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Everyone notices the eyes first, languid, those of a somnambulist. Robert Mitchum, calm and observant, is a presence that, through passivity, enamors a viewer. His face is as effulgent as moonlight. The man smolders, with that boozy, baritone voice, seductive and soporific, a cigarette perched between wispy lips below which is a chin cleft like a geological fault. He’s slithery with innuendo. There’s an effortless allure to it all, a mix of malaise and braggadocio, a cocksure machismo and a hint of fragility. He’s ever-cool, a paradox, “radiating heat without warmth,” as Richard Brody said. A poet, a prodigious lover and drinker, a bad boy; his penchant for marijuana landed him in jail, and in the photographs from his two-month stay he looks like a natural fit. He sits, wrapped in denim, legs spread wide, hair shiny and slick, holding a cup of coffee. His mouth is...

While attending the Camerimage International Film Festival last November, I was fortunate enough to speak with cinematographer Ed Lachman about Carol — one of the biggest titles they hosted, if it filling an opera house for a 10 a.m. screening should serve as any indication. His busy schedule for the day, as well as a few unexpected outside factors, cut this interview short, and a planned follow-up never came through.

With the film now out on Blu-ray, however — click here to find out how you can win a free copy — it’s about time the thing is shared, a decision also justified for a) the way it exhibits Lachman’s intelligence and candor in equal measure and b) the fact that we certainly admire his work, with or without Todd Haynes. (And, of course, we liked Carol enough to already get other talent on the record about their processes.) Abbreviated though it may be,...

Carol is getting raves not just for Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett’s subtle performances, but also for Ed Lachman’s cinematography, which was inspired by mid-century street photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier. In a first-person story for Indiewire, the veteran cinematographer, who has worked with Werner Herzog, Sofia Coppola, Todd Solondz, Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh, writes about why he and director Todd Haynes chose to shoot the film in 16mm in order to achieve the look of 1952. “We wanted to reference the photographic representation of a different era,” Lachman said. “They can recreate grain digitally now, but […]...

Carol is getting raves not just for Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett’s subtle performances, but also for Ed Lachman’s cinematography, which was inspired by mid-century street photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier. In a first-person story for Indiewire, the veteran cinematographer, who has worked with Werner Herzog, Sofia Coppola, Todd Solondz, Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh, writes about why he and director Todd Haynes chose to shoot the film in 16mm in order to achieve the look of 1952. “We wanted to reference the photographic representation of a different era,” Lachman said. “They can recreate grain digitally now, but […]...

"Carol" is definitely a far cry from Todd Haynes' Douglas Sirk-inspired "Far From Heaven." It's a completely different aesthetic, of course: the difference between expressionism and naturalism, the difference between Hollywood artifice and more delicate photography. Which is why Haynes' long-time Dp Ed Lachman, who earlier today won Best Cinematography from the New York Film Critics Circle, chose to shoot the gorgeous Patricia Highsmith-adapted love story starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara on Super 16 film. Read More: "Todd Haynes and Writer Phyllis Nagy Talk 'Carol,' Glamorous Stars, Highsmith and More" "I wanted to reference the visual language of the time, not Hollywood movies, but the use of color by photojournalists," explained Lachman. "And many of those photographers were women that experimented with color photography: Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Vivian Maier, Helen Levitt. "Each time period has different...

Even as late as the seventies, a lot of serious photographers looked askance at color pictures. Black-and-white was pure, documentary, the medium of Arbus and Adams and Avedon. Color was for ads and blockbusters. That attitude is mostly gone now—William Eggleston, Saul Leiter, Helen Levitt, and many others helped bury it for good—but spend some time with Katherine A. Bussard and Lisa Hostetler’s Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman (Aperture, $60), and you’ll begin to realize that it was bunk all along. For one thing, the marriage of art and technology that these images required is, itself, compelling: You cannot help staring at, say, a color photo of Parisian life in 1907, as much for its achievement as for its content. Even more eye-opening are those very approaches that highfalutin artists eschewed: the oversaturated Kodachrome jewel tones that make a Hollywood tableau simultaneously over-the-top and exactly right,...

Vote below for this week's Project of the Week. The winning filmmaker will receive a digital distribution consultation from SnagFilms and will become a candidate for Project of the Month. That winner will be awarded with a creative consultation from the fine folks at the Tribeca Film Institute! The four projects up for the prize: "Other Months," "When Sunny Gets Blue," "Lost Pines" and "95 Lives: Helen Levitt." Voting will end on Monday December 3, at 11Am Eastern. Which project do you most want to see?...

Here's your daily dose of an indie film in progress; at the end of the week, you'll have the chance to vote for your favorite. In the meantime: Is this a movie you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments. "95 Lives: Helen Levitt" Tweetable Logline: Uncovering Helen Levitt: a camera-shy photographer hits the NYC streets for 70 years, transforming American street photography forever. Elevator Pitch: Before street photographers took Manhattan by storm, there was Helen Levitt. An artistic pioneer and the ultimate photographer’s photographer, Levitt lived as a total enigma, determined to dodge the public eye in favor of what she loved most: poker, baseball, and, above all, capturing the city at play. 95 Lives searches for the many, colorful lives of this female pioneer and the formidable contributions she made to 20th century art and to the city that shaped her incredible body of work: New York.

Repertory theaters on the coasts are truly offering a window onto the world this spring, with Jia Zhangke and Bong Joon-ho retrospectives, as well as New French Cinema in New York, "Freebie and the Bean," "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" and Jason Reitman's favorite films invade Los Angeles, and the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin is offering a fond farewell to the video cassette. But consider this a hello to seeing classics, oddities and rarities on the big screen over the next few months.

Cities: [New York] [Los Angeles] [Austin] More Spring Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]

[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]

New York

92YTribeca

Is there a more energetic way to start the spring than with a screening of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (Feb. 20, with editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny in attendance)? Perhaps not, but it's only the start of an exciting spring season at the 92YTribeca Screening Room, which will present several special events over the next few months.

October Country follows a year in the life of the Moshers, residents of New York State's economically depressed Herkimer Valley. Co-director Donal Mosher escaped the region to pursue a career in photography, though one of his most notable projects documents the travails of his family back home. In the original photo series "October Country," Mosher's images of modestly decorated households, empty factory lots, turning foliage and Colonial graveyards convey a post-rural, post-industrial landscape endowed with a eerily gothic splendor. Co-director Michael Palmieri brought his background in experimental and music video to coax Mosher's work into a cinematic dimension. The result, a breathtaking work, offers new aesthetic possibilities in depicting working class American reality. The film endows more empathy and dignity than could ever be found in white trash reality TV, while bringing touches of stylization (i.e. Halloween party scenes shot in ghostly slow-motion) not found in more vanilla strains of social observation documentary.