The NYTimes has a beautiful series on abandoned movie theaters. They are heartbreaking and packed with emotional metaphor.
Thanks to Phillip Lefesi for making sure I checked it out.
Categories
Category: These Are Those Things
That inspire, that I like, and that I hope you feel the same about
Categories
“That Was A Good Trailer”
Film Forum showed this trailer before the restored print of METROPOLIS. When it was done, the nine year old young man next to me turned to me and said “That was a good trailer”. He knows of what he speaks. And thus how little we have traveled. Fifty years is the age of Godard’s BREATHLESS and it still feels fresh even to an innocent’s eyes. And for that matter, METROPOLIS totally stood up and got the approved stamp of “exciting” from both my son and his friend.
For a film not yet shot, Neither The Veil Nor The Four Walls, is a beautiful website, and one that we can be expected to be an inspiration for many other websites. It’s got a great crowdfunding mechanism, clean simple design, easy navigation, and all the critical information you want.
Somebody sent me a nice note Marian Evans sent me a nice note about it, but I forget who, but truly, thanks!
if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was. Thanks to Dan McGuire and Poets.org http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16549 |
Chris Cunningham is one of the great directors of our time. He’s never made a feature. Now he’s abandoning music videos and commercials. It’s a crime this live show of his is not coming to NYC. Can we do anything about that?
I find it very rare that I end up telling stories of movies, particularly short films. That is what happened when I first saw Nash Edgerton’s SPIDER, perhaps my favorite short of recent history. I found myself doing it again when he started making videos for Bob Dylan. This is his most recent video and it, like Dylan’s Christmas tunes, has a good sense of goofy fun — although I miss Nash’s signature mayhem.
I am relieved that Mr. Edgerton’s finally made a feature, because there’s too much story inside it for me to ever tell well. You just have to see it. With no stars, no fancy VFX, just talent in craft, he spins an excellent yarn. Discipline, the avoidance of the unnecessary, the commitment to the declared agenda, has long been one of my favorite attributes in cinema, and this man’s got it. The NY Times agrees (“Mr. Edgerton, with crack timing in the editing room and a sure hand on the Steadicam, is a coldblooded professional. His craft is frightening.”) so hopefully this film will prove that people do care for good movies, even without the hype and star trappings.
As some of you might know from my tweets when I first saw it, I dug this movie. Someone once complimented me for making many films that captured the awkwardness in sex on film as it is real life. Film history is filled with the fluff in both sex and violence. Nash stages fights as the mess they are and it does wonders for bringing us in to the movie and keeping us there. It’s just one in a number of approaches that makes this film work. He makes it look easy — and is not. Still, it makes me wonder why we can’t get noir right. This is good pulpy fun played for real without winks and nods.
Check out the trailer below, and please see it soon, as we have to vote for the work we want with our dollars.
Today’s guest post is from Afterschool’s director Antonio Campos.
I met Babak Jalali in the summer of 2006 when we were both accepted into the Cannes Residence. We then spent close to 5 months living in a glorious Parisian apartment working on our scripts, me on Afterschool, Alexis Dos Santos on Unmade Beds, Fien Troch on Unspoken, Sebastian Lelio on Navidad, and Babak on Frontier Blues. Though we are all very supportive of one another in the Residence, we were all nervous about showing one another our scripts until the very end. I think both Babak and I both had the feeling that we liked one another’s scripts but weren’t sure how it was all going to translate to screen. And when did see each other’s films, we were all pleasantly blown away.
