Sonic Cinema

Sounds, Visions and Insights by Brian Skutle

News

There are some pleasant surprises with the nominees for this year’s Georgia Film Critics Association awards, but also some not-so-pleasant snubs. There are still several I haven’t seen, though. Here are the nominees, what won, and my thoughts as a voting member. I hope you enjoy! This was a fairly impressive selection this year. 2023 Georgia Film Critics Association Awards Best Picture “American Fiction” “Barbie” “Godzilla Minus One” “The Holdovers” […]

Categories: News, News - General

The excess of overspending on blockbusters and relying too much on audience goodwill for franchises, and not putting enough creative muscle in stories, finally caught up with Hollywood in 2023. This summer was a reckoning for studios on a number of fronts: first with the studios penny-pinching and disregard of creatives in the form of multi-month strikes by both the Writer’s Guild and Screen Actors Guild (with more potential strikes […]

Categories: News, News - General

Sonic Cinema Podcast

Obviously, when you figure in all of the “Class of 1999” episodes, this is closer to episode 190, but I love that, in the basic episode numbering of the podcast, this episode has shown up in this slot. For this discussion, I bring in Darin and Jonny from NostalgiaCast to discuss some classic films they were introduced to as kids, and which gives them that hit of nostalgia, as a […]

Categories: News, News - Podcast

It’s that time again. Amanda Spears returns to discuss the Oscars and help predict the winners. I also share my 10 Best list for 2023. I hope you enjoy! Episode 149 – Oscar Thoughts with Amanda Spears & Brian’s Top 10 of 2023 Read Brian’s Retrospective on 2023 here. Read Brian’s Thoughts of the 2023 Georgia Film Critics Association Nominees and Winners here. Thanks for listening, Brian Skutle www.sonic-cinema.com You […]

Categories: News, News - Podcast

Repertory Revues

If you love film, you likely have been to a repertory screening at some point in your life. The chance to watch an older movie, on the big screen, with a crowd as in love with the opportunity to watch a movie in theatres, maybe for the first time, or maybe to recapture that sense of wonder of when you first saw it. The idea of repertory showings of movies […]

This is the fourth year of “Repertory Revues,” and the 15th year since I started to watch older films over the month in an attempt to both broaden my cinematic horizons, as well as rewatching older favorites I wanted to write about, and it’s been increasingly difficult to keep up in the way I originally intended when I started in 2009. This year, I made a fairly big dent in […]

Music News

One of my favorite things in movies is when they show why a piece of music matters to a character. While a great soundtrack can help us figure out who a character is, when we see characters actively engage with music onscreen, that is a special thing for me. There are plenty of great examples of this- Max Cherry discovering The Delfonics in “Jackie Brown”; “As Time Goes By” being […]

Categories: News, News - Music

**Author’s Note: The following essay includes scenes from “Touch of Evil” to illustrate my words. These scenes not only include spoilers to the film, but one involves implied sexual assault. Orson Welles never stopped pushing cinema form forward after “Citizen Kane”– the problem was his resources got more and more scant, and his freedom more and more bowled over by studio interference as he went along. But watch films like […]

Categories: News, News - Music