Zodiac

I read the book long ago and was intrigued by the codes and the fact that he hadn't been caught. I saw the video in Blockbuster and recalled that it had gotten some good reviews. The narrative is interesting but the reason I'm posting about it is the direction.

The long overhead shot in the hotel at the end of Taxi Driver is a one of my favorite scenes of all time. It was absolutely original*, riveting, and a cinematic slight of hand (how exactly do you pass over the hallway lights?).

David Fincher does something similar in Zodiac in a scene in which he follows a car in downtown San Francisco. It's mesmerizing and I have no idea how it was done.

There's also a wonderful CGI scene in which, to indicate the passage of time, the Transamerica building is shown be built in a time-lapse that would make Harryhausen proud.

After watching the movie, I looked up the book and the author, Robert Graysmith, on Amazon. Graysmith wrote a follow-up book in January 2007, Zodiac Unmasked, in which he identified Zodiac as Arthur Leigh Allen,** as does the movie. Graysmith had apparently suspected Allen when he wrote the original book but didn't name him.

Many comments on Amazon criticize Graysmith for sloppy detective work and even fabrication in concluding that Allen was Zodiac.

*Hitchcock did interior overheads in Dial M for Murder but they were not directly overhead.

**Played with goofy menace by my favorite duck stamp artist.


If you're not reading Nicholas Packwood, who invented footnotes in blog posts, you should.