Sam Mendes-2 – Press Play Video Blog

Watch: Michael Mann’s ‘Collateral’ and Sam Mendes’ ‘Skyfall’: How to Build a Scene

For a scene to be truly suspenseful, one must have a sense of the director’s omniscience. What this means is that the viewer must be made to feel on top of, inside, outside, behind, beneath, all over a scene from its beginning to its end, each hairpin plot turn a twist in the viewer’s gut, each moment of respite a breeze on the viewer’s brow. In comparing two key scenes from Michael Mann’s ‘Collateral’ and Sam Mendes’ ‘Skyfall,’ Michael Mclennan shows us how the two directors and cinematographers Dion Beebe and Roger Deakins have placed us inside and outside of the action onscreen simultaneously.

Watch: Sam Mendes Is a Visual Completist

https://vimeo.com/144534729

You may, with my blessing, comment on the inconsistency of Sam Mendes’s films, possibly proposing that many of them are all dramatic onrush, without payoff, or ‘American Beauty‘ is a high point to which his other films do not much up, or asking why ‘Road to Perdition’?, or what’s up with ‘Spectre’? Good thoughts, all. However, one thing you cannot say is that Mendes spares one ounce of effort, one kilowatt of creative energy on the lush and detailed settings of his films. Art of the Film‘s new video piece takes us through some of these settings, from the drab London of ‘Skyfall’ to the simmering domestic order of ‘American Beauty’ to the deceptively bucolic suburbs of ‘Revolutionary Road.’ Praise goes to Roger Deakins, Mendes’ frequent collaborator, for surrounding us; equal kudos, though, to Mendes for wanting to surround us in the first place.

Watch: James Bond ‘Skyfall’ Title Sequence Wondrously Re-Invented

Regardless of what you may think of the James Bond films, you probably do know, or remember, or even have an emotional attachment to their title sequences. Knowing this, Heebok Lee has recreated the title sequence from Sam Mendes’ ‘Skyfall’ here, using Claudia Kim (from ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’) as the central female figure and employing the choreography of renowned Korean dancer Soojin Choi to create something that looks like… well, what does it look like? A Miltonic, explosive, surreal, dreamlike, and frightening (in a good way) opening to one of the better films of the series.