125 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Bottoms

      Despite it's woke plot points, enjoyable and not obsessed with identity. Pretty funny, despite implausible ending of killing a bunch of football players.

  2. Jan 2024
    1. What made the deal so unusual - and sparked concern among exhibitors - is that 2929 plans to distribute the projects simultaneously in the theatrical, home video and cable arenas.

      https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/may/27/news1

      In 2005, 2929 Entertainment signed a distribution deal with Steven Soderbergh which was one of the first to suggest distributing projects simultaneously to theatrical, home video, and cable.

  3. Dec 2023
  4. Oct 2023
    1. frank danielle at the 1:29 american film institute 1:30 who was dean of the school uh center for 1:33 advanced film studies 1:34 and he taught a way to do it 1:39 um you get yourself a pack of three by 1:42 five cards 1:44 and you write a scene 1:47 on each card and when you have 70 scenes 1:52 you have uh a feature film 1:56 so on each card you write the heading of 1:58 the scene 1:59 and then the next card the second scene 2:00 the third scene four scenes so you have 2:03 70 cards 2:04 each with the name of the scene then you 2:07 flesh out each of the cards 2:09 and walk away you got a script

      David Lynch described the method from Frank Daniel (1926-1996) of the American Film Institute and Dean of advanced film studies who taught students to plot out their screenplays using 3 x 5" index cards. One would write out a total of 70 cards each with scene headings. Once fleshed out, one would have a complete screenplay.

      via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yngWNmouhP0

  5. Sep 2023
    1. Art is the hook that engages students…. The subjects are familiar so that students have much to recognize but they also contain elements of mystery so students have observations, ideas, and emotions to puzzle over [my emphasis]. (p. 24)

      Right, so the modern equivalent would be to design a game or an 3d animation in an intuitive way, yet the integration of pipeline in this systems makes it so that not even experienced professionals in the area cn develop a short film or an interactive experience through art that eases people into coding.

      I think we need to do a better job at this. If the system that allowed us to design the processes also taught it to people then we wouldn't have to chose between improving the learning curve and the system there should all be one. why did we stop shipping manuals with our tech..? ahh it was because we stopped caring about what the people that designed the tool thought.

  6. Aug 2023
  7. Jul 2023
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5XqqylBW7M

      Building up Christopher Nolan's IMAX 70mm version of Oppenheimer.

      IMAX splices use zigzag cuts in the film to create more surface length to tape the film ends together.

      Christopher Nolan now holds the record for the longest IMAX film ever made. IMAX needed to extend the length of their platters to accommodate his prints of Oppenheimer for release in 2023.

  8. May 2023
  9. Apr 2023
    1. but this time it was like the entire film, and some scenes in particular, needed extra rhythm and vitality. T

      The music in this film is so soft, tender, and goes all over different scenes.

    2. I wanted the colour pal-ette of this film to convey a cinematic reality, which is somewhat different from the actual reality. That is why we picked pastel colours with a sum-mery tone. Up to the post-production phase, my DoP Kim Ji-Hyun kept on working on colour details. Creating this special universe was the result of a true collaboration with the entire crew.

      The director describes her choice of colors for the film.

    1. Though the film ended up as a fictional romance, it drew on documentary techniques and precedents.

      Kayo Hatta applied documentary techniques in filming the fictional romance Picture Bride.

    1. Yoon places all her shots at the children’s eye-level, which results in the adults in their lives being cropped out of frame. The director only uses diegetic sound to populate neighbourhoods, with the exact sounds as the children would hear it. Plus, if the children get distracted, so does the audience.

      Yoon captures shots at the children's eye-level, employs diegetic sound, authentically representing the children's auditory experiences. The audience's attention is directed by the children's distractions, immersing them in the childlike perspective.

  10. Mar 2023
    1. At the University of California, Berkeley, Tom studied physics and then literature, graduating with a B.A. in English. He also ran a film society and played on the varsity golf team.

      Tom Luddy ran a film society while in college at the University of California, Berkeley.

    2. “I Vitelloni,” Federico Fellini’s 1953 film about a group of young men on the brink of adulthood drifting about in a small Italian village, to George Lucas before he made “American Graffiti.”

      Tom Luddy introduced George Lucas to Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni before he made American Graffiti.

    3. It was a measure of Mr. Luddy’s influence, The Times noted in 1984, that he showed “The Italian,” a 1915 film that is considered a model for the immigrant-gangster epic, to Mr. Coppola before he made “The Godfather,”
    4. As director of special projects for Francis Ford Coppola’s company American Zoetrope, he produced movies like Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), a complicated film about Yukio Mishima, the eccentric Japanese author who killed himself publicly in 1970 — a passion project that Mr. Schrader has described as “the definition of an unfinanceable project.” Mr. Luddy was its tireless booster and supporter, funding it early on with his American Express card.
  11. Jan 2023
  12. Dec 2022
  13. Nov 2022
    1. Donations

      To add some other intermediary services:

      To add a service for groups:

      To add a service that enables fans to support the creators directly and anonymously via microdonations or small donations by pre-charging their Coil account to spend on content streaming or tipping the creators' wallets via a layer containing JS script following the Interledger Protocol proposed to W3C:

      If you want to know more, head to Web Monetization or Community or Explainer

      Disclaimer: I am a recipient of a grant from the Interledger Foundation, so there would be a Conflict of Interest if I edited directly. Plus, sharing on Hypothesis allows other users to chime in.

    1. Changing the order in which you do things. —Brian Eno, Oblique Strategies

      This sounds like the sort of shift Walter Murch made in his sound editing by doing his first cut completely without sound. If you can't tell the story visually without sound the whole thing will fall apart. But you can use the sound, music, etc. to supplement, gild, and improve a picture.

