Recently, I watched the movie "Cold in July" (2014) directed by Jim Mickle, in which Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard and Don Johnson acted brilliantly.
Watch the trailer:
One thing that stood out in this movie was the mysterious vibes the soundtrack by Jeff Grace added to the overall picture. Listen to the soundtrack on Spotify.
The movie's theme song is "Cosmo Black" by Dynatron:
Image credit: Poster via IMP Awards.
Designer Pete Majarich designs one alternative movie poster every day for 2016, which he posts at the Tumblr page "A Movie Poster A Day", and the posters are up for grabs over at Society6.
Day 4 of 365 – The Bourne Identity:
Day 12 of 365 – The Man Who Fell To Earth:
Day 17 of 365 – Fargo:
Via Cool Material.
The Swedish documentary "Regissören som försvann – historien om The Ninja Mission" (The Director Who Disappeared, The Story of The Ninja Mission), is an interesting watch about the making of the action film "The Ninja Mission" (1984), directed by Mats Helge. The film was shot entirely in Sweden (and Norway), and while it wasn't particularly well received in its native country, the movie became a major success in the U.S and other countries. It grossed a staggering 250.000.000 Swedish crowns (30750000 USD), proceeds that never reached Mats Helge and his team, but mysteriously went elsewhere. Rumour has it, that a large chunk of the proceeds went to the production of New Line Cinema's Freddy Krueger movies.
Mats Helge continued to direct and produce movies, but none of them became as successfull as "The Ninja Mission". Helge made his last public appearance during Sweden's leading film awards "Guldbaggen" in 2000, and has since then choosed to stay out of the limelight.
Full documentary:
Kim Nguyen's latest film "The Empire of Scents" (Le Nez) lets you delve into the world of scents and aromas. The film that's influenced by the book "Taste Buds and Molecules" by Francois Chartier hits cinemas this spring.
This work reminds me of the excellent documentary "The Nose – Searching for Blamage" (2013) about the very charismatic perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri.
Via @mollybirnbaum and @papillesetm.
"The Moped Diaries" is somewhat simplified a short movie about the cycle of love; falling in love, staying in love and falling out of love, and still be able to handle thoose ups and downs by creating a life worth living. A truly life-affirming movie!
For more details, head over to Short of the Week for a lenghty review.
I've seen this Saturday Night Live segment called the "Dance Floor Killer" with Jim Parsons a few times when it's aired on television. I just think he's an astounding actor and I'm really looking forward to see him portrait various characters in the future.
Little White Lies presents the 25 best films of 2014 in this 12 minutes long compilation. Edited by David Ehrlich.
Gawker reports about Kean University's latest purchase: a $219,000 conference table. For all the parents out there and students who've saved up for university, this must make sense.
Reading the commment section, I found this wonderful clip from the movie 24 Hour Party People (2002). "You're paying for design…":
Via reader robNYC.
In this clip from the BBC documentary In At The Deep End (1985), actor Oliver Reed gives journalist Paul Heiney a little lesson in acting. 01.36 min in gets me every time!
Oliver Reed was certainly an actor with a very powerful presence and persona, so I'm very glad to have found the three-part web documentary Oliver Reed: In Search of a Legend in which Oliver's son Mark Reed talks to actor Rob Crouch about his father, a most welcome contrast to some of the videos that can be found showing a rather tipsy Oliver.
Hearing Mark speak in the beginning of part 3 just makes me sad. The reality TV exploitation mindset isn't new after all, e.g. Mark mentions his dad appearance on the show "The Word" (video), when they spied on him in the green room, just cynical.
Featured image: Oliver Reed portrait by Duane Michals. Via Masters of photography.
