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WORK TITLE: Talking Pictures
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CITY: Baltimore
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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/movies-screen-deep-heres-watch-like-critic/ * http://wtop.com/entertainment/2017/08/ann-hornaday-book-talking-pictures-teaches-viewers-how-to-watch-movies/ * http://www.rogerebert.com/chazs-blog/illuminating-insight-ann-hornaday-on-talking-pictures
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LC control no.: n 2017021419
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017021419
HEADING: Hornaday, Ann
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670 __ |a Talking pictures, 2017: |b ECIP t.p. (Ann Hornaday) data view (currently film critic for the Washington post; grew up in Des Moines, Iowa ; graduated cum laude with a degree in Government from Smith College; worked at Ms. magazine as a researcher and editorial assistant, she became a freelance writer in New York City, where she eventually began to write about movies for the New York Times Arts & Leisure section and other publications; in 1995 she became the movie critic at the Austin American-Statesman in Austin, Texas, where she stayed for two years before moving to Baltimore to be the movie critic at the Baltimore Sun; she left the Sun in 2000 and began working at the Washington Post in 2002; finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2008; resides in Baltimore MD)
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Smith College, B.A. (cum laude).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Film critic, journalist, author. Austin American-Statesman, TX, film critic, 1995-97; Baltimore Sun, MD, film critc, 1998-2000; Washington Post, film critic,2002–. Also worked as a freelancer and as a researcher for Ms. magazine.
AWARDS:Finalist, Pulitzer Prize in criticism, 2008.
WRITINGS
Contributor to the New York Times, among other periodicals.
SIDELIGHTS
Ann Hornaday is a film critic for the Washington Post and the author of the 2017 book, Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies. In an interview with Nell Minow on the Roger Ebert Website, Hornaday, a cum laude graduate in Government studies from Smith College, commented on her training as a movie critic: “I really learned how to be a critic on the job, as a freelance reporter in New York and, later, writing features as a critic. I didn’t go to film school and only took film history and filmmaking late in life, during an arts journalism fellowship. So writers, directors, actors and below-the-line artisans have been enormously helpful in guiding my eye and my thinking about movies.”
In Talking Pictures, Hornaday contends that a movie will actually “teach” the viewer how to watch it. She notes how the collaborative effort between writers, actors, cinematographers, production designers, composers, editors, and directors all combine to the “ultimate immersive creative experience,” according to Minow. Hornaday divides the book into seven sections: screenwriting, acting, production design, cinematography, editing, sound and music, and directing. With each of these sections, the author poses insightful question that lead the reader to watch movies more critically. Hornaday does not shy away from her own opinions on directors, actors and other members of the film-making mix. The author also provides comments from her numerous interviews with filmmakers in this “captivating new book,” as Minor further termed it.
A Kirkus Reviews critic offered a varied assessment of Talking Pictures, noting that it is a “user-friendly, nonintimidating guide to appreciating movies,” but because it is “very American-centric, the book’s scope is limited.” Others had a much higher opinion of the work. Writing in Booklist, David Pitt called Talking Pictures a “master class in filmmaking and a celebration of why we love the movies.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt the book “gives the reader tools for watching films more intentionally and with more discerning taste.” New York Times Online contributor Lisa Schwarzbaum thought that “Hornaday provides a pleasantly calm, eminently sensible, down-the-middle primer for the movie lover — amateur, professional or Twitter-centric orator — who would like to acquire and sharpen basic viewing skills.” Schwarzbaum further noted that Hornaday is “determinedly reasonable and adult in this levelheaded book.” Washington Post Online writer Amy Henderson was also impressed with Talking Pictures, observing that it “reflects Hornaday’s 20-plus years of writing about movies. Her career has given her great access to the people who make the movies, and some of her anecdotes can be fascinating.” Henderson added: “Hornaday’s objective in Talking Pictures is to give moviegoers an informed understanding that flickers across the page with movielike ease, and she does this.” Similarly, Pop Matters Website contributor Chris Barsanti termed this a “vital book,” further noting: “For people who go to the movies and (even better) like talking about them afterward, Talking Pictures is a must-have. For those of us who study and write about the movies, it’s a reminder of why we bother.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2017, David Pitt, review of Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies, p. 48.
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2017, review of Talking Pictures.
Publishers Weekly, April 3, 2017, review of Talking Pictures, p. 66.
ONLINE
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (June 2, 2017), Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of Talking Pictures.
Pop Matterrs, https://www.popmatters.com/ (June 23, 2017), Chris Barsanti, review of Talking Pictures.
Roger Ebert Website, https://www.rogerebert.com/ (March 27, 2017), Nell Minow, “Illuminating Insight: Ann Hornaday on Talking Pictures.”
Washington Independent Review of Books, http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/ (July 26, 2017), Paul J. McCarren, review of Talking Pictures.
