Sound City

Nov 22, 2017 — We begin with the latest entry in Reverse Shot’s symposium on time, Chris Wisniewski’s, on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971). The focus here is on “a sequence that seems at first ordinary and unravels under scrutiny,...

Jul 25, 2024 — During a tumultuous period in New York’s history, movies like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and Shaft found excitement and squalor in one of the city’s most infamous tourist attractions.

Apr 17, 2020 — Tsai Ming-liang, Charlie Chaplin, Wim Wenders, and Albert Serra are just some of the names in the news this week.

Sep 29, 2017 — “A ravishing visual colossus, Blade Runner 2049 more than lives up to its predecessor’s legacy as a groundbreaking mixture of sound, images and mood,” begins Screen’s Tim Grierson. “This long-anticipated sequel’s screenplay sometimes struggles to keep pace, but director Denis...

Nov 15, 2019 — This week’s highlights take us from post-apocalyptic cityscapes to the deepest jungles of Southeast Asia, from the sound stages of Hollywood to the coal mines of West Virginia.

Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...

Mar 18, 2016 — Meg Baird is a founding member of the experimental folk collective Espers (Drag City). She continues to perform and produce solo work under her own name, and she is the vocalist and drummer in Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop). Her most...

Sep 8, 1998 — In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...

Ben Ratliff is the author of books including Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening and Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. A former music critic for the New York Times, he lives in New York City and teaches...

Imogen Sara Smith is the author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City and Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. Her writing has appeared in Film Comment, Sight and Sound, Cineaste, Reverse Shot, and other publications.