The Big Picture Magazine
Let me flow into the oceanLet me get back to the seaLet me be stormy and let me be calmLet the tide in, and set me free … – Pete Townshend, “Drowned,” from The Who’s Quadrophenia (1973) The conflict at the heart of The Warriors (1979) isn’t as simple or straightforward as Mods versus Rockers. […]
In Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Faye Dunaway is a fashion photographer with a penchant for sensationalism and stylised violence in her imagery. But between the luridness of the fashion and the precision of her photography, there is something indistinct, unknown and unexpected that takes her to the edge. Director Irvin Kershner plunges viewers into […]
Old pals John Wayne (as Sheriff John T. Chance) and Ward Bond (as Pat Wheeler, soon to be murdered, shot in the back) have a conversation that says much about the good guys’ dilemma in Howard Hawks’ classic Western Rio Bravo (1959). Wheeler: A game-legged old man and a drunk. That’s all you got? Chance: That’s […]
“Ya see, when a man bleeds, it’s just tissue, but blood from one of you Things won’t obey when it’s attacked. It’ll try and survive… crawl away from a hot needle, say.”
In his best films, John Carpenter straddles the fuzzy line between auteur and genre craftsman. This tendency is on full display in Prince of Darkness (1987), perhaps his most deceptively heady film of all. Beneath its jump scares and gore coils a sombre commentary on the relationship between science and faith. Does religion exist, the […]
Detroit has produced many mean sounds in its volatile history – The Stooges and the MC5 to name but two bands that pushed the rock and roll sound to new and lurid heights. But surely the meanest of them all comes from the growling purr of a Detroit-made 1957 Plymouth Fury, lovingly named Christine. The […]
Deep Focus is a series of film books published by California based Soft Skull Press with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history. Kicking off the series is Jonathan Lethem’s take on They Live, John Carpenter’s 1988 […]