Washington Post Online, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (June 7, 2017), Amy Henderson, review of Talking Pictures.
QUOTE:
captivating new book,
ultimate immersive creative experience
I really learned how to be a critic on the job, as a freelance reporter in New York and, later, writing features as a critic. I didn’t go to film school and only took film history and filmmaking late in life, during an arts journalism fellowship. So writers, directors, actors and below-the-line artisans have been enormously helpful in guiding my eye and my thinking about movies.
Chaz is the Publisher of RogerEbert.com and a regular contributor to the site, writing about film, festivals, politics, and life itself.
Primary hornaday tpictures 2017
ILLUMINATING INSIGHT: ANN HORNADAY ON "TALKING PICTURES"
by Nell Minow
March 27, 2017 | 0
Print Page
In her captivating new book, Talking Pictures, Washington Post movie critic Ann Hornaday says that a movie will teach you how to watch it. She explains how the thousands of small and large choices made by the writers, actors, cinematographers, production designers, composers, editors, and directors create the ultimate immersive creative experience. And, indirectly, she ends up bringing critics into the discussion as well. “The job of the critic,” she writes, is to recognize these connections and disruptions, not in order to be pedantic or superior to the reader, but to open up interpretive possibilities that will enrich the viewing experience or at least provide some thought-provoking reading.” (Talking Pictures will be released on June 13; Click here to pre-order your copy.)
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The book is filled with illuminating insights from Hornaday’s interviews with filmmakers and from her own perceptive response to the movies she has seen and written about. In an interview with RogerEbert.com, she discussed some of the topics in the book, from her problems with 3D to the issue of spoilers.
When a movie is based on a book, should you read the book before seeing the film?
Ah, start with an easy one, why don’t you?! This is a perennial conundrum for critics. My answer is “No,” if only because so many movies today are based on books—and graphic novels, comics, video games and other pre-existing properties—that it’s impossible to experience every story in its original form before it becomes a film. But I also think it’s important philosophically to judge a film on its own merits, as a freestanding piece of cinema, that works or doesn’t work according to those aesthetic/narrative principles.
In the case of something like “Harry Potter” or “The Lord of the Rings,” if the critic doesn’t have time to read those books, he or she should at least cultivate the opinion of hardcore experts who have seen the movie, to gauge its success in fan service. I don’t think that group should dictate whether something succeeds or fails, but their expectations deserve at least to be taken into account.
Why are you so critical of 3D? You discuss the benefits of technological advances like the 5.1 sound system—what other technological advances do you think have been used most effectively in movies?
With very few exceptions I really have come to despise 3D. I think it rarely adds anything to the image, and it often detracts, in terms of brightness, detail, color and legibility. Although I thought it was put to good use in “Hugo”—as well as “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”—now 3D is being used simply for depth of field, which Gregg Toland perfected with the good old-fashioned movie camera. I just think 3D is more of a gimmick and cash-grab than genuine aesthetic advance. As for other technological feats, I’ve become more and more impressed with the combination CGI-live action space, which began in the “Uncanny Valley” and now has given us such ravishing immersive experiences as the newest “Jungle Book” and “Doctor Strange.” The romantic in me still loves practical effects (stay strong, Christopher Nolan), but CGI has really grown by leaps and bounds the past few years.
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How do you decide whether a detail is essential to a review or too much of a spoiler to include? What about a more general survey or analysis written months after a film’s release—does the calculus on spoilers change?
One of the best lessons I learned as a newly minted critic was when Elizabeth Peters, who was running Rick Linklater’s Austin Film Society, called me at the Austin American-Statesman and very gently and diplomatically took me to task for synopsizing too much of the plot on one of my reviews. It wasn’t just spoilers, it was the idea that, if someone should decide to go to that movie, they deserved to enjoy the same sense of discovery that I did as a first-time viewer. I realized in that moment that synopsis is the final refuge for the lazy critic. I try to avoid it at all costs, and instead convey the tone, mood and general gestalt of a movie, the better to prepare readers for the experience rather than have it for them. Of course, one or two revelatory details can be helpful in that regard—I try to put myself in the viewer’s place, in terms of whether my delight in it would be diminished by knowing about it beforehand; I also consider whether it’s been revealed in trailers. And I consult with my editors and fellow reviewers, who I’m happy to say, take the issue seriously as I do. Even months after release, I try to remain spoiler-free, especially if I’m doing something for a wide, general audience. Why ruin something unnecessarily?
How has the widespread availability of films from every era changed the way today’s audiences watch movies?
I wish I knew. I’d like to say that it’s made us all more cine-literate, but as we saw in a recent Twitter meme, a game show contestant couldn’t identify "A Streetcar Named Desire" with only one letter missing from the title.
Why is it that you can always immediately tell the difference between a movie made in the past and a new movie set in the past?
