The Cow-Boy Girl contest comes to an end

Had the only raison d'être of this blog been to provide David Bordwell with the missing piece of the Magnificent Ambersons puzzle, I'd still be happy with it. That being said, I hope there's more to life than The Cow-Boy Girl and that we will have more occasions to talk about cinema in fresh and engaging ways.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here you can read Bordwell's final blog entry on the quest, with the links to the previous posts and the poster I discovered on the eHumanity archive.

Please don't expect such exploits from me every week!

Hurrah! A poster! A poster!

You may recall that at the end of May I tried to contribute to solve a mystery involving an unidentified poster briefly appearing in a scene of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. Film historian David Bordwell was responsible for it.

Disney's Maleficent: Adding complexity, with caution

One of the most common complaints leveled against Disney films has always been the lack of complexity. Their detractors generally emphasize that the Disney universe seem to adhere to a rigid Good/Evil dichotomy, with little or no room for nuanced, multi-faceted characters. Disney's latest effort Maleficent, a live-action reinterpretation with gothic undertones of the 1959 iconic animated feature film Sleeping Beauty, appears like a curious attempt to break with tradition and respond to those allegations with a shining counterexample.