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kottke.org posts about movies
The graphic design of the futuristic world
The graphic design of the futuristic world depicted in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. I love the signage that doesn’t fit on the hospital. (via do)
David Denby talks about films with “disordered
David Denby talks about films with “disordered narratives”, with a special focus on the films of Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu: Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel. Many of the films he mentioned are what Alissa Quart, Mark Bernstein, and Roger Ebert refer to as “hyperlink cinema” or “hypertext films”…too bad Denby didn’t use that term in his piece.
This video has so much goodness in
This video has so much goodness in it: a short Bollywood-esque production featuring Daleks and the Tardis and then Kevin Smith arriving at an event flanked by a bunch of Stormtroopers, Boba Fett, and Anakin Skywalker. “Stormtroopers, keep it tight, we gotta move.” I wonder if he always travels that way and if so, does he fly business class while the Stormtroopers are stuck in coach? (I assume Boba Fett has miles and can upgrade most of the time.)
Update: I really like the idea that the Stormtroopers, after the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi, are this giant unemployed workforce who occasionally find work chauffeuring Kevin Smith about.
Interviewer: Ok, tell me about your past work experience.
Stormtrooper: Most recently, I flanked Kevin Smith.
Good. What else?
Um, I was in the room when Lord Vader choked an Admiral.
Wow! Right next to Vader?
Well, no. He choked him over the video screen and I was in the room with the Admiral. But it was still pretty cool.
Oh.
A commercial for the iPhone aired during
A commercial for the iPhone aired during the Oscars last night. Rick Silva noticed that it was a lot like artist Christian Marclay’s 1995 piece Telephones (the relevant clip starts at 3:40) and, to a lesser extent, Matthias Mueller’s film, Home Stories. Nice detective work!
Update: Here’s a list of all the actors in the iPhone commercial (except one).
Update: The missing “French Woman” is Audrey Tautou from Amelie. (thx to several folks who wrote in)
Video montage of classic movie photos taken by Magnum photographers.
Video montage of classic movie photos taken by Magnum photographers.
Why the backlash for Little Miss Sunshine? “
Why the backlash for Little Miss Sunshine? “The critics have a point, which they sometimes make with noticeable bitterness, that many independent films are stale and mannered. But for some of these films, this critical dismissal is a strange fate: to be faulted for pretense, preciosity, and stylistic calculation when their real achievement is to reintroduce an enjoyable sort of broad humor into American cinema.”
A peek into David Fincher’s uncompromising filmmaking
A peek into David Fincher’s uncompromising filmmaking process on the eve of the release of his new film, Zodiac. Jake Gyllenhaal: “David knows what he wants, and he’s very clear about what he wants, and he’s very, very, very smart. But sometimes we’d do a lot of takes, and he’d turn, and he would say, because he had a computer there, ‘Delete the last 10 takes.’ And as an actor that’s very hard to hear.”
Lots of Buster Keaton movies on YouTube
Lots of Buster Keaton movies on YouTube and Google Video.
Update: Lots more Buster Keaton films at Internet Archive. (thx, nick)
Good actors that got paid a lot
Good actors that got paid a lot of money to appear in crappy movies. Buster Keaton was in Beach Blanket Bingo?
Interview with Stephen Frears about his film,
Interview with Stephen Frears about his film, The Queen. “Do you think, then, that some of the power of the monarchy derives from its privacy and secrecy, and that as it modernizes — as the people are demanding that it do — it will actually lose some of that power?”
Cate Blanchett’s relaxed concentration
One of my favorite actresses is Cate Blanchett, but I don’t know much about her. A profile of Blanchett from last week’s New Yorker (not online) filled in the blanks nicely:
What Blanchett hides from her directors and her audience she also hides from herself. “I do like to preserve the mystique of the thing, for myself as much as anyone else,” she has said. Over the years, she has repeatedly dodged autobiographical questions by claiming, “I’ve sort of forgotten my childhood.” These ellipses in conversation help Blanchett to trick herself out of self-consciousness. “I’m not interested in the character I am in myself,” she told James Lipton on the television series “Inside the Actors Studio.” “Any connection I have to my characters will be subliminal and subconscious.”
