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Jeff Smith on Offscreen Sound in La cérémonie
On the Channel
Jun 22, 2017 — Most film analysis centers on what is visible on-screen, but sometimes a moment can hinge on information that lies beyond the frame. In the latest installment of Observations on Film Art, a Criterion Channel series that explores the ins and...
Jeff Chang is a cultural critic and the author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post–Civil Rights America, and We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race...
The director and the subject of Author: The JT LeRoy Story take a trip to the closet, where Albert sheds some more light on the saga chronicled in their film and graces us with a song.
The comedy duo snatch up everything from Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve to Todd Haynes’s Safe.
Jul 14, 2020 — Bruce Lee seemed born to be on-screen. At three months old, he appeared as an infant in a Hong Kong movie called Golden Gate Girl (1941). After he died suddenly of cerebral edema in 1973 at the age of thirty-two,...
Truffaut Goes Wide for His “American” Movie
On the Channel
Oct 29, 2018 — Professor Jeff Smith breaks down how François Truffaut’s loving tribute to the crime genre Shoot the Piano Player uses anamorphic widescreen compositions to stylish effect.
Finding Expressive Freedom in Continuity Editing
On the Channel
Jun 25, 2018 — In a new episode of Observations on Film Art, scholar Jeff Smith examines how The Devil and Daniel Webster plays with the conventions of traditional Hollywood editing.
Genre Play in Robert Altman’s The Player
On the Channel
Jan 29, 2018 — In the latest episode of Observations on Film Art, now playing on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck, professor Jeff Smith discusses Robert Altman’s playful experimentation with genre in his 1992 film The Player.
Mar 27, 2013 — Andrew Loog Oldham was the manager of the Rolling Stones and Marianne Faithfull from 1963–1967. In 1965, he started Immediate Records, one of the first independent labels in the UK, where he worked with such artists as Jeff Beck, Eric...
The Stripped-Down Style of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
On the Channel
Aug 24, 2017 — Professor Jeff Smith illustrates how, under the constraints of a low budget and compressed shooting schedule, Rainer Werner Fassbinder arrived at a minimalist approach that blended seamlessly with his subject matter.