#4 - shot-for-shot

(Russell J Turner)

This year we are using films from the Sight and Sound 2022 list as prompts

First up from me is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960 - #33), along with Gus Van Sant’s pointless remake

Our Californian butchery begins
not far from Fairvale, where the Bates Motel
stands like a monument to filial sins ‒
a seedy small-town cinematic hell.

Conversant with the carnage that ensued,
some cineastes will bore us with the cast ‒
“But did you know the characters include
the wonderfully named Milton Arbogast?”

Then Gus Van Sant, in nineteen ninety-eight,
decided to completely replicate
this classic film ‒ a shot-for-shot redraft
that’s more to do with marketing than craft.
Though given Norman’s chosen tool of strife,
perhaps not shot-for-shot but knife-for-knife...

RJT