Soundtrack “To Build a Home” by The Cinematic Orchestra. From their Album Ma Fleur. I think this spot touches the right kind of noble sensibility. Good for them for aligning the product with those honorable values.
Kingdom of Heaven
It’s a remarkable heroic movie that on balance, would be worthy of watching on a cold winter night.
Taking a closer look at this forgotten film, examining that familiar look of a “greenish tinge with hints of blue”. What I particularly appreciate is how under the guises of Ridley Scott these actors are not only supremely focused and alert, but look so convincing in battle costume.
Without sentimentality this movie has a cold heart but you’ll warm to it’s eye for delectable beauty. The characters are rich and intriguing, the plot has plenty of twists and turns.
Kubrick
“The best education in film is to make one. I would advise any neophyte director to try to make a film by himself” ( neophyte means “a recent convert to a belief” )
Dodes'ka-Den
Kurosawa in Color is Pretty But Jumbled
Akira Kurosawa made a movie with several interlocking stories. The stories were all about the denizens of a Tokyo slum. They fight, gossip, joke, fantasize and live out their daily lives in destitute poverty. Dodes’ka-Den is pretty to look at in parts but jumps fitfully about and the stories are not particular compelling & the entiremovie has a relentlessly downbeat & somewhat preachy tone.
I’ve seen it twice now and I was bored both times. I’ve seen all but two or three Kurosawa movies and there are a few Kurosawa movies I don’t care for but this is the only one that outright bores me. Kurosawa highlighting the travails of les miserables is nothing new. He had already done so in Red Beard and The Lower Depths and both of those are far superior works. Here, Kurosawa seems to be playing it safe with retread themes and unimaginative camerawork. For all of the pretty colors, the maker of Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and Rashomon renders a surprisingly static palette.
The making of Dodes’ka-Den was a turning point in Kurosawa’s life. It was an unqualified disaster. After over two decades in in the Japanesestudio system Kurosawa had broken with the studios and his stable of actors & entered into a fragile production partnership with three other directors. They desperately needed their first feature to be a hit. Dodes tanked critically and publically and Kurosawa tried to kill himself. Fortunately, he rallied and made six more movies, including the excellent Kagamusha & Dersu Uzala, the masterpiece Ran and the very watchable Dreams & Madadayo. Dodes’ka-Den is a lesser work by one of the greatest directors ever, which means it’s a better work that most directors’ best work.
Philip Bloom
Alone in Tokyo By Philip Bloom
U2 Sweetest Thing
I was checking out the new MTV music site, which incidentally seems to be the same technology implementation with a new user interface/visual design: www.mtvmusic.com This music video is one of the funnest, bravest attempts to pull off a synchronized sequence of comical moments, all without a single cut/edit. It’s basically live the entire way through without stopping.
Sorry, really sorry, really, really, really sorry.
Design for the War Room in ‘Dr Strangelove’
Design for the War Room in ‘Dr Strangelove’ Kenneth Adam (born 1921), UK, 1962
In ‘Dr Strangelove’, the concept for the War Room – the principal setting of this bitterly ironic film about the prospect of nuclear warfare – came from director Stanley Kubrick’s idea for a reinforced-concrete bomb shelter.
Production designer Kenneth Adam dramatised the space by using backlit maps, display boards and a huge circular baize-covered table, which turned defence planning into a poker game. Final concept drawing of felt-tip pen on card for ‘Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1964. Additional section to drawing, 1999 Sir Kenneth Adam, London
Kubrick said:
“As I tried to build the detail for a scene I found myself tossing away what seemed to me to be very truthful insights because I was afraid the audience would laugh. After a few weeks of this I realized that these incongruous bits of reality were closer to the truth than anything else I was able to imagine. After all, what could be more absurd than the very idea of two mega-powers willing to wipe out all human life because of an accident, spiced up by political differences that will seem as meaningless to people a hundred years from now as the theological conflicts of the Middle Ages appear to us today?”
Cool Hand Newman
Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as the anti-hero of such films as ”Hud,” ”Cool Hand Luke” and ”The Color of Money” — and as an activist, race car driver and popcorn impresario — has died. He was 83.
Newman died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.
With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was a heartthrob just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. ”I was always a character actor,” he once said. ”I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.”
Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon’s ”enemies list,” one of the actor’s proudest achievements, he liked to say.
Simple shapes of stories
Short lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on the ‘simple shapes of stories’ using nothing more than chalk, a blackboard, and his famous wit.
