Saturday, August 7, 2010

Life Imitates Art

I screencapped this shot of Cliff Robertson, from Underworld USA (1961, Sam Fuller), because it cracked me up that the espresso bar shares a name with the Elite Groceries store I photographed the other day.

I'd never seen a Fuller film before. He's a low-budget, B-movie director whom filmmakers such as Martin Scorcese name among their influences.
I can see why now: his bold black and white and extreme close-ups pack a punch so strong the shoddy sets fall away. It almost overcomes the stinker of a plot and the ludicrous dialogue.
(Well, the ludicrous dialogue has its own charm.)

Vision and energy can still trump big bucks.

In comparison, this summer's Inception has a clever plot but the visuals were zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. (Well, unless you've never seen a big-budget movie or a video game before.)

2 comments:

ArtSparker said...

Still of two minds about whether to see this...someone compared it to Donnie Darko, which is almost enough to get me in the door. But mostly I don't like big and it bores me.

In Oakland, we don't have so many elites, but we have lots of crowns.

Fresca said...

SPARKER: I'd be interested to hear what you think of Inception, if you see it.
I thought it would make a great short story! And I would have loved it when I was twenty. But now, yeah, I thought it was kinda boring.