Some Like It Hot
One of the greats.
One of the greats.

One of the greats.

One of the greats.

Brian Murnion is a filmmaker, creative director, poet, and self-proclaimed intellectual scrub from Billings, Montana. He spends an unreasonable amount of time obsessing over the connective tissue between music, film, literature, and whatever else seems culturally or aesthetically significant at any given moment. His curation process is equal parts curiosity, fixation, and blind luck, driven by the irrational hope that brilliance is hiding in plain sight somewhere in the chaos.
The “beauty” of the title refers to many things, but, above all, to Rome. That is where Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a writer known for producing a single book and attending innumerable parties, has lived for decades. Clearly, he never tires of the place; the happiest moments in this long and indulgent film, directed by…
We lost a truly great actor yesterday. Memory eternal Philip SH. Here’s a scene from Magnolia. This moment alone accelerated my interest in film production. I remember watching this scene for the first time back in the day, and I think of it often.
The Dust Bowl, a film by Ken Burns, is as heartbreaking as it is intriguing. A documentary about one of the worst man-made disasters in American history. I’m researching and writing a few treatments for documentaries I want to produce in 2014, and of all the docs I’ve seen recently, The Dust Bowl is a…
Criterion is releasing a box set of three films by the Italian film director Roberto Rossellini and starring Hollywood’s Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli, Europe ’51, and Journey to Italy. These are remarkable films–highly recommend Journey to Italy, a film about a husband and wife whose marriage begins to disintegrate while traveling near Naples. A masterpiece film in Italian cinema.
#15. High And Low dir. Akira Kurosawa (Japan – 1963)
Birth follows a woman who is preparing to move on with her life after her husband’s death, when a ten-year-old boy appears and calmly insists that he is her husband reincarnated. I first saw this film in 2004, alone, late at night, at the Lagoon Theater in Uptown, Minneapolis. I remember wondering what sort of…