Babies trailer
Babies is a documentary that follows the lives of four newborn babies for the first year of life…in Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and San Francisco. (via clusterflock)
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kottke.org posts about movies
100 different versions of Avatar
To cover every possible screen and audio option out there, James Cameron produced over 100 different versions of Avatar for distribution to theaters.
In some cases, a single multiplex required different versions for different auditorium configurations. Creative decisions involving light levels also led to additional versions. 3D projection and glasses cut down the light the viewer sees, so “Avatar” also had separate color grades at different light levels, which are measured in foot lamberts. “If we had just sent out one version of the movie, it would have been very dark (in the larger theaters),” Barnett says. “We had a very big flow chart with all of the different steps, so we could send the right media to the right theater.”
NASA movie posters
For a number of their recent missions, NASA has designed movie-like posters. This one was pretty clearly influenced by Star Trek:
Americans don’t like movies with subtitles
Only nine foreign films have grossed more than $20 million in the US:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Life Is Beautiful
Hero
Pan’s Labyrinth
Amelie
Jet Li’s Fearless
Il Postino
Like Water for Chocolate
La Cage aux Folles
And only 22 have made more than $10 million. There are some great great films on the full list. (via latimes)
The September Issue
I straight-up loved this movie. It’s a fascinating look at the creative process of a team with strong leadership operating at a very high level. The trailer is pretty misleading in this respect…the main story in the film has little to do with fashion and should be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever worked with a bunch of people on a project. Others have made the comparison of Anna Wintour with Steve Jobs and it seems apt. At several points in the film, my thoughts drifted to Jobs and Apple; Wintour seems like the same sort of creative leader as Jobs.
Pre-order Avatar on Blu-ray
Avatar is already available for pre-order on Blu-ray (and DVD). Release date is April 22.
Marwencol
Marwencol is the name of fictional town built by Mark Hogancamp in his backyard in an attempt to cope with a near-fatal beating. Jeff Malmberg has made a documentary of the same name about Hogancamp’s fantasy world.
After being beaten into a brain-damaging coma by five men outside a bar, Mark built a 1/6th scale World War II-era town in his backyard. Mark populated the town he dubbed “Marwencol” with dolls representing his friends and family and created life-like photographs detailing the town’s many relationships and dramas. Playing in the town and photographing the action helped Mark to recover his hand-eye coordination and deal with the psychic wounds from the attack. Through his homemade therapy, Mark was able to begin the long journey back into the “real world”, both physically and emotionally — something he continues to struggle with today.
Some bits of the film are available on Vimeo. (thx, greg)
Best movie scenes
The Guardian asked several film directors to choose their favorite movie scenes. Ryan Fleck chose the chase scene from The French Connection and discovered that the 80+ mph chase was done through normal traffic with Hackman just driving like a crazy person.
I did a little bit of research about how they shot the scene. Phenomenal. Basically they just did it. There was no security blocking off other traffic, just Hackman in a car with a camera mounted on the front. They went crazy, lost their minds, and went for it. It was the kind of thing that you just would never get away with these days.
I don’t know if it’s my favorite or not, but the opening scene in The Matrix where the cops walk into a dusty old building to find Trinity working alone at a computer and then she flies up in the air and the camera circles around her as she kicks those cops’ asses, well, let’s just say I want to be that excited about seeing the rest of every single movie I watch. (via @brainpicker)
Update: The FC chase scene was actually done by stunt driver Bill Hickman. (thx, jason)
Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner
Philip K. Dick never got to see Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s film adaptation of his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but he did catch a snippet of the film on TV a few months before he died and was over the moon about it.
I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by Blade Runner.
(via hodgman)
The formula for Hollywood movies
After analyzing dozens of Hollywood films, a team of researchers has found evidence that the visual rhythm of movies at the shot level matches a pattern called the 1/f fluctuation, the same pattern that is found in dozens of natually occurring phenomena, including the length of the human attention span.
