Totally loving this Chinese movie poster for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (perhaps designed by Huang Hai).
And while we're on the subject, I watched the movie the other day and loved it. In fact, it might be the most visually inventive movie I've ever seen...it's just one mindbending visual after another, for more than two hours. (via @gray)
Yesterday I posted a link to a Twitter thread by Stanley Kubrick scholar Filippo Ulivieri about a previously overlooked (*ahem*) aspect of The Shining: Jack Nicholson breaks the fourth wall by micro-glancing at the camera dozens of times during the film. It turns out that Ulivieri also made a visual essay about this and it's really worth a watch.
Let's go back to that glance that has been noticed by a few film critics. Some say it's a Brechtian effect to expose the artifice of the mise en scène and have the audience reflect on the film medium. But Kubrick's films are not intellectual, despite what the critics say. "The truth of a thing," Kubrick said, "is in the feel of it, not in the think of it." If this look at the camera means anything, for me it means that we are not safe from Jack's fury. He knows where we are, he may come for us next. But what about the others? Why on Earth is Jack Torrance constantly glancing at us, breaking the fourth wall over and over, and over, and over.
What all of these micro-glances mean is open to interpretation. Ulivieri offers a few theories of his own -- e.g. Jack is looking at ghosts, or perhaps just one ghost: the camera ghost -- but says one of the reasons he made the video is to hear what other film critics and fans think might be going on here. I thought this response to his thread hit near the mark:
My gf's read The Shining, and it's really interesting now that they notice all these fourth wall breaks Jack does. throughout the whole book, Jack feels like he's being watched and judged, and that's why he feels so much pressure to keep up appearances.
If Jack is the only one in the MOVIE to consistently break the fourth wall, where it's always just passing glances, that's a pretty effective way to show the character's fear of being watched or judged. Especially if WE don't notice it at first.
I wonder how many The Shining re-watches this video and thread have inspired...I'm gonna watch it again in the next few days and see how my awareness of the glancing changes the film for me.
Oh no. It's June? Where what how?!? I did not mean to let this much time elapse since the last installment of my media diet, all the way back on Dec 2 in a completely different calendar year. But there's nothing to be done about it, we're all here now, so tuck your arms inside the carriage and let's do this thing. Here's what I've been watching, reading, listening to, and experiencing over the last six months. Enjoy.
Fire of Love. Superb documentary on volcanos and obsession. The footage, mostly shot by the subjects, is unbelievable. (A)
Star Trek: First Contact. Maybe my favorite Star Trek movie? Ok, maybe not favorite but I like it a lot. (A)
Splendor. This is one of my favorite engine-building games that I've played — it strips the concept down to the bare bones. That makes it easy to get the hang of but there's a lot of room for different strategies as skill levels rise. (A-)
Ted Lasso (season three). I almost didn't watch this because season two was not my favorite and the critics were just tearing into season three, but I'm so glad I did...this is one of my favorite things I watched over the past few months. This was more like free therapy than a "sitcom", which probably explains why some people didn't care for it. (A)
Mercado Little Spain. José Andrés' Spanish version of Eataly. I've only been there a couple of times, but omg the food. The pan con tomate is the simplest imaginable dish — bread, tomato, olive oil, garlic, salt — but I could easily eat it every day. (A)
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure. Such a gift to see so much of Basquiat's art in one place. Loved it. (A+)
Wood stove. An actual fire inside of your house that warms and captivates. Perfect, no notes. (A+)
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. A memoir about loss, grief, food, and the Korean American experience. (A-)
The Bourne Identity. Over 20 years old and still a great action thriller. (A-)
AirPods Pro (2nd generation). I've been using the first-gen AirPods Pro for the last few years and they've been great. But these 2nd-gen ones are next-level: the noise cancelling is way better and they are much more comfortable...been wearing the hell out of these since I got them. (A+)
Succession (season four). Has any show ever hit it out of the park on every episode like this? The whole last season, including the finale, was just fantastic. (A+)
China's Van Goghs. A Chinese man who's been painting replica van Goghs for half his life visits Holland and France to see the original paintings and the locations where van Gogh painted. Fascinating. What makes someone a "real" artist? (A-)
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Got to ski here with my kids a couple of times this winter and I can see why they love it. (B)
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Better than I expected and perhaps better than a superhero holiday special has any right to be. (B+)
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. If you've ever enjoyed a long collaborative creative partnership with another person or group of people and that collaborative frisson felt like the highlight of your life, you will probably like this book. (A)
Glass Onion. Super fun. (A-)
