Cinematic Soulmates: ¡Three Amigos!, A Bug’s Life, and Galaxy Quest

In my last column, I discussed how cinema is essentially a medium that is built upon its own history, with countless directors using their own films as excuses to pay homage to those that inspired them.  Whether it come in the form of lifting a particular bit of technical flair like a camera movement or editing choice, or the outright […]

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Great Moments in Cinema: Alien

Part of the brilliance of director Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is the way in which it demystifies space travel.  His characters aren’t heroic astronauts or brilliant scientists or mystic space knights.  Instead, they are blue-collar working stiffs who just happen to make their living on a mining ship that traverses the stars.  It is a clever (if not wholly original) […]

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