Ménilmontant (1925)
by Adam Hirsch
One of the great things about the internet is having access to things you wouldn’t ordinarily find.
In this case, it’s a 37 minute film by Dimitri Kirsanoff from 1925 called Ménilmontant. I saw it in a screening at Bard with the understanding that it was an “extremely rare film to ever see” and to savor it because the likelihood was that I’d never see it again (unless I, you know, checked it out from the Bard film library).
Ha! Here it is presented for you, in these holiday times. Incidentally, it’s also Pauline Kael’s favorite film (she, too, claimed it was impossible to find). A real gem.
The Little Imperfections
by Adam Hirsch
They came out about a week ago, but if you haven’t already watched them — you should. In an absolute stroke of brilliance, The New York Times Magazine decided to get fourteen A-list actors in front of a camera for short, silent single-take scenes. It’s called “Fourteen Actors Acting“. (Click the link to follow to it.)
For all of you that went through film school — especially working with a Bolex and 16mm B&W Reversal — a lot of these will feel familiar in the best way. They’re just like those exercises and assignments you had to suffer through while trying to get a grasp on the medium, the ones you overexposed or had your actor-friend drop out at the last minute only to be replaced with your roommate’s drunk friend — only these are perfect little exercises, perfect little displays, and fourteen actors — including Matt Damon, James Franco, Chloe Moretz, Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem and Tilda Swinton — who all seem to understand how less translates to more.
They can remind you why you like this crazy stuff in the first place.
What Should He Do?
by Matt Paley
I’m glued to my TV (with everyone else in Boston) watching the retooled Boston Celtics (now the old big three–or are they suddenly the big four?) play the new big three from Miami.
About 10 minutes ago–during the first commercial break–I got a big surprise when Nike unveiled their new Lebron James campaign. Playing on their eternal “Just Do It,” Lebron sat in the same chair–in the same shirt, in fact–that he announced his big (and ill-fated, from a marketing perspective) decision to join the Miami heat, and asked: what should I do? Should I admit I’ve made mistakes?
What followed was a real evisceration. Lebron stands at a podium under a Hall of Fame banner, in a totally deserted room. This went well, he says to the lone caterer. He watches his giant banner in Cleveland fall. Amidst some funny moments (Lebron imagines becoming an actor on Miami Vice, plays a villain in a cowboy film), Lebron speaks a lot of the things his critics (including myself) have been thinking.
“Rise,” as Nike has dubbed it, is a good move for Lebron–I’ll admit I’m impressed, and I’m a hater–and a better move for Nike, who so recently stunned the sporting world with their similar Tiger/Earl Woods commercial. Whomever is directing these ads is a true Don Draper–someone capable of extracting not just drama and complexity out of these superstars, but (what reads as) maturity. Lebron doesn’t look stubborn sticking to his guns OR pathetic asking for forgiveness. Instead, he asks the same question so many times–what should I do? what should I do? what should I do?–that by the end of the 30 second spot, we want what he wants– to put it all behind us. The message is clear, and the humor is an improvement on Nike’s Tiger Woods strategy, which, played straight, was melodramatic enough (Earl speaks from beyond the grave!) to strike many as a bit creepy.
The real winner here is Nike, who doesn’t have as much of a stake in Lebron’s likeability as they do in his marketability. This commercial is going to be talked about. And with all the talk–whether you forgive Lebron, or don’t, find it pandering, or find Nike to be profiteering–no one will deny that “rise” makes damn good television.
Under The Boardwalk Empire
by Matt Paley
My good friend and frequent collaborator Adam Goldman called me last night seeking editing help. His Final Cut Pro wasn’t working and he couldn’t make head or tail of iMovie (a program which has become utterly unintelligible in the last few years). Rather than stumble around iMovie with him, I offered to edit his brainchild myself.
I’m glad I did. It took all of 30 seconds and provided a needed dose of creative therapy.
If you’re like Adam and myself, you’ve been patiently slogging though the first episodes of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, hoping that the show will suddenly hit its stride (and that the writing will miraculously improve) and live up to its obvious potential. But while I sat on my couch lamenting that Mad Men was nearing its Season 4 finale, Adam (ever proactive) developed a plan to improve HBO’s lackluster creation himself.
Without further ado, I offer you Adam’s alternate (obviously improved) title sequence for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
Check out Adam’s current blog, dear stupid blog, for more curiosities.
Another One From Reichardt
by Adam Hirsch
Kelly Reichardt, the patron mater familias of the Company, whom most of us here were mentored by during our days up on Annandale, has just churned out her newest work, Meek’s Cutoff, and from most of the internet buzz, it’s something. It was sold for theatrical release at the Toronto Film Festival, and as of today it’s loosely scheduled for a Spring 2011 release.
The Real Thing
by Giampaolo Bianconi
There’s a new “edition” (new to my knowledge) of Oliver Laric’s Versions posted to his website. This time, Laric makes use of Disney’s penchant for reusing animation cells and the Romans’ tendency to copy Greek artwork to riff on the status of the image, which Laric argues is not watered down by but in fact requires reproduction (and always has). Laric’s versions are essential to any understanding of the multiplicities of the internet—-I’m extremely grateful for this one.