    1. In late 2006, Eno released 77 Million Paintings, a program of generative video and music specifically for home computers. As its title suggests, there is a possible combination of 77 million paintings where the viewer will see different combinations of video slides prepared by Eno each time the program is launched. Likewise, the accompanying music is generated by the program so that it's almost certain the listener will never hear the same arrangement twice.

      Brian Eno's experiments in generative music mirror some of the ideas of generative and experimental fiction which had been in the zeitgeist and developing for a while.

      Certainly the fictional ideas were influential to the zeitgeist here, but the technology for doing these sorts of things in the musical realm lagged the ability to do them in the word realm.

      We're just starting to see some of these sorts of experimental things in the film space and with artificial intelligence they're becoming much easier to do in all of these media spaces.

      In some of the film spaces, they exist, but may tend to be short in nature, in part given the technology and processing power required.

      see also: Deepfake TikTok of Keanu Reeves which I've recently run across (algorithmically) on Instagram: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/unreal-keanu-reeves-ai-deepfake/

      Had anyone been working on generative art? Marcel Duchamp, et al? Some children's toys can mechanically create generative art which can be subtly modified by the children using axes of color, form, etc. Etch-a-sketch, kaleidoscopes, doodling robots (eg: https://www.amazon.com/4M-Doodling-Robot-Packaging-Vary/dp/B002EWWW9O).

  14. Oct 2022
    1. Film making is like note taking

      Incidentally, one should note that the video is made up of snippets over time and then edited together at some later date. Specifically, these snippets are much like regularly taken notes which can then be later used (and even re-used--some could easily appear in other videos) to put together some larger project, namely this compilation video of his process. Pointing out this parallel between note taking and movie/videomaking, makes the note taking process much more easily seen, specifically for students. Note taking is usually a quite and solo endeavor done alone, which makes it much harder to show and demonstrate. And when it is demonstrated or modeled, it's usually dreadfully boring and uninteresting to watch compared to seeing it put together and edited as a finished piece. Edits in a film are visually obvious while the edits in written text, even when done poorly, are invisible.

  15. Sep 2022
  16. Jun 2022
    1. Lois Weber<br /> - First woman accepted to Motion Picture Director's Association, precursor of Director's Guild<br /> - First directors committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences<br /> - Mayor of Universal City<br /> - One of the highest paid and most influential directors in Hollywood of her day<br /> - one of first directors to form her own production company

      See also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Weber

    2. Where are My Children?, Universal's top film of 1916, written and directed by their top director Lois Weber, discussed abortion and birth control. It was added to the National Film Registry in 1993.

      See also - Stamp, Shelley. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood. University of California Press, May 2015. ISBN 9780520284463


      Watched this last night

      https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/episodes/dream-factory

  17. Apr 2022
    1. Klar ist auch, dass dieMehrzahl der kommerziell produzierten Filme unter didaktischen Gesichtspunktenabzulehnen ist

      Die Mehrzahl? Was ist mit Kompetenzen hinsichtlich der Kritik der Kulturindustrie? Adorno Erziehung zur Mündigkeit

    2. Wenn Philosophielehrerinnen und -lehrer in (Spiel-)Filmen philosophische Fra -gen oder Probleme ausmachen, dann liegt es daran, dass sie mit ihrem philosophi-schen Blick Sequenzen, Szenen, Gespräche, Beispiele etc. aufspüren, an denen einephilosophische Idee oder Position exemplifiziert oder eine philosophische Fragebzw. ein philosophisches Problem aufgeworfen werden kann

      Was macht diesen Blick aus? Was ist Bedingung für diesen Blick? Wie geht das, philosophisch auf einen Film zu Blicken? Welche Eigenschaften muss eine Lehrkraft mitbringen, um erfolgreich sein zu können, bei diesem Unterfangen? - Diskussionsanlass für das Seminar

    1. DiephilosophischeProblemreflexionkannangeregtwerdendurcheigeneinlebens-weltlichem Zusammenhang entstehende grundsätzliche Überlegungen oder durchdiskursive,d.h.traditionellphilosophischeoderandereSachtexte;siekannauchanset-zenanpräsentativenMaterialienwieliterarischenTexten,Bildern,FilmenundanderenKunstwerken,dieeinenimplizitenphilosophischenGehaltaufweisen.

      präsentative Materialien - u.a. Filme

  18. Mar 2022
    1. All of us, then, are effectively bilingual: we speak one or more languages, butwe are also fully fluent in gesture.

      I'm reminded of how Academy Award winning film editor Walter Murch once told me that his first edit of a feature film was always done without any sound at all. If the motions and actions of the actors could communicate as much meaning as possible, then the spoken words would only help to supplement the storytelling.

  19. Feb 2022
  20. Jan 2022
  21. Oct 2021
  22. Sep 2021
  23. Mar 2021
    1. film sites on the web have become the minor leagues of the movie and television industry.

      Or as we've seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, feature films are debuting on the internet rather than in theaters, so now the big leagues are on the web!

  24. Feb 2021
    1. Die Dokumentation erhielt die Auszeichnung als „Bester Wissenschaftsfilm“ beim Internationalen Green Screen Naturfilmfestival in Eckernförde 2020. Die Einschätzung der internationalen Jury des Green Screen Festivals in der Laudatio zum Film: „Er zeigt anhand anschaulicher Einzelschicksale und verstörender Bilder die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf Rentierhirten und die Natur Sibiriens, ohne den globalen Bezug aus den Augen zu verlieren." Außerdem gewann der Film 2020 beim „Jackson Wild Festival“ in der Kategorie „Best Changing Planet Film - Long Form“.