This is genius filmmaking! When the movie Indiscreet came out in 1958, it wasn't accepted to even shown a married couple together in bed. To be able to film the romantic bed conversation between Cary Grant's and Ingrid Bergman's characters, film director Stanley Donen solved the dilemma by employing a split-screen effect:
As noted in a May 1958 Hollywood Citizen-News article, the film employed a split-screen effect showing Philip and Anna in their separate beds in different cities. According to the article, Donen had "two bedrooms built side by side on the sound stage, and...two separate camera and sound crews. Their operations were synchronized, but each color camera photographed only one-half of the action." Although the characters are supposed to be three hundred miles apart, the effect resulted in their appearing to be "side by side in bed." This was significant in 1958, when even married couples could not be shown together in the same bed. Because the actors could hear each other's words as they were spoken, "their emotional reactions had far more romantic impact than if the action of each split-screen half had been staged at different times." The Hollywood Reporter review describes how the act of Grant straightening his blanket in Paris appears "to conquer space by patting Bergman's London derriere." The Hollywood Citizen-News article predicted that this method "might well set a precedent for future scenes of this kind."
Via And So It Begins.
What initially was thought to become a half-hour PBS documentary about a basketball court in a deprived area of Chicago, ended up portraying two teenage basketball players and their goal to make it to the NBA and college, with a running time close to 3 hours. Regarded as one of the best American films in the 90's, Hoop Dreams now celebrates it's 20th anniversary. Dazed met up with director Steve James to talk about the movie:
Why did you decide to go beyond your original half-hour premise?
Steve James: The germ of the idea of following them over time came fairly early on, when Pingatore said to Arthur and his family that if he came to St Joe's and worked hard at the grades and basketball he'd help him get into college. We thought it was such an extraordinary promise for this man to make to a kid he'd literally just met and seen play briefly. That led to us thinking it would be interesting to see what happens to a kid like this in four years. The way we presented it to the families was we would maybe check in once a month and see what was going on. That didn't sound too demanding to them or us. For the first two years we shot a total of about 25 days, but then we became more obsessed as the story was evolving. By the end we shot a total of 100 days just during their senior year and its aftermath. If you watch the film you see the detail and complexities grow as the years pass, and that was due to a growing feeling that there was so much going on in these stories apart from basketball that we needed to capture as it was unfolding.
[...]
In the film William and Arthur both dream of making it into the NBA, but at a certain point their focus shifts towards the more tangible goal of getting into college. How did you feel about their changing desires?
Steve James: I think that's something that's sometimes lost on people who like to say, with good intentions, “How can these kids possibly put so much faith in this basketball dream when the odds of making it to the NBA are so minuscule?” Yes, the odds are minuscule, but for the opportunity to get to college and possibly to even get a full or partial scholarship, those odds are far, far better. When kids like Arthur and William look around their neighbourhoods they don't see doctors and lawyers and other professionals. They see guys who have been able to use sports to get out and go to college or get a job because they were a star, even locally, so that becomes a much more realistic dream to them. The tragedy of it all speaks to a larger tragedy, but you can't fault them for seizing on something like basketball as a method of escape.
Watch full movie on Vimeo or SnagFilms.
Featured image: The original movie poster via film-cine.com.
David Lynch and Mark Frost will start shooting 9 episodes of Twin Peaks in 2015:
Swedish artist Anders Weberg has taken on an ambitious project by making the film Ambiancé with a running time of 720 hours, equal to 30 days.
The premiere date is set to December 31, 2020 and the film will only be shown once, the master copy will then get destroyed after the screening.
A teaser has been shown online between 4-20 July 2014 and the next one is due to 2016 and will be around 7 hours long.
Unfortunately, this teaser is the only thing available:
I leave you with an audiovisual performance from 2012 by Marsen Jules and Anders Weberg:
Featured image: Via the Ambiancé website.
Related:
Billy Hayes ended up in a Turkish prison after getting caught smuggling hashish in 1970. He wrote about his experiences in the autobiographical book Midnight Express which also became a feature film (full movie on YouTube) with the same name.
In this epsiode The Real Midnight Express of National Geographic Channel´s Banged Up Abroad, Billy now tells the full story, since neither the film nor the book was completely accurate due to legal reasons.
Yes! I loved the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (trailer) from 2012 and am really looking forward to the sequel The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel that´s due to March 2015.
