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23 December 2009
[movies] Great Overview Of The Best Of Asian Cinema … my friend Steve has been looking at Asian Cinema from some time now on his blog Things Fall Apart. His review of progress so far is a great jumping on point … ‘The blog has not run the way I thought it would. I started with a list of 15 movies. I still have to cover my favourite 7 (Oldboy, My Sassy Girl, Infernal Affairs, Uzamki, Battle Royale, Suicide Circle and Kairo). I have at least another 20 movies that I know I want to talk about.’
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22 December 2009
[comics] Mike Sterling On Watchmen: ‘…there’s a part of me that wishes the Watchmen film had been an enormous hit, enough so that a sequel would have been inevitable, and that even possibly new comic book follow-ups and tie-ins would have been published. Because really, the fanguish that would have caused would have been epically awesome.’
18 December 2009
[tv] Let’s Enhance Montage … ‘Lock On and enhance the Zee Axis…’ (more…)
11 November 2009
[movies] In Praise Of The Sci-Fi Corridor … On the corridors in Alien: ‘Ridley Scott knows that corridors matter in a horror (or ‘haunted house’) movie, but these marvellous sets are also being showcased to sell the gritty and grimy, commercial and industrial reality of the Nostromo as well. The upper sections related to the command deck were dirtied down with gold and black paint after a reshuffle of sections in order to convey the grittier world inhabited and Parker and Brett on the engineering level.’ [via Metafilter]
19 October 2009
[movies] Roger Ebert Reviews Alien … As the sequels (“Aliens,” “Alien 3,” “Alien Resurrection”) will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn’t play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a “perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility,” and admits: “I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.”
29 September 2009
[movies] Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner … ‘As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, 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.’ [via @girlonetrack]
7 September 2009
[movies] Matt Haughey on Julie and Julia: ‘There was this one scene. Julie is in her cube and she’s ecstatic that a post got 53 comments and she high fives her coworker, and moments later her husband calls and says he just noticed she’s #3 on the most popular Salon blogs list and her arms shoot up out of her cube in victory and I began to cry tears of joy. I sat in the theater thinking about my little blog…’ [via Robot Wisdom]
26 August 2009
[timeline] Time Travel Timeline … Information is Beautiful provides a visual timeline of time travel movies showing where paradoxes might occur.
21 July 2009
[comics] After Watchmen, What’s ‘Unfilmable’? These Legendary Texts … Wired looks at some susposedly unfilmable comics and books … On Sandman: ‘Too long. Spanning 74 issues and more than a decade, if you count spinoffs and standalones, Neil Gaiman’s decorated mythopoetic fantasy starring Dream, Death and other revered, abstract personifications is stuck in film limbo. “There is talk of an HBO Sandman,” Gaiman told Wired.com in March, “because no one quite knows what to do with it. But the truth is, if anybody is going to make [it] a movie, it will probably be a kid in film school right now to whom The Sandman was the most important thing ever. It will take the amount of commitment, dedication and madness that Peter Jackson brought to Lord of the Rings to get it on the screen…”‘
27 June 2009
[movies] Michael Mann Interview … the director of Public Enemies interviewed in the Guardian … ‘Public Enemies is the first movie to attempt to disentangle the Dillinger myth from the facts – until now every other filmmaker has, so to speak, printed the legend – and one wonders, in retrospect, why it took Mann this long to get around to it, so well matched are the gangster’s story and the themes and concerns that have animated Mann throughout his career.’
4 June 2009
[funny] Han Solo, P.I. … Star Wars done in the style of Magnum P.I.’s opening credits. [via Waxy]
8 May 2009
[lists] 10 Best Head-Scratching Stories, Explained … ‘Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth: Jimmy relives his granddad’s life. He finally meets his father, who then dies. Superman can’t save him.’
6 May 2009
[movies] Top 13 Stupidest Decisions In The History Of Horror Films … ‘Building your house on top of that old cemetery.’
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27 April 2009
[funny] Ask Mefi: I would like a comprehensive list of each offense Ferris and his friends commit during the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” … ‘There are many cases of fraud in the movie. For example, when one kid is asked, “Do you know Ferris Bueller,” he responds, “Yeah, he’s getting me out of summer school.” [..]
Oh, and in theory, Cameron’s father could go after both Ferris and Cameron for grand theft auto of the Ferrari.’
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25 April 2009
[film] Go Watch: Carousel … I watched this and wondered… Where’s Batman? … ‘Tribal DDB, Amsterdam commissioned us to create a piece of filmed content that could hold its own with Hollywood’s best. Director Adam Berg responded with an idea for an epic ‘frozen moment’ cops and robbers shootout sequence that included clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, and plenty of broken glass and bullet casings.’
