A Cinema Gallery: 200 Images, Part 2

As promised, another 36 images of the 200 I've picked to exemplify great movie visage. This time, instead of trying to construct a narrative, I'm concentrating on color, trying to capture your eye. This'll make 69 of a promised 200. So here we go:

Bob Dylan makes another mark via electricity in Eat The Document. (Bob Dylan, 71; PHOTOG: Howard Alk)

One loser loses again, this morning at a Night Fever pinball machine, and so he takes another drink to blunt the pain before The Verdict. (Sidney Lumet, 82; PHOTOG: Andrzej Bartkowiak)

A quick glimpse of a squat, desolate world from Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 79; PHOTOG: Don Coscarelli)

Organic, this woman looks for a place among the poisonous machines in Red Desert. (Michelangelo Antonioni, 64; PHOTOG: Carlo Di Palma)

The sabre supreme returns to its source in Excalibur. (John Boorman, 81; PHOTOG: Alex Thompson)

Urgently searching for that snake juice while in the Drug Zone. Natural Born Killers. (Oliver Stone, 94; PHOTOG: Robert Richardson)

"I know what it feels like when it when things get all balled up at the head office. They put you through hell, Barton." Charlie goes back home in Barton Fink. (Joel and Ethan Coen, 91; PHOTOG: Roger Deakins)

Feed The Kitty. (Chuck Jones, 52)

"AirEast 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind to us?" Air traffic controllers pose a desperate question in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (Steven Spielberg, 77; PHOTOG: Vilmos Zsigmond, John Alonzo, William Fraker)

A refuge goes up in smoke in The Road Warrior (George Miller, 81; PHOTOG: Dean Semler)

"MMMhhmm. This IS a tasty burger. Vincent, you ever had a Big Kahuna burger?" Pulp Fiction. (Quentin Tarantino, 94; PHOTOG: Andrzej Sekula)

Think pink. Funny Face. (Stanley Donen, 57; PHOTOG: Ray June)

A batch of new innocents arrive ashore in Gallipoli. (Peter Weir, 81; PHOTOG: Russell Boyd)

Up the Andes, in full armor, at the beginning of Aguirre, The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 72; PHOTOG: Thomas Mauch)

And the cellulite melts away in Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 86; PHOTOG: Ross McElwee)

Davy Jones' skull is now a fan trophy in the Monkees' aptly titled Head. (Bob Rafelson, 68; PHOTOG: Michel Hugo)

A fight is caught on close-circuit camera outside a violated convenience store in Something Wild. (Jonathan Demme, 86; PHOTOG: Tak Fujimoto)

Hopeful science turns to heated horror in Sunshine. (Danny Boyle, 2007; PHOTOG: Alwin Küchler)

An ultimate offering. The Fountain. (Darren Aronofsky, 2006; PHOTOG: Matthew Libatique)

The Dante Quartet. (Stan Brakhage, 87)

Sometimes all you need is an actor near end of his career. "Let's go." William Holden in The Wild Bunch. (Sam Peckinpah, 69; PHOTOG: Lucien Ballard)

And sometime all you need is an actress near the beginning of hers. "Have you ever met her?" Amy Adams in Junebug. (Phil Morrison, 2005; PHOTOG: Peter Donahue)

Though she yet knows it not, she turns to spot at once her future betrothed. Tess. (Roman Polanski, 80; PHOTOG: Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet)

The sizzle of a first lustful glance, from Vertigo. (Alfred Hitchcock, 58; PHOTOG: Robert Burks)

"No exceptions." Errol Flynn as the ultimate good guy in The Adventures of Robin Hood. (Michael Curtiz, 38; PHOTOG: Sol Polito and Tony Gaudio)

"He's a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody." Yellow Submarine. (George Dunning, 68)

Hollywood collapses in on itself--and, y'know, a stuntman actually died doing this scene for The Day of the Locust. (John Schlesinger, 75; PHOTOG: Conrad Hall)

