Images of Vietnam washed across newspapers. Starry-eyed college kids with flowers in their hair staged demonstrations across the country. America was in flames and the revolution was televised. In the clink and clamor of war and protest during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hollywood cinema started to change with the rest of the country. […]
Author Archives: Ian Colvin
Out of Focus: Mexican film traverses social commentary, coming-of-age
Long, black roads of tar and gasoline, visions of Jack Kerouac, greasy-spoon diners and desolate fill-up stations. Seedy motels, hitchhikers thumbing for rides and broken-down metal machines along the highway. These are the images conjured up when thinking of the traditional road trip. The road movie has always been seen as a uniquely American invention […]
Out of Focus: The films of Anthony Mann come to Westwood
Modern cinema is indebted to Anthony Mann, even if few are aware of it. Working under strict production codes and B-picture budgets, Mann crafted a string of brilliant movies in the 1940s and 1950s that chronicled outsiders and anti-heroes long before they became popular. These were films made practically on the run, churned out in […]
Out of Focus: Classic noir film “Laura” returns to big screen
Film noir, a genre characterized by dark lighting, seedy characters and raging sexuality, became an American movie mainstay in the early 1940s. Influenced by the stylized cinema of the German Expressionists and the white-hot violence of 1930s pulp magazines like “Black Mask,” film noir would leave an indelible mark on film. Ruthless criminals, private eyes […]
Out of Focus: A French New Wave classic comes to Santa Monica
In the smoke-filled cafes situated along the Left Bank of the Seine river in Paris, a group of young film critics started talking. Their late-night conversations seeped into the early morning streets and spawned a new kind of cinema: one that was youthful and innovative, playful and rebellious. The movement that these critics-turned-filmmakers would […]
Out of Focus: Japanese horror ‘House’ creeps into American cult culture
Los Angeles exists as it does today because of the movies. Initially rolling hills and orange groves, it has become a major American metropolis because of its status as the filmmaking capital of the world. As a result, movies are present everywhere. In Westwood and its surrounding areas alone, there exists a large number of […]
‘A Century of Chinese Cinema’ comes to Westwood
A weary traveler wanders the desolate countryside, clutching his suitcase. The haunting narration of a torn and tortured woman reveals her feelings for a lost love, her distant memories and her hidden melancholy. So begins the 1948 production “Spring in a Small Town,” director Fei Mu’s film about a love triangle among a sickly man, […]