From the moment we exit the womb, we tend to hear the same basic stories over and over again. For instance, one wouldn’t normally draw comparisons between Jane Eyre and Avatar, but the two actually share the same trope. You know the one: “boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.” Most literary folk agree that there are common plots on which all literature is built, though they quibble over the exact number. In this video relic, the late Kurt Vonnegut boils them down to three, which he charts on just two axes. What you get is an old-school infographic of the shapes stories take.
HT @fastdesign
Christopher Nolan
Doodlebug, one of his early short films:
Old Man of Coniston
The blind climber story quickly gained status amongst the locals. It’s a story that could of easily become folklore, a old man loses his sight and against all odds, starts climbing the local mountain in aid of charity. I stumbled across this documentary by pure chance. What happened was a blind climber story had quickly gained cult status amongst the local’s mountain community in Cumbria (North of England).
Arriving in the village of Coniston, I wandered into the local post office and asked for directions. Sure enough, they knew a blind climber who’s actually better known as Charles Turnbull, 86, a retired police inspector with a passion for remembering names, place and people. “It’s comes from 40 years on the job” he explains over tea, clearly at ease with sharing his story with the inclusion of charm and good humour. This was an extraordinary tale of adventure and courage.
Director/Cameraman Dan Sellars
Sound and Vision Jez Curnow
Format: U-matic High Band – 10 minutes
James Marsh, Man on Wire
Don’t wobble when you reach the top. This new doc might well strike a chord for the audience, especially those desperately eager to establish ‘why’ and ‘how’ do you go about walking the wire across the 1970’s construction site of the Twin Towers. This was one of the most defining stunts every accomplished by a French climber.
Synopsis: August 7, 1974. A young French man named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire suspended between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He danced on this wire for an hour with no safety net before he was arrested for what has become to be known as the “artistic crime of the century”.
“Man on Wire” is the perfect example of matching doc director to doc subject. French tightrope walker and juggler Philippe Petit became world-famous when he walked between the two World Trade Center towers, then under construction, on August 7, 1974 — a completely illegal if fantastic act that involved complex preparation and shook up New York City’s police department. (He had to cross back and forth several times to avoid the cops.) Petit had already achieved artistic notoriety for his feats at famous sites like Notre Dame in Paris, but to traverse the air space between what were then the world’s two tallest buildings? It’s not only his unbeatable skill, though, that makes Petit an ideal subject for a doc: He is a ball of fire, a fascinating egomaniac who engages you completely with his energy and confidence. Petit has written several books, including To Reach the Clouds, which recounts the feat in downtown Manhattan.
The full interview with British director James Marsh.
Christopher Nolan
Like many future filmmakers, British-born Christopher Nolan began making amateur movies at an early age, playing around with a Super 8mm camera that belonged to his father. When his family relocated to Chicago for three years during his formative years, this child of a British father and American mother traded tips on movie making with pals Roko and Adrian Belic (who in 1998 premiered their documentary “Genghis Blues”). While an undergraduate at University College in London, Nolan saw his short “Tarantella” air in the USA on PBS in 1989. By the mid-90s, he had hooked up with Jeremy Theobold who appeared in the shorts “Larceny” and “Doodlebug”. Theobold would go on to produce and star in Nolan’s feature directorial debut, “Following” (1998). Serving as director, co-producer, co-editor and cinematographer, he inverted some of the conventions of the film noir to recount the tale of a blocked writer (Theobold) who spends his days stalking strangers in the hopes of jump-starting his imagination. Then, one of his “victims” turns the tables and invites the scribe to join in a series of petty thefts. Juggling time via flashbacks and flash forwards, Nolan established a key signature of his work in which chronology takes a back seat to character. Critics found much that was admirable in Nolan’s first feature, although most felt it was a marginal achievement, at best.
Nolan took a giant leap forward with his second film, “Memento” (2000), working from an unpublished short story by his brother Jonathan. An intriguing skewering of the conventions of film noir, “Memento” centers on a man with “anterograde amnesia”, a condition that does not allow him to form new memories, who is seeking the man who raped and murdered his wife. While the heart of the piece was a conventional revenge drama, the story unfolded in an intriguing manner — backwards, with bits of additional information added each time. Fascinating and complex, “Memento” earned great acclaim when it opened in Europe in fall 2000 and at its US premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival where Nolan picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. The film also earned him numerous citations from critics’ groups. Despite the fact that the idea for the story originated with his brother’s fiction, Nolan’s screenplay was deemed an original for the purposes of Academy Award consideration, in part because the film had premiered in both Great Britain and the USA before the short story was published in the March 2001 issue of Esquire. Capitalizing on his success, Nolan directed the English-language remake of the 1997 Norwegian crime thriller “Insomnia” (2002), starring three previous Academy Award winners, Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank . The critical response to the film was mixed: while some labeled the thriller as an early Oscar contender and heaped praise on Williams’ smart, controlled performance, others found the film a lackluster sophomore follow-up to the bravura efforts of “Memento.”