Andor. I really enjoyed this but was also kind of perplexed about the hype around how much better this series was than the rest of Star Wars. Again, I liked it but it didn't seem too far apart from the whole. (A-)
The 2022 World Cup. This whole thing gets an F for the corruption, human rights abuses, and idiotic TV coverage in the US, but as a long-time fan of Lionel Messi, watching Argentina win the trophy was 💯. The final against France was one of the peak sports viewing experiences of my life. (F/A+)
Rogue One. Had to rewatch after Andor. Still a favorite. (A-)
1899. This gave me Lost and Westworld vibes (that's bad) but I'd heard good things so I stuck with it for two more episodes than I should have. Stopped watching halfway through and then read the Wikipedia page and, yep, thankful I didn't spend anymore time on it. I have to stop watching these puzzle box shows. (C-)
Bullet Train. People seemed to like this more than I did. Seemed like a Guy Ritchie Tarantino sort of thing, but a bit flashier? It was fine? (B)
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. This movie gets better and better every time I watch it. Two world-class hams, William Shatner and Ricardo Montalban, trying to see who can chew the most scenery, the first movie scene wholly generated by computer, and Scotty playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes? Come on! (A+)
White Noise. Fine, I guess. But the end credits were the best part. (B)
Acupuncture. I tried acupuncture to address a chronic injury. It didn't end up working for that purpose, but each time I went, I felt an incredible sense of relaxation and calm after the session. (B)
Wonderland Dreams. I posted about Alexa Meade's "living still lifes" more than 13 years ago and I finally got a chance to see her work in person in NYC. (A-)
Edward Hopper's New York. Always good to visit the Whitney. (B+)
Avatar: The Way of Water. Oh dear. Amazing effects but the plot & dialogue were right out of a B movie. And yeah, just a few months after seeing it, I can't name a single character. (B-)
Fleishman is in Trouble. This wrecked me and I loved it. So much of this rhymed with my life — very uncomfortable at times! (A+)
Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Read this straight after I finished the show. (A)
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Entertaining time travel adventure from the author of Station Eleven. (B+)
Ambient 23. Moby made an 2.5-hour-long ambient album and it's pretty good. (B+)
The Fablemans. I liked this quite a bit — it's one of those films that grows in your esteem as you think back to it. Curious to see it again in a month or two to see how it holds up. (A-)
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I hadn't read any Hemingway since high school and ok, I get it now. Enjoyed the first half more than the second though. (A)
Minions: The Rise of Gru. I enjoy the Minions more than, what, I should? And what's not to like about Steve Carell doing a funny voice? (B+)
The White Lotus (season two). I didn't care for the first season of this (I stopped watching halfway through), but I loved this season. I did think the ending was a little weaker than the rest of it. (A-)
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Picked this book up after a viral tweet by Bigolas Dickolas sent it screaming up the Amazon bestseller charts. Not bad (time travel, causality, etc.) but the writing style was not my favorite. (B+)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. My kids and I went to see this the other day and afterwards had an interesting chat about how you can make a movie where one of the themes is animal cruelty and then the rest of the movie is just a lot of hyper-violence with a surprising amount of yelling (at children!) and also mindless killing of some cyborg animals (during the rescue of other cyborg animals). Honestly disappointing and kind of a muddle. (B)
The Rihanna Halftime Show at Super Bowl LVII. It's been years since I watched the Super Bowl (or American football), but my daughter and I were excited to catch Rihanna's halftime show. We both loved it, a great performance. (A)
Raiders of the Lost Ark. A perfect action/adventure movie. (A+)
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. Listened to this on audiobook with my mystery-loving daughter — it made some long drives fly right by. (A-)
The Last of Us. Some of the episodes showed their video game roots (side quests, NPCs, etc.) a little too much but maybe that's just how most action drama is written now? (A)
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The kids and I agreed this was just fine but wasn't as fun as the other two Ant-Men. (B)
The Book of Mormon. Live things are always a hell of a lot of fun, but I think this played a lot differently when it premiered in 2011 than it does today. (B+)
Speed Racer. Not a fan of the visual style of this movie. (B)
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout. I've been in a mode of my life for awhile now where I identify with the characters of books I read and movies/TV that I watch and it makes it difficult to actually be objective (ha!) about it, even with myself. Did I like this or did I just identify strongly with the characters? And what does it matter if I got something valuable out of it even if it wasn't "good"? (B+)
Ivory. I've mostly quit Twitter and this app from Tapbots makes Mastodon feel a lot like Twitter for me. Well, without the right-wing owner and increasingly fascist rhetoric. (B+)
Triangle of Sadness. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to everyone, but I loved it. The dinner scene had me hyperventilating with laughter. (A)
