Category Archives: News

Special Effects you won’t believe were done for real

Posted on April 25, 2011 by | 1 comment

Here at The Filmsmith we have a great love for all the hours that go into practical special effects, those pieces of wizardry that aren’t created by computer animators.  These guys have to battle the restrictions of the real world (time, space, gravity) in order to do their job well, because when they do, you feel the term movie magic.  So here are some of the highlights from Cracked’s, “8 Special Effects You Won’t Believe Aren’t CGI.” Continue reading →

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“Rome” Album Pays Tribute to Italian Film Scores

Posted on April 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

In the humble opinion of this reviewer, the greatest film composer of all time is Ennio Morricone. Famous for his genre -defining scores for Sergio Leone (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West), he has also created the profoundly beautiful scores for The Mission and Days of Heaven. He has collaborated with Samuel Fuller in White Dog and Brian de Palma in The Untouchables. His music is unforgettable and ubiquitous, and now Danger Mouse, one of the great musical voices of this generation is going to pay him tribute with his new album Rome. Continue reading →

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X-Men: First Class fan-made credit sequence classy and graphic

Posted on April 7, 2011 by | 2 comments

The art of a credit sequence is probably one you haven’t thought of unless you’re watching the latest Bond film.  This fan-made opening credit sequence for the upcoming X-Men: First Class demonstrates how graphic design can set the mood for a film – in this instance by channelling the film’s 1960’s setting with bold outlines of various X-Men and the images of the era’s most prolific personalities.  Even if you have no interest in the latest X-Men film, this is quite cool. Continue reading →

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Juno Temple cast in “The Dark Knight Rises”

Posted on April 4, 2011 by | Leave a comment

First there was Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy, followed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And now there’s been another addition to the already stacked cast of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises–Juno Temple.

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Colorful noir emerges in “The Big Bang” trailer

Posted on April 1, 2011 by | 2 comments

The general consensus amongst film scholars is that film noir begins with The Maltese Falcon and ends with Touch of Evil, with the latter marking a transition into the so-called neo-noir stage. Since then the visual iconography, motifs, and archetypes of noir have been propelled into the future and re-appropriated into “new” scenarios. Such a scenario appears in a trailer for The Big Bang, which also incorporates an unexpectedly vibrant color scheme.

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A sword-slashing trailer arrives for Takashi Miike’s “13 Assassins”

Posted on March 31, 2011 by | Leave a comment

In 2002, Quentin Tarantino helped bring a marital-arts epic to the big screen, Yimou Zhang’s Hero. Starring Jet Li, the film featured a group of assassins desperately attempting to kill a tyrannical lord and in 2010,  Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer) created a similar themed film, 13 Assassins.

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David Fincher Filmography Mash-Up

Posted on March 30, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Previously The Filmsmith brought you the Christopher Nolan filmography video that cleverly teased out the themes of Nolan’s films, and the image system within which he works.  Now we have a slick video of David Fincher’s filmography created by Kees van Dijkhuizen.

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Trailer for single-take horror feature, “The Silent House”

Posted on March 28, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Decoupage-filmmaking, shooting a film with long takes between cuts, has been in play well before Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope or Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. But then in 2002, the world was amazed as Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov created the first feature-length single-take film, Russian Ark and in 2010 director Gustavo Hernández accomplished a similar feat, filming a 78-minute single-take horror film entitled The Silent House.

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If Movie Posters Were Honest

Posted on March 26, 2011 by | Leave a comment

When I’m not browsing The New York Times‘ website to find out about the latest despot killing his protesters in the Middle East, I go to Cracked.com for lighter fare.*  They posted an item called “If movie posters were honest” and here are the best ones. Continue reading →

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Cinematic Television

Posted on March 24, 2011 by | 2 comments

I have already written extensively on a couple of miniseries this year that have blurred the line between cinema and television (Red Riding Trilogy, Carlos). Many directors are turning to this format as a way to expand the possibilities of cinema, and as a result, we are experiencing what may in the future be referred to as the definitive golden age of TV. HBO has raised the bar on series like The Wire and The Sopranos, and AMC is right on their heels with Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Some of these shows are just damn good television, but in a few instances there is little to distinguish between the big and small screens. Here are a few of those instances. Continue reading →

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