GREAT SCENES
Mr. Edison at Work in His Chemical Laboratory (William Heise/James White, 1897)

Born today — February 11: American inventor Thomas Alva Edison, whose 1,093 credited patents include the kinetoscope, the first fully functional motion picture camera.

By 1893, construction was complete on the world first film production studio, the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey. Here, cinematographers captured Edison at work in a mock staging of his actual chemical laboratory.

For Edison, who often employed ruthless tactics to advance his inventions — including bribing a theater owner in London for a copy of Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon, then showing the film in New York City without compensating Méliès — the arrival of sound in motion pictures “spoiled everything.” In an interview with Reader’s Digest in March 1930, he cited D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation as his favorite film.

Notes on Evolution: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

David Liu | 31 December 2011

From Zodiac’s restless journalists and detectives to Seven’s ruthless killer, from Edward Norton’s white-collar waif in Fight Club to the troubled young entrepreneurs of The Social Network, the heroes and antiheroes of David Fincher’s films are forces of nature, obsessive and meticulous to a fault. Their hunger for progression and distaste for established norms reflect common psychological impulses connecting the director’s body of work.

It’s no stretch to say that Fincher revisits familiar territory with his latest The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The film begins by giving us snapshots of the physically scarred, emotionally neutered Lisbeth Salander, played brilliantly by Rooney Mara. As her relationship with journalist Mikael Blomkvist develops, Salander evolves into a fascinating contradiction — alternating between cool detachment and feral intensity, she comes to embody both spectrums of the “Fincherian” archetype.

The more of Fincher’s films we experience (and experience again), the more they seem to share the same dialectical universe. Every line of dialogue, gesture and expression springs from an unconsummated desire for fulfillment, fragments of colossal puzzles that straddle the divide between revelation and oblivion.

Hip-Hop & Film: Art of the Sample

Throughout the years, feature film scores have provided rich sources of cross-genre experimentation for hip-hop artists.

David Liu | 27 December 2011

Song: “Blueprint²” by Jay-Z 
Sample: “The Ecstasy of Gold” by Ennio Morricone
Film: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)

Producer Charlemagne preserves the grandeur of Morricone’s iconic opening piano riff and ensuing operatic sweep. (See also: samples by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony on their 2007 track “We Workin’” and by David Fincher for an NFL commercial starring LaDainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu.)

Song: “Burnt Offering“ by Blue Scholars
Sample: “Moon River” by Henry Mancini & Johnny Mercer
Film: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961) 

The Seattle-based duo of Prometheus Brown and Sabzi are self-professed cinephiles, and their jazz-tinged re-interpretation of the Mancini classic resonates with cosmopolitan refinement.

Song: “RoboCop” by Kanye West 
Sample: “Kissing in the Rain” by Patrick Doyle
Film: Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuarón, 1998)

After skillfully juxtaposing string instruments with rap vocals on 2005’s “Gone,” West pushed the envelope further with this lush, angst-ridden arrangement of Doyle’s score.

Song: “It’s Mine” by Mobb Deep & Nas
Sample: “Tony’s Theme” by Giorgio Moroder
Film: Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) 

Larger than life: Queensbridge’s most illustrious products join forces over a prominent instrumental tribute to one of cinema’s most celebrated underworld figures.

Song: “Dance with the Devil” by Immortal Technique
Sample: “(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story” by Francis Lai
Film: Love Story (Arthur Hiller, 1970) 

Drenched in irony, Technique’s 10-minute tale of a young would-be gang member’s vanishing illusions elevates its melancholy source material to unsettling heights.

GREAT SCENES
A Better Tomorrow / 英雄本色 (John Woo, 1986)

In a spirited homage to Johnny Boy’s entrance in Mean Streets, Mark Gor (Chow Yun-fat) sashays his way into a restaurant before a shootout.

With A Better Tomorrow, Woo ignited the “heroic bloodshed” genre of Hong Kong action cinema, combining operatic montage sequences, charismatic criminals as protagonists and recurring themes of redemption and chivalry.