This Theater is Haunted

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François Truffaut standing in front of a photograph of Henry James and paying tribute to the author in his 1978 film The Green Room, itself an adaptation of James's short story The Altar of the Dead (1895).

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Kill Bill | Quentin Tarantino, 2003

Seconds before revenge, and seconds after

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Kaisha monogatari: Memories of You | Jun Ichikawa, 1988

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I've always found this shot from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001) very moving, and emblematic of the crushing sadness of that movie. I'm too much of a coward to rewatch it but this image has been on my mind again lately.

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All The Long Nights | Sho Miyake, 2024

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Thick Skinned | Patricia Mazuy, 1989

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The White Balloon | Jafar Panahi, 1995

Catching water in a sieve. Kids in a man's world.

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Notes on a Scandal | Richard Eyre, 2006

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It's Not Me | Leos Carax, 2024

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The Blue Sky Maiden | Yasuzō Masumura, 1957

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Another Life | Emmanuel Mouret, 2013

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Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door | Nintendo GameCube, 2004

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Twister | Jan de Bont, 1996

The calm before. The first four shots of Jan de Bont’s Twister (1996) set an ominous tone. Empty landscapes in rural America, dwarfed by the sky above, darkness closing in. A gentle evening punctuated by the chirps of crickets. The fading remnants of the day’s sunlight slowly smothered by clouds. There are no people in sight, just their creations: a small farm and a pumpjack, a truss bridge across a river, a barbed-wire fence; each designed to give man some kind of hold over nature: to farm it, to traverse it, to segment it. And then, finally, a shot of the cloud-filled sky above a distant row of trees. Uncontrollable, unpredictable, unknowable. A constant, looming presence, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. And then a crash of lightning tips the scales. Man has conquered the land and the threat now comes from above. The wind starts howling and the calm is over.

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AGGRO DR1FT | Harmony Korine, 2023

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Nobody's Hero | Alain Guiraudie, 2022

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Challengers | Luca Guadagnino, 2024

Tennis is an inherently cinematic sport, not just in its ability to create narrative, but also in its tragedy. A sport in which it’s possible to win more points and more games than your opponent and still lose; or lose more and still win. A sport about winning the points that matter. It’s in this idea that Guadagnino roots the film. A sport, and a film, about fluid contexts and constant reinvention, grinding down your opponent and preying on their weakness. Tennis and life, indistinguishable from one another. Winning at both is playing the game to win, and deciphering the points that matter from the ones that don’t. Come onnnnnnnnnnn!

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i've mostly drifted away from tumblr but i drop in from time to time to see what's going on or to post a photoset like the good old days — now, i mostly write about movies in newsletter or letterboxd form, so pls stop by and say hi some time

here's an unrelated image from a mikhaël hers movie that i like with a poster of a prefab sprout album that i like on the wall — it seemed like an appropriate image to use.