Siri took a note for me this morning. So close yet so far.
Siri took a note for me this morning. So close yet so far.
“How to make an intelligent blockbuster and not alienate people”
Every time I complain that a blockbuster movie is directorially dumb, or insultingly scripted, or crappily acted, or artistically barren, I get a torrent of emails from alleged mainstream-movie lovers complaining that I (as a snotty critic) am applying highbrow criteria that cannot and should not be applied to good old undemanding blockbuster entertainment. I am not alone in this; every critic worth their salt has been lectured about their distance from the demands of “popular cinema”, or has been told that their views are somehow elitist and out of touch (and if you haven’t been told this then you are not a critic, you are a “showbiz correspondent”). This has become the shrieking refrain of 21st-century film (anti)culture – the idea that critics are just too clever for their own good, have seen too many movies to know what the average punter wants, and are therefore sorely unqualified to pass judgment on the popcorn fodder that “real” cinema-goers demand from the movies.
This is baloney – and worse, it is pernicious baloney peddled by people who are only interested in money and don’t give a damn about cinema. The problem with movies today is not that “real” cinema-goers love garbage while critics only like poncy foreign language arthouse fare. The problem is that we’ve all learned to tolerate a level of overpaid, institutionalised corporate dreadfulness that no one actually likes but everyone meekly accepts because we’ve all been told that blockbuster movies have to be stupid to survive. Being intelligent will cause them to become unpopular. Duh! The more money you spend, the dumb and dumberer you have to be. You know the drill: no one went broke underestimating the public intelligence. That’s just how it is, OK?
Good afternoon nerds. It’s time to die buy my Blade Runner inspired etching, Monoceros Monologue.
(via Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen on Artabase)
“The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will present the world premiere of Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen, a major exhibition charting the history and future of space exploration as experienced through the moving image, opening 22 September, 2011.”
This looks awesome.
Atheism is probably the philosophy least comfortable with the cinematic form. How to denigrate the faith of others when cinema itself is always, in a sense, an act of faith? How to cry at a film, feel anger or joy without acknowledging the beauty of an illusion?
–
Brad Nguyen on Paul at Screen Machine (via clembastow)
Gotta disagree here. Being an atheist doesn’t make me a joyless automaton, it’s just means I can draw the line quite clearly between fantasy and reality. I can still get lost in stories because I have an imagination, and I can (and often do) acknowledge the beauty of an illusion. In fact, I would argue that I can appreciate the feelings of anger and joy I have when watching films to a greater effect than a non-atheist, as I can comprehend more fully how real the unreal felt.
I watched The Shining for the first time a few years ago. As someone who’s studied film, I could see all the tricks and camera angles and effects Kubrick used to make the film seem scary as it played out. And you know what, I still didn’t want to walk through my own house alone that night.
Tell a story well enough and you shouldn’t have to care about your audience’s faith or lack thereof.
(via clambistro)
via frenchforcupcake
I did this once, except it wasn’t Lynch. It was for an essay on viewer complicity regarding violence in cinema, and I watched Man Bites Dog, Peeping Tom, Funny Games and A Clockwork Orange back-to-back. Alone.
Good times.
off the shoulder of Orion
Every year the staff and graduating students from RMIT Printmaking do an exchange folio. I’ll be taking part this year, and the theme is ‘unfolding’. Because it’s a folio — something usually kept together in a drawer and handled rather than hung on a wall — we’re encouraged to think about both sides of the paper. This is my initial idea.
In 2009 I won a pass to the Melbourne International Film Festival. I watched about 32 films in two weeks.
This was my favourite.
iSay...: Since the restoration and re-issue of Lawrence Of Arabia a few 70mm...
isay:
Since the restoration and re-issue of Lawrence Of Arabia a few 70mm film prints were made for distribution in select territories, and Australia was lucky enough to be one of those places where the studio decided to send a very valuable 70mm print . Of all films that were filmed in this…
I would “like” this, but …I actually just died a little bit inside.
Another Yojimbo laserdisc cover sketchbook. This one is bound using the “pinched p’s” stitch from the Keith Smith book I mentioned last week.
A lightning bolt binding that took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out.
Experimenting with sewn bindings today by making some new sketchbooks from paper offcuts and obsolete film technology packaging.
This one uses the ‘Waterfall’ stitch from Keith A. Smith’s book, Non-Adhesive Binding Volume II: 1— 2— & 3—Section Sewings.
Alice in Wonderland (1903) (via BFIfilms)
“The first-ever film version of Lewis Carroll’s tale has recently been restored by the BFI National Archive from severely damaged materials. Made just 37 years after Lewis Carroll wrote his novel and eight years after the birth of cinema, the adaptation was directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, and was based on Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations. In an act that was to echo more than 100 years later, Hepworth cast his wife as the Red Queen, and he himself appears as the Frog Footman. Even the Cheshire cat is played by a family pet.
With a running time of just 12 minutes (8 of which survive), Alice in Wonderland was the longest film produced in England at that time. Film archivists have been able to restore the film’s original colours for the first time in over 100 years.
Music: ‘Jill in the Box’, composed and performed by Wendy Hiscocks.”