New Jerusalem/Oldham
by Giampaolo Bianconi
I’ve been trying, desperately, to come up with something intelligent to say about Toy Story 3 (something other than, “My mother and I cried watching this movie). With any luck, that review will be up here by the end of the week (any luck, really…). For now, I’ve been able to distract myself with the trailer for the film New Jerusalem, which stars Will Oldham. I love Oldham’s music and his acting, so I’ll be keeping and eye out for this one. As Vulture points out, his output is prolific. But it’s his presence in films–heartfelt, bizarre, genuinely talented and pleasurable to watch–that always fascinates me. This one looks no different.
City of Light
by Giampaolo Bianconi
I spent two rainy, somewhat cold, humid days in Paris last week. Exhausted and dirty, I felt like a young hero from a Balzac novel: none of the nobility, all of the fervor. At least I wasn’t wearing Tevas and crew socks. (more…)
Banksy in Boston
by Matt Paley
I’ve spent the last few hours searching downtown for this.
Bingo. (more…)
Lines of Flight
by Giampaolo Bianconi
Today, my good friend Kevin and I launched a Tumblr called Lines of Flight. We’ll provide tidbits from popular culture, history, philosophy, science–anything–and illuminate them with passages from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, which we’ve spent a semester plowing through. Stop by, please, if you’re interested in another way to look at pop culture.
Dispatches from the Circuit: Back of the Napkin
by Adam Hirsch
At around 6:00 p.m. yesterday, the shorts program ended here at the Geneva Film Festival and I walked over to the bar across the street. I sat down, got a drink, and on the back of the napkin began writing down the first things that came to mind after seeing my work screened (with other people’s hard, truthful work — but more on that in a later post). Here, unedited and unfiltered, is the list.
Tidbit: HD to DVD
by Brian Barth
This is your HD footage in SD.
I have to say, when Kelly Reichardt asked me to burn a DVD of “Part II” for review, my heart jumped to my throat and I almost fainted. Ok, a slight exaggeration, but anyone who has ever needed to burn HD footage onto a standard-definition DVD has felt this dread. (more…)
Weekend Watch: Paris qui dort
by Giampaolo Bianconi
René Clair’s first film, Paris qui dort (1924), is a delightful silent science-fiction romp invoving the Eiffel Tower, a conniving and schlubby Professor X, and scenes of Paris so deserted they recall the earliest, emptiest photographs of the city. You can watch the whole thing online here, or you could seek out the Criterion release of Clair’s Under the Roofs of Paris (Sous les Toits de Paris), which contains Paris qui dort as an extra. At about 30 minutes, this version–retooled by Clair in 1950–is half as long as the original 1924 film.
Annette Michelson wrote about the film:
“Clair proposes, with a cascade of subtlegags, the topography of a great city; he explores its scale and pace, that which sustains its life. Temporality, apprehended as movement in space, is the vital current of metropolis, the medium of “the course of affairs,” of “the business of life.” Their powerful and intricate implication is the film’s generative core. Adopting the genre of science fiction–which is, as we know, one of cinema’s oldest forms–Clair offers a fresh series of critical variations upon the thematic cluster–the city, the crowd, capital–which the art and the cinema of his day had begun to explore. There is in fact no single theme of Paris qui dort which expressionism, in an antithetical register, did not also explore. The accuracy and lucidity of Clair’s enterprise were, however, products of a privileged position, a special preparation.”
It’s a great, important film. And it should be your weekend watch.
Sometimes, the Academy…
by Adam Hirsch
Like Kathryn Bigelow, recipient of the Oscar for Best Director, I’m utterly speechless. Last night the Academy decided, under pressure from the big moneymakers and unique genre films, to select the best-made film for best picture. Going into this, I was almost certain that it was going to be Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director and Avatar for Best Film. I am so glad that I was wrong.
Dispatches from the Web: Friends Don’t Let Friends Trip Alone.
by Adam Hirsch
This entry comes via an e-mail from Matt. Apparently I had to see this. Check it out for yourself before I go on because anything I say on the matter will be utterly useless if you don’t.
Friends don’t let friends trip alone. The inexplicable terror of the otherness of time, to borrow the cocktails-at-seven phrase from Freud, has overwhelmed this television ad in many ways. Forty-odd years later it seems like an odd relic of some civilization of indeterminable musical taste and choice in travel. Most haunting of all might be the realization that it was our civilization.
Dispatches from the Web: Whose Tube?
by Giampaolo Bianconi
Video artist Amy Greenfield was recently informed that Youtube would be pulling her work from their website. She was told that “her works, which contain some artistic nudity, did not conform with YouTube’s ‘community standards.’ Under YouTube’s policies, ‘Films and television shows may contain [full nudity]; however, videos originating from the YouTube user community must abide by the YouTube Community Guidelines and are not permitted to include such content.’” Though Youtube has now reversed their decision thanks to efforts from the EFF and the National Coalition Against Censorship, I fear the issue is far from over. I found out about the story through BoingBoing, where one reader identified only as pjcamp commented: “I’m having a hard time telling the difference between artistic nudity and busty.pl[.]” I’m having a hard time deciphering “busty.pl,” but what intrigues me about pjcamp’s comment is how magnificently it manages to miss the point completely.
