Which is also to say—
—that the cover of Roxane Gay’s Ayiti reminds me of Saul Bass’s opening credits for North by Northwest.
Update: Since Peter mentioned it in the comments:
If anyone else can think of other works in this vein, let me know and I’ll include it. We can make a long list…
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A. D. Jameson is the author of five books, most recently I FIND YOUR LACK OF FAITH DISTURBING: STAR WARS AND THE TRIUMPH OF GEEK CULTURE and CINEMAPS: AN ATLAS OF 35 GREAT MOVIES (with artist Andrew DeGraff). Last May, he received his Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the Program for Writers at UIC.
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Nice comparison, Adam. I always thought Fincher was “doing Hitchcock” with _Panic_Room_ and that title sequence is now just another useful piece to putting together that puzzle. There’s definitely something memorable and unsettling about taking the mundane shots of overly-familiar urbanity and putting these substantial, free floating letters and words in occupying real space over them. A nice little touch to “ease” the viewer into the atmosphere of the movie, of which I think Hitchcock might have approved.
When they make the list of David Fincher’s best films, the opening credits of Panic Room will be on it.
Hmmm…it’s hard to tell if you’re being complimentary or not :-)
I was also going to mention Magritte’s “Voice of Space” in conjunction with these title sequences, but I don’t know how to imbed images (or anything really) in html, if that’s even what you hip cats are doing.
Panic Room didn’t leave much of an impression on me (good or bad), but those opening titles are truly fantastic. I don’t mind taking films piecemeal.
As for “The Voice of Space,” I added it above.