15 April 2009
[funny] Uncomfortable Plot Summaries … from postmodernbarney.com … ‘DAREDEVIL: Blind man pisses off crime boss, gets all his girl-friends killed.’
25 March 2009
[comics] The 20 Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books … interesting list to ponder … ‘American Splendor (2003. USA) Welcome to the esoteric life and times of Harvey Pekar, a cranky file clerk from Cleveland whose cult-fave self-published comix used to get pimped back in the day on the David Letterman show. Paul Giamati does a fantastic job of portraying Pekar, and even more eerie is how dead-on some of the supporting cast are at channelling Robert Crumb and Tobey Radloff. Pretty much a perfect movie about one of the most important autobiographical comics to ever come out of the underground.’
18 March 2009
[watchmen] Charlie Brooker On Watchmen: ‘Fun as a massive great spectacle, but it surely can’t make any sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn’t read the comic; it was a bit like watching an impressive animated version of a collection of snatched memories of what the comic was like, if you see what I mean.’
6 March 2009
[comics] Who Makes The Watchmen? … A illustrated guide to the tortured history of the production of the Watchmen movie … ‘Hurm. Snyder and Tse seem to have faithful adaptation. Minus the squid. But keeping the violence. Fine with me.’
[comics] Review of the Watchmen Movie by Pádraig Ó Méalóid … a real Alan Moore fan reviews Watchmen … ‘There is a scene in the film where Doctor Manhattan is being interviewed in a television studio, just before he abruptly leaves the Earth to go to Mars. He describes something – I don’t recall what at this point – as being as useful as a photograph of Oxygen would be to a drowning man. And this is actually the most apt description I can think of for this film: It looks a lot like the original Watchmen book, but has none of its grace, or beauty, or subtlety, or sinuously beautiful timing.’
27 February 2009
[watchmen] The Visceral Horrors of ‘Watchmen’ Movie Merchandise … On a Comedian Costume: ‘So, how many people are going to wear this without realizing that they’re dressed as a serial rapist who shot a pregnant woman in the face?’
20 February 2009
[comics] BeaucoupKevin(dot)com: Why I will not be seeing Watchmen … ‘The more I see of the film version of Watchmen, the less I like it, and perhaps more importantly, the more I dislike what it represents: the dumbing-down of something greater for the sake of a false “authenticity” that’s apparent only to those shallowest of readers of the source material.’
[movies] How accurate was Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” about the future? … from Currybetdotnet … On Leonard Rossiter: ‘The problem is that, 6 years before ‘Rising Damp’ hit British television, Leonard Rossiter is basically playing a Russian scientist as if he were Rupert Rigsby…’
19 February 2009
[movies] The Universe According to Kaufman … profile of Charlie Kaufman … On Synecdoche: ‘Near the film’s end Caden is confronted by a sea of Post-it notes that stretch toward the horizon, each signifying a part of a larger whole. He takes in the expanse and says, “I don’t know why I make it so complicated”.’
16 February 2009
[quotes] The words of Mickey Rourke, actor, 56 … On his early days in Hollywood: ‘I was bouncing at a transvestite nightclub… and back then all the transvestites were on this shit called Angel Dust, so you’d hit them over the head with a baseball bat but they’d keep on coming…’
13 February 2009
[movies] A List Of Mindfuck Movies … On 2001: A Space Odyssey: Yes, it’s a meticulously crafted and imminently rational three-course meal of a film. For the first two hours, anyhow. And then, in the final 30 minutes, it serves up a steaming bowl of WTF for dessert.
20 January 2009
[rEDrUM] Finally Published: All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy by Jack Torrence … you can buy a copy at blurb.com: ‘If it’s nearly impossible to read, let us take a moment to consider how difficult it must have been to write. One is forced to consider the author, heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence. It’s that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power’
15 December 2008
40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes … ‘Let us cut out their living guts one inch at a time, and they will know what we can do!’ [via Waxy’s Links]
12 December 2008
[movies] Stuff About Stanley Kubrick – big page of links from a Kubrick fan.
29 November 2008
[movies] Michael Caine reveals Italian Job ending … ‘The star says he would have saved them by “switching on the engine”, burning off petrol until it righted itself. “I crawl up, switch on the engine and stay there for four hours until all the petrol runs out,” he said. “The van bounces back up so we can all get out, but then the gold goes over…”‘
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18 November 2008
[comics] 75 comics being made into films … they are really digging through the comic archives for film properties. The Hands of Shang-Chi: ‘This kung-fu crazy character emerged from Marvel comics at the height of the early 70s martial-arts boom and the stories incorporated Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith characters. Ang Lee is in the producer’s chair with Forbidden Kingdom stunt arranger Woo-ping Yuen set to direct, but most of the news on the project is pretty old.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
28 October 2008
[movies] Dog Day Afternoon … a page about the Al Pacino movie Dog Day Afternoon which includes a Life Magazine article about the real robbery which inspired the movie … ‘Inside the bank is bedlam. Bank robbers and hostages listening to live radio coverage of the caper. Phone calls going out, phone calls coming in. “I hope they kill you all,” a voice, at the end of the line tells bank manager Barrett. “Make your move now,” whispers another voice, calling every 15 minutes.’