Youtube isn’t protecting anyone from “busty.pl,” though it might appear so. What’s happening, instead, is that Youtube is continually serving the interests of “films and television shows.” These, to be sure, aren’t your films or the tv talk show you and your friends record every Sunday night: “films and television” shows are films and television shows from networks, studios, and distributors that have a serious financial worries about how their media is viewed. Since Amy Greenfield wasn’t one of those, her work got axed–though, presumably, if it had been from the film Young Adam starring Ewan McGregor, Youtube wouldn’t have thought twice. That’s what is dangerous about Youtube: its interests couldn’t have less to do with you. The question is not one of moral censorship but rather of financial censorship: Youtube isn’t barring nudity, they’re just not allowing it if you aren’t distributed by Fox Searchlight. It’s a question, all the same, about what we’re allowed to see.
Double Feature: I
by Adam Hirsch
There are always films that fall through the proverbial cracks in every filmmaker’s viewing library, well-known and applauded films that we have claimed to have seen but actually have on our I’ll-eventually-sit-down-and-watch-it list. We all have these lists, myself as much as anyone.
Which is why last night, thanks in part to the wonderful advent of Netflix, I decided to start crossing a few films off the list with weekly double features of missed works. It certainly didn’t hurt that my girlfriend was out of town and I could unapologetically choose which films to watch.
I’m approaching these posts as impressions more than appraisals. I’m not going to write up synopses or review the filmmaking. The films that I’m going to watch are classics that have just passed me by — I’m choosing the ones I’ve heard are magnificent, and it follows that they are going to deliver on the promise. For this first week’s double feature, I chose to kick things off with a triple feature: Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow and Robert Altman’s Gosford Park.
About/Above/Around
by Matt Paley
I just found this wonderful little video directed by Dewey Nicks of superstudio for Jade Castrinos (of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros):
There’s something unexpectedly vital about the video that blooms out of Nicks’ decision to use layered live audio where most music videos just stick the studio recordings on top. It’s not the take-away show idea, either, which from the very start was a familiar idea–a stripped-down concert video. This is something new entirely: edited like a music video (which is to say, edited heavily), recorded like a take-away show, you get pulled in to the reverie of the song–eternal, omnipresent, out of time and space, whether you’re on the beach or in a park or getting in your car or following a toddler in a devil-jumpsuit down the stairs, the way a good piece of music lingers under your breath for a day, or a week.
Lids
by Adam Hirsch
Every year they make the same mistake. They rinse off the pot, give it a quick dry, pop it on the burner and twist the heat to high. The prep work takes precedent, chopping the onions and slicing thin the meat, letting the pot heat all the while. Then the time comes for them to brown the meat and they pour in a few tablespoons of oil, which smokes for a moment, and then, with a sudden and heavy breath, pfoof! – fire. (more…)
Cabinets of Curiosities
by Matt Paley
Yesterday, NPR.org’s picture show blog featured the work of Kate Stone. I knew Kate at Bard, but had missed her thesis show; boy, am I grateful to NPR for cluing me in to what I’d missed.
In her most recent work, Kate explores a space with her camera, prints the photos, reconstructs the space in three dimensions, and then re-photographs the scene. In At The Seams, Kate disassembles and reassembles strangers’ houses, leaving doors poking out of the floor and fans reproducing across empty rooms. In Wunderkammer (which translates to ‘cabinet of curiosities’), the stuffed animals at a museum seem to step right out of their displays. (more…)
Coming Soon: Daddy Longlegs
by Giampaolo Bianconi
Fresh off the heels of the romantic and alluring The Pleasure of Being Robbed, Joshua Safdie has teamed up with his brother (and fellow Red Bucket Films mate) Ben Safdie on Daddy Longlegs, also known by the title Go Get Some Rosemary. The film’s two titles are indicative of the film’s own dual identities. If you watch the trailer available now via Apple and then watch what’s on the Red Bucket website, you’ll see two different films. (more…)
Blinded by the Limelight
by Jake Teresi
Our company is, also, pleased obliged to report that Warner Brother’s The Blind Side has been nominated for Best Picture. [Insert despairing, snarky remark about the Academy here]
Let Her Rip!
by Giampaolo Bianconi
"Hurt Locker" Director Kathryn Bigelow
Co-head New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis just gave an interview with Jezebel, and she held little, if anything, back. “Let’s acknowledge,” she says right off the bat, “That the Oscars are bullshit and we hate them. But they are important commercially… I’ve learned to never underestimate the academy’s bad taste. Crash as best picture? What the fuck.” (more…)
Coming Through The Rye
by Adam Hirsch
Yesterday, J.D. Salinger died at the ripe old age of 91. We here at the Company thought there couldn’t be a better way to send the old boy off than with the proper belt of a proper beverage, our eyes firmly set on something heavy with the whiskey.
However, we ran into a revealing snag: there doesn’t exist a Salinger drink. And so, we filled the gap. (more…)