http://fuckyeahmovieposters.tumblr.com/post/9124344611/die-hard-made-and-submitted-by-donald-smith

This comes from 10 Modern Movies That Are Better in Black and White, which, despite its List of N Things, degenerate-case-of-essay title, is aces:

There is, we can all agree, just something about black and white. In his wonderful 1989 essay “Why I Love Black and White,” Roger Ebert wrote: “There are basic aesthetic issues here. Colors have emotional resonance for us… Black and white movies present the deliberate absence of color. This makes them less realistic than color films (for the real world is in color). They are more dreamlike, more pure, composed of shapes and forms and movements and light and shadow. Color films can simply be illuminated. Black and white films have to be lighted. With color, you can throw light in everywhere, and the colors will help the viewer determine one shape from another, and the foreground from the background. With black and white, everything would tend toward a shapeless blur if it were not for meticulous attention to light and shadow, which can actually create a world in which the lighting indicates a hierarchy of moral values.”

Once I picked the movies that we thought would work for this experiment, I realized that trying to just describe them in a standard post wouldn’t work at all. So I’m doing something different with this post: I made a little video for each title, with clips transformed to black and white and commentary explaining why each one was selected.

Here’s the first one:

The rest are cool too — though be careful with the links as Jason Bailey’s inexplicably chosen the spammy nightmare of Megavideo to host some of the clips. (If you click play, you have to shut down the irritating pop-up window and then click play again.) [Update: it's not inexplicable at all - as he explains below, it's a copyright thing.]

In the late 80s, we had the Incredibly Strange Film Show and Moviedrome on the TV. Both shows tried to educate viewers into watching better movies by doing two things; scheduling the movies and/or prefacing them with little appreciation lectures.

I pretty much devoured both the shows and their recommendations. At the time, the seemingly massive, higgledy-piggledy selection in the video store needed taming.

I could reminisce for hours about the shows. But won’t.

Instead, I’d just like to point out I’ve noticed loads of amateur Moviedromes and Incredibly Strange Films Shows springing up, and would just like to register my approval. Here are two examples:

1. Chaos Cinema and Indiewire

I really enjoyed this video essay, CHAOS CINEMA: The decline and fall of action filmmaking, partly because it reminded my so much of Alex Cox’s startlingly informative introduction to Yojimbo back in 1990 (a sign of good telly — it’s stuck with me for 21 years). Moviedrome taught me how important spatial awareness was in filmmaking, this video essay demonstrates how this skill has been lost:

Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

The video essay Chaos Cinema, administered by Indiewire’s journalistic blog PRESS PLAY, examines the extreme aesthetic principles of 21st century action films. These films operate on techniques that, while derived from classical cinema, threaten to shatter the established continuity formula. Chaos reigns in image and sound. Part 1 contrasts traditional action films with chaotic ones and takes a close look at the “sound” track, especially its use in car chases.

2. Collate and Assimilate

Similarly, Rob Ager’s YouTube channel is fabulous. His ‘collate and assimilate’ methodology is the epitome of show-don’t-tell in critical analysis. His take on The Shining is fascinating and explores similar themes to Chaos Cinema, though it’s possibly only for the truly motivated. His analysis of The Thing demonstrates how you need a bit of wabi-sabi goes a long way in creating a true classic:

Related posts:

1. Promiscuous Interfaces

‡ 2 Responses to The Incredibly Strange Moviedrome"

• bailey says:

  October 24, 2011 at 1:53 am

  Thanks for the link and praise. Believe me, I’m not happy about having to use Megavideo either. But certain studios (particularly Warner Brothers) will yank any video excerpting their films that you put on YouTube, regardless of content.
• Bostock says:

  October 24, 2011 at 6:21 am

  Yep, makes sense. It’s easy to sit here and moan about Megavideo – but I’m not the one taking the time to put anything interesting up :-)

  I’ve updated the post.