A plastic bag writhing in the air says it all in American Beauty. (Sam Mendes, 99; PHOTOG: Conrad Hall)

Jean Paul Belmondo as Crazy Pete, or if you prefer, Pierrot le fou. (Jean Luc Godard, 65; PHOTOG: Raoul Coutard)

What the fuck was that?!?! Jacob's Ladder. (Adrian Lyne, 90; PHOTOG: Jeffrey L. Kimball)

The plum is considered. Cinque Lee and Screamin' Jay Hawkins in Mystery Train. (Jim Jaramusch, 89; PHOTOG: Robby Müller)

"Sure, you can't show that on the screen, you get arrested." And so says The Critic. (Ernest Pintoff and Mel Brooks, 63)

Five super humans seen not so super anymore in The Fall. (Tarsem Singh, 2006; PHOTOG: Colin Watkinson)

Waiting for news, William Munny determines the deed: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." Unforgiven. (Clint Eastwood, 92; PHOTOG: Jack Green)

The wipers keep the rain away from the glass, but not from the driver, as Gordon Lightfoot's "Beautiful" floats about in The Brown Bunny. (Vincent Gallo, 2003; PHOTOG: Vincent Gallo)

Man surrounded by all his energies in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Stanley Kubrick, 68; PHOTOG: Geoffrey Unsworth)

Look for 35 more sights tomorrow. And part 1 of this six-part series is right here.

A Cinema Gallery: 200 Images, Part 1

I visited Ed Howard's lovely Only the Cinema the other day, and saw he'd been tagged in a meme by MovieMan at The Dancing Image. This meme, conversely started by Stephen at Checking On My Sausages, calls for film bloggers to create authentic screen captures from movie moments they felt best exemplified the visual magic of cinema. And even though I wasn't tagged by Ed (who had some nicely steamy choices), I quickly recalled my drive to do just this very thing. So today's the day to begin...

As usual, I can't do anything half-way (a curse and blessing). So, noting that MovieMan said any number of captures would do as participation, I decided to go for a bat-shit crazy list of 200, though I'll be doing it in a few parts (I originally was going to go for my standard 101, but I changed my mind). One might think 200 stills would be enough for this subject, but it isn't. I'm not even sure 10,000 images would suffice to illustrate how tasty movies can be for the eyes. I had to make one specific rule for myself: no directors would be mentioned more than once (photographers, on the other hand, are exempt from this rule, as you will see). I also made no determination to cover the whole of film history nor the entirety of the world's contribution to it. This put too much pressure on me. So I tried to keep it simple. I went with whatever popped into my head, or looked good upon research. My main criteria: the shot had to work as a single photograph, and in fact, had to transcend the moving image and stand on its own as a frame-worthy still (you can click on the images to see them bigger, if you like). So, in no real order of preference--except I may be trying to transmit emotion through free association--here are the first 33 of 200 beautiful and arresting cinematic visions:


A frame from the Oscar-winning collage-animated autobiography Frank Film (Frank and Caroline Mouris, 73; PHOTOG: Frank and Caroline Mouris; See it HERE)

A "pillow shot," a critical term for the director's distinctive linking/establishing shots, like this one from Floating Weeds (Yasujirô Ozu, 59; PHOTOG: Kazuo Miyagawa)

Shyness among the hordes at Monterey Pop. (D.A. Pennebaker, 68; PHOTOG: Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, Richard Leacock, James Desmond, Roger Murphy and Barry Feinstein)

Philly is fascinated by his cousin's camera, as his aging mother Pearl stares nervously into the sunlight in Best Boy (Ira Wohl, 79; PHOTOG: Tom McDonough)

"Little bird, little Chavahla, you were always such a pretty little thing, everybody's favorite child." A poor farmer imagines his daughter's drift away from childhood in Fiddler on the Roof. (Norman Jewison, 71; PHOTOG: Oswald Morris)

