To fans of sexy early films like "Red Headed Woman" (1932) and "Baby Face" (1933), the Hays Code was the ultimate cinematic party pooper.
TARVER: One of the biggest challenges is that by its very nature, coding isn't particularly cinematic.
Not every actor in Hollywood made it to the red carpet at the Golden Globes tonight, as Mrs. Prada covered her runway in an enormous red carpet of her own as part of a show that was "a cinematic character study, subverting male archetypes and formal codes of dress".
Its rigorous codes of authority, repression, discipline and honor become the cinematic equivalent of a military ballet in which the Legionnaires' drills and training rituals are ecstatic rites of purification.
The prosecutors and federal agents described Mr. Gigante's behavior in prison in cinematic terms, suggesting that he had issued orders in whispers and coded hints that could mean life or death on the outside.
This line is mumbled by actor Heath Ledger, in the midst of an arresting and career-defining performance as Ennis, in which his anguished taciturnity seems both consonant with some of the finest performers in cinematic westerns - Henry Fonda, John Wayne - and entirely plausible - according to a more realistic code of the cinematic west, which Lee has announced as one of his own ambitions.
The week's major cinematic disappointment is the fact that the talent of director Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) has been chewed up by the studio franchise system and spewed out as this derivative, relentlessly dull-witted computer game spin-off.
They repudiated most French movies on the grounds of taste; they were exalted cinematic hedonists for whom film was a kind of primordial rock and roll, a secret code of ecstatic pleasures that defined their very generation.
It seems an unlikely candidate for a star turn, but the humble bar code, long the quiet workhorse of retailing, is poised for the consumer equivalent of a cinematic close-up.
It is also an exercise in color coding, inviting us to ponder stereotypical ideas about blondes, brunettes and redheads, and also to admire the cinematic properties of hair.