      Ein differenzierter und bedrückender Film über die Folgen der globalen Erhitzung in Sibirien. Zwei Zitate: "In Sibirien wurde die Büchse der Pandora geöffnet." Und: "Die Nenzen stehen schon jetzt vor einer Entscheidung, die den Verursachern des Klimawandels noch erspart bleibt, der zwischen zwei Übeln. In ihrem Fall: Sollen ihre Rentiere verhungern oder erfrieren?"

  25. Dec 2020
    1. Look at filmmaker Anubhav Sinha’s last three films. He went for Muslim minority story (Mulk) then he went to do a Dalit-related, anti-caste-related story in Article 15, and now he has gone for domestic violence (Thappad). He has touched religion, caste and gender.
  26. Oct 2020
    1. John Grierson, a Scottish filmmaker and critic who was one of the first people to coin the term “documentary film” in the 1930s, advanced the idea, drawing from the work of radicals like Dziga Vertov, that documentaries can awaken people to liberal ideas and show them the necessity of social change.
  27. Sep 2020
    1. Dexter clearly wasn’t sleeping. He had insisted on using old equipment, and avoided digital almost entirely, to the point where several of the crew were using pieces of kit they’d never even seen before. This meant that a work print had to be made manually for the dailies, something he refused to let anyone else do.

      Noted by jjhunter on RQO.

    1. while the material of literature (graphemes, words, and sentences) may be of a different nature from the materials of cinema (projected light and shad-ows, identifiable sounds and forms, and represented actions), both systems may con-struct in their own way,

      This is why adapting theatre musicals to Film is so hard--completely different mediums

  28. May 2020
    1. I hasten to add that my own liking for this movie, as with Lucy, has nothing to do with academic enlightenment and is strictly and exclusively a matter of fun (without scare quotes, and speaking in terms of both erotics and aesthetics, at least insofar as anyone can separate these two forms of sexiness).

      I love how Rosenbaum categorizes aesthetics as a form of sexiness. Yes.

    1. touching and examining

      GANGNES: The tactile nature of the Martians' hunt for the narrator is a scene of intense tension in adaptations and illustrations of the novel. Byron Haskin’s 1953 film increases the danger posed by the machine's searching tentacle by adding a mechanical "eye" to its end, so that the characters must stay out of sight as well as sitting still.

      More information:

  29. Apr 2020
    1. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century

      GANGNES: Adaptations of The War of the Worlds have tended to modify their settings to match those of their main audience. To aid in establishing their time periods and locations, they open with a prologue that is similar to this one, but with several details changed to suit the adaptation.

      The 1938 RADIO DRAMA (Orson Welles, Mercury Theatre on the Air)) begins: "We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."

      The 1953 FILM ADAPTATION (Byron Haskin)) includes a bit of narration before the title that briefly discusses war technology from WWI and WWII, then begins: "No one would have believed, in the middle of the twentieth century, human affairs were being closely watched by a greater intelligence. Yet, across the gulf of space, on the planet Mars, intellects vast and unsympathetic regarded our Earth enviously, slowly and surely drawing their plans against us."

      The 2005 FILM ADAPTATION (Steven Spielberg)) begins: "No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century, that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied. Like the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet, across the gulf of space, intellects, vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our plant with envious eyes. And slowly and surely, drew their plans against us."

      Perhaps most interestingly, the opening lines were modified to fit a fictional setting: the DC Comics universe. The DC "Elseworlds" comic "SUPERMAN: WAR OF THE WORLDS" (1988) accommodates the existence of Krypton in this way: "No one would have believed, in the early decades of the twentieth century, that the Earth was being watched keenly and closely across the gulf of space by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. One such older world was Mars, where minds that are to our mind as ours are to the beasts--intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic--regarded Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. Another such world, unknown alike to our earth and to the red planet... was the doomed sphere called Krypton." The narration goes on to link the fates of Earth, Mars, and Krypton to establish their similarities and draw them together under the Elseworlds Martian invasion.

    1. The pattern of Hollywood is to balance the independent woman with the female stereotype so that the net sum of progressivism remains zero.

      Compare the line of reasoning in this essay with Bordwell's observation that Hollywood movies strive to present the perfect balance between left and right, so as to upset no one, to flatter everyone, and to sell tickets.

  30. Mar 2020
  31. Jul 2019
    1. I am the product of male gaze – we all are. I've spent my life loving films that sometimes hated me, identifying with Superman, for example. Female gaze is a hybrid – it’s really about knowing both of these worlds. I am a lesbian, and I know how to live in a male-dominated environment. But the question is, can they?

      I love this quote. If one feels threatened by it, one needs to check itself.

  32. Apr 2019
    1. A big greyish rounded bulk, the size perhaps of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder.

      GANGNES: Visual depictions of Wells's Martians, like those of their fighting-machines, have varied widely. Part of this is due to the fact that, even though they are described at length, the narrator still has difficulty wrapping his head around how to relate their appearance to terrestrial creatures. Most depictions resemble something squidlike, but Spielberg's 2005 film) extrapolates from the tripod machines and gives the Martians three appendages.

