Rio Bravo El Dorado Rio Lobo It’s very interesting to watch the same Director and Star more or less make the same movie 3 times.
Also check out the Fox film noir collections. Some great stuff there done on low budgets.
The Great Escape and The Satan Bug (if you can catch it widescreen on TCM). John Sturges has a great eye for widescreen in my opinion.
Bullitt The granddaddy of modern car chase movies and a fine performance by Steve McQueen
The Big Sleep Howard Hawks again. Many young filmmakers could learn from his economical use of camera and editing.
Klute, The Parallax View and All The President's Men Alan Pakula was the king of the Paranoid Thriller.
Singing in the Rain The movie musical at its zenith. Close Encounters of the Third Kind The movie that made me realize that movies didn't just go together by themselves.
Raiders of the Lost Ark Probably the greatest Action Adventure movie ever made.
Interesting. 1941 is one of my favorite movies, and i contend that if it were released today it would be a huge hit. But I guess its not everyone's cup of tea.
I'm going to have to disagree again. I think It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World is very funny, but its slapstick. You don't quote slapstick.
I do agree however that you can learn as much or more from a bad movie as you can from a good one. With a bad movie you can see the seams. You can say "okay I see what they were TRYING to do".
A good movie SHOULD be seamless and there for you don't always know how you are being manipulated.
Curtiz himself probably didn't have THAT much input on the actual lighting of scenes in his films. That would have been his DP's job. In fact if you look at the memos going back and forth on Casablanca it looks as though Producer Hall Wallis had more input on the lighting than Curtiz.
Now surely Curtiz would tell his DP what he liked and what he didn't, but deciding the ratio between the back light the key light and the fill would have been up to the DP. Particularly in the Studio System days.
Here are some I would mention. I don;t love all of them, but I feel any film student should see them:
Almost any Pier Paulo Passolini, in particular Salo or the Gospel According to Matthew Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago and Bridge on the River Kwai by Lean 8 1/2 by Felini Kurosawa, my favorites are Ran, Seven Samurai and Kagemusha Raging Bull Birth of a Nation Triumph of the Will Taxi Driver Run Lola Run Anything by Aronofsky, I love The Fountain. Pi to me is his best film and Requiem for a Dream is pretty good as well. Solaris (Original Russian) 2001: A Space Oddyssey, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon all by Kubrick
2 Casablanca 20 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 23 The Maltese Falcon 27 Bonnie and Clyde 34 To Kill a Mockingbird 42 Rear Window 46 A Clockwork Orange 48 Jaws 64 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 68 An American in Paris 72 Ben-Hur 75 Dances with Wolves 77 American Graffiti 84 Fargo
and from BFI 100
2. Brief Encounter (1945) 9. The Red Shoes (1948) 20. A Matter of Life and Death (1946) 41. Dr. No (1962) 45. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) 92. In Which We Serve (1942)
you really need to watch more documentaries because those are the easiest things to make when you get out of school. Odds are that you won't have the budget nor the crew to make the next Citizen Kane. But there's a good chance you can make Cocaine Cowboys 3 with your HDV camera and Final Cut Pro.
Surfwise is a great documentary showing you how you can shift the emotional tone of your subject. Cocaine Cowboys shows how you can go beyond an MSNBC reports. Grizzly Man is essential. Any Erroll Morris documentary. John Landis' The Slasher. Maysles Brothers discs.
because even if you intern they still want you to have a film or media related degree and learning all aspects of film etc helps. I also have an interest in screenwriting and producing. As well as the business side of film.
So if anyone can suggest films to watch from a casting perspective, let me know
if you're going into casting forget any movie 60s and earlier, they aren't relevant to your career except for chit-chat purposes, familiarize yourself to a certain degree with the people still alive and working who were actors in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but primarily see every single new movie that comes out, especially independents, take notes on even bit players who stand out to you and create your own filing system of actors. Order HBO and Showtime and watch their shows, pick a handful of serial and semi-serial single-camera tv shows to watch carefully as they churn through a lot of casting (ER, House, 24 etc). If you can, try to know pretty much every show out there, you may have a better shot getting a job as a casting assistant on tv than in film--and knowing the show and knowing a feel for how that show casts will be a very important asset.
