“In many ways, too much time has passed for films from the ‘30s to be of much interest to most people living today. The black and white images, the grainy sound, the entirely different method of acting and the relatively straightforward plots all require time and an open mind to get used to—two scarce commodities in our era.

However, the rewards of watching films from Hollywood’s Golden Age are many, perhaps the most important being that they connect us to a heritage of American cinematic art that was at one time the envy of the world. Only tiny echoes of this distant past can be seen and heard in a relatively small number of films today. For better or worse, modern cinema has become something else entirely.”

Read the rest of this article from Pop Matters.

Concluding our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2009, and ponders on what the future holds for cinema.

“The global crisis that is concluding this decade may have been predicted by experts in 2006, but it was beginning to be noticed by the public in 2008, and by the turn of this decade’s last year, worldwide recession, debt, and cutbacks were in every home, on every media in every country. We were officially in comedown, with banks and banking institutes collapsing like houses of cards.

Hollywood braced itself. It started to make redundancies based on fears that abundant pay cuts would mean less disposable income to spend on things like cinema tickets and DVDs. But oh how wrong they were. By the end of the year, 2009 will have earned far more box office moolah than any other year, despite all the gloom and doom, beating the record set in 2007.

Why? Because people still need entertainment. They may even need it more now than ever. And film offers a 2-3 hour break from the anxiety of reality, an escape into another world. And despite what many say about the death of cinema in an age of LCD screens and HD formats, going to the movie theatre is a social aspect, a way of getting out of the confines of the home (which may indeed represent financial anxiety) and connecting with other people. It’s this shared experience that home video can never replace.”

Read this article from Screenhead.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2008.

“As mentioned in the look back on 2007, there seemed to be a dissonance between talent and money in Hollywood, with big budget movies getting critically hammered by critics and public alike. But all that changed in 2008. No one can argue that the biggest and most important film of the year was The Dark Knight. In 2005 Christopher Nolan had won back audiences, after the awful Batman and Robin, with the dark and grittier reboot Batman Begins.

Many analysts claimed that while the film performed well ($370 million worldwide), it only didn’t do better due to backlash against the previous Batman film. So by the time the teaser trailers appeared in late 2007 there was already a salivating fanbase counting the days. Rumours were circulating that Heath Ledger’s performance as Batman’s nemesis Joker was one of cinema’s finest.

When Ledger died in January 2008 (see below) the incident created a sense of foreboding relating to the character, although some felt that the death would be an incentive not to watch the film. By the time the film was released in July, it instantly started breaking box-office records left, right, and centre.”

Read this article from Screenhead.

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Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2007.

“The dispute between entertainment and art has waged on for decades, and this one was no different. But the largest rift between these factions was arguably in 2007. It was Hollywood’s first $4 billion summer, with huge hits such as Spiderman 3, Shrek the Third, Transformers, and even some surprises such as The Simpsons and The Bourne Ultimatum thrashing analyst expectations. But, the majority of these films (excluding Bourne 3) were slated by critics.

Nothing new there, but fanboys and many of those with broader tastes also seemed to react to these films negatively. IMDB, the ultimate fanboy gauge, saw poor ratings for the threequels such as Spidey 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and while these films topped the box office, they interestingly failed to surpass their predecessors (even disappointing expectations if you take inflation into account).”

Read this article from Screenhead.

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Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get: (1) Day One of my 201 page mutli-media Online film directing audio course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar” and (2) the first 24 pages (plus mp3 audio) of my 137 page “Script Breakdown and Film Scheduling Online Course For Independent Filmmakers.”

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Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2006.

“If at first you don’t succeed, then reboot it” became the motto of the major Hollywood studios in the latter half of this decade. 2005 saw Christopher Nolan take on the ever-popular Batman character and reboot him in Batman Begins, a film that couldn’t be any more different from the horrendously camp Batman and Robin. Audiences were impressed and so it was time to reboot one of the most successful franchises of all time.

Even though Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond was earning more and more bucks as the series progressed, it was felt that a new super-spy was needed, someone who tied in more with modern action-audience sensibilities. That man was Daniel Craig, whose craggy face seemed to suit the harsher action of Casino Royale, an adaptation of the original Bond novel. The film was a critical and commercial success, and was the biggest Bond movie to date, earning nearly $600 million worldwide.”

Read this article from Screenhead.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2005.

