Double Feature: For Sama and A Diary for Timothy
The shot lasts only about seventeen seconds, a simple downward tilt. First we see Sama, the young daughter of journalist and filmmaker Waad al-Kateab, being held by her father, Hamza, […]
Tag Archives: Double Feature
Double Feature: Memento and Irreversible
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”–Kierkegaard “He destroyed my ability to live.”–Leonard Shelby, Memento “Paranoiacs need everything explained. Some things can’t be explained.”–Alex, Irreversible […]
Double Feature: Murder by Death and Clue
Detective stories were among Hollywood’s very first franchises, offering durable structures and just enough variation to keep people wanting more. For the most part, these films were based on popular […]
Double Feature: Zora Neale Hurston’s Ethnographic Films and Daughters of the Dust
Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, was also something of an amateur filmmaker, documenting everyday life and work in the American South as part of anthropological […]
Double Feature: The Devil Is a Woman and That Obscure Object of Desire
In addition to a pair of silent film adaptations and a 1959 Julien Duvivier film starring Brigitte Bardot, the two most notable cinematic takes on the 1898 Pierre Louÿs novel La […]
Double Feature: The Big Lebowski and The Beach Bum
“Sometimes there’s a man — well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.” Thus the voiceover narration in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski […]
Double Feature: The Terminator and RoboCop
There are several interesting ways of contrasting these two landmark films about cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs. One could play up the dystopian angle, thinking of RoboCop as the Brazil (or […]
Double Feature: Pickford vs. Temple
Eleanor Gates began writing novels just after the turn of the century, then turned to writing plays before starting a film production company in 1915. This same trajectory was taken […]
Double Feature: The Heartbreak Kid and Modern Romance
In outline form, The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and Modern Romance (1981) would best be described as romantic comedies. They have the right structure, working their way through humorous incidents to the ultimate […]
Double Feature: On Falling in Love with Ghosts
Most notably in film noir, but also detectable in drama and fantasy, Hollywood films immediately after World War II often circled around moods of despair and loss. The war had […]
