: Dick Bush. Art direction: John Barry. Film editing: Willy Kemplen. Music: Brian Gascoigne. 

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 1996)

Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai in Comrades: Almost a Love Story

Cast: Maggie Cheung, Leon Lai, Eric Tsang, Kristy Yeung, Christopher Doyle, Tung Cho "Joe" Cheung, Irene Tsu, Yu Ting, Michelle Gabriel. Screenplay: Ivy Ho. Cinematography: Jingle Ma. Production design: Chung-Man Yee. Film editing: Ki-Hop Chan, Chi-Leung Kwong. Music: Tsang-Hei Chiu. 

Monday, April 8, 2024

The Place Promised in Our Early Days (Makoto Shinkai, Yoshio Suzuki, 2004)


Cast: Voices of Hidetaka Yoshioka, Masatao Hagiwara, Yuka Nanri, Unsho Ishizuka, Kazuhiko Inoue, Risa Mizuno, Hidenobu Kiuchi. Screenplay: Makoto Shinkai. Cinematography: Makoto Shinkai. Art direction: Takumi Tanji. Film editing: Makoto Shinkai. Music: Tenmon. 

Sunday, April 7, 2024

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)


Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Johann Karthaus, Luis Noah Witte, Nele Ahrenmeier, Lili Falk, Medusa Knopf, Maximilian Beck, Andrey Isaev, Stephanie Petrowitz, Imogen Kogga. Screenplay: Jonathan Glazer, based on a novel by Martin Amis. Cinematography: Lukasz Zal. Production design: Chris Oddy. Film editing: Paul Watts. Music: Mica Levi. 

Saturday, April 6, 2024

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)

Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, and Françoise Lebrun in The Mother and the Whore

CastJean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Lebrun, Isabelle Weingarten, Jacques Renard, Jean-Noël Picq, Jessa Darrieux, Berthe Granval, Geneviève Mnich. Screenplay: Jean Eustache. Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme. Film editing: Denis de Casabianca, Jean Eustache.

Friday, April 5, 2024

Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)


Cast: Voices of Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, Taro Ishida, Tessho Genda, Mizuho Susuki, Tatsuhiko Nakamura, Fukue Ito, Kazuhiro Shindo, Yuriko Fuchizaki, Masaaki Okura, Takeshi Kusao, Hiroshi Otake. Screenplay: Katsuhiro Otomo, Izo Hashimoto, based on a manga by Otomo. Cinematography: Katsuji Misawa. Production design: Kazuo Ebisawa, Yuji Ikehata, Hiroshi Ono. Film editing: Takeshi Seyama. Music: Shoji Yamashiro. 

Thursday, April 4, 2024

Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977)


Cast: Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou, Ramon Bieri, Karl John. Screenplay: Walon Green, based on a novel by Georges Arnaud. Cinematography: Dick Bush, John M. Stephens. Production design: John Box. Film editing: Robert K. Lambert, Bud S. Smith. Music: Tangerine Dream.  

Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Cast: Cillian Muphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Dylan Arnold, Tom Conti, James D'Arcy, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, Tony Goldwyn, Jefferson Hall, David Krumholtz, Matthew Modine. Screenplay: Christopher Nolan, based on a book by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema. Production design: Ruth de Jong. Film editing: Jennifer Lame. Music: Ludwig Göransson. 

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Caged (John Cromwell, 1950)

Eleanor Parker in Caged

Caged: Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Hope Emerson, Ellen Corby, Betty Garde, Jan Sterling, Lee Patrick, Oliver Deering, Jane Darwell, Gertrude Michael, Sheila MacRae. Screenplay: Virginia Kellogg, Bernard C. Schoenfeld, based on a book by Kellogg. Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie. Art direction: Charles H. Clarke. Film editing: Owen Marks. Music: Max Steiner. 

Monday, April 1, 2024

The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell, 1972)

Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come

Cast: Jimmy Cliff, Janet Bartley, Carl Bradshaw, Ras Daniel Hartman, Basil Keane, Bob Charlton, Winston Stone, Lucia White. Screenplay: Perry Henzell, Trevor D. Rhone. Cinematography: Peter Jessop, David McDonald, Franklyn St. Juste. Art direction: Sally Henzell. Film editing: Reicland Anderson, John Victor Smith, Richard White. Music: Jimmy Cliff, Desmond Dekker, The Slickers.