I guess off the top I’d say the means of production have changed, as have their aesthetic artifacts. This gets into a notorious film-nerdy debate among film fans about grain—that visible texture we see on old black and white films—and whether it’s a bug or a feature. I’m one of those sentimentalists who recoils when a 1940s film is “cleaned up” and made to look more modern; even though the less grainy version is probably what the filmmaker would have intended at the time. Similarly, our ideas of what the past properly “looks” like have been conditioned by films like “Days of Heaven,” “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Lincoln.” One of the reasons why Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” didn’t work—for me—was that the high-def digital “live TV” look of the film felt completely at odds with the Depression-era period. But Mann’s aim was precisely to make the past more immediate. So I guess it comes down to taste.
To your question: Even something like Soderbergh’s “The Good German,” which sought to re-create World War II-era movies in terms of grain structure and aspect ratio, still managed to look obviously modern, not least because of the recognizable presence of George Clooney. Still an enlightening exercise, though. I guess an economist would say the answer is “over-determined.”
How does our familiarity with particular performers affect the way we watch their films, for better and/or worse?
This is an enduringly fascinating question for me. How much can, or should we banish, what we know of actors off-screen—and exponentially more difficult enterprise with our 24/7 “Stars, they’re just like us!” gossip culture? I think good directors are aware of those associations, accept them and leverage them to help the characterization on screen. (Good example: Angelina Jolie in “Maleficent”; bad example: Angelina Jolie in “Changeling.”)
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This is also where good screenwriting comes in: With a really specific and well-developed screenplay, the actor has the tools he or she needs to build a fully realized character and merge with it, even if they don’t disappear entirely. So, yes, that’s Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams up there in “Manchester by the Sea,” we recognize them from other movies and red carpet appearances, but their characters are so grounded and filled out that they genuinely seem to become someone else, while being themselves. It’s a type of cognitive dissonance that's difficult to describe!
Should people read reviews before or after seeing the film?
Both! Please visit WashingtonPost.com and RogerEbert.com early and often!
How has digital and social media changed the way audiences decide what to see and how to think about it?
This is probably above my pay grade. But I note with interest the Motion Picture Association of America’s recent theatrical statistics report indicating that moviegoing among young people is up—suggesting that review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, as well as social media, are helping to drive business, especially to genre films with strong communities of affiliation. As we’ve discovered at the Post, technology is also helping foster a continuing conversation about the films long after they’ve opened, as we’ve seen with “Get Out.”
Do awards like the Oscars or Golden Globes help bring the attention of the audience to quality films or do they create a skewed notion of “prestige”?
I think for the most part they’ve been a force for good in providing “earned awareness” for movies that otherwise couldn’t afford huge marketing campaigns, and with which studios otherwise wouldn’t bother. We’ll always have what our colleagues call “Oscar bait” movies—genteel historical dramas, usually featuring well-heeled British actors in a worthy but not necessarily daring or cinematically expressive story. But I’ve come to see those films through the eyes of readers who value them for what they are. My current obsession is figuring out a way for the Academy and the studios to spread these films out across all 12 months of the year instead of just awards season, which creates a logjam, is hard on filmgoers and inevitably results in some good movies being unfairly crowded out (I would include such gems as “Loving” and “20th Century Women” in that category from last year).
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The highlights of the book include some exceptionally insightful comments from your interviews with filmmakers. Whose answers surprised you the most and what has speaking to filmmakers taught you about how to watch a movie?
I really learned how to be a critic on the job, as a freelance reporter in New York and, later, writing features as a critic. I didn’t go to film school and only took film history and filmmaking late in life, during an arts journalism fellowship. So writers, directors, actors and below-the-line artisans have been enormously helpful in guiding my eye and my thinking about movies. I’m not sure anyone has surprised me that much … Although Nicolas Winding Refn has always been refreshingly candid (he’s the one who told me that, in the digital era, “the color timer is the new gaffer.”). Interviewing filmmakers about how they go about doing their jobs has given me great respect for film as a collaborative medium. I still think it’s mostly a director’s medium, but I see the director’s job as leading an entire creative team, each member of which makes discrete, make-or-break creative contributions to the finished whole.
How do you as a critic maintain a balance between allowing yourself to get caught up in a movie and analyzing the way it achieves (or does not achieve) its story-telling goals?
That’s the mental yoga of film reviewing! I really do try to let myself succumb to every film I see, because I think that’s only fair. But I do take a notebook along with me, so I can jot down what seems to be working or not at any given moment. Of course, that’s harder when something is really sweeping you along; but then I’ll try to kind of snap out of my trance for very brief interludes, so I can take a step back and be able to explain how the filmmakers are casting their particular spell. This is why I tend not to hang out and chat with my fellow critics after a screening; I use that time to let a film sink in, think about it, go over it in my mind and basically internalize it. I remember not understanding “Magnolia” at all immediately after seeing it, but by the time I’d walked back to the Baltimore Sun newsroom, I’d fallen in love with it.