The spot where two forbidden lovers will consummate their obsession in Ryan's Daughter. (David Lean, 1970; PHOTOG: Freddie Francis)

A stolen kiss before a color field in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. (Jacques Demy, 64; PHOTOG: Jean Rabier)

A depressed filmmaker remembers his happiest moment: a long-ago girlfriend sweetly, spontaneously catching his gaze in Stardust Memories. (Woody Allen, 80; PHOTOG: Gordon Willis)

This spiritually exhausted woman waits to be saved in Magnolia. (Paul Thomas Anderson, 99; PHOTOG: Robert Elswit)

Motivated by love, the prince fights an evil queen, who's transformed into a dragon, in Sleeping Beauty. (Clyde Geronimi, 59)

Stranded on a desert island, separate but together, a boy tries to lure a horse into friendship in The Black Stallion. (Carroll Ballard, 79; PHOTOG: Caleb Deschanel)

Illusion comes alive in the underseen The Sea That Thinks. (Gert De Graaff, 2000; PHOTOG: Gert De Graaff)

A boy finally uncovers his eyes to behold an odd inferno in The Reflecting Skin. (Phillip Ridley, 90; PHOTOG: Dick Pope)

Jonesy watches and waits in Alien. (Ridley Scott, 79; PHOTOG: Derek Vanlint)

A widow, locked out of her apartment, hears her husband's unfinished music in her head as she tries to rest in Three Colors: Blue. (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 93; PHOTOG: Slawomir Idziak)

The bullet finds its target and a senator is dead, his golf cart sliding into the dinner preparations, in The Parallax View. (Alan J. Pakula, 74; PHOTOG: Gordon Willis)

The big escape plan is launched with Brute Force. (Jules Dassin, 47; PHOTOG: William H. Daniels)

Fascism beats the hell out of free thinking in Punishment Park. (Peter Watkins, 71; PHOTOG: Joan Churchill, Peter Smokler)

This thing works. Taxi Driver. (Martin Scorsese, 76; PHOTOG: Michael Chapman)

The humiliation and The Passion of Joan D'arc. (Carl Th. Dreyer, 28; PHOTOG: Rudolph Mate)

A hit man walks the New York streets towards his destiny in Blast of Silence. (Allen Barron, 61; PHOTOG: Merrill Brody)

42nd Street movie theaters, soon to host the premiere of The Projectionist. (Harry Hurwitz, 71; PHOTOG: Victor Petrashevic)

The choreographer intently watches a cattle call in All That Jazz. (Bob Fosse, 79; PHOTOG: Giuseppe Rotunno)

An oil executive, back home in his city, looks longingly into the night and wonders what's going on a world away in Local Hero. (Bill Forsyth, 83; PHOTOG: Chris Menges)

Rabbits at home. Inland Empire. (David Lynch, 2006; PHOTOG: David Lynch)

Children "play" in Killer of Sheep. (Charles Burnett, 77; PHOTOG: Charles Burnett)

Relief for a hot city summer In America. (Jim Sheridan, 2002; PHOTOG: Declan Quinn)

Always making an effort to cheer the kid up in Kikujiro. (Takeshi Kitano, 99; PHOTOG: Katsumi Yanagijima)

Jessie, happy in the care of her friend. "When She Loved Me" from Toy Story 2. (John Lasseter, Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich, 99)

The master plan. The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. (Roy Rowland, 53; PHOTOG: Frank Planer)

"You didn't see it, you didn't hear it, you won't say nothin' to no one ever in your life. You never heard it, how absurd it all seems without any proof." The trauma for Tommy. (Ken Russell, 75; PHOTOG: Dick Bush, Ronnie Taylor, Robin Lehman)

First love's pure bliss in A Little Romance. (George Roy Hill, 79; PHOTOG: Pierre-William Glenn)

Finally...Le Rayon Vert / Summer. (Eric Rohmer, 86; PHOTOG: Sophie Maintigneux)

Look for 36 more visions tomorrow!