Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, and other highlights from our colleagues across the Internet — and, occasionally, our own writers. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
For Speed‘s 20th anniversary this week, Kris Tapley revisits the film with those involved at In Contention:
There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. As movie premises go, this one is absolutely ridiculous, right? You’d have been forgiven for thinking so, at least, as few involved with Jan de Bont’s “Speed,” which was released by 20th Century Fox on June 10, 1994, could have anticipated its popularity. The film was a runaway hit, winning two Oscars and grossing over $350 million worldwide. Now, 20 years later, it’s a celebrated relic of an era before blockbuster filmmaking was so awash in digital wizardry, an era when practical movie magic sold the highest of concepts to the masses.
Watch a video tribute to the cinematography of Frederick Elmes (via Refocused Media):
At Smug Film, Brad Every looks at Bicycle Thieves and other apocalyptic movies:
As far back as human civilization can be traced, there have been stories about the end of the world. The Norse had Ragnarok, Christianity has the Rapture, and the Mayans had 2012. Some have argued film as a form of modern mythology, and as anyone who has been to a movie theater in the past decade or so can tell you, modern film is chock full of apocalyptic stories. It’s only right—every mythology needs its ‘end of times’ tales. They tell a lot about the culture that produced them: what their fears were, and how they perceived death.
Watch David Lynch interview the dead Leland Palmer and see a restoration comparison for the fantastic-looking Twin Peaks box set: