Linotype: The Film is a feature-length documentary film centered around the Linotype typecasting machine invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. Called the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by Thomas Edison, the Linotype revolutionized printing and society, but very few people know about the inventor or his fascinating machine.
The Linotype completely transformed the communication of information similarly to how the internet is now changing it all again. Although these machines were revolutionary, technology began to supersede the Linotype and they were scrapped and melted-down by the thousands. Today, very few machines are still in existence.
Writer/director Sofia Coppola reunites with the film company with which she made the Academy Award-winning hit “Lost in Translation.” Her new film is an intimate story set in contemporary Los Angeles; Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a bad-boy actor stumbling through a life of excess at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood. With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning), Johnny is forced to look at the questions we must all confront.
As one of the few people who enjoyed Marie Antoinette, I’m of course looking forward to this. (via df)
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)
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?
The Cove is a 2009 documentary film documenting the annual killing of more than 2,500 dolphins in a cove at Taiji, Wakayama in Japan. The film was directed by former National Geographic photographer Louis Psihoyos, and was filmed secretly during 2007 using underwater microphones and high-definition cameras disguised as rocks.
Dave Eggers has written a young adult novel called The Wild Things that is based loosely on Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and the screenplay he co-wrote with Spike Jonze for the movie version. The New Yorker published an excerpt of the book this week.
Max left the room and found Gary lying on the couch in his work clothes, his frog eyes closed, his chin entirely receded into his neck. Max gritted his teeth and let out a low, simmering growl.
Gary opened his eyes and rubbed them.
“Uh, hey, Max. I’m baggin’ a few after-work Z’s. How goes it?”
Max looked at the floor. This was one of Gary’s typical questions: Another day, huh? How goes it? No play for the playa, right? None of his questions had answers. Gary never seemed to say anything that meant anything at all.
“Cool suit,” Gary said. “Maybe I’ll get me one of those. What are you, like a rabbit or something?”
But while I was working on the book, it was funny, because I started going in new directions, different from any of the screenplay versions, pushing it into some territory that was personal to me. So in a way the movie is more Spike’s version of Maurice’s book, and this novel is more my version.
In “Extract,” writer/director Mike Judge returns to the fertile territory of the American workplace, rotating his perspective away from the white collar cubicle warriors of “Office Space” and towards a blue collar boss — a small business owner — who employs an odd cast of losers, loners and misfits in his flavor extract factory.
It is the story of a teenage girl who, after being brutally raped and murdered, watches from heaven as her family and friends go on with their lives, while she herself comes to terms with her own death.
Jackson personally purchased the film rights to the book and from the trailer, it seems like this is a return to his Heavenly Creatures days, with a bit of the LOTR fantasy and special effects sprinkled in. Looking forward to this one.
Wonder no more what an animated Wes Anderson movie might look like: the trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox is out. Scroll a bit for the HD links. This looks *great*. (thx, dain)
The September Issue is the much-anticipated documentary that follows Anna Wintour and her staff at Vogue through the process of creating the magazine’s September issue, AKA the world’s thickest magazine issue.
An apt demonstration that an editor/curator’s main job is saying no to almost everything.
The world of the movie is one in which everyone tells the truth all the time…until Gervais invents lying. It also stars every other Hollywood actor and comic in the world, including Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Patrick Stewart, Jeffrey Tambor, Tina Fey, Christopher Guest, Rob Lowe, Louis C.K., and John Hodgman. (You know it’s quite an august list when you have to stick “and John Hodgman” on the end of it.)
IFC lists the 50 greatest trailers of all time. Trailers are like episodes for Law & Order for me — ten minutes after viewing and I can’t remember a thing about them — so I don’t really have any favorites, but this list seems like a solid collection.
Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and over 30 of today’s top documentary filmmakers provide an in-depth look at non-fiction filmmaking and the steps to making a documentary. These masters of the craft reflect upon the nature of documentary as a form of storytelling and offer insight into their approach to the ‘truth.’
The trailer for Ponyo, the latest animated feature film from Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, etc.). The film opened in Japan last year and made more than $150 million at the box office. The American version is dubbed and I don’t know if a subtitled version will made it to theaters in the US or not. There was a theatrical release of a subtitled Mononoke but that was a long time ago.
As a follow-up to the excellent Band of Brothers, HBO, Steven Speilberg, and Tom Hanks have teamed up to make The Pacific, a 10-part miniseries about the fighting in the Pacific during WWII from the perspective of a group of US Marines. The first trailer for the series has been released:
Update: So of course HBO made YouTube remove the video of the trailer. But they put up a smaller crappier version on their own site so it’s all ok, right? (Why do media companies not like people spreading their advertising around? That’s the fucking goal, yes?) Anyway, in the meantime I changed the link to the video above with a new one that hasn’t been removed yet. And if that one gets removed, you can probably find the newest ones here. (thx, greg)
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