“Judd Apatow could have been one of those guys in Hollywood who had talent but no one would have heard of. He began his career as a stand-up comedian, and eventually started writing for acclaimed TV shows such as The Ben Stiller Show, and the influential The Larry Sanders Show. It seemed as if Apatow had a frustration between being a writer/director and a producer.

He wrote, for example, the comedy series Freak and Geeks which was cancelled too soon despite the positive response. And when he produced, with comedies like Anchorman, he succeeded. But it was 2005 that finally saw Apatow receive the accolade and popularity that he deserved.”

Read this article from Screenhead.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2004.

“Mel Gibson’s religious personal life meant very little to film fans at first, who were pretty happy seeing Mel rip up the screen in the cop action series Lethal Weapon, or in the post-apocalyptic Mad Max films. But all that changed in 2004, when Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was released. Charting the supposed last days of Christian saviour Jesus Christ, the film was made using the languages of the time (Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew), and thus was considered box-office poison by many studios.

Gibson funded a lot of the film himself, and was unable to go for a full-scale marketing strategy. Luckily for him, he didn’t need it, as churches around the nation were doing all the promotion for him. Opening on religious holiday Ash Wednesday, the film made $65 million in 3 days, and eventually made over $600 million worldwide, making it the most successful independent movie of all time.”

Read rest of article from Screenhead.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2003.

“As a director, Clint Eastwood was always uneven. When he made a critically acclaimed movie like Bird, they wouldn’t make money. When he made a money-maker, it was usually somewhere between dull and awful (Space Cowboys). And up until 2003 he had mostly made mediocre thrillers like True Crime and Blood Work. But all that ended with the release of Mystic River, an adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel in which the lives of three boys in Boston are disrupted by a child molester, and how that incident complicates a murder when the three become grown men.

The film, although somewhat over-rated, was a nice balance between murder mystery and exploration of a typical working-class neighbourhood, elevated by the two excellent lead performances of Sean Penn (as the gangster Jimmy whose daughter is murdered) and Tim Robbins (the molested boy who never quite recovered, and becomes Suspect #1). The film was praised, was a box-office success, and also earned Oscars for both Penn and Roberts (who is now the tallest actor to win an Oscar!).”

Read this article from Screenhead.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2002.

“Digital cinema had been around for quite a while throughout the 90’s, but it was this decade that saw it start to challenge traditional methods of film-making. While most major and indie films were shot on celluloid film roles (normally 35mm or 16mm), digital cameras managed to cut the cost of film processing and thus make things cheaper and easier. Initially digital cameras recorded onto tapes, and eventually electronic data could be stored directly onto hard-drives, making it ready for instant playback and editing.

Adopting digital film-making was a very slow process, mostly because early cameras couldn’t challenge the amount of information captured on traditional film, and also because digital cameras react to low-light in different ways to the “grain” of film stock. 2002 saw that perception change with the release of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the first major Hollywood film to be shot entirely in digital (on Sony’s HDW-F900), and most people couldn’t tell the difference.

This year also saw the release of Russian Ark, also shot entirely on the same camera and consisting of a single 90-minute take as a man explores a mansion that represents the history of Russia. Many Hollywood films still use 35mm, but digital formats are being championed by some, such as director Michael Mann who has shot his last two films using digital cameras.”

Read this article from Screenhead.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2001.

“You’d think it would have been milked a lot earlier. Since the original Star Wars trilogy, there had been very few interconnected franchises around, despite the obvious appetite audiences would have for an extended movie series. But all that changed in 2001, the year that started two of cinema’s most successful franchises of all time. The story of orphan and fledgling wizard Harry Potter was already a huge hit when JK Rowling’s first novel hit the UK stores in 1997, and was even bigger in the US the following year.

It didn’t take long for the rights to be sold and in November of 2001 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released to great success, breaking opening day box office records and the, and the cast of unknown children became stars almost instantly (and managing to stay in their roles throughout the series, despite initial plans to recast). The films have raked in over $5 billion worldwide, and the last film, split into two films, is yet to be released.”

Read this article from Screenhead.

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Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get: (1) Day One of my 201 page mutli-media Online film directing audio course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar” and (2) the first 24 pages (plus mp3 audio) of my 137 page “Script Breakdown and Film Scheduling Online Course For Independent Filmmakers.”

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