Short Round, Indy’s precocious 12-year-old aide in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was described by former LucasFilm archivist J.W. Rinzler as the real hero of Indy’s second big-screen adventure. He catches Indy and Willie Scott with his perfectly placed car in Shanghai. Later, he defends Willie, uses a burning torch to break Kali’s…
Forty years ago, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg introduced audiences to the intrepid archaeologist, Indiana Jones. He was not exactly a new type of hero. He harked back to the old black and white Republic serials, cheaply made globetrotting adventures that had such a huge effect on Lucas growing up. Jones was part Allan Quartermain…
Some of the most memorable scenes in movies are the introduction of characters. Darth Vader, James Bond, Hannibal Lecter, The Joker in The Dark Knight, and Trinity in The Matrix all rank as some of the great introductions in film. All of these are from vastly different directors and the analysis of all can provide some valuable insights…
Would you like to see genius at work? Would you like to see how one of cinema’s greatest heroes emerged from a blank sheet of paper? Very rarely do we get a glimpse behind closed doors at a real, unedited creative discussion during pre-production. It’s so rare, that the only one I can think of…
With its 1930s matinee film origins, Raiders of the Lost Ark is perfect as a black and white film. But when Steven Soderbergh drained the film of all its color for his 2014 re-edit, he had something else in mind. On his website, he said the experiment was “for education purposes only”, emphasizing the purpose is to…