These results suggest that Hollywood film has become increasingly clustered in packets of shots of similar length. For example, action sequences are typically a cluster of relatively short shots, whereas dialogue sequences (with alternating shots and reverse-shots focused sequentially on the speakers) are likely to be a cluster of longer shots. In this manner and others, film editors and directors have incrementally increased their control over the visual momentum of their narratives, making the relations among shot lengths more coherent over a 70-year span.
Modern action movies are particularly adept at matching the audience’s attention span in this manner. The full paper is available here.
Famous movie quotes, graphed
Information visualization of some well-known movie quotes. A picture is, how you say, worth a thousand words:
Honest movie titles
Posters featuring accurate movie titles for some 2010 Oscar nominees.
Up —> Suck It Dreamworks
Inglourious Basterds —> Inaccurate Trailer
Blind Side —> White Lady Saves the Day
Logorama
One of the films up for the Best Animated Short Oscar is called Logorama. It’s a Pulp Fiction-inspired ditty composed almost entirely of inventively used corporate logos. A screenshot is instructive in illustrating what I’m talking about:
This is a nearly perfect outsiders view of the US. Watch the whole thing here.
Moon and Sunshine soundtracks
I don’t know what took me so long, but I finally tracked down the soundtracks for both Moon and Sunshine…hiding in plain sight on iTunes. They are both great in their entirety. If you just want a taste, at least get Welcome to Lunar Industries from Moon and Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor) from Sunshine.
Update: Forgot to add that the Sunshine soundtrack is only available through iTunes and the Moon soundtrack is available in the US as an expensive import (and not on Amazon’s mp3 site or anything like that) so your best bet is iTunes there as well.
Management lessons from Anna Wintour
The September Issue director R.J. Cutler sums up what he learned about business from Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and subject of his film.
I work in the film business, where schmoozing is an art form, lunch hour lasts from 12:30 until 3, and every meeting takes an hour whether there’s an hour’s worth of business or not. Not so at Vogue, where meetings are long if they go more than seven minutes and everyone knows to show up on time, prepared and ready to dive in. In Anna’s world, meetings often start a few minutes before they’re scheduled. If you arrive five minutes late, chances are you’ll have missed it entirely. Imagine the hours of time that are saved every day by not wasting so much of it in meetings.
Zoolander sequel
The very phrase strikes fear into my heart. I loved the original but this can’t possibly be any good, can it?
Bill Cunningham, the movie
Showing at MoMA next month, a documentary based on the NY Times’ relentless and intrepid street photographer Bill Cunningham. From the press release:
The opening night feature of this year’s New Directors/New Films is the world premiere of Bill Cunningham New York (USA, 2010) on Wednesday, March 24, at 7:00 p.m. at MoMA. Director Richard Press’ documentary is a heartfelt and honest film about the inimitable New York Times photographer, who has for decades lovingly captured the unexpected trends, events, and people of Manhattan for the Styles section of the newspaper. The film shows Cunningham, an octogenarian, riding his Schwinn bicycle to cover benefits, galas, and fashion shows around Manhattan, and illustrates how his camera has captured the looks that have defined generations.
I couldn’t really find any other information online about this film. They should at least get a trailer up on YouTube or something.
Update: No trailer yet, but there’s a web site for the film with screening info, etc.
Homeless Oscar picks
Greg Sloane, who calls the streets of New York home, thinks that Avatar should win best picture at the Oscars.
“I hope ‘Avatar’ wins so they keep it in theaters longer,” he said. “It’s three hours long, so you get more time to sleep.”
Skiing down Mount Everest
Forty years ago, Yuichiro Miura skied down Mount Everest.
“When I planned to ski Everest, the first thing I faced was ‘How can I return alive?’” he recalls. “All the preparation and training was based on this question. But the more I prepared, I knew the chance of survival was very slim. Nobody in the world had done this before, so I told myself that I must face death. Otherwise, I am not eligible.”
Miura’s exploits were the subject of The Man Who Skied Down Everest, which won the Oscar for best documentary.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy on Blu-ray
The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is finally coming out on Blu-ray on April 6th, but more than 1800 angry Amazon commenters would like to remind you that these are the theatrical versions and not the extended versions that true LOTR fans have canonized.
