kottke.org posts about movies
The Art of the Title chats with the excellent Jessica Hische about the lettering and type design she did for Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom.
To me, that was really fun because if you think about New England in the ’60s… it’s not like most places would be staying on top of the most current trends in type, using typefaces that were released that very year. So, using something from the ’40s made sense to me. If you think about a small, conservative New England town, lord knows all the printers and designers in town are probably still using type from years ago. I think when people think about historical type references, they often don’t think about that. You should be reaching from that time period to 15 - 20 years earlier and then you’ll be getting stuff that’s quote-unquote “current.”
And she’s releasing the typeface commercially so everyone can use it! Yay!
I love this theory from Jon Negroni that all of the Pixar movies take place in the same universe and are all connected.
Centuries later, the animals from Brave that have been experimented on by the witch have interbred, creating a large-scale population of animals slowly gaining personification and intelligence on their own.
There are two progressions: the progression of the animals and the progression of artificial intelligence. The events of the following movies set up a power struggle between humans, animals, and machines.
The stage for all-out war in regards to animals is set by Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, and Up, in that order. Notice I left out A Bug’s Life, but I’ll explain why later.
For the reading-averse, there’s a condensed timeline version. (via slate)
Update: And for the very reading-averse, here’s a video explanation:
Tim Pietrusky made an HTML/CSS version of the opening text crawl from Star Wars.
Well, sort of. Rowling is writing a screenplay for Warner Bros. based on a Hogwart’s textbook called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Although it will be set in the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for seventeen years, ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world. The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films, but Newt’s story will start in New York, seventy years before Harry’s gets underway.
If you’ve watched a movie in the past 20 years, chances are you’ve seen the animation featuring the Pixar logo and Luxo Jr., the company’s mascot. Luxo hops in, squashes the I, and takes its place; here’s what it looks like:
According to the Pixar wiki, there have been several variations of the logo, including the one where Wall-E comes out to fix Luxo Jr’s busted lightbulb:
Others include 20th and 25th anniversary versions, a 3D version that premiered with UP, and versions from Cars 2 and Finding Nemo that incorporate story elements into the logo.
This particular logo debuted with Toy Story in 1995. For the short films Pixar produced before that, they used variations on the not-very-exciting theme of circular indent in beveled square, a shape borrowed from the look of their Image Computer:
Many of the logo animation variations, including the pre-Luxo Jr. versions, can be seen in this video:
Animator Hayao Miyazaki is retiring from making feature length films. At a press conference in Tokyo, he discussed why.
The director spoke about how his eye sight was getting worse, making it hard for him to create his animation. He also said how each year, he is leaving his desk earlier and earlier.
A reporter noted that Miyazaki’s official retirement statement stated that he was retiring from making feature films. “As long as I can drive,” Miyazaki replied, “I will be going to the studio every day. But if there’s thing I want to do, then I will.”
This year’s The Wind Rises will be his last feature film. My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Ponyo, and many more…that’s quite a body of work.
Vice has a sneak peak at Errol Morris’ new documentary on Donald Rumsfeld, in what looks like a sequel of sorts to The Fog of War.
Morris has Rumsfeld perform and explain his “snowflakes,” the enormous archive of memos he wrote across almost 50 years in Congress, the White House, in business, and twice at the Pentagon. The memos provide a window into history — not as it actually happened, but as Rumsfeld wants us to see it.
Jesus, that little smile at the end. The Daily Beast has an interview with Morris about the film.
THE DAILY BEAST: How the hell did you get Rumsfeld to agree to do this? Were you chasing him down?
ERROL MORRIS: No, not at all. I wrote him a letter, enclosed a copy of The Fog of War, heard back from him very quickly, went to Washington, and spent a good part of the day with him. We started it under the premise that he would do two days of interviews, I would edit it, and if he liked it, we’d sign a contract and continue. If he didn’t, I’d put the footage in a closet and it would never see the light of day.