Nevertheless, Warner Brothers, which produced “Insomnia,” was still confident enough in Nolan’s talents to tap him to direct its long-aborning effort to revive the all-but-defunt “Batman” franchise after various other incarnations failed to make it into production. Teaming with screenwriter and comic book author David S. Goyer, who’d previously translated the “Blade” character from comics to film, Nolan took the film series 180 degrees from its increasingly gaudy and campy direction, envisioning “Batman Begins” (2005) as a pitch-black, deadly serious psychological exploration of the origins of the legendary comic book superhero. Taking direct inspiration from many sequences from the post-“Dark Knight Returns” era of the comics, Nolan’s film traced Bruce Wayne’s journey from orphaned millionaire to intensely skilled crimefighter, taking pains to craft both a Gotham City and an outer world that was as realistic as its pulpy source material would allow and eschewing over-the-top theatrics and computer-generated special effects in favor of nuanced acting and old-fashioned stunt work. Nolan and Goyer’s take attracted an all-star cast, including Michael Caine as Wayne’s faithful aide Alfred; Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Gotham’s sole uncorrupt cop; Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, the provider of Batman’s technology; and Liam Neeson as the mysterious, machiavellian Henri Ducard; but the true discovery of the film was Christian Bale in a star-making turn as the titular superhero. Though the film lacked some of the darkly manic pop inspiration that characterized the Tim Burton films, “Batman Begins'” soberer take was a breath of fresh air for loyal fans of the comic books and moviegoers turned off by Joel Schumacher’s more recent camp efforts, and the film proved to be both a critical and commercial success. Nolan was set to return to the franchise for “The Dark Knight” (scheduled for release in 2008) reteaming with Goyer on story chores (with a script by Nolan’s brother Jonathan) and helming again, this time with Heath Ledger in the role of the iconic villain The Joker.
* Born:
July 30, 1971 in England
* Job Titles:
Director, Screenwriter, Director of photography, Producer, Editor
Family
* Brother: Jonathan Nolan. wrote short story upon which “Memento” (2000) was based
Education
* University College, London, England, English
Milestones
* 1989 Made short “Tarantella” which received airing on PBS in USA
* 1996 Short film “Larceny” screened at the Cambridge Film Festival; Jeremy Theobald made acting debut
* 1998 Feature directorial debut, “Following”; Theobald starred and served as one of the producers
* 2000 Helmed second feature, the acclaimed thriller “Memento”, adapted from a story by his brother
* 2002 Directed the English-language remake of “Insomnia”
* 2005 Directed and co-wrote the fifth Caped Crusader installment “Batman Begins” which starred Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman
* 2006 Directed Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in “The Prestige,” about rival magicians working in early-20th-century London
* Began making short films at age seven
* Collaborated with Theobald on the short “Doodlebug”
* Spent three years of his youth living in Chicago; made early films with Roko and Adrian Belic (the future Oscar nominees for the documentary “Genghis Blues”)
Maggie Chung
New York Times review for In the Mood for Love:
“But I was so much older then, I’m much younger than that now..!”
Maggie’s acted in 75 films, but she says she only likes 10 of them and is only proud of 3: “Comrades – Almost a Love Story“, “Clean” and “In the Mood for Love“. In the sorta-sequel to the latter, “2046”, she was supposed to play an important part but wound up only appearing on screen for a few minutes.
How to watch Maggie Chung:
Netflix In the Mood for Love (subscription required)
Hulu The Heroic Trio (free with commercials/ads)
In The Mood For Love – he whispers his secrets into the hole, and then covers it with mud. it’s supposed to be a method to keep secrets as he once said to his friend during dinner in singapore.
Cool Hand Luke
Luke: I can eat fifty eggs.
Dragline: Nobody can eat fifty eggs.
Society Red: You just said he could eat anything.
Dragline: Did you ever eat fifty eggs?