Should Hollywood stop producing so many remakes and sequels?
The glib answer is: “Yes! Next question!” But look at how well Disney has done with remakes and sequels. They understand, perhaps better than any studio right now, that all movies—even comic-book movies or sure-fire “Star Wars” reboots—are execution dependent. They all need to be brilliantly written, perfectly cast and executed with skill and lack of condescension to the audience. So I’d say Hollywood needs to stop producing so many lazy remakes and sequels.
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What’s the difference between an actor and a movie star? Who qualifies as both?
I guess what we’re talking about is a character actor—the actor whose name might not be a household word, and who disappears into whatever person they’re playing—versus an actor whose persona extends beyond the screen to what we know of them as larger-than-life public/private figures. I honestly think most of our movie stars are good actors (I’m thinking of Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt), but the trick is finding those roles that mesh seamlessly with audience expectations. I actually think Tom Cruise is an excellent actor (op cit “Magnolia”), especially when he’s addressing his own star persona, which he did so cleverly in the criminally under-seen “Edge of Tomorrow.” I’d also put Denzel Washington in that category of stars-who-can-also-act. He’s carved out a wonderful career of being able to open a movie purely on the basis of his presence, but also delivering specific, technically nuanced performances.
To pre-order your copy of Ann Hornaday's Talking Pictures, click here.
QUOTE:
ery American-centric, the book's scope is limited. If uninspiring, this is a user-friendly,
nonintimidating guide to appreciating movies.
Print Marked Items
Hornaday , Ann: TALKING PICTURES
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Hornaday , Ann TALKING PICTURES Basic (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 6, 13 ISBN: 978-0-465-09423-3
A film critic for the Washington Post offers advice on watching movies.Hornaday isn't the first to write a
primer about critically assessing films instead of subjectively responding to them as simply good or bad.
Avoiding critical jargon, she hopes to guide novice viewers into "appreciating movies more fully when they
succeed, and for explaining their missteps when they fall short." She has conducted extensive interviews
with film folk over the years, which adds an informed, insider's quality to her discussions. Hornaday smartly
divides the book into seven sections: screenwriting, acting, production design, cinematography, editing,
sound and music, and directing. Within each section, the author poses a number of questions that she then
answers ("where was the camera and why was it there?"), giving the book an unfortunate textbook quality.
The narrative is also heavily prescriptive. Hornaday is quick to give her likes and dislikes: "I've never loved
the films of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu...credibility might be the chief problem." On acting, "the most
fundamental element of cinematic grammar," she cites John Sayles: "casting the right actors is easily 90
percent of the [director's] job." But mistakes are made. Cameron Diaz was "fatally miscast" in The Gangs of
New York. One of the stronger sections is production design, often overlooked by general moviegoers. It
encompasses backdrops, locations, sets, props, costumes, hair, and makeup. Done well, writes the author, it
establishes "the overall look of a film, the sense of richness, texture, and detail." In the cinematography
section, Hornaday confesses that one of the "few things I truly despise in life...[is] 3-D." She was "awed" by
Sandra Adair's editing work in Boyhood; Raging Bull and GoodFellas are "masterpieces of editing and
rhythm." The section on sound and music is also good, the one on directing poor, and because the author's
picks are very American-centric, the book's scope is limited. If uninspiring, this is a user-friendly,
nonintimidating guide to appreciating movies.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Hornaday , Ann: TALKING PICTURES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A489268515/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1b96cb08.
Accessed 8 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A489268515
QUOTE:
master class in filmmaking and a celebration of
why we love the movies.
Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies
David Pitt
Booklist.
113.17 (May 1, 2017): p48+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies By Ann Hornaday. June 2017.304p. Basic, $26 (9780465094233).
791.43.
Hornaday, a film critic at the Washington Post, breaks movies into their component parts and identifies what
critics and audiences look for--the elements that distinguish good movies from bad. The book is broken into
seven sections: screenplay, acting, production design, cinematography, editing, sound and music, and
directing. How much does a screenplay determine the final look and feel of a movie (you might be
surprised)? How much can a miscast actor affect the success of a film? Does a movie have a fresh look, or
does it feel like a rehash of things we've seen before? Is the editing choppy and incoherent, or do the images
and scenes flow together naturally? How does a director stage a scene? Does he move the camera because
the scene demands it or because he's being showy (beware, Hornaday says, of scenes in which the camera
tracks endless circles around two people who are simply talking)? A successful movie, she concludes, is a
combination of many elements working harmoniously. A master class in filmmaking and a celebration of
why we love the movies. --David Pitt
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Pitt, David. "Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies." Booklist, 1 May 2017, p. 48+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495035014/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=adc9ccf6.
Accessed 8 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495035014
QUOTE:
gives the reader tools for watching films more
intentionally and with more discerning taste.
Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies
Publishers Weekly.
264.14 (Apr. 3, 2017): p66.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies
Ann Hornaday. Basic, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-0-465-09423-3
Washington Post film critic Hornaday's new book gives the reader tools for watching films more
intentionally and with more discerning taste. Breaking down a film into separate components--screenplay,
acting, production design, cinematography, editing, sound and music, and direction---she emphasizes the
importance of taking a critical perspective. In each section she poses several key questions for readers to ask
themselves: in the screenplay section, "Did the story 'want' to be a movie?", and underproduction design,
"Are the colors helping to tell the story, or are they providing quote marks around emotions and information
that are already perfectly clear?" For direction, "Whose eyes did we see the world through?" Together these
highlight both the project's value and its chief flaw: systematically evaluating films requires a toolset like the
one Hornaday provides, but also a level of active engagement many viewers are not accustomed to. Further
emphasis could have been placed on this challenge, though Hornaday does state, "The days of passive
viewing are over." Her philosophy is that nothing happens in filmmaking by accident, and so "the least the
rest of us can do is notice." Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, ICM/Sagalyn. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies." Publishers Weekly, 3 Apr. 2017, p. 66. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A489813753/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1c0c0fe6.
Accessed 8 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A489813753
QUOTE:
Hornaday provides a pleasantly calm, eminently sensible, down-the-middle primer for the movie lover — amateur, professional or Twitter-centric orator — who would like to acquire and sharpen basic viewing skills.
determinedly reasonable and adult in this levelheaded book
BOOK REVIEW | NONFICTION
Getting Beyond ‘I Love It’: How to Understand Movies
By LISA The New York Times Online 2, 2017
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From “Children of Men,” directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Credit Double Negative/Universal Pictures
TALKING PICTURES
How to Watch Movies
By Ann Hornaday
289 pp. Basic Books. $26.
Consider the following four movie reviews:
“Awesome!”
“Awful!”
“Criminally underrated!”
“It is my sad duty to report that I was mildly disappointed!”
The first two reactions are probably the analyses of amateur movie lovers, and the latter are more likely the declarations of professional critics, but still: All four are equally valid reactions to a movie-going experience. And all four are equally useless opinions, of no interest — unless that opiner can back up sentiment with sense. Analysis. A cogent explanation of the factors that go into passing personal judgment on a work of cinema. Reasonable minds can differ and all that, but the first requirement of any meaningful movie debate is a demonstration of that reason — beyond “I love Wes Anderson movies!” and “I can’t stand Wes Anderson movies!”
Photo
In “Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies,” Ann Hornaday provides a pleasantly calm, eminently sensible, down-the-middle primer for the movie lover — amateur, professional or Twitter-centric orator — who would like to acquire and sharpen basic viewing skills. An estimable movie critic at The Washington Post and a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in criticism, Hornaday explains upfront that she did not grow up, in her words, as “a congenital movie geek”; rather, in a winding journalism career that began at Ms. magazine, she learned her craft on the job. In this way, she says, she is more like her readers than like a film studies major or a gender studies major or a was-Pauline-Kael-really-all-that? major. And, inspired by a series of instructional articles she assembled for her readers some years back, here she considers various aspects of filmmaking in chapters that roughly follow the timeline of production: screenplay, acting, production design, cinematography, editing, sound and music, and directing. (Missing from consideration: a grasp of cinema history and cultural context within which to assess Movie A in relationship to Movies B-Z.)
Hornaday fortifies her observations with comments from film professionals — writers, actors, directors — interviewed for the project. She also peppers each chapter with suggested questions a conscientious viewer might want to ask in each category. The screenplay: “Did the movie flow? Did I care what happened next?” The acting: “Did the actors disappear completely into their roles?” The directing: “Did the movie reflect ambition and vision beyond simply recording performances?” Inevitably, as a seasoned critic, she asks questions that reinforce her own aesthetic preferences. And so, especially, does the recommended viewing she lists at the end of each chapter — certified examples of excellence that only the most insistent of contrarians might challenge, including “Casablanca” and “Chinatown” for screenplay, “The Hurt Locker” for directing, and Viola Davis in “Fences” for acting. (The book is current through 2016 and the triumph of “Moonlight.”)
Since a professional critic is generally thought to be a genius when her opinion matches that of the reader and an idiot when it doesn’t — I have been hailed as both in my time — I can announce that Hornaday is a genius insofar as she loves the nonverbal, visual power of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” as much as I do, and deftly dismisses the directorial stylings of Tom Hooper in “The King’s Speech” and “The Danish Girl” as “attractively appointed, visually inert parlor dramas.” Indeed, the author is so determinedly reasonable and adult in this levelheaded book that there is little incentive to argue with her criteria for what makes a movie “good” or “bad.”
The downside, I suppose, is the lack of opportunity to call her an idiot. And that, to a certain portion of the opining, moviegoing public, is apparently almost as pleasurable an activity as drawing one’s own conclusion, backed by reason and emphasized by the turn of a thumb.
QUOTE:
Talking Pictures” reflects Hornaday’s 20-plus years of writing about movies. Her career has given her great access to the people who make the movies, and some of her anecdotes can be fascinating.
Hornaday’s objective in “Talking Pictures” is to give moviegoers an informed understanding that flickers across the page with movielike ease, and she does this.
Don’t just watch movies — understand them
By Amy Henderson June 7, 2017
Movies are America’s national pastime. But while moviegoing is for everyone, understanding what movies mean can be a much more rarefied endeavor. How do we know what a movie is trying to say? How do we account for a movie’s effect on us?
(Basic)
Ann Hornaday, chief film critic for The Washington Post, helps us decipher the medium’s message with “Talking Pictures,” her illuminating new book for anyone who wants more from the movies than popcorn and thrills.
Several years ago, Hornaday began exploring why movies are “good” or “bad” in a series of articles designed “to help readers analyze and evaluate films in the same ways I do.” Eventually, this led her to write “Talking Pictures” as a full-fledged guide “for appreciating movies more fully when they succeed, and for explaining their missteps when they fall short.”
Hornaday has organized her book like the movie industry itself — by category of film production. Deconstructing the essential elements of moviemaking is an excellent way to understand how all the pieces ultimately fit together. Every chapter includes examples of movies that reflect the “best practices” of that category. And she poses basic questions along the way to help readers evaluate a particular film category: Why was the close-up important in Hollywood’s Glamour Years? How did the clack of typewriter keys generate the dramatic pulse of “All the President’s Men”? At the end of each chapter, she also lists a “mini-canon” of movies she feels exemplify the best in each discipline.
She begins with “The Screenplay” and “Acting.” Hornaday thinks the script is “the founding document of every film” and argues that “within the first ten minutes, a well-written movie will teach the audience how to watch it.” Her opinions can be delightfully personal, as when she writes, “I hate plots. I love stories.” She chooses “Casablanca” to exemplify a movie that creates an instant world for viewers, establishing time and place in the opening credits and quickly introducing key characters at Café Américain. She believes that “character” matters, but warns that “bad movies are about characters. Great movies are about people.” The difference is why we care what happens when Rick Blaine puts Ilsa Lund on the plane leaving Casablanca for Lisbon.
Washington Post movie critic Ann Hornaday (Marion Ettlinger)
When is an actor’s performance credible, and how does that happen? Hornaday uses the actors who portrayed Boston Globe reporters in “Spotlight” as an example, describing how they spent months rehearsing as an ensemble before creating an on-screen performance that felt “organic, un-showy, and rivetingly dramatic.”
Her chapter on “Production Design” focuses on the essential question, “Whose world are we in?” Every physical aspect of filmmaking is included in this category, from backdrops, locations, sets and props to costumes, hair and makeup. Hornaday calls production design “the material culture of a movie: the tactile, palpable ‘stuff’ that establishes a sense of place” and convinces the audience to invest in the reality that’s being presented.
Other chapters cover “Cinematography,” “Editing,” “Sound and Music” and “Directing.” Hornaday’s comments can be funny, as when she rips into 3-D cinematography as one of the “few things I truly despise in life — other than bullies, white chocolate, and the designated hitter rule.” Her discussions in each category are driven by pointed questions bound to make any reader a more conscious viewer: e.g., “Where was the camera and why was it there?,” “Was I swept along, or swamped?” and did the director weave everything into “an emotional and aesthetic event?”
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“Talking Pictures” reflects Hornaday’s 20-plus years of writing about movies. Her career has given her great access to the people who make the movies, and some of her anecdotes can be fascinating. In one, she writes how director George Lucas had extensive conversations with sound effects wizard Ben Burtt for “Star Wars” to make sure the the film sounded “ ‘used’ and worn, rather than shiny, computerized, and sterile. For that reason, none of the signature sounds of ‘Star Wars’ are synthesized.”
Hornaday’s objective in “Talking Pictures” is to give moviegoers an informed understanding that flickers across the page with movielike ease, and she does this. But her “Epilogue” hints at another book that may be in the works. She notes that movies project “what we believe, what we value as a society.” One hopes she will write more about why movies matter. In today’s fragmented world, film critics have a unique opportunity to explain how we are all connected to our history, and to each other.
Amy Henderson is historian emerita of the National Portrait Gallery and writes frequently about media and culture.
TALKING PICTURES
How to Watch Movies
By Ann Hornaday
Basic. 289 pp. $26
Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies
By Ann Hornaday Basic Books 320 pp.
Reviewed by Paul J. McCarren
July 26, 2017
An esteemed film critic examines the story behind the camera.