The name of the film, The Unknown Known, is a reference to a statement Rumsfeld made at a press briefing about WMDs, terrorism, and Iraq:
There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we do not know we don’t know.
Empire asked a group of visual effects specialists about their favorite special effect movie moments…here’s what they had to say. Tim Webber (The Dark Knight, Gravity, Children of Men) picked the warehouse scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark:
I love Davy Jones in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and the T-1000 walking out of the flames in Terminator 2, but my pick is the warehouse scene at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. It’s just a simple matte painting, not a very complicated visual effects shot, but it was done brilliantly. A lot of the visual effects from that period look terrible now — there are lines around things or you can see the joins on matte paintings, but that one was immaculate. I was pretty young when I watched it, but I was so impressed by the way it slowly revealed the size of the place. It’s not your big, crash-bang-wallop modern visual effects shot but it has real dramatic effect.
Josh Gondelman wants to make love to you like in the movies.
Everything that happens will be sexy. There won’t be any gross sounds or sights. Just like in the movies, our sex will be tasteless and odorless. I will not kiss your neck and get a mouthful of perfume and then you’re like what’s wrong and I’ll be like nothing and you’ll get all distant and I’ll be like sorry it’s the taste of your perfume, and you’ll be sad because you only wore it because I said I liked it one time and then all of a sudden you’re not in the mood and I think about sneaking off to the bathroom to furtively masturbate but I don’t and I just hold you limply until you fall asleep then I check Twitter for like an hour. That doesn’t happen.
Lantern is a search engine for the books, periodicals, and catalogs contained in the Media History Digital Library. If you are a fan or student of pre-1970s American film and broadcasting, this looks like a goldmine. Here are some of the periodical titles and the years available:
Variety 1905-1926
Photoplay 1914-1943
Movie Classic 1931-1937
Home Movies and Home Talkies 1932-1934
Talking Machine World 1921-1928
(via candler blog)
Here’s the trailer for Visitors, a new film from Koyaanisqatsi collaborators Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass. Most of the trailer consists of a single two-minute shot.
That shot reminds me of many things: Andy Warhol, long photos, James Nares’ Street, and Robbie Cooper’s work depicting kids playing video games.
Also interesting is that Visitors is comprised of only 74 shots, which with a runtime of 87 minutes means the average shot lasts over a minute. According to a recent investigation by Adam Jameson, an ASL (average shot length) of more than a minute is unusual in contemporary film. Inception, for instance, has a ASL of just 3.1 seconds and even a film like Drive, with many long shots, has an ASL of 7 seconds. But as Jameson notes, Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming Gravity contains only 156 shots, including a 17-minute-long shot that opens the film. But the Hollywood master of long-running shots? Hitchcock, I presume:
1. Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock), ASL = 433.9 [seconds]
OK, this isn’t a recent recent film, but it has to be noted, as it’s most likely the highest ASL in Hollywood. Hitchcock used only 10 shots in making it (the film’s Wikipedia page lists them). (As you probably know, Hitchcock designed those shots, then edited them such that the finished film appeared to be a single take.)
Spike Jonze’s new movie features Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with his computer. The trailer:
That looks really good. I didn’t care for Where the Wild Things Are but Being John Malkovich is one of my favorite movies.
Ecstasy of Order is a documentary about Tetris and the quest to find the game’s grandmasters.
Tetris. We’ve all played it, rotating the pieces (“tetrominoes”) and dropping them in the perfect place, or despairing as we discover a piece won’t fit. You may have even joked about “mastering” the game during a stint of unemployment, or as a child, before you could afford any other Game Boy cartridges. But what about the people who’ve truly mastered Tetris? Where are the Kasparovs and Fischers, the great champions who’ve dedicated their minds to solving its deepest puzzles?