Her approach to acting sounds similar to the idea of relaxed concentration in sports, like the practicing of free throw shooting until you can do it automatically without having to focus on shooting and can instead just focus on being focused while shooting. The author of Blanchett’s profile, John Lahr, wrote a piece on stage fright for the magazine a few months ago that deals with the same theme. British actor and comedian Stephen Fry describes how he seized up after reading a review of a performance in the Financial Times:
The impact of the review was, Fry says, “phenomenal.” He describes the sense of acute self-consciousness and loss of confidence that followed as “stage dread,” a sort of “paradigm shift.” He says, “It’s not ‘Look at me - I’m flying.’ It’s ‘Look at me - I might fall.’ It would be like playing a game of chess where you’re constantly regretting the moves you’ve already played rather than looking at the ones you’re going to play.” Fry could not mobilize his defenses; unable to shore himself up, he took himself away.
To me, the battle with the self is one of the most interesting aspects of watching performance, whether it’s sports, ballet, live music, movies, or someone giving a talk at a conference.
Miami Vice
Count me among those that scoffed when I heard a movie was being made of the Miami Vice TV series. The lesson: don’t doubt Michael Mann. Not to mention Vice’s director of photography, Dion Beebe. The movie was gorgeous and had the most distinct and tight sense of style I’ve seen in quite some time. Wish I’d seen it on the big screen.
Teaser trailer for Oceans 13. Looks like #13 is Andy Garcia.
Teaser trailer for Oceans 13. Looks like #13 is Andy Garcia.
Errol Morris on Abu Ghraib
Some information on Errol Morris’ newest project, a film about Abu Ghraib:
Morris introduced us to his latest project about the Abu Ghraib, and the iconic images created from the prisoner torture. It’s his hypothesis that it’s a handful of those photos from that we’ll remember a hundred years from now about the Iraq War. He explained that this project began with the mystery of two photos by Roger Fenton described by Susan Sontag in her book, Regarding the Pain of Others. During the Crimean War, Fenton took photos of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Two are of the same road, one with cannonballs littering the road, one with the cannonballs in the ravine. The Mystery being which photo was taken first, which was staged?
This is an interesting topic for Morris considering he pioneered the use of “expressionistic reenactments” in documentary filmmaking with The Thin Blue Line.
Update: The film is called “S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure”.
From what looks like an informative and
From what looks like an informative and insightful blog on film, two posts: one on planimetric composition or “mug-shot framing” in films (you may have seen Wes Anderson using it) and the other is an update on The Hobbit movie and Peter Jackson’s involvement (or lack thereof) with it. The Hobbit item is old news, but it fills in so many blanks left by traditional and typical online media coverage that it’s worth the read if you’re at all interested in the subject. (thx, ajit)
Andy Warhol would have loved this round-the-clock
Andy Warhol would have loved this round-the-clock webcam view of the Empire State Building…it’s like a sequel to Empire that never ends. (via cyn-c)
A pair of fine sports-related headlines from
A pair of fine sports-related headlines from The Onion: Confused Bill Simmons Picks The Departed To Win Super Bowl and Bears Lead Rex Grossman To Super Bowl. “All season long, the Bears have shown that they can win, even in the presence of Rex Grossman.”
Andy Baio has a report on Oscar
Andy Baio has a report on Oscar nominated films showing up online. Out of the 34 films nominated in one form or another, 31 have been released online. “The average length of time between a film’s USA release and its first appearance online is 12 days.”
Two lists, both alike in dignity: the
Two lists, both alike in dignity: the top 10 best best actress Oscar winners and the top 10 worst best actress Oscar winners. Anyone they missed?
The Oscar nominees have been announced. Compare
The Oscar nominees have been announced. Compare with the top movies as determined by the film critics.
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