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Showing posts from December, 2011

FILM SKOOL: NORTH BY NORTHWEST

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God, I wish I could pull off wearing a fedora any day of the week. The tall kind, the kind the “professor” wears. And yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s nothing more “American” than Mount Rushmore. Maybe. I’ll go with Jazz, and bourbon. And you should, too. So, the 20 year Pappy Van Winkle, switched to Noah’s Mill Bourbon about 45 minutes in, should make you giggle like a school girl as Cary Grant escapes harm via fabricated hijinx in the auction house. Seriously, NORTH BY NORTHWEST is one of the obvious go-to films for “learning”. I was shown the cornfield crop-duster sequence at age 18 in my freshman year story class at CalArts. The problem with freshmen is that you’re dealing with people who you ASSUME have seen certain films. At age 18, I’d heard of NORTH BY NORTHWEST, but never seen it. So the crop dusting sequence was marvelous to behold, even out of context, but still…it was out of context. And out of context, in a story class, is almost useless. Story happens in two ways: