How Scream Saved Horror by Explaining — and Subverting — the Rules
By the mid-1990s the slasher genre had run out of scares. Then a film arrived that did something radical: it explained the rules of horror…
The Camera Moves That Built Hitchcock’s Suspense Machine
Few filmmakers understood the psychology of the camera as well as Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock believed suspense was not created by plot twists alone, but by…
Netflix Buys Ben Affleck’s AI Filmmaking Company InterPositive
Netflix has acquired InterPositive, an artificial-intelligence filmmaking technology company founded by actor and director Ben Affleck, in a deal that signals the streaming giant’s growing…
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The Eurocopter Tiger in GoldenEye: Disentangling Reality from Fiction
In GoldenEye, a rogue Russian general and former Soviet fighter pilot steal Eurocopter’s answer to the electronic battlefield — the Tiger helicopter. The sleek, black,…
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The DB5 Before 007: David Brown’s Legacy of High-Speed Ambition
Before it became the lethal extension of a cinematic super-spy, the Aston Martin DB5 was a masterclass in Italian-inspired British engineering produced by a company…
Calculated Chaos: The Mechanics and Practical Stunts of the Live and Let Die Boat Chase
In the history of cinematic aquatic action, the boat chase in Live and Let Die (1973) stands as a massive mechanical upgrade to the daylight…
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The Bond That Never Was: The Story of Donald Westlake’s “Lost” 007 Movie
In the vast archive of unmade cinema, most “lost” films are merely fragments—a pitch on a napkin or a half-finished outline. But Forever and a…
The Blueprint, The Con, and Production Chaos: How Bruce Geller and His Team Built Mission: Impossible
In front of the camera, the Mission: Impossible team was a well-oiled machine: a group of elite specialists working in perfect harmony under a cool,…
GoldenEye’s Forgotten Motorbike BASE Jump Deserves More Respect
Everyone remembers GoldenEye for its bungee jump. It is the stunt that introduced Pierce Brosnan as James Bond: a sheer concrete dam, a silent fall,…
Dead Reckoning’s Motorbike Jump: How 13,000 Jumps, 500 Skydives, Computer Simulation, and an Engineered Ramp Created Cinema’s “Biggest Stunt”
The motorbike BASE jump executed by Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning was promoted by both Paramount and the media as “the biggest…
