Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Martin Sheen.
In this scene from 1979’s ApocalypseNow, Sheen shows the intensity that not only nearly killed him when he suffered a heart attack during filming but which also served to make Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic a true classic.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we pay tribute to a great year in cinema. It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 1974 Films
The Godfather Part II (1974, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Gordon Willis)
Chinatown (1974, dir by Roman Polanski, DP: John A. Alonzo)
The Conversation (1974, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Bill Butler and Haskell Wexler)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Daniel Pearl)
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
95 years ago today, Robert Evans was born in New York City. He started out working in his brother’s clothing business but a chance meeting with actress Norma Shearer led to him becoming an actor. And while Evans, by his own account, was not a particularly good actor, he did prove himself to be very skilled at playing the games of Hollywood. Evans eventually moved from acting to production, first as an executive at Paramount and then as an independent producer.
He lived a life as glamorous and tumultuous as the stars of his pictures and his memoir, The Kid Stays In The Picture, is considered to be one of the classic show biz autobiographies. He hung out with cinematic rebels like Jack Nicholson and Robert Towne and counted Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a friend. He suggested that Francis Ford Coppola should direct The Godfather and, when Paramount put pressure on Coppola to cut the film down to two hours, it was Evans who famously announced that a two-hour Godfather was nothing more than a trailer. He lost Ali MacGraw to Steve McQueen and, again by own account, he lost a lot of potentially productive years to cocaine. (The Cotton Club scandal is one of the wildest in the history of Hollywood, though it should be noted that Evans himself was never charged with any wrongdoing.) But, for all that he lost, Evans continues to gain admirers as being the epitome of the producer who was willing to take chances. For all of his flamboyance, Evans had an eye for good material and the willingness to protect his directors. In many ways, he was as important to the cinematic revolution of the 70s as the directors that he hired. When Evans passed away in 2019, it was truly the end of an era.
Here, in honor of the birth and legacy of Robert Evans, are 8 Shots from 8 Films that Evans produced, either as studio chief at Paramount or as an independent producer.
8 Shots From 8 Robert Evans Films
Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir by Romnn Polanski, DP: William A. Fraker)
Love Story (1970, dir by Arthur Hiller, DP: Richard Kratina)
The Godfather (1972, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, Cinematography by Gordon Willis)
Chinatown (1974, dir by Roman Polanski, DP: John A. Alonzo)
Marathon Man (1976, dir by John Schlesinger, DP: Conrad Hall)
The Cotton Club (1984, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Stephen Goldblatt)
The Two Jakes (1990, dir by Jack Nicholson, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Sliver (1993, dir by Phillip Noyce, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Composer Carmine Coppola, the father of Francis Ford Coppola, was born 115 years ago today.
Coppola composed music for almost all of his son’s films. To me, his best work was the menacing and dream-like score that he and Francis put together for 1979’s ApocalypseNow. Some of that score can be heard in today’s scene of the day, as Willard (Martin Sheen) and the boat approach a bridge that is built every day and destroyed every night.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today the Shattered Lens celebrates what would have been the 94th birthday of the great cinematographer, Gordon Willis. Willis was the master of using shadow and underexposed film to create some of the most haunting movie images of the 70s and 80s. He was also one of the first cinematographers to take advantage of the so-called “magic hour,” that moment when the sun is setting and everything is bathed in a golden glow. Today, everyone does that but Willis was the first.
Willis has often been cited as one of the most influential cinematographers of all time but, amazingly, Willis would receive only two Academy Award nominations (for Zelig and The Godfather Part III) and he would never win a competitive Oscar.
In memory of Gordon Willis, here are….
6 Shots From 6 Gordon Willis Films
End of the Road (1970, dir by Aram Avakian, Cinematography by Gordon Willis)
The Godfather (1972, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, Cinematography by Gordon Willis)
The Parallax View (1974, dir by Alan J. Pakula, Cinematography by Gordon Willis)
The Godfather Part II (dir by Francis Ford Coppola, Cinematography by Gordon Willis)
All The President’s Men (1976, dir by Alan J. Pakula, Cinematography by Gordon Willis)
Manhattan (1979, dir by Woody Allen, Cinematography by Gordon Willis)
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Al Pacino! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Al Pacino Films
The Godfather (1972, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Gordon Willis)
The Godfather Part II (1974, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Gordon Willis)
The Irishman (2019, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Rodrigo Prieto)
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Robert Richardson)
“I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
My latest “Scenes I Love” Monologue Edition comes courtesy of the great Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz from Francis For Coppola’s magnus opus, Apocalypse Now.
The scene is the Kurtz monologue describing the horror he has seen and how it has shaped his thought process and concept on how to fight the enemies he has been tasked to fight and also condemned for the methods he has used to achieve results.
Shot and framed with Brando’s face half in shadows as he describes how the horrors he has seen and committed is just a reflection of the war they’re fighting and how emotions and judgment from those who have not experience and committed such horrors is the path to defeat.
Brando’s time in front of the camera is not very much in the whole runtime of the film, but from beginning to end his shadowy presence looms over everyone and this 5-minute monologue becomes the exclamation mark that succinctly explains the entire theme of the film: “In an insane world, the mad men are the ones who are sane”.
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today is Francis Ford Coppola’s birthday! Coppola is a bit of a controversial figure among some film scholars. While everyone agrees that, with the first two Godfathers, he directed two of the greatest films of all time (and some people would include Apocalypse Now on that list as well) and that he was one of the most important directors of the 70s, his post-Apocalypse Now career is often held up as a cautionary tale. Some say that Coppola’s career suffered because of his own excessive behavior and spending. Others argue that he was treated unfairly by a film industry that resented his refusal to compromise his vision and ambitions. Personally, my natural instinct is to always side with the artist over the executives and that’s certainly the case with Coppola. Coppola has only completed five films since the start of this current century and three of them were not widely released. Say what you will about the films themselves, that still doesn’t seem right. For the record, I like Megalopolis.
Regardless of how one views his latter career, Coppola is responsible for some of the best and most important films ever made. And today, on his birthday, it’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Francis Ford Coppola Films
The Godfather (1972, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Gordon Willis)
The Conversation (1974, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Bill Butler)
The Godfather Part II (dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Gordon Willis)
Apocalypse Now (1979, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Vittorio Storaro)
Since today is Marlon Brando’s birthday, it only seems appropriate that today’s song of the day should come from the soundtrack of one of his films. (I’ll also be watching this film later tonight.)
From 1979’s Apocalypse Now, here is the haunting music that plays as Willard and the boat approach the infamous bridge that is built every day so that it can be destroyed every night.
Through the Shattered Lens 