One man made it his mission to find them. In an effort to legitimize Tetris as a pro sport, Tetris super-fan Robin Mihara summoned the greatest Tetris players from around the country to compete in Los Angeles at the 2010 Classic Tetris World Championship. Among them are the only players known to have reached the unthinkable perfect ‘max-out’ score on classic Nintendo Tetris: Jonas Neubauer and Harry Hong. Add in the top players for most lines, Ben Mullen and Jesse Kelkar, as well as newcomer Dana Wilcox and modern-day Tetris Grandmaster Alex Kerr, and a storm of Tetris greatness is brewing.
The film is also on Hulu (US-only) if you don’t mind commercials.
The CarsAndFilms Etsy shop sells posters featuring famous cars from films.
(via cup of jo)
Compiled from a bunch of different sources, here’s an attempt at an exhaustive list of movies that Stanley Kubrick liked. Among them:
Citizen Kane
The Godfather
Metropolis
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Harold and Maude
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
By far the weirdest entry on the list is White Men Can’t Jump. Then again, Terrence Malick loves Zoolander and David Foster Wallace once listed a Tom Clancy novel as a favorite. (via @DavidGrann)
The latest trailer for Gravity, starring Bullock and Clooney and directed by Alfonso Cuarón (who directed Children of Men).
Holy God, this looks terrifying. Can’t wait. (via ★interesting)
Published in 1927 in a publication called The Motion Picture Industry as a Basis for Bond Financing, this map shows what locations in California look like other places from around the world.
(via flickr)
Fourth-grader Zachary Maxwell is making a short documentary film about the lunch program at his New York City public school. It’s called Yuck.
In the fall of 2011, fourth grader Zachary Maxwell began asking his parents if he could start packing and bringing his own lunch to school. Unfortunately, they kept insisting that he take advantage of the hot lunch being served at the school. After all, the online menu sounded delicious and the NYC Department of Education (DOE) website assured parents that the meals were nutritious. Zachary wanted to convince his parents that the online menu did not accurately represent what was really being served at his school.
Here’s a short clip in which Zachary compares the special salads concocted by celebrity chefs Rachael Ray and Ellie Krieger for use in NYC public schools to the sad reality.
This is awesome. I mean, the lunches aren’t awesome, but Zachary is.
A recent episode of Planet Money explores what the movie Trading Places can teach us about financial markets.
On today’s show, we talk to commodities traders to answer one of the most important questions in finance: What actually happens at the end of Trading Places?
We know something crazy happens on the trading floor. We know that Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd get rich and the Duke brothers lose everything. But how does it all happen? And could it happen in the real world?
Also on the show: The “Eddie Murphy Rule” that wound up in the the big financial overhaul law Congress passed in 2010.
One of my favorite movie moments is Eddie Murphy’s breaking of the fourth wall in this Trading Places scene:
Lena Dunham shares her fifteen favorite Criterion films, saying she’s embarrassed that “so many of these films are in English, but I just love speaking English”.
Back in November, I posted about the effort of the filmmakers of Capturing the Friedmans to prove the innocence of one of the film’s subjects, Jesse Friedman. On Monday, a 168-page report released by the Nassau County District Attorney’s office found that there was enough evidence to charge and convict Friedman of sexual molestation of minors.
Friedman, his supporters and the makers of the Academy Award-nominated documentary have long maintained he was railroaded into pleading guilty to charges he molested 13 kids in the late 1980s, and were expecting the report to exonerate him.
It did the opposite.
Friedman, they found, was labeled a “psychopathic deviant” by his own shrink, and had actually sexually abused a total of 17 children.
“The District Attorney concludes that Jesse Friedman was not wrongfully convicted,” the blistering 172-page report says.
“In fact, by any impartial analysis, the investigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman … has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea adjudication as a sex offender.”
The panel said it interviewed three of Friedman’s now-adult victims. “Each confirmed that he was sexually abused by Jesse Friedman. Each told their separate story, marked by pain and recovery,” and “recounted years of shame and humiliation,” the report said.