      More information:

  33. Mar 2019
    1. Asked which of his films are his personal favorites, Kore-eda — in characteristic fashion — expounded upon a familiar adage until it felt new: “It’s like asking someone which of their 10 kids you like the most. You may have one child who’s just ridiculously successful and making tons of money, and then you have this other child who’s living in poverty, but they’re just so lovable.” He grew silent for a moment, and then went on: “I would say there are two children who are most similar to myself. ‘Nobody Knows’ is the film that I became a director to make. ‘Still Walking’ is special to me because I made it shortly after losing my mother. Having said that, I also have to mention ‘Like Father, Like Son,’ because that film took me to the next level, to the point where I couldn’t believe this was really my career.”
    2. The truth, as always, is more complicated. Kore-eda cited the formative experience he had with “After Life” in 1998, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival after a programmer sent the director a handwritten fax proclaiming his love for the movie. But a gala debut wasn’t enough to get the movie sold. The director sighed: “I received very blunt information from the agent saying that this isn’t the kind of film that people want — they didn’t want to see people in heaven, they wanted the kind of typical Japanese film that would be representative of a national cinema.” Emotionally inhibited parents drinking sake on tatami mats, rogue samurai wandering the countryside, geishas scuffling around the Gion, that sort of thing. It could have been a devastating moment, but Kore-eda chose to see it as a call to action. “That process made me realize that I don’t have to make what other people want,” he said. “‘After Life’ led me to have confidence that if I make something that I love, there will be fans and critics out there who will love it also, and won’t start putting labels on it.” To his point, “After Life” now regularly appears on (American) lists of the best films of the ’90s. “I feel really fortunate that I’ve been able to find those people,” Kore-eda continued, “even when I’ve wanted to make films just because I liked them.”
    3. “The traditional concept of family was already being dismantled or destroyed in Japan, and 3/11 just made it obvious that was happening. I believe you can no longer interpret the true value or purpose of family based on the antiquated traditional tropes of Japanese society. In ‘Shoplifters,’ I was looking at three generations living together, because that’s typically what you’d find in a Japanese household. But I wanted to play with that, and show that even within those terms the nuclear family is undergoing a permanent change.”
    4. To watch Kore-eda’s films — and certainly to hear him talk about them — it’s clear that he’s not interested in judging this perceived degradation of traditional norms. These movies don’t lament what’s been lost so much as they wonder about what’s been found, a dynamic that allows even the most devastating pieces of Kore-eda’s work to feel intrinsically hopeful (his thoughts on the ending of “Shoplifters” were too spoiler-heavy to share here, but they made it clear the director savors that bittersweet aftertaste). His films are less concerned with passing a verdict on the state of things than they are in studying the various mechanisms that bind people together, and the performative elements required to keep us that way.
    1. That’s exactly right. What’s the technique to avoiding that stance?I don’t think it’s a technique. I don’t think that’s something you can make up, or trick people into believing through your filmmaking. It comes from the fundamental worldview, the sense of humanity. It comes from the depth of the work’s creator. If you have that empathy, you won’t go down the road of voyeurism. You can’t just sympathize; you have to make visible what is invisible. Make visible the factors that have brought the impoverished to this point, so that the audience can see them in a fuller and more complex way. That skirts the trap of poverty porn. Regarding your initial question: I don’t want to present the film in such a way so that when the audience leaves the theater, they say, “Well, it’s the government’s fault! It’s the system’s fault!” That’s not what I’m trying to portray. They’re part of it, but the people watching the film are part of it, too, and they need to feel that by the end.
    2. I’ve read that you visited an actual orphanage while researching this subject. What sort of emotional response did you have at that time?I did not go to an “orphanage,” per se. I went to a facility run by the government that houses children with parents who are dysfunctional in some way, through alcoholism or domestic abuse or something like that. Just wanted to clarify that first. While I was there, a young girl in grade three had just come back from school, and she read for me the book Swimmy by Leo Lionni. I happened to be there in time to witness this. The people who worked at the facility went, “Oh, no, don’t bother him; he doesn’t want to listen to this.” But she completely ignored them and kept reading this book right to the end. And at the very end, I applauded because she had done so wonderfully. The girl was absolutely thrilled by this, and she smiled a big smile, and it occurred to me that it was her parents that she wanted to have witness this reading of Swimmy. This moved me. That was the feeling I took with me when I made Shoplifters. The young boy in the film reads Swimmy, to show to his parents that he’s reading. That sense of pride and joy that the little girl had was something I held with me.
  34. app.getpocket.com app.getpocket.com
    1. Sakura Ando gives a phenomenal performance as Nobuyo. Can you talk about your collaboration with her? I agree that she is phenomenal. To answer quite honestly, I first heard about Sakura Ando through actors or cameramen who are friends of mine or who I worked with. They all said she was amazing. I was still unsure she’d be right for my film because the part of Nobuyo was written for someone who’s in their 40s. However I ran into her in the neighborhood and we just talked for a little while. And then I ran into her a second time. After that I thought she might be the best person for this role [despite her age] and I offered her the job. You are a director who has successfully directed children in many of your films. How do you work with them? Thank you saying they are successful. For 15 years the way that I have worked with children is I never give them a script. They have no idea about the full story. Everyday when they come on set, I tell them each individual line when they need to know it. So I whisper in their ears this is your line, this is what you are going to talk about, sometimes they choose their own words. But also during auditions I choose children who specifically seem to respond to that method well. Once I’ve chosen them I organize activities to create trust and a relationship with them. My goal is to have them come to set every day smiling, excited and looking forward to the work. That’s my approach.
