Meeting shot from the crop duster scene in North By Northwest (1959)

This is a still from Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959)

A car has just dropped off the Man on the right. Cary Grant's character Roger Thornhill has been waiting on the left side of the road to meet a secret agent named George Kaplan for the first time. Thornhill has been waiting on the road for some time, leaning with anticipation as previous vehicles came and went wondering if this car would be the one carrying his covert contact. The man on the right is looking at Thornhill after being dropped off. But will then look down the road most of the time, as if waiting for someone. Glancing back at Thornhill again as if he might or might not be the agent in question. Thornhill prepares to approach the man to determine if he is the man he has come to see.

There is no soundtrack throughout. Only ambient sounds.

Note the shot. The landscape is barren and clean, lightly colored in earth tones. The two men are dressed in dark suits, starkly contrasting with their surroundings. This forces the viewer to focus intently on the two figures.

The road is shot at an angled perspective, the lines drawing our eye towards Thornhill, our protagonist who is the primary focus of our film.

The road is a split with a median line, indicating a barrier between the two men that must be crossed for a secret conversation to occur.

The road is a broad, bare, open gulf that would be a long challenge to cross making Thornhill vulnerable and exposed.

The camera is on Thornhill's side of the barrier, because as the protagonist we the audience are on his side, wanting him to succeed.

The barbwire fence behind him and the telephone line down the road, visually prevent escape. Thornhill has nowhere to go but towards the Man.

The Man on the right is slightly closer to the camera causing him larger and more intimidating than Thornhill. This makes him a more menacing prospect to walk towards.

The man on the right is wearing a hat to shade his eyes from the late morning sun. Thornhill is not wearing a hat making him unprepared and even more vulnerable.

The man on the right stands alone in the open space with no fence around, his arms braced behind him all indicating a stronger more powerful presence than the slightly slouching Thornhill.

Thornhill is on the left side of the shot, wanting to move to the right. As an American film directed towards an audience that reads English from left to right, our eyes instinctively want to push Thornhill across the frame from left to right.

All of these items are subtle artistic cues that drive into our subconscious and cause us to side with Grant's character and anticipate his task at hand more intensely than we normally would otherwise. Forcing our attention, and bringing us suspensefully to the edge of our seat. This seemingly simple shot is only on screen for a couple of seconds. But a detail oriented master planner like Hitchock worked on it for far longer than that.

Here's the clip:

Braveheart's Speech

Felt like seeing a Braveheart clip this morning for some reason. Landed on the speech at the Battle of Stirling. And you know, it's a remarkably short speech, but it turns the mood of the scene and the whole movie around 180 degrees.

If you read the speech in your head, and try and do it without hearing any music or pauses, it seems like an extremely short, effectless 7 sentences.

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Wallace: I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What would you do with that freedom? Will you fight?

Veteran soldier: Fight? Against that? No, we will run; and we will live.

Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you'll live -- at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!!!

Wallace and Soldiers: Alba gu bra! (Scotland forever!)

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So why does it work so well?

One, story buildup. Randall Wallace did a great job of making this speech a turning point by building up the scenes of scottish resistance to this point. If William can't turn the army around, then their cause will end there. So our minds give the speech gravity, because we know it's an important moment.

Two, direction. Gibson is many things including a master filmmaker. He knows just where to put beats in a scene to make it effective. Just how to cut it. And since he was doing the acting himself, he knew just how to play the scene.

Three, and this is the most important, music. Steven Spielberg has said that music is 50% of the movie. And it's true. And there has not been a contemporary film composer that could top James Horner for emotional impact. Glory, Avatar, Field of Dreams, Legends of the Fall, Titanic. The man was a master at enhancing the feelings of screen story. His passing is a great loss to cinema. But at least we can enjoy his masterworks such as this for years to come.

And these three aspects really encapsulate the essence of film craft.

The villainous Stephen from Django Unchained

Django Unchained was a painfully/joyously cathartic film. A true masterpiece. But I would like to take a moment to comment as to why I feel Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen was a truly villainous villain, brilliantly written by Tarantino and utterly inhabited by Jackson.

To start with, DiCaprio's Calvin Candie was utterly villainous himself, but he's your standard "petulant child emperor" character. Like Commodus from Gladiator he is bored with his existence and only cruelty and domineering over others brings him pleasure. This kind of sadism, while utterly villainous, is a different flavor from Stephen's twisted villainy.

Stephen was utterly villainous for the following reasons:

One, he was a conniving, plotting, Shylock-like weasel of a simpering villain. Devising and sneaking around doing his evil masters bidding. The only character that comes to mind for true comparison is Shakespearian courtier Iago from Othello, or Iago the parrot from Alladin for the pop culture referral.

Two, he is a manipulative villain, always putting ideas of cruelty in Candie's head. When Candie admonishes him or dismisses his intentions, he makes them even sweeter with his devil's tongue to the point that he has become the master of this household of horror.

Three, and this is most prescient, he is a traitor. A traitor to his race. Candie was evil, but his evil was aligned with the one systemic norm of the time, racism. I don't believe Stephen even identifies himself as black anymore. He goes so far as to maintain the brutal household's financial affairs, to personally oversee the torture of his fellow slaves in far crueler methods and durations than his master, and upon identifying opportunities overlooked by his master to practice cruelty upon his brothers and sisters, he happily guides Candie's hand to the literal whip.

Lastly, he's a player hater, plain and simple, through and through. Taking joy in the cutting down of others to or below his level is his sustenance. Take Clifton Powell's Chauncy from Menace II Society. Multiply it times 9,999, you're getting closer to Steven.

So it is with all these villainous traits in mind that we experience the utter jumping-up-and-down-hand-clapping joy in witnessing that side of violence that Tarantino calls "the cathartic fun of violence"

Dredd (2012)

Dredd was awesome but I didn't like it. Let me elaborate.

Awesome: The most honest single comic book adaptation I've ever seen. This film was completely accurate to the source material. Unlike the 90's Stallone adaptation where Hollywoodization abounded, I couldn't pinpoint a single thing in this film that wouldn't have happened in the comics. It was dark, ultraviolent, and unapologetic. We never see Dredd's face. His dialogue is to-the-point, almost monosyllabic. The sets, the non-distracting camera work. I could go on.

I didn't like: The ultraviolence. A sure sign I'm getting old is I just can't stomach the unrelenting violence in action and emotion abounding in this film. This is a personal taste, a subjective one. The only thing is, that's the essence of the comics. The unapologetic, impersonal, unrelenting execution of the law of Mega-City One. So bravo for the filmmakers in their unflinching translation.

Now for the sake of disclosure, while I am logging this in my list as 4/10 for personal subjective reasons. In an objective light, such as when discussing the merits or demerits of a work of adaptation, I will give it a resounding 10/10. If you read the Judge Dredd comics and recall wondering what it would be like to actually see it? You're in luck.

The fact that someone finally made a movie based on a comic book and yet restrained themselves from changing whatever they damn well pleased... it pleases me.