Double feature: Here’s a fun new game to play – which Best Picture Oscar winner about ego, aging, and Hollywood’s incursion into the New York theater world am I talking about: “Birdman” or “All About Eve”? Continue reading
creative process
Frances Ha + Bridget Jones’s Diary
Double feature: When “Frances Ha” came out, many reviewers hung their claims for its distinction on the fact that its heroine was a young woman, and yet its narrative had essentially nothing to do with that young woman’s love life. Presumably, this separated it from the pile of marriage-plot driven romantic comedies with women in the lead, a pile in which “Bridget Jones’s Diary” stands honorably near the top.
Gandhi + Black Narcissus
Double feature: A double feature of epics that will take the better part of a day to watch, the pairing of “Gandhi” and “Black Narcissus” provides ample fodder for considerations of dominion, overcoming, and the good/evil within us (i.e. whether one or both are inherent, and how each has the potential to conquer the other, if only temporarily).
Magic Mike + The Graduate
Double feature: For its soundtrack, imagery, and expression of a generation’s possibly prevailing mood, “The Graduate” deserves the adjective “iconic.” It’s also one of several antecedents of a more recent entry in the annals of post-grad (or non-grad) male ennui: “Magic Mike.”
Bill Cunningham New York + Michael Clayton
Double feature: “I’m not the enemy,” the eponymous protagonist of “Michael Clayton” tells his unravelling coworker in an attempt to distance himself from the compromising agenda of his profession. The latter, not skipping a beat, shoots back: “Then who are you?” It is this exchange – the sharpest in a film of sharp exchanges – that links “Michael Clayton” to the endearing and moving documentary “Bill Cunningham New York.”
Bright Star + The Earrings of Madame de…
Double feature: Here are two ravishingly beautiful, radiantly intelligent films whose beauty and brains are in large part due to their shared attention to the details of domestic life.
Almost Famous + Dirty Dancing
Double feature: Need help bidding farewell to summer? Try a double feature of “Almost Famous” and “Dirty Dancing.” Both films let you relive the thrill of warm weather escapades, then prepare you to wave goodbye to the season (wistfully, from the rear windshield of the tour bus/family station wagon) by pointing to the potential for good that lies further down the year’s road.
Broadcast News + Pretty in Pink
Double feature: “Broadcast News” and “Pretty in Pink” are most obviously linked by their common depiction of that oft-instantiated shape, the love triangle.
Groundhog Day + Ikiru
Double feature: “Groundhog Day” and “Ikiru” are linked by their shared recognition of the weight of time. To most people, for most of life, time is an elastic, cyclical backdrop to daily events. To the protagonists of these two films, it is a head-on challenge.