It´s a bit sad that I´m not going to see one of the main characters from the first movie played by one of my favorite actors Tom Wilkinson, but I guess I can cope with some great acting by Richard Gere instead:
Via @kenchawkin.
Tony Zhou has directed this short video called The Art of Silence, in which he talks about Martin Scorsese’s frequent use of silence in his films. Silence seems to be used by Martin whenever the characters are all making important choices that will have consequences.
I found it interesting to hear Tony discuss how popular cinema today tends to misuse silence or don´t use it at all. It´s a rare commodity it seems.
Via Brain Pickings.
A couple of years ago an image of a Macgyver Multitool circulated on the Internet. To my great disappointment I found out today that this was indeed just another hoax. I got my hopes up, but it quickly faded away. I must admit, I really wanted to have one of thoose.
The MacGyver Multitool (image via Bit Rebels):
Maybe I may have more luck finding me some new Chuck Norris Action Pants, great for my yoga practice. They did exist after all:
Learned a few fun facts from the new Swedish TV show Retro. You know the famous dance scene from the movie Flashdance (1983)? Some of the dancing is done by Crazy Legs (Richard Colón) from the American b-boying crew and hip hop group Rock Steady Crew, the group behind the hit single (Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew (video). The day before the shooting of the scene he tried to learn the actors Jennifer Beals and her body double, the French actress and dancer Marine Jahan, how to perform the dance, but after failing numerously times they showed up the next day all bruised up:
But it was Beals's final scene wherein she got the most help. Jahan performed most of it, but certain moves required specialized expertise. Gymnast Sharon Shapiro performed the flips, and one certain breakdance move was done by a male breakdancer -- Colón himself. "Being the first person in hip-hop to dress in drag -- I had to deal with that for years," the 47-year-old joked.
The producers of the film didn't plan to put Colón in the pivotal scene but were forced to out of necessity. No one could learn his backspin move, he recalled. He remembered Jahan and Shapiro showing up with bruises on their hips after many failed attempts to follow his breakdance coaching.
It happened:
When Colón was finally approached to dress and dance as Beals's character, he said with a laugh, "I just rubbed my fingers together because of that money," explaining that it was a lot to ask of a Puerto Rican teen from the Bronx to shave his legs, underarms, and mustache. "Especially the mustache because … I was a young kid and I'm finally getting my little machismo thing going on. And now, I have to shave my mustache off."
Here´s the whole dance scene. Skip to 3:43 to see Crazy Legs:
You can see more of the Rock Steady Crew in the grafitti documentary Style Wars from 1983 (video).
Featured image: Rock Steady Crew performs in Flashdance (video).
Related reading:
Chronos (1985) is the name of the film directed by Ron Fricke, also known for his work with the film Baraka. The movie was made using time-lapse photography. Together with the continuous soundtrack by Michael Stearns, this truly makes for an ambient experience.
And here is the soundtrack:
Update: You can watch the film over at The Internet Archive.
Yesterday I watched the movie The Way, Way Back. At first I almost rejected the movie but me and my wife ended up watching it anyway. Seeing one of the posters, I mistakenly thought this was yet another youth movie. I´m so happy I was wrong. The movie left us with some very good feelings.
The story was touching, the movie was shoot in nice surroundings and the soundtrack was good (soundtrack on Spotify), but most importantly, the acting was great. Steve Carell played yet another character role, this time acting as the wicked and controlling stepdad. The acting by Sam Rockwell was pure pleasure to watch, Toni Collette, Maya Rudolph and Allison Janney were outstanding as always. The younger actors did really great too, Liam James and AnnaSophia Robb.
From the IMDB synopsis:
Shy 14-year-old Duncan goes on summer vacation with his mother, her overbearing boyfriend, and her boyfriend's daughter. Having a rough time fitting in, Duncan finds an unexpected friend in Owen, manager of the Water Wizz water park.
Trailer:
We fell in love with co-writer Jim Rash´s character Lewis:
Related reading: