Film I was shocked and saddened to hear about the death of Robert Altman. Having spent the summer studying a style of cinema which if he didn't instigate, he developed, it's really difficult to capture just how visionary the man was in his film making techniques. The modern film narrative owes him a debt and you can't watch most independent cinema, with its loose improvisational style, shooting and editing without seeing his influence.
Although I can't admit to loving all of his films, my favourites were probably Short Cuts, the dream-like Three Women, Gosford Park, M*A*S*H and particularly The Long Goodbye which deconstructed the detective genre to the point that the case became less important than the characters. About the only genre he didn't tackle was Science Fiction, and I always wondered what that would look like. Twenty characters, ten or so storylines, alien colony, no real conclusion. How great would that have been?
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