Reels

Photo: Colleen Sturtevant / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 The heat in Hinkley that afternoon sat on the roofs like something heavy and patient. Erin Brockovich stood on Donna Jensen’s porch with a borrowed file pressed against her ribs. She had driven out from Los Angeles with little more than questions and a tank of … Read more

Photo: Harald Krichel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 On the morning of October 14, 2005, a Royal Marine speedboat cut across the grey Thames toward a moored naval ship. Standing in the boat was a blond actor in a dark suit and an orange life jacket. The jacket had been insisted upon by naval … Read more

Photo: Philip Romano / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 The tour bus rolled through darkness while a band that had argued for hours sat in bruised, exhausted silence. Then one tired voice near the back began singing a familiar Elton John ballad, quietly and almost to itself. Another voice joined, then another, until harmony replaced … Read more

Photo: Diliff / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5 Dawn came up over the Grand Harbour of Malta, and Rome was rising with it. Inside the old walls of Fort Ricasoli, carpenters were already climbing scaffolds of plaster and plywood. Their work was a curve of arches, fifty-two feet high, modelled on the most famous ruin … Read more

Photo: Gorgo / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain On the night of March 5, 2006, the Academy Awards came down to one final envelope. Inside the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, the evening had belonged, hour after hour, to a quiet western. Brokeback Mountain had arrived with eight Academy Award nominations, more than any other film … Read more

Photo: Natasha Baucas / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 On the night of July 23, 2009, a cinema in San Diego hosted the strangest premiere of that summer. The Reading Gaslamp 15 sat a few blocks from the San Diego Comic-Con crowds. Inside, several hundred fans settled in to watch a film almost nobody could … Read more

Photo: Nick Hobgood / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 On a Sunday afternoon in May 2003, Hollywood Boulevard turned the color of shallow water. Families queued outside the El Capitan Theatre for the premiere of a film about a fish. The marquee glowed blue, and the lobby had been dressed like the floor of the … Read more

Photo: David Torcivia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 On the first evening of September 2010, boats were still tying up along the Venice Lido as the festival lights came on. The sixty-seventh Venice International Film Festival was opening with a film about a dancer, made for thirteen million dollars. Inside the Sala Grande, the … Read more

Photo: daryl_mitchell / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 On the night of March 23, 2003, the Academy Awards came down to a single white envelope. Inside the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, five films waited for the words that would end the evening. Three days earlier, the United States had gone to war, and the ceremony … Read more

Photo: Daderot / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 In the spring of 2001, an old man walked quietly onto a film set at Princeton University. He was seventy-two years old, tall and stooped, with the careful shuffle students had known for decades. The crew was shooting in the courtyard where he had once arrived as a twenty-year-old … Read more