Ann Hornaday’s new book about watching movies is perfectly titled. Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post, talks us through what happens behind the scenes in the writing, acting, designing, filming, editing, sound-tracking, and directing of a movie. She lets us hear screenwriter and director Kenneth Lonergan’s thoughts about writing dialogue, Jack Lemmon’s reflections on Marilyn Monroe’s acting instincts, Elia Kazan’s insights on production design, Spike Lee’s opinions about cinematography — and the tour’s just getting started.
In her introduction, Hornaday says she hopes her book will help us savor the huge range of details that goes into making a movie. The book is necessary, she repeatedly notes, because the detailed, behind-the-scenes work of filmmaking isn’t visible in the final product.
“We don’t need to know how much research actors have done to create the worlds they inhabit on screen. We just need to enter it with them.” Or, “The best visual effects are those you don’t notice at all.” And again, “Production design should be invisible.”
To pull the curtain back, the author gives us an insider’s look at what usually goes unnoticed. She begins her exploration with a chapter on the screenplay because, she says, “The screenplay serves as the founding document of every film.”
As an example of skillful writing, she points to the first information-packed sequence in Francis Ford Coppola’s screenplay for “The Godfather.” The script moves back and forth from subdued conversations in the Don’s dim office to lively chatter at a sunlit wedding reception, where Michael arrives with his new girlfriend, Kay, and must explain the peculiarity of his family’s business, saying at one point, “That’s my family, Kay. That’s not me.”
Hornaday says Coppola introduces the Corleones so clearly and economically that he’s “made sure we’ll eagerly tag along on whatever journey they take.”
Each chapter in Talking Pictures is broken into short sections kicked off by a few simple questions. Some of Hornaday’s answers seem obvious: “For a movie to work, we must believe it.” But most of her insights are enlightening. For instance, when she learns from screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga that he pays little attention to backstories for his characters, and realizes, “This lack of detail has resulted in a lack of credibility in his films.”
She quotes the pithy opinions of other film greats to convey her insights. About acting: “You come to work on time, know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture” (Spencer Tracy); “To have a career in the movies, the wisest thing was to do absolutely nothing at all. And that is more or less what I’ve done” (Alec Guinness).
About bad cinematography: “pictures of people talking!” (Alfred Hitchcock). About directing: “For some strange reason, I always look the most talented when I’m working with the most talented people” (Alan J. Pakula).
Hornaday is clear in describing which creative choices work and which don’t. Director Christopher Nolan’s reputation for obscuring dialogue with an overlay of sound effects gives a final result that is “provocative at best and unintelligible at worst.” In contrast, director Robert Altman is a master “of realism in sound” for designing a technique that keeps overlapping dialogue from being garbled.
Occasionally, she piles up names in lists that crawl by in a blur, like final credits. But most of her lists work as helpful hints, as if to say: “Notice how these people work; now compare that to the methods of this other bunch.”
Hornaday doesn’t skimp on technical details (we learn about double-dolly shots, a “Dutch angle,” and the Steadicam), but she folds such information into anecdotes about individuals fiddling with these technical elements.
She also stresses non-technical skills, such as improvisation, and she gives good luck its due. She tells us that a famous tracking shot (following the main character in “Goodfellas” entering a side door of a nightclub) was the result of Martin Scorsese’s improvising when he was suddenly told he couldn’t film at the club’s front entrance.
And a “Field of Dreams” shot of a character disappearing into a mist-shrouded cornfield came about because “an actual, shelf-like fogbank rolled in suddenly and unexpectedly” — a bit of luck that proves an opinion she’d earlier cited from Orson Welles: a film director’s role is to “preside over accidents.”
In her epilogue, Hornaday says that appreciating a movie comes down to one question: Was the film worth making? I can’t yet tell if her book has sharpened my ability to ask and answer that question. But I’m ready to find out the next time I go to the movies.
Paul J. McCarren, S.J., lives in southern Maryland, where he continues to work on a series of Simple Guides to the Bible. He occasionally leaves the quiet of the boondocks to teach in DC at the Dog Tag/G.U. business program for veterans.
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QUOTE:
vital book
For people who go to the movies and (even better) like talking about them afterward, Talking Pictures is a must-have. For those of us who study and write about the movies, it’s a reminder of why we bother.
Movies Matter in 'Talking Pictures'
CHRIS BARSANTI 23. Jun, 2017.
CRITIC ANN HORNADAY’S CLEAR-EYED, UNPRETENTIOUS GUIDE TO WATCHING CINEMA IS A LONG OVERDUE CALL FOR THOUGHTFUL APPRECIATION IN OUR TIME OF MEDIA OVERLOAD.