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25 September 2008
[movies] Trailer to Synecdoche … Charlie Kaufman’s new film … ‘There are millions of people in the world. And none of those people is an extra. They’re all leads in their own stories.’ [via Fimoculous]
22 September 2008
[funny] The Onion – EPA Shuts Down Local Ghost-Entrapment Business … ‘Though its incarcerated employees were unavailable for comment, the company released a statement denying any wrongdoing. The statement also repudiated claims that those associated with the spectral-entrapment operation were afraid of any individual ghost, and went on to say that the act of capturing said ghosts simply made them “feel good.” Despite being a relatively new discipline, specter reclamation, more popularly referred to as “phantom-busting,” has enjoyed enormous success in recent weeks due to a massive increase in paranormal phenomena in the New York area.’
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8 September 2008
[movies] Frost/Nixon Trailer … for Ron Howard’s new film on the famous interview starring Michael Sheen as David Frost … ‘Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.’ [via Ghost in the Machine]
2 September 2008
[movies] Ten Truly Underrated Sci-Fi Movies … ‘Ten bucks says that Silent Running is Al Gore’s favorite sci-fi film.’
14 August 2008
[comics] Watchmen Movie Poster Comparison … compare the recent movie posters with Dave Gibbon’s original posters for the comic … ‘Who Watches the Watchmen?’
28 July 2008
[movies] WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars … Wired on War Games … ‘Leonard Goldberg, the producer, shows me some footage they’d shot – it was a scene with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy going into his bedroom, early in the movie, and he shows her how he can change her grades on his computer. She freaks out and leaves. And I’m looking at this and thinking, “What’s wrong here?” Driving home that night, I realized what it was. I stopped the car, found a phone booth, and called Leonard. “I know what the problem is!” I said. “They’re not having any fun!” These kids were treating this as if they’re involved in some dark and evil terrorist conspiracy. If I could change somebody’s grades on the computer, I’d be peeing in my pants with excitement to show it to some girl. And the girl would be excited about it!’
26 July 2008
[movies] The Shining (with Robots) … ‘The famous tricycle scene re-created with a tribot and a couple femisapiens.’
17 July 2008
[movies] The letters of Stanley Kubrick … Kubrick on Full Metal Jacket: ‘My intention was not to relish violence for its own sake but to emphasise the reality of both the training process undergone by the recruits and the war situation in which they found themselves. A crucial aspect of this process is the use of language to dehumanise the young men. This had to be presented in a totally truthful way otherwise I would have compromised the reality of the story. I make no apology for taking such an approach. Full Metal Jacket offers no easy moral or political answers. It is not intended to be either pro-war or anti-war. It is concerned with the way things are.’
8 July 2008
[blogs] The Documentary Blog … ‘Welcome to The Documentary Blog, a website created by and for documentary fans and filmmakers. Our goal is to become your quintessential source for news and reviews pertaining specifically to documentary films. Our regular ‘features’ will focus on filmmakers, style, and hopefully provide insight into the process of documentary filmmaking.’ [via Metafilter]
7 July 2008
[kubrick] Amazing Promotion Film for More4’s Stanley Kubrick Season … a 65 second one-take tracking shot following Kubrick’s point-of-view as he walks through the set of The Shining … ‘Your Script, Mr Kubrick.’
5 July 2008
[comics] Heroes … Ex-comics writer Gerry Conway on work for hire in comics and how he feels about not being credited as one of the creators of the Punisher or for the use of his ideas in the Spider-man movies… ‘So, to put it bluntly, I got nothing for either Punisher film, and nothing for my stories being adapted for the Spider-Man movies. I didn’t even get credit for creating the Punisher, or for the use of my story material in Spider-Man. Honestly, I didn’t expect that I would. I’m not happy about the fact, but I’m resigned to it. I accept the reality of how the business operated when I wrote those stories…’
4 July 2008
[movies] One Storyboard from The Shining showing Kubrick’s meticulous and controlling eye for detail … ‘THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO DO IT REPEAT NO OTHER WAY exercise the greatest care as the compositional effect of a different path might be BAD BAD BAD’
30 June 2008
[kubrick] Stanley Kubrick – 79 – Male – Hertfordshire, St. Albans … wonderful profile of Kubrick on MySpace of all places … ‘By Barry Lyndon (1975) a pattern in Kubrick’s later work emerges: his leading men are either blank slates or over-the-top psychotics.’ [via Kottke]
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