Film History

CULVER CITY, Calif. -- Snag one of the terrace seats under the palm tree at the Starbucks on Washington Boulevard. In the time it takes to drink one tall latte, you can overhear two plots for a TV pilot, watch the tall guy with the platinum hair sketch designs for a movie promo, and listen to three young things in sunglasses and yoga pants sipping green ice d tea berate themselves for the audition they just blew. "My agent told me it was a waste even to show up," the brunette says.

‘T he Story of Film: An Odyssey," an eight-part documentary that ran on Britain's Channel 4 last fall, takes in 14 decades, six continents (sorry, Antarctica), and one art form. Like that art form, it's wildly ambitious, often extremely good, occasionally maddening, and always stimulating. Writer-director Mark Cousins's unifying conception is cinematic innovation — or as he pronounces it in his rather enchanting Ulster accent (he narrates, too) "en-iv-ay-shun. " The Museum of Fine Arts will be showing paired episodes of the documentary starting Wednesday and...

CAMBRIDGE -- The power of photography both to bestow celebrity and mock it inspires "Girls on Film," a sly, cheerfully unsettling exhibition put together by Julie Buck and Karin Segal at Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. It runs through Sept. 18. The show draws its material from a technological footnote to Hollywood history. Since feature films consist of multiple reels, each reel must have a consistent color balance or (with black-and-white films) tonal density. Today, color balancing is done digitally.

‘T he Story of Film: An Odyssey," an eight-part documentary that ran on Britain's Channel 4 last fall, takes in 14 decades, six continents (sorry, Antarctica), and one art form. Like that art form, it's wildly ambitious, often extremely good, occasionally maddening, and always stimulating. Writer-director Mark Cousins's unifying conception is cinematic innovation — or as he pronounces it in his rather enchanting Ulster accent (he narrates, too) "en-iv-ay-shun. " The Museum of Fine Arts will be showing paired episodes of the documentary starting Wednesday and running through May 27....

‘T he Story of Film: An Odyssey," an eight-part documentary that ran on Britain's Channel 4 last fall, takes in 14 decades, six continents (sorry, Antarctica), and one art form. Like that art form, it's wildly ambitious, often extremely good, occasionally maddening, and always stimulating. Writer-director Mark Cousins's unifying conception is cinematic innovation — or as he pronounces it in his rather enchanting Ulster accent (he narrates, too) "en-iv-ay-shun. " The Museum of Fine Arts will be showing paired episodes of the documentary starting Wednesday and running through May 27....

‘T he Story of Film: An Odyssey," an eight-part documentary that ran on Britain's Channel 4 last fall, takes in 14 decades, six continents (sorry, Antarctica), and one art form. Like that art form, it's wildly ambitious, often extremely good, occasionally maddening, and always stimulating. Writer-director Mark Cousins's unifying conception is cinematic innovation — or as he pronounces it in his rather enchanting Ulster accent (he narrates, too) "en-iv-ay-shun. " The Museum of Fine Arts will be showing paired episodes of the documentary...

Asked if he ever thinks about his place in movie history, Max von Sydow expresses puzzlement. Can the reporter explain the question? This request has nothing to do with translation difficulties. Von Sydow's English is almost as formidable as the timbre of his magnificent Nordic baritone. No, what gives the Swedish actor trouble is history as a relevant concept. True, von Sydow has appeared in more than 125 movies. The latest, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," opens Friday.

NEW YORK - Robert Sklar - a film scholar whose 1975 book, “Movie-Made America,’’ was one of the first histories to place Hollywood films in a social and political context, finding them a key to understanding how modern American values and beliefs have been shaped - died July 2 in Barcelona. He was 74. The cause was a brain injury suffered in a bicycle accident, said his son, Leonard. Mr. Sklar, who was a professor of cinema studies at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts for more than 30 years, came to film in the 1960s, when he was asked to...

