Dirking About … The Great Unread
The long Summer nights are playing havoc with my viewing schedule. There are fences to fix. Beer to drink. My ‘To Watch’ pile is about to topple over and drown […]
Author Archives: Dirk
Dirk’s Five: It’s a long shot …
When I took to Twitter for suggestions of the greatest Tracking Shots for Dirk’s Film School STUDENT NOTEBOOK, I was struck that when it comes to a good tracking shot […]
DIRK’S FILM SCHOOL: TRACKING SHOT
SEMINAR NOTES Tracking shots typically involve moving the camera on a platform running on tracks, towards a subject or away from it or from side-to-side. R.W. Paul devised panning and […]
CHRIS: Lost in La Mancha (Fulton, Pepe, US, UK, 2002)
“If anything goes wrong, at least this time, I’ll have witnesses.” – Terry Gilliam (in THE HAMSTER FACTOR, AND OTHER TALES OF TWELVE MONKEYS It appears that Terry Gilliam is […]
DIRK’S FILM SCHOOL: FEATURE FILM (Part Two)
PROF DOM-DIRK RECOMMENDS One hundred years ago this year the feature film came in to it’s own when the Italian’s got there first with the epic “Cabiria”, a year later […]
DIRK’S FILM SCHOOL: FEATURE FILM (Part One)
SEMINAR NOTES The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of a human bladder – Alfred Hitchcock It was the development of the ‘Latham Loop’ that […]
Dirk’s Five: Extreme Camping
Two thirds of The Dirk Malcolm Alternative have packed their bags and headed for the hills for adventures in EXTREME CAMPING. Yes, it’s time for the annual Village People Fan […]
CHRIS: Diabolo Menthe (Peppermint Soda) (Kurys, France, 1977)
One of the themes of this list of post-STAR WARS films is the ‘autobiographical film’: the struggle to present ‘the personal’ in a medium that is collaborative, expensive and ‘in […]
Dirk’s Five: Rik Mayall
“And all the grown-ups will say, “But why are the kids crying?” and the kids will say, “Haven’t you heard? Rick is dead! The People’s Poet is dead!” And then […]
DIRK’S FILM SCHOOL: THE CHASE SEQUENCE
SEMINAR NOTES When G.A.Smith remade the Louis Lumiere’s L’ARROSEUR ARROSÉ (1895) as THE PRACTICAL JOKE (1998) he gave more prominence to the chase of the young boy who douses the […]
The Dirk Malcolm Alternative 