Luke: Nobody ever eat fifty eggs.
Prisoner: Hey, Babalugats. We got a bet here.
Dragline: My boy says he can eat fifty eggs, he can eat fifty eggs.
Loudmouth Steve: Yeah, but in how long?
Luke: A hour.
Society Red: Well, I believe I’ll take part of that wager
Cloud Cuckoo
“Cloud Cuckoo”. It’s now registered on IMDB. The film celebrates daring acts of childhood imagination. This 12-minute short tells a tall story about a young boy’s adventure to an imaginary cloud factory. An award winning production in partnership with an aspiring young Scottish producer Lachlan MacKinnan. Our fantasy script secured the renowned acting talents of the late Doctor Who supremo Jon Pertwee.
Sci-Fi Hong Kong
Captured on the street of Hong Kong/Shanghai in 2006. Colin Mutchler over at ActiveFreeMedia providing the soulful acoustic tunes, courtesy of the YouTube audio swap function.
Prefab Structures
Thinking about a new office with good light and plenty of space.
Gorgeousness
An idea reminded me of a young Lara Sellars. Nicely played act of gorgeousness.
Rock solid determination
From Paul Zollo’s book Hollywood Remembered, an oral history of the movie industry: A 2001 interview with A. C. Lyles, a producer at Paramount who was born in 1918 in Jacksonville, Florida and worked at Paramount for over 60 years.
When I was 10 [in 1928] I wanted to make movies…
I had seen a picture called Wings — the first and only silent picture to win the Academy Award — with Clara Bow… and a new fella named Gary Cooper [who subsequently became a huge star]. I went and just fell in love with that picture. It was a Paramount picture playing at the Paramount Theater [at the time, the studios owned the theaters] in Jacksonville. I had seen that it said Adolph Zukor Presents, so I was in awe of Adolph Zukor [the founder and CEO of Paramount]. I spoke to the manager of the theater that day [to see] if he would give me a job. And he gave me a job handing out leaflets…
After four years in the job [he was then 14] I eventually met Adolph Zukor… when he came to Jacksonville. I asked him to let me come to Hollywood to work for him. He said, “Well, you’re just a kid, but you’ve been working for Paramount now for four years at the theater. So you finish high school, keep in touch, and I’ll hire you when you get out of high school.”
Now that was extremely kind of him… when he said to keep in touch and finish high school, my main objective then was to finish high school. But the most important thing was writing him a letter every Sunday. He didn’t tell me to write him every Sunday, he just told me to keep in touch. So I wrote him every Sunday for four years.
He didn’t write back — I didn’t hear from him but it didn’t matter. I never lost confidence or lost courage. I just knew he was looking forward to my letter each week as much as I was looking forward to writing him.
One day Gary Cooper came to my hometown. I was writing movie news for the hometown paper. I saw Mr. Cooper and I told him I would be out here in Hollywood to work at Paramount as soon as I got out of high school. And there again, for some reason, he took a quick liking to me. I told him about my letters to Zukor every Sunday and he asked me what I would be writing about this week, and I said, “Oh, about meeting you, Mr. Cooper.”
So he said, “Give me a piece of paper.” So he… wrote a note to Adolph Zukor saying, “I’m looking forward to seeing this kid on the lot.” So I wrote to Mr. Zukor telling him I had met Gary Cooper and enclosed the note to him.
Then I heard from Mr. Zukor indirectly. A woman named Sidney Brecker, who was his secretary, wrote to me and said, “Mr. Zukor has been receiving your letters. But he feels that you don’t have to write every week. If you wrote once every three or four or five months, that would be enough.”
Well, that didn’t discourage me at all. I continued to write to Mr. Zukor every Sunday. But I also had a new pigeon, Sidney Brecker, his secretary. So I wrote her every Sunday too. My whole main objective all week was what I was going to write to Mr. Zukor. Then I had to write another original letter to Sidney Brecker…
I wrote [Zukor] a letter every Sunday for four years, keeping in touch. The day I got out of high school [in 1936, in the heart of the Great Depression], I was in a day coach headed for Hollywood, where you sit up — probably four days and four nights. I had $48 in cash that I had saved up, and two loaves of bread, and two jars of peanut butter and a sack of apples, and I headed for Hollywood. Got off the train downtown, took the streetcar straight to Paramount, and told them at the gate to tell Mr. Zukor I was here.
And I’ve been here ever since.
Producer, A. C. Lyles
