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         It is quite common for directors to work with a consistent set of actors over the course of their careers. Looking over a director’s filmography one will often find evidence of these collaborations, and, indeed, using the same acting talent over and over again is one of the signs of an auteur. The actors and actresses often build a relationship with a director; they draw inspiration from one another, and push the other’s limits. There are a few directors who narrow this number, and end up working with one specific actor or actress over and over again, until they begin to be permanently identified with one another in the public consciousness. Think Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski or, if you prefer, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. These relationships have highs and lows, just as any other relationship, but the more films you watch by these collaborators the richer the experience becomes.             Ta...

          In my last article I wrote about one of my favorite directors, Akira Kurosawa, and Ran, his adaptation of King Lear . Kurosawa was well read in western literature, and also made adaptations of Macbeth ( Throne of Blood ), Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich ( Ikiru ), and works by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Maxim Gorky. Kurosawa was a master of identifying characteristics that made stories universal, thus making western classics accessible to Japanese audiences. What is even more impressive is, however, how many of his 1950s-era Japanese films became classics in world cinema, and have remained in the western collective conscience ever since.             To my eye, Kurosawa made two different types of film. There are the “jidaigeki” samurai epics, set in feudal Japan, all evoking a distant past – films such as Rashomon, Ran, Kagemusha, and Yojimbo. These are how most audiences think of Kurosa...

          Recently my life has been full of Shakespeare. I have started a Shakespeare reading group with some of my New Jersey friends, I saw an excellent production of Measure for Measure at the Globe Theatre in London this week, and I am in the middle of reading King John for my own pleasure. I have ambitions to read through the entire canon before I turn thirty, and at 25 am happy to say that I have read about twenty so far. Part of the fun of reading Shakespeare is then watching film adaptations of his work – from Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier to Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa, many auteurs have used the bard as inspiration and directed their own versions of his plays. When I was last back in America, I made it a point to watch three of the most epic Shakespeare adaptations on my parents' big screen television, and feel comfortable in saying that each is in the canon of not just the greatest Shakespearean films, but some of the greatest films of al...

There is a lot of symbolism in film that people tend to overlook, the most obvious example being rain. Rain scenes are a pain in the ass to film; it doesn’t show up unless properly colored or backlit, it can be costly depending on the severity, it requires extra resources, can be noisy, and, obviously, makes the actors wet. Yet, several famous and beloved films go through the hassle of creating rain scenes. Spiderman, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Seven Samurai, Minority Report, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Raising Arizona, Millers Crossing, Platoon, Inception, and, most famously, Singing in the Rain, all have well known rain scenes in them. Hell, David Fincher even uses rain as a supporting character in most of his films. So, what’s the point, you might ask, if it is such a problem creating rain sequences? Why should directors bother? Well, different films use weather differently, so here are a few examples and how the effect works in each. So far in this blog I have been over...