Inpsired by critics

One portion of the film industry which gets dumped on too much: film critics. Now, obviously I’m a bit biased because of Rotten Tomatoes, but I find that the best critics are able you enjoy movies even MORE. Case in point: Take my favorite film critic and longtime friend of Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert. While in the process of reading Etchy’s review of “Lust, Caution”, I was reminded of a film by one of my favorite directors, Hitchcock’s “Notorious” so I immediately looked up Roger Ebert’s review. The review is so well-written and insightful and full of love for the film that it actually got me really excited about watching “Notorious” again (even though I’ve seen it 3-4 times already). When I read the review, I’m reminded about the great film book “Hitchcock on Hitchcock”, a series of interviews with Hitchcock written late in his life which gives fascinating insight into his work. Then I’m reminded that the book was authored by ANOTHER famous film critic, Francois Truffaut who had an even more spectacular career as a director and the leader of the French New Wave of films… And how Truffaut is the primary inspiration for the films of all of the cool, young directors of today like Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola. And yet Truffaut’s primary inspirations were the very MAINSTREAM Hollywood directors, Hitchcock and John Ford…. but John Ford (the famous director of Western movies) was the primary inspiration for Akira Kurosawa was the primary inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola  who himself was the primary inspiration for John Woo and all of today’s major action movie directors. The world of film history is so small that it actually makes the experience of watching movies more fun if you know the context of where the passion is inspired from…

In any case, this all leads me away from what sparked my interest in the first place: Does anyone else recognize that Tang Wei from “Lust Caution” looks very similar to Ingrid Bergman in “Notorious”?