New releases Air Doll Yes, the object of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s fairy tale is a life-size sex toy, but it’s the size and emotional shading of the toy’s new life that interests him. The lovely, daring Korean actress Bae Doona plays the doll. Her performance begins in exquisite mimicry of strangers on the street. But she gradually allows natural instinct to create a wholly original woman. In Japanese, with subtitles. (115 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

Before Court TV, before Nancy (Not So Full of) Grace, and before the in-depth cable analyses of Michael Jackson's perp walk, there was the Scarsdale Diet Doctor Murder. The 1980 case, in which school headmistress Jean Harris put on campy sunglasses and stood trial for shooting Dr. Herman Tarnower, was a watershed in tabloid legal coverage. For a litigation lover such as Dominick Dunne, the Schadenfreudian crime writer, Scarsdale must have hit like a bolt of career lightning. "Mrs.

Some movie titles are wordy and complicated ("Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan") or generically forgettable ("Someone Like You"). Others, like this week's "Man on a Ledge," tell you everything you need to know about the movie in just a few tidy words. Here are five other movies whose titles say it all. I also thought about doing this list when Cameron Crowe's feel-good "We Bought a Zoo" came out at the end of last year. Somehow, though, my choices all turned out to be genre pictures — probably because they're so hilarious: —...

Asked if he ever thinks about his place in movie history, Max von Sydow expresses puzzlement. Can the reporter explain the question? This request has nothing to do with translation difficulties. Von Sydow's English is almost as formidable as the timbre of his magnificent Nordic baritone. No, what gives the Swedish actor trouble is history as a relevant concept. True, von Sydow has appeared in more than 125 movies. The latest, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," opens Friday.

NEW YORK - Robert Sklar - a film scholar whose 1975 book, “Movie-Made America,’’ was one of the first histories to place Hollywood films in a social and political context, finding them a key to understanding how modern American values and beliefs have been shaped - died July 2 in Barcelona. He was 74. The cause was a brain injury suffered in a bicycle accident, said his son, Leonard. Mr. Sklar, who was a professor of cinema studies at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts for more than 30 years, came to film in the 1960s, when he was asked to...

New releases Air Doll Yes, the object of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s fairy tale is a life-size sex toy, but it’s the size and emotional shading of the toy’s new life that interests him. The lovely, daring Korean actress Bae Doona plays the doll. Her performance begins in exquisite mimicry of strangers on the street. But she gradually allows natural instinct to create a wholly original woman. In Japanese, with subtitles. (115 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

CULVER CITY, Calif. -- Snag one of the terrace seats under the palm tree at the Starbucks on Washington Boulevard. In the time it takes to drink one tall latte, you can overhear two plots for a TV pilot, watch the tall guy with the platinum hair sketch designs for a movie promo, and listen to three young things in sunglasses and yoga pants sipping green ice d tea berate themselves for the audition they just blew. "My agent told me it was a waste even to show up," the brunette says.

Before Court TV, before Nancy (Not So Full of) Grace, and before the in-depth cable analyses of Michael Jackson's perp walk, there was the Scarsdale Diet Doctor Murder. The 1980 case, in which school headmistress Jean Harris put on campy sunglasses and stood trial for shooting Dr. Herman Tarnower, was a watershed in tabloid legal coverage. For a litigation lover such as Dominick Dunne, the Schadenfreudian crime writer, Scarsdale must have hit like a bolt of career lightning. "Mrs.

Some movie titles are wordy and complicated ("Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan") or generically forgettable ("Someone Like You"). Others, like this week's "Man on a Ledge," tell you everything you need to know about the movie in just a few tidy words. Here are five other movies whose titles say it all. I also thought about doing this list when Cameron Crowe's feel-good "We Bought a Zoo" came out at the end of last year. Somehow, though, my choices all turned out to be genre pictures — probably because they're so hilarious: —...

Who says high school teachers can't bust a move? A prank video created by teachers at Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public School in Worcester shows them dancing behind unsuspecting students in hallways, in the band room, and in front of an art-storage closet. Now, the clip has gone viral after it aired on national television. The video, " Teachers Dancing Behind Students ," was featured Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show. Since then, "Good Morning America" and a slew of local news stations have asked to broadcast the video, which had garnered...

CAMBRIDGE -- The power of photography both to bestow celebrity and mock it inspires "Girls on Film," a sly, cheerfully unsettling exhibition put together by Julie Buck and Karin Segal at Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. It runs through Sept. 18. The show draws its material from a technological footnote to Hollywood history. Since feature films consist of multiple reels, each reel must have a consistent color balance or (with black-and-white films) tonal density. Today, color balancing is done digitally.