    2. There is a density and depth to your stories and characters that’s reminiscent of novels. I’m interested in your writing process and how you come about it? That is a difficult question. First there's the person, a human. Then the situation and what if that situation causes the human to do something? I don’t know if it’s right or wrong but I don’t actually sit down and write all the details about each character, their whole history. If you were to attend a screenwriting course, often they’d tell you to sit down and define each character before writing the script. I don’t believe in that, I don't think character development is the way to go. For me it’s the relationships. The relationship between one person and the person standing in front of them. It’s the way they move, the way they react, and how they relate to each other. That’s what defines them. Take for example the character of the father Osamu, he’s defined by the context of the relationships around him. The story comes out of the numerous interactions between these different people.
    1. Thinking of happy accidents, it looked like Miyu Sasaki, who plays the young Juri, really did lose a tooth. Is that something you had to incorporate into the script? On the first day of shooting, we were shooting the scene where she’s discovered on the veranda and it just happened that the tooth came out. [And she yelled] “Oh no, my tooth came out!” We talked about fixing it so there was a fake tooth there, but then I thought I might as well write a scene about losing her tooth. [SPOILERS AHEAD] Then I thought what would be really interesting would be to write a scene where the grandmother who has no teeth dies and the granddaughter loses her teeth and then you throw the teeth up on the roof, so I thought the combination of those two things would make it very interesting and I wrote it into the script.
    2. Was the family’s home on screen a set or a real location? We did use a real house [for exteriors]. There was a small house that existed within all those high-rises, but most of the interior scenes were shot on set. There’s a scene where [you see] the entrance to the home [where] they’re on a little corridor or a little porch outside and when I went to see the house, I was just looking around it with my crew. it’s very near Sumida River, which is very famous for the fireworks coming up, so I just thought, “Oh, it’s very near the river, but [the family] would never be able to see the fireworks,” [which] stayed with me, so I decided to write a scene about it.
    3. Is it true you got to shoot the first scenes of the film in the summer and then go back later to shoot the rest of the film, after you had an idea of how they might interact with one another? Yes. When we started shooting in the summer, the truth is the script wasn’t really finished. I hadn’t really had a complete script by that point and we shot it anyways because we thought we might need it. I told all the actors we may not even keep this scene and Kiki Kirin [who plays the grandmother] said, “Well, in that case, it probably won’t stay. It won’t survive.” [laughs] But then there’s the scene where it rains suddenly and where [the family] finds the cicada, so it was fortuitous when those things all happened. And then when I went back and wrote the script properly in the autumn, I incorporated some of those things in it.
    4. There is a bit of a fantastical quality to the film, which comes through subtly through the score, and I loved how visually, there are often boxes created throughout the frame, particularly inside the family’s house. How did you go about getting the tone right aesthetically? In terms of the visual, in terms of Kondo [Ryuto, the cinematographer], when he talked to me about how he viewed it, he really wanted a poetic state, so visually we were looking at poetic images around their lifestyle and after about a certain amount of filming, I just let Kondo-san go — he was the one that decided the framing, so it was his sensibility that created those lines that you’re talking about. With Honoso [Haruomi, the composer], it was more the image of swimming, so the family were like a bunch of little fishes at the bottom of an ocean swimming around and they would look up at the surface and see the sparkling night, but the sound of that sparkling night would come down to the bottom and twinkle around it.
    5. You’ve acknowledged that “After the Storm” marked a bit of a turning point where you’d start making films about broader Japanese society. What inspired that shift? I look at it a little bit differently because for me, from “Still Walking” to “After the Storm,” that thread was really very much about me looking at what went on inside of a family, inside of the home, [with] a narrow and deep perspective. But that was more the exception. With “The Third Murder,” I felt I went back to where I started, which was with “Nobody Knows” and looking at the family within society. That’s the thread I was following and then I got disrupted by my own personal inquiry.
    1. Shoplifters’ question of whether this family counts as a “real” one does occasionally feel belabored. But its exploration of the layers, and limits, within this unlikely clan is so moving and observant that one can easily overlook that foible. Like nearly every mystery in the film, it isn’t meant to be resolved anyway. To spend time with the Shibatas is to make peace with a lack of answers. In so doing, Shoplifters achieves that ultimate goal of art as expressed by the artist Robert Filliou: It’s art that makes life more interesting than art.
    1. All well and good, but what makes Kore-eda's movie so quietly devastating, the work of a master in full command of his art, is that its emotional rewards stem from a deep engagement with the world rather than a retreat from it. It's the rare movie indeed that can unite a jury without even remotely smacking of compromise.
    1. L.A. has this amazing Koreatown and the most Korean Americans anywhere in the states. At the same time, the industry that you wanted to break into when you arrived is extremely white. What were your impressions of L.A. when you first got here, and has your relationship to the city changed in any significant way? Koreatown at first became a safe haven for me where you can go to not feel othered. I wasn’t cognizant of [being othered then]. I was aware of me being an Asian actor, but I was not thinking about anything but just working within the system, whatever that meant. I wouldn’t take roles that would be bad as an Asian person, but I was looking to just get work. So you do that on the daily and then you come back, and for some reason you always just keep gravitating toward K-Town. It’s comfortable. Then you start to let it go for a bit. Because you go, “Oh, I don’t need the security blanket of this place.” And then you find it again, where now you’re approaching K-Town not from a place of fear. Rather, now you’re just going there to go eat some bomb food and celebrate your culture. That’s the confidence that you build over time, or you hope to.
    2. What do you feel like that gaze wants you to do? I won’t speak for other Asian American actors, because I don’t know what they’re being offered. But for me, it’s like: nice guy, dependable, supportive, benign. Beige. And as a Korean man, I am not beige. And I felt that when I was over there [shooting Burning].
    3. Do you think of yourself as a heartthrob? Ay-yi-yi. I’m at this interesting point of not rejecting it, because I want to be representative of the idea that anyone can be that and feel that. For that reason, I don’t want to reject it. But definitely I want to reject it. Why? Self-hatred. Maybe when I was young, I wanted that. I was like, “Why not me, why can’t an Asian man be this?” Then you try to find that through systems that aren’t native to you. You’re like, “I know what it means to be hot. It means you work out. It means you drink a ton of milk, so you get huge. It means you’re mean to people. Toxic masculinity.” Then you realize it’s so stupid. Just be comfortable with yourself.
