Excellence in Art

In Tony Zhou’s video essay “Akira Kurosawa – Composing Movement,” in his “Every Frame a Painting” series, Mr. Zhou leads us through a fascinating analysis of one aspect of good movie making. Most modern American movies are poorly made because the directors fail to grasp the essence of the motion picture: using pictures in motion to tell a story; bringing a painting into motion and life.

Most modern American movies merely show people talking; the talking is expected to drive the action since the actors cannot show emotion and ideas in movement, and the director cannot direct sequences of action/movement. They use talking and technology to cover up their incompetence, whereas talking and technology should be used to enhance the telling of the story, told in moving pictures.

Near the end of the video essay is an interesrting contrast between good movie making and poor. The last 30 seconds (minute?) has a scene you might want to avoid. You don’t get to see exactly what happens, as you would in a modern American movie, but someone clearly dies.

Mr. Zhou has other fascinating analyses in his series, such as “Jackie Chan – How to Do Action Comedy” and “Buster Keaton – The Art of the Gag.”

Speaking of Buster Keaton, Buster did Parkour and MovNat before they were cool.