TALKING PICTURES: HOW TO WATCH MOVIES
Publisher: Basic Books
Price: $26.00
Author: Ann Hornaday
Length: 304 pages
Format: Hardcover
US RELEASE DATE: 2017-06
AMAZON
Moving pictures are everywhere now. Whether it’s the YouTube videos your kid watches on their laptop when they should be doing homework, or the true-crime series you binged all weekend, or that disappointing date-night rom-com you saw two nights ago and already can’t remember the name of, there are more TV shows, movies, and video “content” (that vile word, reeking of corporatized banality) than people know what to do with now. We’re swimming in the stuff.
But even though the water-cooler factor of all this frantic locking of eyeballs to screens is at an all-time high, nobody is really talking about it much beyond “wasn’t that funny?” or “did you see that coming?” It’s almost as though people just don’t have the time or tools for talking about what they’re watching. That’s one of many factors that makes Ann Hornaday’s Talking Pictures such a vital book for this moment.
Firstly, Hornaday isn’t talking about video but rather movies. As in, “let’s go to the movies”. As in, that vessel which just about all the great creative disciplines pour themselves into. Hornaday points this out in her introduction: “film is an amalgamation of almost every mode of expression -- painting, theater, dance, music, architecture, photography, and writing.”
But it’s not just the banquet of cinema that Hornaday wants to dig into. She's crafting a handbook for how to watch movies, and how to appreciate them. That involves unbraiding the weave of sound and vision into its component parts. So, the book is cut into chapters on each of what she has designated as the seven building blocks of film, both seen and unseen: The Screenplay, Acting, Production Design, Cinematography, Editing, Sound and Music, and Directing.
If that sounds didactic or textbook-like, be assured it’s not. (Though if Hornaday was ever hired to produce a primer for the study of cinema, those American school districts that haven’t yet banished everything except STEM curriculum and classes glorifying American exceptionalism would be well-served to buy it in bulk.) For one, Hornaday is less interested in providing a lecture on each element than she is in providing an entry point for analysis. Each chapter is then split into component parts highlighted by a few key questions for the viewer to ask themselves. These range from “Was it beautiful and should that matter” in the “Pleasure Principle” section of the Production Design chapter to “Did the movie make sense?” in “What’s Going On?” from the Editing chapter.
In the hands of a lesser writer, this approach could have turned stale and rote within pages. But instead of an Introduction to Cinema slog that’s too outré for the average reader and too pedestrian for the film buff, Hornaday cuts to the quick. Her writing is brisk, friendly, and incisive, in the manner of the best daily newspaper writers. That approachable style comes as no surprise, as she’s been the film critic for a number of papers (currently the Washington Post) and won a Pulitzer Prize for it. It also helps that she wasn’t a movie buff to begin with but came to the calling later.
Like all superior newspaper journalists, Hornaday assumes nothing of the reader besides that they are an individual of average intelligence with some basic knowledge of the world and a curiosity to know more. She wears her learning lightly, but still with authority, dropping not just the names of relevant movies and moviemakers, but showing an instinctive knowledge of their characteristics that go beyond the encyclopedic. Her book can flip easily from quipping about lusting after the copper pots in the yuppie fantasy kitchens of Nancy Meyers movies to rhapsodizing about the cinematography in the work of Nigerian filmmaker Andrew Dosunmu and feel perfectly comfortable doing both. Building on that cool-for-school foundation, she makes a solid and impassioned argument for not just why movies matter, but why it’s worth paying attention to them.
Hornaday establishes credibility early on in Talking Pictures with a few dictums that are hard to argue with. Like: “I hate plots. I love stories.” Or: “Bad movies are about characters. Great movies are about people.” Her rules on screenwriting: It’s almost impossible to make a good movie out of a bad screenplay; avoid narration wherever possible; don’t insert unnecessary second act complications just to prolong the conflict; don’t follow the rules. And of course: “Overweening good taste … can be just as oppressive” as no taste at all. It helps also that the roll call of moviemakers she continually returns to in order to make a point about superior craftsmanship (Tom McCarthy, the Coens, Bigelow, Scorsese) are as hard to argue with as her examples of inferior craftmanship (editing in modern dance or action movies, the dialogue of James Cameron, almost everything about Adam Sandler).
Talking Pictures could be construed as a class but it isn’t a lecture. In that, Hornaday is primarily invested in spurring an interest in the study of the art that she so clearly adores. Because of that, she wants to invite interest in the exacting, convoluted process of moviemaking:
Just as it takes all day to achieve the Meg Ryan “I woke up this way” tousled hair style, it takes months of painstaking work to write a script that, once realized on screen, feels fresh and spontaneous.
Hornaday’s writing could be described in much the same way: Fresh and spontaneous enough to make you think that it was all just dashed off in a matter of days (unlikely) instead of painstakingly crafted over months if not years (likely).
For people who go to the movies and (even better) like talking about them afterward, Talking Pictures is a must-have. For those of us who study and write about the movies, it’s a reminder of why we bother.