    4. You’ve worked with heavyweights in the Korean film world: Joon-ho Bong on Okja and Chang-dong Lee on Burning. They’ve given you meaty roles, as well as the opportunity to work with art-house auteurs. What do you make of the fact that these opportunities seem to be primarily coming from the Korean side, rather than the American side?  Sometimes it’s tough. I’ll come back from Burning, and I’ll be like, “Will I ever get this experience again? Will I ever feel this free in a character? Will I ever feel like they’re looking to get my best performance? Down to the lighting, the makeup, the boundarylessness that they project on me?” I feel like there’s a mold here in America, that even in my daily walking around I feel subjected to. Someone’s projecting, like, “This is how you’re supposed to fit in this world.” It’s this generic Asian man mold that pervades.
    5. I like to joke that Korean cinema, which is known in part for its intensity of emotion, is 5,000 years of suffering condensed into an art form. Yeah, that’s real.
    6. Yesterday, when you were introducing the movie [at a screening], you called Chang-dong Lee a “film genius.” What draws you to him? He reached out to me through his films first, obviously. Peppermint Candy helped me understand why I have this han [an untranslatable strain of sorrow that makes up a pillar of Korean national identity] in my body that I can’t explain. I couldn’t explain how me being a 5-year-old immigrant in America was filled with so much rage. It wasn’t just the fear of my environment, or being an Asian kid in America. That probably stoked it a little bit, but I didn’t experience war, I didn’t experience trauma. You don’t know where it comes from, but then you watch [the movie] and you go, “Oh my God, there’s a whole level of Korean experience that I’m missing out on.” There was this deeper level that I couldn’t access, and that film helped me get there.
    7. Are you disappointed that American or international audiences won’t get all of the nuances in the dialogue? No, because we’re talking about one layer of this story, and really the human layer is the thing that binds it all together. Do you mean the romantic triangle in the film? I mean the feeling of unrequited loneliness. The feeling that we’re all alone. We can try to put labels on ourselves and try to separate each other, but really, we’re all fucking alone and that’s what it is. And it’s scary, and it sounds terrible, but really, it’s OK.
    1. The whole movie is about the tension between three people, just like a ghost story at certain points. And in the middle, there’s this chilly sequence where they just hang out during the magic hour. How did you approach the structure of the film and how did you shoot this particular sequence? _________________   After the dance scene, something had to change. That’s what I felt, and the audience can feel that we’re heading to another road as well. The scene itself is in the middle, storyline-wise, and also it’s a quarter of the film. A lot of people think of it as a thriller that it’s mostly about finding Hae-mi’s whereabouts, but we’re not doing that: we’re doing something that’s more about what she was looking for and who she really is. We wanted to shoot the dancing scene after sunset, and so that we could emphasize the boundaries between darkness and lightning, as well as the mixture of reality and surrealistic reality. And when you look at the set, you can see the Korean flag which reflects Korean politics, you can see a dirt, the grass and nature elements, where on the other side you can even see cars passing by. So it’s a mixture of all kinds of life around us, in the scene, and in here Hae-mi is looking for the meaning of life. She is dancing with great hunger. We tried to film that scene without any artificial light. Also, I wanted that scene to show the freedom which she’s getting through and the spontaneity she’s also getting through. That’s the most important thing I wanted to capture in the scene.
    1. Though this genre has existed for quite some time, it really blossomed the decade following World War II thanks to so-called “sun tribe” youth movies (these featured teens interested in violence and sex, similar to America’s Rebel Without A Cause). In the decades since, seishun eiga have generally focused on the ups and downs of adolescence, particularly high schoolers. “Seishun eiga offer the sort of clear window into Japan’s national culture, society and psyche that other, more internationally popular, genres don’t. Most Japanese survived high school; relatively few joined yakuza gangs,” the Japan Times film critic Mark Schilling has written. Since these movies can be loaded with cliches and melodrama, the laziest iterations of this style are often deeply formulaic.
    1. Theo bà Ngô Phương Lan, năm 2017, Việt Nam đạt 3.250 tỷ đồng trong lĩnh vực điện ảnh. Trong đó, doanh thu từ phim Việt chiếm 28% nhờ quy định số suất chiếu phim Việt ở mỗi rạp phải chiếm 20% trên tổng số (theo nghị định 54). Tuy vậy, phim trong nước vẫn bị phim ngoại lấn át về sức cạnh tranh.
    1. “Korea is very dynamic, it is undergoing social and political change. Its culture reflects that. Its films are rooted in change,” Rayns said. “In Japan I don’t see that. I see stasis. I still see same right wing politicians denying the existence of comfort women, the same old stuff we’ve heard for 20, 30 or 40 years. Until we see some challenge to the establishment [in Japan] I don’t think you will see the same dynamism as in Korean cinema.”
    1. The situation today is much less dynamic. Filmmaking in Japan has largely polarised, with very high budgets (by Japanese standards, i.e. US$ 10 million or a multiple of it) on the one extreme and no-budget indie (or amateur) filmmaking on the other. Films in the former category seek to emulate the Hollywood blockbuster formula and are produced by "film committees": consortia of production partners, the majority being television stations, advertising agencies and talent agencies rather than traditional film production companies. Each partner has a stake and a say in the filmmaking and the result more often than not literally comes across as something made by committee rather than artistic vision. It is a type of filmmaking that takes no chances: all the stories are based on hit properties (TV series, manga, novels) and the lead actors are pop musicians or TV talento, while the important share of media companies in the production committees is resulting in self-censorship and/or conservative political stances in line with the policies of Shinzo Abe’s government.
  35. Feb 2019
    1. When you’re doing a biopic, it’s very hard to shake the cradle-to-grave structure that audiences are so familiar with. People are going to come into the theater knowing that first we’re going to see a little boy with his father, and he’s looking into the window of the electronics store, and then we’re going to hit these famous signposts along the way in Steve Jobs’ life. Also, I’m not really a screenwriter; I’m a playwright who pretends to be a screenwriter. I’m most comfortable writing in claustrophobic pieces of geography and periods of time.

