The Big Picture Magazine
Do the Right Thing (1989), a provocative piece set in 1980s Brooklyn, is an audacious directorial dive into the underlying forces of racial tensions. Bound to stimulate generations of heated discussions, Spike Lee’s film retains its resonance even decades after the film first appeared on screen. It is a film that screams and roars, startling and […]
Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) has just met Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) for a double match at a tennis club in Manhattan. She is getting ready to engage him in their first conversation. They’re back in street clothes, which, for Annie, means a white men’s shirt and loose wrinkled beige trousers, black vest and wide white […]
At the root of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) is a telling paradox: though the film chronicles a nightmarish, serpentine journey through New York’s Soho neighbourhood, it is ultimately a story of entrapment. The protagonist’s sense of being stuck in a life of routine is symbolised through a recurring, startling prop: plaster sculptures of humans […]
Few images more powerfully evoke the stark reality of 21st Century city survival than the Sisyphean struggle of Pakistani immigrant Ahmad dragging his cart along the indifferent Manhattan streets in Rahim Bahrani’s mournfully poetic debut feature. It’s an image Bahrani revisits throughout the extraordinary Man Push Cart (2005) as Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi) toils away day […]
2018 World Championship final commentary. Houston Vs. New York And as you join us at Madison Square Garden here in New York City for tonight’s World Rollerball Championship final, it’s shaping up to be the most intense battle we have ever seen in the history of the game. Hosts New York meet powerful Houston in […]
Future flight – The Gullfire from Escape from New York (John Carpenter, 1981) “You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad. You know how to get in quiet. You’re all I’ve got.” – US Police Force Commissioner Bob Hauk From ‘Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft 1999’, pp346: The Lockheed G-6 Gullfire stealth sustainer motor glider entered service […]
Following on from our ‘Widescreen’ feature on New York’s Museum of Moving Image in issue 14, we spoke to Chief Curator David Schwartz about the nature of a film museum, how the redesigned building has transformed their exhibition space and what the future holds for MOMI. Big Picture: How do you face the challenge of […]
Continuing our tie-in series of articles to celebrate the launch of the World Film Locations book series in July – and as a tribute to director Sidney Lumet who sadly passed away on April 8th – we look at how New York’s Hell Gate Bridge (which connects Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan), provided the perfect […]