Here’s a fun game to play: try to find a ranking of directors which doesn’t have Alfred Hitchcock in the top five. I can tell you that out of sources that I find generally credible (even if I largely disagree with them), I haven’t been able to do so. In 2002, Sight and Sound polled… Read More Alfred Hitchcock Meta-Analysis
One of the Grantland legacies I’m fond of, although I’m sure the idea didn’t start there, is the championship belt (RIP Grantland, long live Barnwell and Hyden). The purpose is to go year by year and create a list of who’s at the top of some field, which is a deceptively simple task, and one… Read More Anglophone Director Championship Belt, 1918-2018
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. A lovely young woman named Melanie (Hedren) – all lovely young women are named Melanie – is a flirt, a prankster, a teaser. She has the sort of verve for mischief that one… Read More The Birds (1963)
Seeing Things Secondhand 