      Theatre vs film

  36. Jan 2019
  37. Dec 2018
  38. Nov 2018
    1. the doctors, unthinkingly embracing the latest medical breakthrough, do not even demand a psychological test to determine the wisdom of bringing the gift of hearing to people who have managed for 65 years without it

      Meliora students, what do you think about this statement? Are there times "medical miracles" should NOT be used? Please give example(s).

    2. despite being deaf, she was the gossip editor of her high-school newspaper

      Meliora students, how do you think she achieved this?

    3. hearing has become the most burdensome of the senses. One only has to consider the number of ear plugs, sound-canceling devices, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills being purchased to attest to that.

      Meliora students, what do you think? Is your world inundated with noise? What actions do you take when you're surrounded by too much noise?

  39. Aug 2018
    1. the kids are all right

      Given danah's age, I would suspect that with a copyright date of 2014, she's likely referencing the 2010 feature film The Kids are Alright.

      However that film's title is a cultural reference to a prior generation's anthem in an eponymous song) by The Who which appeared on the album My Generation. Interestingly the lyrics of the song of the same name on that album is one of their best known and is applicable to the ideas behind this piece as well.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETvVH2JAxrA

  40. Jun 2018
  41. Feb 2018
    1. The mental energy required for readers to constantly jump from the present text to an older one is considerable, and if readers must supply the gaps in their ‘allusive competency’ by engaging in ‘textual archaeology,’35or going outside the text to research its allusions, the demand is indeed extreme.

      This demand seems especially daunting in poetry, with few words as it is. Does the novel or film have an easier go of connecting the reader to the demands of allusion? Less of a loss in understanding the idea of the work if the reader doesn't bat a thousand with the allusions because other elements carry the storyline.

  42. Nov 2017
    1. This took place on March 10, 1977, at the home of actor Jack Nicholson in the Mulholland area of Los Angeles.

      Could this be why Kubrick casted Nicholson for The Shining? See Rob Ager's analysis of sexual abuse themes in The Shining.

  43. Oct 2017
    1. We can u-;e this mode to communicate representations of how something look~ or how someone is feeling, to instruct, to persuade, and to entertain, among other things.

      As page 9 notes, "audio can also have visual impacts." This quote demonstrates the multi-modality of singular objects and subjects, a fact that exhibits the importance of multidimensional analysis. One of the panels on the AIDS Quilt contains a patch of leather, which has both a visual connotation and a distinct aural context. Leather evokes the Danny Zuko stereotype by conjuring images of enigmatic characters and inviting the sounds of rumbling motorcycles.

      Cardiac monitoring, similarly, is a common image in popular media that also contains multiple influences and connotations. Cardiac monitoring is typically executed with electrocardiography, a machine that monitors a person’s cardiac rhythm. At its core, though, the sound of a heartbeat monitor relies on the heartbeat itself. Our pulse of life.

      Image result for heartbeat monitor

      The human heartbeat is primal and intrinsic to our humanity. It betrays our fear and reveals our desires. Its visual and aural modes are ingrained within us all, for it is both a familiar sight, and a calming sound. The following short film presents the significance of our heartbeat in finding our truths, facing our fears, and embracing love. Relying heavily on visual and aural modes to encapsulate a story of heartache and romance, "In a Heartbeat" communicates a tale of love by personifying a famed motif, the heart itself.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2REkk9SCRn0

  44. Sep 2017
  45. Aug 2017
    1. Vocativ's authors also found that the films that passed the test earned a total of $4.22 billion in the United States, while those that failed earned $2.66 billion in total, leading them to conclude that a way for Hollywood to make more money might be to "put more women onscreen."[35] A 2014 study by FiveThirtyEight based on data from about 1,615 films released from 1990 to 2013 concluded that the median budget of films that passed the test was 35% lower than that of the others. It found that the films that passed the test had about a 37% higher return on investment (ROI) in the United States, and the same ROI internationally, compared to films that did not pass the test.[37]
  46. Jul 2017
  47. May 2017
    1. The source material (mostly Malory's Le Morte D Arthur) is treated in a very syncretist kind of way, merging many characters, events and elements. This arguably allows the movie to display many more Arthurian motifs than would have been possible to show in a two-hour movie by staying truer to the original story, all while cleverly avoiding the Compressed Adaptation effect.

      This seems like an interesting option for people who are adapting a book into a film themselves.

