firstshotlastshot:

Summer of Sam (1999)

New York City during the blazing hot days of mid-1977 is the setting for this real life horror story, as the public fear over several shootings of young couples created a level of panic rarely experienced before or since. New York Daily News reporter Jimmy Breslin’s connection to the case (he received a letter from David Berkowitz, who was later arrested and confessed to the crimes committed during the period of July 29th, 1976 - July 31st, 1977) made him a valuable player in bookending Spike Lee’s film about the turbulent events and their aftermath. Berkowitz has been in prison since then and his criminal legacy was said to have helped sell more newspapers in New York during those months than at any other time in modern American history.

visionsoflight:

Director: David Lynch

Director of Photography: Peter Deming

“What are you doing? We don’t stop here.”

thelightsgoneoutforme:

David Lynch directing Eraserhead

The term ‘auteur’ is applied to many directors, but few could argue David Lynch isn’t worthy of it. For decades his name has been synonymous with boundary pushing creations that leave audiences and critics alike wondering what he’ll come up with next. The man born in Montana in 1946 is nowhere near finished and his projects are always a major event. “Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me.”

arcaneimages:

Lon Chaney Sr. London After Midnight. 

Occasionally, deleted scenes and even entire films get lost. Perhaps the most notorious example of a missing movie is this 1927 silent feature. The last known copy was said to have been destroyed by fire in an MGM vault forty years after it’s production.

Apocalypse Now has taken on a status few other films ever have. The legends of it’s troubled production are very well known and included Coppola’s recasting the lead role, budget issues, plus extreme weather destroying a large part of it’s set. But the heart attack suffered by Martin Sheen brought the dire events to a terrifying peak. Sheen, a Catholic, allegedly received last rites from a priest on location and rumours of him having actually died spread like wildfire back to the United States. He recovered and gave a truly haunting performance as a military man dealing with hell on Earth in the form of America’s most complicated war. The essential documentary Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991) showed the cast members and Coppola many years later recounting their observations of what turned into modern cinema’s greatest war movie.

arcaneimages:

Giger at work. Alien. Via William Forsche. 

Swiss artist H.R. Giger’s indelible creature has haunted millions of viewers since the late 1970s and forever changed the popular cinematic concept of what life outside Earth could appear as. The standard 1950s image of an extraterrestrial was quite innocuous compared to the veritable killing machine Ridley Scott’s A L I E N unleashed on the world and has continued in three sequels since then.

sexmahoney:

Great Moments in Freeze Frame #1658 - Young Adult

The 100th filmskits post is a still from my favourite movie of 2011!

A porn stud’s darkest days are chronicled in a film curiously free of any depictions of that industry. Wonderland (2003) featured a cast filled with veteran actors delivering searing portrayals of infamous (and many now deceased) people, but the relationship between X-rated superstar John Holmes (Val Kilmer) and ex-convict Ron Launius (Josh Lucas) is the cocaine fuelled motor driving it all. Launius and his partners in crime were about to take on their biggest target yet in a city full of drug dealers vulnerable to robbery. The fate they had in store for themselves became the ‘Four On The Floor’ murders, a crime so savage that even hardened LAPD homicide detectives were shocked by the brutality.

theartofmoviestills:

Auto Focus | Paul Schrader | 2002

Biopics are always a matter of compositing people and events, but the painful truths of those whose lives are put on the big screen often remain intact. Bob Crane’s sexually driven lifestyle after rising to TV stardom as the lead on Hogan’s Heroes (1965-71) was the subject of much rumour swirling. His murder in 1978 resulted in his best friend John Henry Carpenter being tried for the crime and ultimately acquitted many years later (the trial was in Arizona in 1994, four years before Carpenter himself died). The reality of amateur porn involving home video technology and celebrities, plus the fate of ‘has been’ stars and how having a bad reputation in show business affects long term entertainment careers made him truly a man ahead of his time. Showbiz has caught up to what was business as usual for the slain actor.

yourethepeetatomybread:

Idk what it is about this type of lighting, but I love it. 

The ‘spoiler’ is a phenomenon that leads to people who haven’t seen a certain film yet already knowing key plot points best left to their own surprised discovery when first watching it. And when the reveals emerge from reviews written by prominent critics, a public outcry is inevitable. The Crying Game remains one of those stories most associated with the importance of keeping a secret intact as long as possible, something basically impossible in the social media age.

theartofmoviestills:

Mesrine: Killer Instinct | Jean-François Richet | 2008

Real criminals frequently have their life and crimes re-enacted on the big screen. Bank robber Jacques Mesrine (1936 - 1979) became one of the world’s most notorious personalities before his death at age 42 and the sometimes hard to believe facts of his legacy were enough for two feature films, Mesrine: Part 1 - Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Part 2 - Public Enemy #1. Vincent Cassel’s wickedly charismatic and at times ferocious performance showed how a former soldier got involved in small crime and gradually saw bigger, but not necessarily better things for himself as a felonious goal to pursue.

branduponthebrain:

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, 2011)

“We’re trying to have a family and I don’t feel safe with you here.” Characters with traumatic secrets reveal and, almost as often, hide what they’ve lived through in many dramas.

An increasing modern trend is the horror remake. The genre has seen many popular titles brought back to the big screen, including some of the most notorious and controversial classics ever. Both versions of I Spit On Your Grave (1978’s, first titled Day Of The Woman, and 2010’s, also executive produced by the original’s writer/director Meir Zarchi) received mostly negative reviews (including Roger Ebert’s famous dismissals of the two). But such vocal outrage from those offended by over the top scenes of savage crimes and the revenge sought by survivors in their aftermath only adds to the word of mouth publicity, increasing the reputations each have for future audiences.

Since the creation of the X rating for films with mature content, there has been endless frustration over how the Motion Picture Association of America deals with sexually frank material. Their decision not to officially trademark the rating (as former MPAA president Jack Valenti once explained, they acted on the advice of attorneys, concerned over legal action for possible ‘restraint of trade’ charges) resulted in the burgeoning hardcore porn industry being firmly associated with it in most people’s eyes and now the commercial consequences of releasing a movie as NC-17 or unrated are seen as pure disaster. Midnight Cowboy remains the only X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar.

(: A sweet wish for all of you DRIVE and VHS nuts out there! :)