Against The Hype

The House Next Door: Sheila O’Malley profiles Cary Grant as conscious shaper of his leading-man persona, and picks his five career-best performances. See also Pauline Kael’s old essay on Grant, The Man from Dream City.

Scanners: In 1995, a group of Danish directors (among whom Lars Von Trier was the most notorious) came up with the Dogme 95 Manifesto, limiting the use of special effects and post-production techniques to refocus the film-making discipline on narrative and acting. Fourteen years later, Jim Emerson updates it with his Dogme 09.8 Manifesto, suggesting ten limitations that modern movies need to get back on track:

1. Get a tripod.
2. Location-recorded sound isn’t the finished product.
3. Shoot the movie so that it can be assembled in as few well-planned shots as possible.
4. No more than three consecutive shots should last less than one second apiece.
5. If you can tell it’s CGI, don’t use it.
6. Don’t fall back on overused scenes, subjects, images and superficial action.
7. Don’t scramble chronology just to make dull material less linear.
8. Know your genre and filmmaking conventions.
9. Fit the format to the film.
10. Remember that every single thing in your movie reflects a decision.