Zoolander sequel
The very phrase strikes fear into my heart. I loved the original but this can’t possibly be any good, can it?
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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.
Ebert’s favorite films of the 2000s
Even though it’s on The Naughtie List, I missed Roger Ebert’s list of the best films of the decade. It’s an interesting list; several items on there that you didn’t see on a lot of other lists.
Best extended movie takes
Mike Le has collected 20 great extended takes from a variety of movies, including no-brainers like The Shining and The Player but also some you may not have noticed before. (via @sippey)
Opening sequence for Sherlock Holmes
The Art of the Title Sequence highlights the impressive Sherlock Holmes opening credits, including an interview with the designer.
Back to the Future, 2009
If Back to the Future were made today, Marty would have travelled back in time to 1980. See also timeline twins.
The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, live in NYC
Working quickly, the DMTheatrics theater company has put together a stage performance of The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski beginning March 18 in NYC. The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, if you don’t remember, is the what-if-Shakespeare-wrote-it version of The Big Lebowski that I linked to last week.
Map of Netflix nation
Fascinating map of Netflix rental patterns for NYC, Atlanta, Miami, and nine other US cities. I wonder if you could predict voting patterns according to where people rent Paul Blart: Mall Cop or Frost/Nixon. I wonder what the map for Napoleon Dynamite looks like?
Update: Here’s how the Times’ graphic was made.
Most of the interesting trends occurred on a local scale — stark differences between the South Bronx and Lower Manhattan, for example, or the east and west sides of D.C. — and weren’t particularly telling at a national scale. (We actually generated U.S. maps in PDF form that showed all 35,000 or so ZIPs, but when we flipped through them, with a few exceptions, we found the nationwide patterns weren’t nearly as interesting as the close-in views.)
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski
What if The Big Lebowski had been written by Shakespeare?
It was of consequence, I should think; verily, it tied the room together, gather’d its qualities as the sweet lovers’ spring grass doth the morning dew or the rough scythe the first of autumn harvests. It sat between the four sides of the room, making substance of a square, respecting each wall in equal harmony, in geometer’s cap; a great reckoning in a little room. Verily, it transform’d the room from the space between four walls presented, to the harbour of a man’s monarchy.
Yep, it’s the entire screenplay. The Knave abideth, indeed. (thx, conor)
Pixar’s conservatism
Pixar, social conservatives?
There is something conservative about much of Pixar’s output, but when I say conservative, I mean a small “c” conservative that sees the world along the same lines as Edmund Burke: “A disposition to preserve.” I’m going to call this “social conservatism,” by which I don’t mean the religious or moral conservatism of modern political discourse, but a conservatism that is interested in preserving traditional social features — in particular, the idea of “family” — but which sees such preservation as ultimately futile. The family will dissolve, eventually, and so we must do what we can to keep it going as long as possible. It is a worldview based not on progression but on loss.
Avatar
One of the most difficult things to get right in movies about aliens or the future is matching the cultural and technological sophistication of a people with their environment and history. In Avatar, the Na’vi are portrayed as a Stone Age tribe, living in relatively small groups and essentially ignorant or uninterested in technology beyond simple knives and bows. But the Na’vi are also very physically capable, obviously very intelligent, aware of their global environment, well-nourished, healthy, omnivorous, adaptive, and even inventive. They have domesticated animals, are troubled by few serious natural predators, can live in different environments, have easy access to many varied natural resources (for sustenance and building/making), and can travel and therefore communicate over long distances (dozens if not hundreds of miles a day on their winged animals).
And most importantly, the Na’vi have regular and intimate access to a moon-sized supercomputer — a neural net supercomputer at that — that connects them to every other living thing on their world and have had such access for what could be millennia.
It just doesn’t add up. The Na’vi are too capable and live in an environment that is far too pregnant with technological possibility to be stuck in the Stone Age. Plot-wise it’s convenient for them to be the way they are, but the Na’vi really should have been more technologically advanced than the Earthlings, not only capable of easily repelling any attack from Captain Ironpants but able to keep the mining company from landing on the moon in the first place.
Nation’s Pride
Nation’s Pride is a fictional Nazi propaganda film that appeared in Inglourious Basterds. The six-minute clip above was released as a promotion for IB and was shot by Eli Roth, who played the baseball bat-wielding Bear Jew (and is also a director of some repute). (thx, jeffrey)
Home Alone, the Twitter version
Follow the McCallister clan on Twitter as they fly to Paris and discover that they left their son Kevin at home, alone.
An attempt to tell the narrative of John Hughes’ classic Chistmas movie through the medium of Twitter as if its happening in real time.
This is pretty crazy/elaborate…they’re updating 22 separate Twitter accounts, one for each main character.
Why the Phantom Menace sucks
I confess that I only had time this morning to watch the first 10 minutes, but from that viewing I can safely conclude that this is the best 70-minute video critique of The Phantom Menace that exists in the world. If the first 20 seconds don’t get you, stick around until “protagonist”. Or don’t take my word for it; here’s Lost’s Damon Lindelof’s reaction:
Your life is about to change. This is astounding film making. Watch ALL of it.
Part the first:
After watching the last 3-4 minutes of this first segment, I wanted to give Lucas a hug because I feel so bad for the guy for failing in public in such a huge way. (thx, scott)
Inglourious Basterds
This is pretty much the point at which I knew I was going to love Inglourious Basterds:
Although I can sure see why someone might hate it; the film rode that razor’s edge all the way through.
Enhance your hyperspace
A bunch of clips from movies and TV that show people enhancing things on computer screens:
And a more artful collection of hyperspace scenes from movies:
Both are via Andy, Mr. Supercuts himself.
Why shoot a gun with a side grip?
Because that’s how they did it in Menace II Society.
Journalists and gun experts point to the 1993 Hughes brothers film Menace II Society, which depicts the side grip in its opening scene, as the movie that popularized the style. Although the directors claim to have witnessed a side grip robbery in Detroit in 1987, there are few reports of street gangs using the technique until after the movie came out.
But the side grip can also be practical:
During the first half of the 20th century, soldiers used the side grip for the express purpose of endangering throngs of people. Some automatic weapons from this era —like the Mauser C96 or the grease gun — fired so quickly or with such dramatic recoil that soldiers found it impossible to aim anything but the first shot. Soldiers began tilting the weapons, so that the recoil sent the gun reeling in a horizontal rather than vertical arc, enabling them to spray bullets into an onrushing enemy battalion instead of over their heads.
But mostly it just looks cool.
Update: TV Tropes has an entire page dedicated to the Gangsta Style shooting technique. (thx, grant)
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