  48. Mar 2017
    1. But argument is not something to present or to displa

      Furthermore, this model of argumentation is extraordinarily easy to undermine; argumentation as simply "display and presentation" is a vapid concept as it does not necessarily require any truth or reality. (See: Chicago)

    2. it eventually becomes a matter of my poster against yours, with the prize to the slickest performanc

    3. Sometimes we don't see enough. Sometimes we find enough and see enough and still tell it wrong. Sometimes we fail to judge either the events within our narrative or the people, places, things, and ideas that might enter our narrative

      This sounds an awful lot like the Rashomon Effect, a term that was popularized by Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon in which a murder is described by a number of witnesses in contradictory manners. The Rashomon Effect describes the phenomenon when an event is interpreted and reconstructed by a number of individuals in inconsistent manners. A number of filmmakers including Orson Welles, Christopher Nolan, and Quentin Tarantino have all made films that build off of this idea of Kurosawa's. All of these films construct a unique narrative by combining a number of "flawed" narratives -- that is, if a "flawed narrative" can even exist, a subtler assertion of Kurosawa and his imitators.

    4. Rhetoric as Love

    1. the idea that authors imagined ideal audiences for their works and readers generally were willing to take on the role assigned to them

      Could connect this with Ebert's earlier-discussed approach of rating a movie in terms of "what it's trying to be." Denies the idea of a linear continuity of quality with art, which sits at the heart of Blair's notions of taste.

    1. To this extent, the scientist must reject and resist in ways that mean the end of"autonomy," or ifhe ac-cepts, he risks becoming the friend of fiends.

      Obviously, Burke is writing this in anticipation of Jurassic Park, which is pretty much entirely about this section. There's a pair of paleontologists whose dig financing is contingent on them legitimizing a theme park. There's the capitalist who claims to just want to tell a story while cutting corners on safety equipment. Jeff Golblum's in it. Hell, the fact that it's an industrial disaster movie dressed up with "Man treading in God's domain" just makes it all the more apt.

  49. Feb 2017
    1. How did Fujifilm, the film photography giant, survive through the digital age while its biggest competitor filed for bankruptcy? By making cosmetics, yes you heard that right, cosmetics.

      Fascinating!

    1. whites have so long and so loudly proclaimed lhc theme of equal rights and privileges, that our souls have caught the name also,

      More fire imagery. Big in Christianity, but also a good metaphor for how rhetoric lets passionate fervor pass from the speaker to the audience.

      Plus, since I'm already thinking of Spike Lee joints, the intense heat of Do the Right Thing and the sense that eventually injustice will boil over into explosive force is a vivid image.

    1. the high eloquence which I have last mentioned, is always the offspring of passion.

      I'd like to connect this with my earlier comment on movies whose enthusiasm outstrips their ability. The quality of passion is a hard thing to pin down--St. Augustine argues that a preacher driven by true faith will outstrip the best educated orator, but at the same time, makes allowances that you can't expect that of everyone, even people who do have true faith. This arrangement also means this section is in immediate parallel with Blair's notion that oratorical skill is inherent and natural, and the real rhetoric was in our hearts all along. I'm pretty suspicious of this as a method of teaching rhetoric, but, at the same time, I can't deny that sometime someone actually does pull off "true of heart" oratorical skill. Nothing technically amazing, but delivered like a champ because they believed in their cause.

    1. But the multitude, the vu/gm, are overpowered and car-ried along by their appetite, which is tumultuous and turbulent; their soul is tainted, having con-tmcted a contagion from the body,

      Thinking of this scene from Men In Black, where J explains to K that "a person is smart, people are dumb, panicky animals." J's more egalitarian, it's something about crowd size rather than an inherent problem in the body of the common multitude, but it's built on the same observation that you can't speak to the masses the same way you might talk to a peer. J endorses secrecy for their own good, Vico endorses explaining it in a simplified way, then raising the discourse over time.

    1. ARIOSTO pleases

      I've never read Orlando Furioso, so I can't really comment on it's offbeat character, but I do see a connection here with the so-bad-it's-good style of filming, particularly the movies that win you over as actually good. Like House (surrealist Japanese film with a remarkable poster) or Miami Connection (...just click). If they're found to please...

  50. Nov 2016
    1. limits

      This is a shot of the pier near Fairway, on the Hudson, overlooking New Jersey

    2. black and white film

      Color stock had not yet entered the mass market for short, news segments like this.

  51. Sep 2016
  52. tellingstory.com tellingstory.com
    1. "Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett", a short film by Andrew Filippone Jr. (Funny. But I think Charlie Rose would interrupt himself more often.)

  53. Feb 2016
    1. In 2009, Amsterdam’s EYE Film Institute invited the public to remix twenty-one film fragments from its collection of early Dutch films. 
  54. Jan 2016
    1. Kodak is making a new analog/digital Super 8 camera, to be released in fall 2016. The price is expected to be $400 to $750. Film cartridge purchase, $50 to $75, will include developing and transfer to digital.

      The new camera has quite a few interesting features that set it well apart from Super 8 cameras made in the past. It is a digital/analogue hybrid product that records digital audio to SD cards alongside the film and will have a digital viewfinder.<br> . . .<br> The camera will also feature a "Max 8" gate which uses the space that used to be reserved for a magnetic soundtrack to capture a wider image. This makes it possible to film for a 16:9 aspect ratio with much less cropping and makes even more efficient use of the film available in a standard super 8 cartridge. It has a range of shooting speeds which are all crystal locked: 9, 12, 18, 24, 25 FPS.

      http://www.kodak.com/go/super8

  55. Aug 2015
    1. The Conns Photolab (introduced in 1990) offers a high quality and cost effective range of services including developing, printing and scanning for film, digital or print reproduction.
    1. “I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.”

      this is fascinating to me - i had no idea of his connections with education. Makes me wonder about Tesla's thoughts on education now. And how he'd feel about filmstrips, which are in essence super cheap motion pictures.