Tuesday

I was referred by Alex a few weeks ago to the greatest tracking shots in cinema. It seems to me that this list is missing some brilliant scenes, as well as including some mediocre ones. For instance, as much as I liked Serenity it really shouldn't be on the list. The oeuvre of Max Ophuls, on the other hand, frequently cited as the master of the tracking shot, if not the inventor of it, is entirely omitted here. I remember particularly the long shot of the exterior of the brothel in Le Plaisir, as we circle around the house looking in at all the windows. Brilliant. And what about Hitchcock's Young and Innocent, and the long track across the concert hall to the man playing cymbals? The tracking shot is one of the tools a director can use that impresses me the most - frequently a whole world has to be organised to act and react in five minutes - and as such perhaps I should be happy enough that there is such a list and people are talking about it, rather than complain about its contents. Much better would be to complain about the '100 greatest war movies' that I saw repeated on More4 last night. This list was quite random in its selection. To put Saving Private Ryan as the best ever is surely wrong. It was well-made, but its sentiment is rather sickly. Far better were many of the British films made during the 40s and 50s.