The Washington Post has more. (via @DavidGrann)
This made me Laugh Out Loud for reals…Simone Rovellini doctors clips from movies to make actresses’ heads explode. The first clip features Dirty Dancing, When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, and Ghost:
And this one features a bunch of Disney princesses:
More videos and animated GIFs on the Exploding Actresses Tumblr. (via @scottlamb)
From filmmakers Leah Wolchok and Davina Pardo comes a documentary about New Yorker cartoons called Very Semi-Serious. They are soliciting funds to finish the film on Kickstarter.
I cold emailed cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, and-to my surprise-he called me right away. So I flew to New York for the New Yorker festival, met all the cartoonists I’d been reading about, and pitched him my idea. An epic film about the past, present and future of cartooning at the New Yorker! The definitive documentary about his beloved craft, his beloved cartoonists, his beloved hair! How could he say no? He said no.
But that was 6 years ago, when I was too young and too nice. Now I’m going gray and getting crabby, and I’ve recruited the talented New York filmmaker Davina Pardo to produce the film with me. Bob has given us amazing access to the cartoon department and we are deep into production on the film.
Prints of that cartoon are also available.
New prints in the Dorothy shop: these really cool Hollywood Star Charts, available in Golden Age and Modern Day editions.
The Modern Day version of our Hollywood Star Chart features constellations named after some of the most culturally significant films to have appeared on the silver screen since 1960 - present day. The stars that make up the clusters are the Hollywood stars that appeared in them.
The chart is based on the night sky over New York on June 16th 1960 — the date of the first showing of Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ at the DeMille Theater. With its new approach to storytelling, characterisation and violence it is seen as a key movie in the start of the post-classical era of Hollywood.
The 108 films featured include those chosen for preservation in the US National Film Registry due to their cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance; Academy Award winners; and a few personal favourites. Films include Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Exorcist, The Godfather, Chinatown, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction and Avatar.
You may remember Dorothy from their movie name maps.
Here are a few clips from Christian Marclay’s The Clock that have been surreptitiously filmed and uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo.
The clips are crappy bootlegs that cut off part of the screen, but I still totally get sucked in after 30 seconds of each clip.
An extensive examination of the evolution of the Star Wars logo, which went through too many iterations to count.
..Though the poster contained no painted imagery, it did introduce a new logo to the campaign, one that had been designed originally for the cover of a Fox brochure sent to theater owners….Suzy Rice, who had just been hired as an art director, remembers the job well. She recalls that the design directive given by Lucas was that the logo should look “very fascist.”
“I’d been reading a book the night before the meeting with George Lucas,” she says, “a book about German type design and the historical origins of some of the popular typefaces used today — how they developed into what we see and use in the present.” After Lucas described the kind of visual element he was seeking, “I returned to the office and used what I reckoned to be the most ‘fascist’ typeface I could think of: Helvetica Black.”
(via df)
Executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, The Act of Killing is a documentary directed by Joshua Oppenheimer about a group of Indonesian mass murderers.
In The Act of Killing, Anwar and his friends agree to tell us the story of the killings. But their idea of being in a movie is not to provide testimony for a documentary: they want to star in the kind of films they most love from their days scalping tickets at the cinemas. We seize this opportunity to expose how a regime that was founded on crimes against humanity, yet has never been held accountable, would project itself into history.
And so we challenge Anwar and his friends to develop fiction scenes about their experience of the killings, adapted to their favorite film genres — gangster, western, musical. They write the scripts. They play themselves. And they play their victims.
Wow. (via @aaroncoleman0)
Update: It expires today, but The Act of Killing is available to watch for free on PBS. After today, try Amazon.
Of course the watches worn by the characters in Fantastic Mr. Fox are going to be classic 70s and 80s timepieces.
From XKCD, a chart of the memes that various star systems are just hearing from the Earth’s light-speed communications.
This is the meme version of Contact’s opening credits scene, which is one of my favorites:
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