This past sum­mer, we fea­tured a shot-by-shot break­down of sev­er­al sequences in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris by film­mak­er and video essay­ist Anto­nios Papan­to­niou. Solaris, as well as the rest of Tarkovsky’s oeu­vre, has giv­en and will con­tin­ue to give detail-ori­ent­ed cinephiles a seem­ing­ly infi­nite amount of mate­r­i­al to break down, scru­ti­nize, and explain the genius of.

But what of big Hol­ly­wood films? Do they have noth­ing of inter­est to offer? Papan­to­niou clear­ly does­n’t think so: his oth­er Shot by Shot video essays include looks, and very close looks indeed, at Bri­an De Pal­ma’s The Untouch­ables, Mar­tin Scors­ese’s remake of Cape Fear, and even the moth­er of all block­busters, Steven Spiel­berg’s Jaws.

These three auteurs, all of the same gen­er­a­tion, came up in the 1970s cohort of film­mak­ers who brought about the “New Hol­ly­wood,” a move­ment where­in young direc­tors like Spiel­berg, De Pal­ma, and Scors­ese (as well as Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, George Lucas, Paul Schrad­er, and many oth­ers) changed the rules of clas­si­cal cin­e­ma, intro­duc­ing a host of sub­jects and tech­niques pre­vi­ous­ly unheard of in main­stream Amer­i­can films. Yet they still did make main­stream Amer­i­can films, which required a kind of hybridiza­tion of cut­ting-edge sen­si­bil­i­ties with sil­ver-screen expec­ta­tions. Papan­to­niou specif­i­cal­ly exam­ines how these direc­tors accom­plish it through the kind of shots they cap­ture and how they cut them togeth­er.

Papan­to­niou’s analy­ses iden­ti­fy the visu­al evi­dence of Spiel­berg’s “appetite for non­stop dynam­ic film­mak­ing,” De Pal­ma’s “own unique post-mod­ern style” expressed through tech­niques like point-of-view-shots, and of how “Scors­ese dis­tincts [sic] him­self by adopt­ing more rebel­lious tech­niques.” You might get the sense of a slight awk­ward­ness in the lan­guage here, but the images select­ed speak for them­selves — and besides, if you took film stud­ies class­es in col­lege, you no doubt had at least one or two pro­fes­sors who com­pen­sat­ed for their odd turns of phrase with their rig­or­ous love of cin­e­ma, and from whom you ulti­mate­ly learned a great deal. Video essays like these have increas­ing­ly made it pos­si­ble for any­one, with­out going back to col­lege or even going in the first place, to do that kind of learn­ing — and, whether watch­ing Tarkovsky or Spiel­berg, to nev­er watch them inat­ten­tive­ly again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Rarely Seen 1968 Film, Amblin’

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Chaos Cin­e­ma: A Break­down of How 21st-Cen­tu­ry Action Films Became Inco­her­ent

Learn the Ele­ments of Cin­e­ma: Spielberg’s Long Takes, Scorsese’s Silence & Michael Bay’s Shots

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

What­ev­er our set of beliefs, most of us soon­er or lat­er unite in the same cel­e­bra­to­ry pur­suit on Christ­mas Day: the watch­ing of movies. Going out to the the­ater to catch a hol­i­day-sea­son block­buster or two after you’ve opened your presents (or after oth­er peo­ple have fin­ished open­ing their presents) has become a kind of tra­di­tion in itself, and enough of a tra­di­tion to per­mit vari­a­tions. Maybe you’d rather use film to free your­self of the bur­dens of the Christ­mas sea­son, going instead to the art house and catch­ing the least com­mer­cial film pos­si­ble in this increas­ing­ly com­mer­cial time of the year.

But even if you stick with the auteurs, you can’t get away from Christ­mas entire­ly. A cou­ple Christ­mases ago, “The Auteurs of Christ­mas” shot a series of ver­sions of this most antic­i­pat­ed morn­ing in the style of direc­tors Steven Spiel­berg, Sergei Eisen­stein, Wes Ander­son, Woody Allen, Lars von Tri­er, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Michael Moore, Stan­ley Kubrick, Wern­er Her­zog, and Baz Luhrmann.

More recent­ly, the fol­low-up above expand­ed the project to envi­sion Christ­mas as envi­sioned by Char­lie Chap­lin, Quentin Taran­ti­no, Ter­rence Mal­ick, Christo­pher Nolan, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitch­cock, Mor­gan Spur­lock, David Lynch, M. Night Shya­malan, and Michael Bay.

