Smart Words About Cinema
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] NASHVILLE. Bantam Books (paperback), illustrated. No pagination. $2.25. On the spine it says “Robert Altman’s Nashville.” On the cover it says “Robert Altman’s Award-Winning Nashville, with an Introduction by Joan Tewkesbury.” On the title page, it says “Nashville, an Original Screenplay by Joan Tewkesbury.” This new and [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] Uniformed marching bands with twirlers. Red, white, and blue. Frustrated chauffeurs who can’t quite comprehend the world of their passengers. An arrival at the airport by charter plane, covered by an on-the-spot news announcer. The death and funeral of someone named Green(e). A reference to car racing. [...]
By Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy [Originally published in Movietone News 55, September 1977] Robert Altman visited Seattle late last year in connection with the world premiere of Welcome to L.A. at the Harvard Exit. The directorial debut of his sometime assistant director and—on Buffalo Bill and the Indians—co-screenwriter Alan Rudolph, Welcome also marked [...]
[Originally published in Film Comment Vol. 10 No. 6, November-December 1974] It’s a good idea to recall periodically no director at, say, RKO in the Forties ever passed a colleague on the lot and called, “Hey, baby, I hear they’re giving you a film noir to do next.” The term was a critical response, on [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August 1978] 1969: That Cold Day in the Park: Lazslo Kovacs’s camera bridges one sequence to another with frequent use of focus-in/blur-out visuals, stylistically underscoring the film’s dual theme: the ambiguity and the dissolution of personality. It’s a film whose greatest strength lies in its atmosphere. Altman’s and Kovacs’s [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News no. 43, September 1975] Nashville is a film with a mirror in it. The mirror is Robert DoQui’s face; specifically, his face at that moment when Jeff Goldblum takes the cap off the saltshaker at the airport lunch counter, pours the salt into his left hand, lifts the left hand [...]