But yeah your priorities should be 1) current TV and new films, 2) films and tv from the last fifteen years. 3) Film from 15-35 years ago. don't really bother with the classics except when the mood strikes you.
speaking as someone who has a film degree, nobody really cares if you have a degree. this is one of the few businesses where if you are asked to provide a resume, you've already lost the job. It's all about knowing people. The faster you get into your circle, the better off you are.
The only time your resume and degree matters is when you realize that the "industry job" that pays, has benefits and retirement package is teaching film at a college. Offer your services quick when you can afford to work for free while still enrolled.
The best thing for you is to learn the faces and names of famous character actors so that when a director says they see a certain old actor's type, you'll be able to quickly respond with the right type.
QFT, but you can still get a job from a resume, I've seen people hire PAs and even some other minor positions based on resumes when they had no reccommendations, however that's the exception rather than the rule. Also, people like it on the white collar side of film/tv if you have some degree. Grip/Elec/lighting tech and the more production oriented side of things it's less important. institution only matters if it's one of the big three.
Strategy. buy the thursday hollywood reporter. look at shows/films in production they should have a fax number listed, if not call the office number and ask for their fax number or for the fax number for casting, fax your resume and cover letter, attn casting to every single one. you might get only a couple bites or none, but it's the way to start out. If it doesn't work for casting, try PA, get some credits, talk to people in casting, try again next season.
to get something to put on a resume in the first place volunteer for as many indy features as you can. DON'T pad your resume with college achievements, one or two entries is more than enough to list your student work if you feel you still need it on the resume. Don't feel you have to fill the entire page, 2/3s is plenty if you have good content. NEVER NEVER NEVER go more than one page on your resume. and try to keep your cover letter to one paragraph, no more than two. I've had multiple bosses tell me that they simply throw away any resume they recieve that's more than one page long.
Oh and if you're a girl you're more likely to find success from resumes than a guy in this industry.
On the laserdisc version of 'Blood On The Moon', the director, Robert Wise, speaks about casting in an audio commentary.
Wise says he lays-out photos of all of the 'extras' on his desk before shooting starts, in order to make sure no two of the extras look alike. Presumably, he felt if 'extras' did look alike, it would create confusion for the audience.
Though there is no R1 DVD release of 'Blood On The Moon', you might want to watch Wise's other films to see if he always followed his own advice.
From a casting perspective, I'd say watch Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH and notice just how perfect every actor is cast, right down to the extras who only get a moment of screen time.
Other films with, IMHO, perfect casts:
Bill Forsythe's LOCAL HERO Robert Aldrich's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE and EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE Don Siegel's DIRTY HARRY
The Seventh Seal Wild Strawberries The Virgin Spring The Silence Winter Light Persona Hour of the Wolf Cries and Whispers.
Start with Persona or The Seventh Seal. Get acclimated to subtitles soon as you can.
If you have the opportunity to see an authentic 3-D film(s), do so as often as possible, make it a priority. Stereoscopic is a language, not a gimmick.
I haven't had a chance to go through this thread, but I assume the key titles have already been thrown out there. Awesome. Personally, I recommend combing through the French New Wave pretty thoroughly. Those old French (and Italian) movies of the 60s are so innovative and groundbreaking it's not even funny. And they hold up really well. It's pretty enlightening to see how much has already been done, or done in unique and exciting ways that aren't explored anymore.
Another great resource is the IMDB Top 250- try watching everything on it except for the newer stuff (2000s).
Some people swear by it, and others hate it, but there's no denying the list's value in offering a rich, ever-changing mixture of great films (the really great ones are the ones that stay on it for a long time; notice how most new movies on it gradually drift downward). Too many lists are not palatable to new film people because they expect and demand pre-existing knowledge of film.
It's better and more rewarding for more people, I think, to start from Terminator 2 and work back to Potemkin then the other way around.
Oh, and definitely watch some Antonioni. And some Scorsese. Try Malick too. You might like him a lot.