Some confusion among other reviewers that somehow we’re obligated to post a five star recommendation for the movie. This is an incorrect understanding of the review process. If I were reviewing the movie itself it would get a five. This review is for the product, as listed — in other words, I DO NOT RECOMMEND BUYING THIS PRODUCT/DVD. This product is being created FOR NO OTHER REASON than to dupe people into buying this movie twice…again. Those of us who were huge fans bought the original DVDs of the theatrical releases. THEN the studio FINALLY released the extended editions, even though they could have released both at the same time. Now that Blu Ray has won the High Def battle, the studios are salivating at screwing us all again the same way! Please do not let them get away with holding the extended edition hostage until everyone buys the theatrical versions.
Or, to put it in a way that Gandalf would understand:
New Line/WB need to learn a lesson from the movies themselves and realize that evil never prevails. Greed has a grip on them stronger than the Ring itself.
Whatever you do, don’t be fooled by the Blu-ray version of the 1978 animated Lord of the Rings feature that’s up for release on the same day.
The top 10 shots of 2009
This is one of my favorite end of the year lists: the top ten shots in movies (part one, part two). (via fimoculous)
Trailer for the A-Team movie
If you must watch. I’m not supposed to giggle when Liam Neeson says “I love it when a plan comes together” in a sorta-American sorta-Irish accent, right?
Annie Hall
A young-ish Christopher Walken appears in Annie Hall but his name is misspelled in the credits as “Christopher Wlaken”. Were this 1990, I might have invented a eastern European backstory for Wlaken, who, perhaps, Americanized his name sometime after appearing in the film. But as we live in the future, a cool hunk of glass and metal from my pocket told me — before the credits even finished rolling — that the actor was born Ronald Walken in Astoria, Queens.
The future isn’t any fun sometimes.
Pirating 2010 Oscar nominees
Andy Baio is back with his annual report on how many Oscar nominated films have shown up online prior to the awards ceremony (ripped from screeners, DVDs, etc.). For some reason, fewer films have been leaked this year and they are taking longer to show up online.
Are studios doing a better job protecting screeners and intimidating Academy members? Or was this year’s crop of films too boring for pirates to bother with? I can’t tell if this is a scene-wide trend or localized to the Oscars only.
The auteur’s Super Bowl
What if the Super Bowl was directed by Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino? You’d get something like this. The Werner Herzog bit at the end is great.
Who makes the most money in Hollywood?
Three out of the top 40 Hollywood earners for 2009 are the 20-something stars of the Harry Potter films…Daniel Radcliffe is sixth on the list, below James Cameron but above Jerry Bruckheimer. Robert Pattinson makes the list at #35 (Kristen Stewart is at #37)…I expect those totals will go up if the Twilight films continue to do well.
The films from Infinite Jest made real
Someone sent this to me ages ago and I forgot to post it but luckily I ran across it again this morning: A Failed Entertainment is a show at The LeRoy Neiman Gallery featuring the films of James Incandenza…you know, the ones from the 8-page footnote in Infinite Jest.
Included as a footnote in Wallace’s novel is the Complete filmography of James O. Incandenza, a detailed list of over 70 industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, and non-dramatic commercial works. The LeRoy Neiman Gallery has commissioned artists and filmmakers to re-create seminal works from Incandenza’s filmography.
No word on whether any of the filmmakers made JOI’s Infinite Jest…I guess we’ll find out if anyone emerges from the opening reception tonight.
Harvey Weinstein to Errol Morris: you’re boring
In 1988, Harvey Weinstein sent Errol Morris a letter complaining that the director wasn’t properly promoting The Thin Blue Line. The words, he doesn’t mince them.
Heard your NPR interview and you were boring. You couldn’t have dragged me to see THE THIN BLUE LINE if my life depended on it. It’s time you start being a performer and understand the media.
This appears to be the NPR interview in question. (via letters of note)
Stop motion thanks
The National Board of Review gave Wes Anderson a Special Filmmaking Achievement award for Fantastic Mr. Fox; Anderson accepted the award in the medium of stop motion animation.
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