Lemoine Drake

The US is in a death spiral.

I remember Bud Ekins talking about it with my dad when I was a kid.

Beloved grim realist auteur Aki Kaurismaki quipped in a 2011 Guardian interview: “The only way for mankind to get out of this misery is to kill the one percent who own everything. The one percent who have put us in the position where humanity has no value.”

‘Bullitt’ at 57: A Suspense-Packed Thriller that Introduced a New Kind of Action Films

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cinephiliabeyond.org/bullitt-a-su...

With Badlands, released on this day in 1973, Terrence Malick made a directorial debut most filmmakers can only dream of.

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cinephiliabeyond.org/badlands-ter...

30 years ago today Strange Days blasted into cinemas—Kathryn Bigelow’s audacious sci-fi noir still feels eerily prescient.

Explore our anniversary deep dive into this cult sci-fi masterpiece:

cinephiliabeyond.org/strange-days...

It holds up.

Next week: Baudrillard, Tiqqun, the Manosphere, and Burning The Script.

#killtheonepercent

Peter Yates’ The Hot Rock, adapted for the screen by two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men).

Read it here: cinephiliabeyond.org/the-cinemati...

My latest Substack newsletter is live
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‘Andor’ Writer Dan Gilroy On Disney Suspending Jimmy Kimmel & Hollywood Facing “Venomous Evil”: “This Isn’t A Skirmish. It’s A Siege” – Guest Column 'Andor' Writer Dan Gilroy On Trump's Jimmy Kimmel Pressure Campaign: "Artists Are Censored First Because They Fear Us Most" -- Guest Column

"Our industry faces the most sophisticated, venomous, creeping evil in America’s history. There’s no standing above this conflict. No impartial observers. If you’re on the sidelines you’ve made a choice and must live with it."

deadline.com/2025/09/ando...

I watch it several times a year. Still, one of the greatest films EVER.

True. But that was one of the more interesting possible second lives for a hero prop.

“Seriously, don’t fuck with me.”
Best Regards,
Stanley

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIcJ...

From Antonioni's Red Desert: Giuliana in a corner of Corrado's hotel room, her face half obscured by the open door of the wardrobe; the left third of the screen is dark (the interior of the wardrobe); the right two thirds, with Giuliana at the centre, is taken up with the beige wall and wardrobe door.

‘Why do I need people?’ asks Giuliana in Red Desert.

She regards this desperate need as a sign of weakness, as the primary cause of her illness – and yet those who claim not to share this need, in Antonioni’s films, turn out to be in denial. Red Desert is about the cost of such denial.

Mack Sennett’s Cyclorama, Keystone Studios, Edendale, Los Angeles, 1925

From Fellini’s 8½: a wide shot in which Guido, his wife, and his other loved ones dance around a circus ring, holding hands.

At the end of 8½, Guido’s fantasy of escape (in a spaceship) is replaced by one of benevolent entrapment: his loved ones, in a huge crowd, descend from the launch tower and dance hand-in-hand with him around a circus ring, accompanied by Nino Rota’s manic but joyful score.

A close-up of the top-right quarter of an old man's face, including his bespectacled eye.

A medium close-up of the same man's face, looking off screen.

A close-up of a statue's eye.

A medium close-up of the same statue's face, looking off screen.

Antonioni looks at Michelangelo’s Moses the same way he looked at the old man at the end of L’eclisse. We see part of his face, then another part; we see from close up and further away. Who is this man, why are we staring at him, and what is he staring at so intensely?

Paul Thomas Anderson discusses shooting on VistaVision in a new behind-the-scenes video from One Battle After Another.

Great Scott: Sir Ridley Scott breaks down some of his more unexplored worlds • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine As the BFI whisks us back into the cinematic worlds of Sir Ridley Scott this fall, Ella Kemp is granted an audience with the peerless filmmaker to revisit some of his key universes.

Every interview with Sir Ridley Scott is a must-read and a real treasure.

letterboxd.com/journal/ridl...

If, by any chance, we were VFX artists, we would gather a hundred of our colleagues tomorrow and threaten Waltz with a mass lawsuit. If he really is film illiterate, and his statement proves it, let him learn how films are made.

Last time I looked, used DVDs were available.