But just as the con­clu­sion of one year’s Christ­mas can sim­ply get you look­ing for­ward to the next year’s, so these two super-homages make you think about the pos­si­ble auteurs for inclu­sion in a third: what would Yasu­jirō Ozu’s Christ­mas morn­ing look like, shot just a cou­ple feet off the tata­mi mat? Or Chan­tal Aker­man’s, which, for prop­er pac­ing, might require a whole video by itself? Or a Coen Broth­ers Christ­mas? Gas­par Noé’s? Tru­ly, this hol­i­day keeps on giv­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rates a Clay­ma­tion of His Grim Hol­i­day Sto­ry “The Junky’s Christ­mas”

A Christ­mas Car­ol Pre­sent­ed in a Thomas Edi­son Film (1910)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Some­times when I enjoy a movie less than I thought I would, I find that my dis­sat­is­fac­tion stems from the feel­ing of hav­ing watched a movie made out of oth­er movies, a Franken­stein­ian cre­ation assem­bled from the dead bits and pieces that worked well when attached to their orig­i­nal bod­ies, alive long ago, but, when re-used, don’t come to life at all. When avid cinephile turned avid cinephile and direc­tor Quentin Taran­ti­no plays the role of a cin­e­mat­ic Dr. Franken­stein, how­ev­er, he turns the volt­age much high­er up, ele­vat­ing the prac­tice to an auteur’s art.

When Taran­ti­no’s films ref­er­ence his favorite films — be they clas­sics of the canon, tried-and-true west­erns, kung-fu obscu­ri­ties, pieces of Euro­pean new-wave, or grind-house exploita­tion flicks — they often tran­scend their sources. Jacob Swin­ney, whose super­cuts of Taran­ti­no’s use of sound, close-ups, and cars we fea­tured back in April, has cut togeth­er 34 par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive visu­al ref­er­ences of the thou­sands found in the direc­tor’s fil­mog­ra­phy and placed them along­side the works quot­ed.

The video cov­ers, in three min­utes, visu­al ref­er­ences from the “Mex­i­can stand­off” from City of Fire in Reser­voir Dogs to the dances from Band of Out­siders and 8 1/2 in Pulp Fic­tion to Super­chick and The Grad­u­ate’s open­ing titles in Jack­ie Brown to Bruce Lee’s track­suit in Game of Death on Uma Thur­man in Kill Bill Vol­ume One to Daryl Han­nah’s writhing from Blade Run­ner in Kill Bill Vol­ume Two to fram­ing from The Searchers in Inglo­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds.

It stops short of The Hate­ful Eight, Taran­ti­no’s lat­est, leav­ing it as an exer­cise for the view­er to tab­u­late just how wide a swatch of cin­e­ma the man has repur­posed this time. He’s gone on record as say­ing he’ll only make two more fea­ture films, but don’t wor­ry, cinephiles: they’ll more than like­ly con­tain enough ref­er­ences to oth­er movies, visu­al and oth­er­wise, to keep you in view­ing mate­r­i­al for the next twen­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Super­cuts Explore the Director’s Styl­ized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

Watch Free Online My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Hal­loween & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Have you had enough Star Wars yet? No, you will nev­er have enough Star Wars, not even after you’ve acquired the Star Wars dinette set, Star Wars bed and bath col­lec­tion, $400 Star Wars Lego Death Star, Star Wars chick­en frank­furter snack with built-in ketchup (seri­ous­ly)… and that’s not even to men­tion the first six movies, re-released every few years in new for­mats and expand­ed edi­tions.

Yeah, the mer­chan­dis­ing may be a lit­tle much; with the inau­gur­al film of the reboot­ed fran­chise open­ing dur­ing the hol­i­days, it’s a feed­ing fren­zy, no doubt. But for true fans, no amount of crass mate­ri­al­ism can put a damper on the enthu­si­asm, and yes, the anx­i­ety, for Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens. Will it eclipse our painful mem­o­ries of the pre­quels? Will Episode VII rekin­dle the mag­ic of Episodes IV-VI (for­mer­ly Episodes I‑III)? By near­ly all accounts, J.J. Abrams reimag­in­ing of the George Lucas lega­cy does all of the above.

To help you pre­pare for open­ing night (I’ve got my tick­ets!), we’ve com­piled some of our top Star Wars posts, fea­tur­ing all man­ner of doc­u­men­tary explain­ers, fan homages, inter­views, par­o­dies, remix­es, etc. From the dead­ly seri­ous to the ridicu­lous, per­haps no pop­u­lar movie prop­er­ty has attract­ed as much com­men­tary and meta-com­men­tary as Star Wars. That isn’t like­ly to change any­time soon, what with the Star Wars uni­verse again expand­ing into infin­i­ty. Before you take the leap for­ward into its future, revis­it its past at the links below.

Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tures and Archival Footage:

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83) (see the first above)

The Mak­ing of Star Wars As Told by C‑3PO & R2-D2: The First-Ever Doc­u­men­tary on the Film (1977)

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

The Mak­ing of The Empire Strikes Back Show­cased on Long-Lost Dutch TV Doc­u­men­tary

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

2 Hour Anno­tat­ed Star Wars Film Reveals the Cin­e­mat­ic Influ­ences Behind George Lucas’ Clas­sic Film

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Star Wars is a Remix

Adap­ta­tions, Fan Films, and Par­o­dies:

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

The Empire Strikes Back Uncut: A New Fan-Made, Shot-for-Shot Remake of the 1980 Sci-Fi Clas­sic

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

Star Wars as Silent Film

Watch a New Star Wars Ani­ma­tion, Drawn in a Clas­sic 80s Japan­ese Ani­me Style

And final­ly, if you’ve got the stom­ach for it and you want to catch up on the last six Star Wars films—or watch them all for the first time—you can do so all at once in the mind-bend­ing Meta Star Wars, which lay­ers all six films over each oth­er to cre­ate a psy­che­del­ic onslaught of whoosh­ing space­ships, droid bleeps and bloops, and flash­ing blasters and lightsabers. You won’t come away from the expe­ri­ence, if you can stand it, with any sense of plot or char­ac­ters, but you’ll have an inti­mate knowl­edge of the Star Wars uni­verse’s many unique sound effects.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch George Lucas’ Award-Win­ning Stu­dent Film Elec­tron­ic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967)

Free: Down­load 151 Sci-Fi & Fan­ta­sy Sto­ries from Tor.com

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you can rank the work of a film­mak­er by the num­ber of video essays it inspires, then Yasu­jirō Ozu must have made some of the great­est motion pic­tures of all time. Wes Ander­son, despite hav­ing got his start 65 years lat­er than Ozu, would also place well — and nat­u­ral­ly, as we post­ed back in July, one video essay even exam­ines the two men’s films (on most lev­els so seem­ing­ly dif­fer­ent) in par­al­lel. But today, let’s take a clos­er look at the mid­cen­tu­ry Japan­ese auteur of Tokyo Sto­ry, Float­ing Weeds, Late Spring and many more in iso­la­tion, through Lewis Bond’s new video essay “The Depth of Sim­plic­i­ty.”

At first glance, most of Ozu’s more than thir­ty films — domes­tic dra­mas which, as crit­ic Don­ald Richie wrote in his study of the direc­tor, “had but one major sub­ject, the Japan­ese fam­i­ly, and but one major theme, its dis­so­lu­tion” — might seem sim­i­lar to each oth­er. But that first glance only reveals the para­me­ters with­in which Ozu decid­ed to work, the stric­tures that engaged his genius. “Although I may seem the same to oth­er peo­ple,” he said in the quote that opens “The Depth of Sim­plic­i­ty,” “to me each thing I pro­duce is a new expres­sion and I always make each work from a new inter­est. It’s like a painter who always paints the same rose.” (Or maybe the same tea ket­tle?)

“Ozu want­ed to cap­ture the cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty of every­day life,” says Bond, “and doing so required a very spe­cif­ic style.” Rather than adding tech­niques on to his cin­e­mat­ic vocab­u­lary, Ozu elim­i­nat­ed them, mak­ing com­plete and mean­ing­ful use of those that remained: rig­or­ous, paint­ing-like com­po­si­tions using frames with­in frames; a low-placed cam­era (set, leg­end has it, around the height of some­one sit­ting on a tra­di­tion­al tata­mi mat) that hard­ly ever moves and always uses a human eye­sight-like 50-mil­lime­ter lens; dia­logue that cuts between straight-on close-ups of each speak­er (break­ing film­mak­ing’s sacred “180-degree rule” every time).

These tech­niques and oth­ers, which “seem false at first glance but begin to weave their way into the tex­ture of his films,” give Ozu’s work what Bond calls its “radi­ant­ly calm tone,” its abil­i­ty to “strad­dle the line of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and objec­tiv­i­ty,” and its expres­sion of mono no aware, one of those not-espe­cial­ly-trans­lat­able Japan­ese con­cepts hav­ing to do with the dis­tinc­tive emo­tion felt upon recog­ni­tion of the tran­sience of all things. Of course, Ozu him­self, who com­pared him­self to a hum­ble tofu-mak­er, would nev­er have made such claims. “I just want to make good tofu,” he said, and cinephiles the world over con­tin­ue to eat it up today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Yasu­jiro Ozu, “the Most Japan­ese of All Film Direc­tors”

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.