Combustion Predictive Thermometer. I preordered this years ago when I was doing a lot more grilling. Mixed results so far. The thermometer is designed to stay in the meat while you cook it, but the heat of my hardwood charcoal grill was too much for it (I run it *hot*) and I had to take it out. But doing the oven part of the reverse sear is a total breeze with this thing...worth it just for that. (B+)
The Complete History & Strategy of LVMH. I am not usually a VC/startup bro podcast listener, but my pal Timoni strongly recommended this episode on luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and it ended up being really fascinating. The episode is 3.5 hours long and I wanted more. (A)
ChatGPT. I wrote about this extensively back in March and I'm still using it several times a week, mostly as a programming assistant. (A)
The Mysterious Benedict Society. Watched with the kids and I think we all agreed it was a bit better than the first season? But Disney cancelled the show and removed it completely from Disney+ 👎 so good luck watching it... (B+)
Star Trek: Picard (seasons two & three). I'd heard not-great things about season two so I wasn't super-curious to watch but with the buzz around season three, I decided to give it a try. I ended up watching both seasons in the space of a couple of weeks during a particularly tough period. I just really like spending time in that universe with those people. (A-)
The Mandalorian (season three). This season really dragged in spots — I guess I don't care about the Mandalorian back story that much? (B+)
Crossword puzzles. I've never been a crossword puzzle person, but I've been doing the NY Times crossword with a friend for the past few months (mostly over FaceTime) and I've become a fan. (B+)
The Wager by David Grann. The beginning is sort of unavoidably slow due to having to explain global geopolitics and how the British Navy functioned in the 18th century, but the rest of the book is just plain masterful and unputdownable. (A)
The Five Lives of Hilma af Klint by Philipp Deines. A graphic novel based on the diaries and art of Hilma af Klint — better than I was expecting. (B+)
Nuun Sport Tablets. I drink a lot of water during the course of my day but also too many sugary drinks. I don't like seltzer so I've been on the lookout for a beverage that tastes good (or at least not terrible) without a lot of sugar. In her excellent newsletter, Laura Olin recommended these and I've been enjoying them so far, particularly the citrus flavors. (B+)
Superman. Christopher Reeve would be just 70 years old right now if he hadn't died in 2004. Wish he were still around; he was a hell of an actor. (A-)
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Strong word-of-mouth got me to sit down and watch this and it didn't disappoint. Solid action/adventure that reminded me of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. (B+)
Poker Face. I'm only a little more than halfway through this, but Natasha Lyonne solving mysteries while on the lam across America in a TV series by Rian Johnson? In. (B+)
Mrs. Davis. I wanted to like this! I'd heard good things! But it was giving me Lost vibes so I had to stop after two episodes. I do not know how to describe it, but I do not like television shows that are confusing/mysterious in the particular way that this show is. See also Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen – all, not coincidentally, written and created by Damon Lindelof. (C)
The Great (season two). I loved season one but season two took me forever to get through – like 7-8 months – and I still have the last episode left. I've heard season three gets good again, so I'm gonna push through and give that a chance. The leads are marvelous. (B)
Past installments of my media diet are available here.
Mosfilm, one of the largest film studios in the USSR during the Soviet era, has put full-length versions of many of its most acclaimed and influential films on YouTube for free, including six of Andrei Tarkovsky's films: Stalker, Solaris, Ivan's Childhood, The Mirror, Andrei Rublev, and The Passion According to Andrei. Also available is Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein. Several of these movies appear on Sight and Sound's 2022 list of the best 100 movies of all time. (via @irwin)
Whenever I hear someone say "it's just business" in order to magically justify some decision to ignore the humanity of individual people, I remember that it's adapted from a line in The Godfather spoken by Michael Corleone at the precise moment when he decides to become a murderous sociopath. We should maybe stop running businesses like fictional mafia families.
I've been waiting patiently on this one: the teaser trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It's based on the fantastic book by David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.
The movie will be out in theaters on October 6. Oh, and Scorsese & DiCaprio have already signed on to adapt Grann's latest book, The Wager, which I recently read and loved.
If you're like me, sometime in the past 4-5 years you noticed that a lot of the films you liked (or, even if you didn't, you appreciated that they were getting made) were coming from the same place, A24. Moonlight, Uncut Gems, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Aftersun, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Eighth Grade, Lady Bird, The Lobster, Amy, Ex Machina. More recently, TV shows like Euphoria, Beef, and Erma Vep.
This video from Vox charts the rise of A24 from a small distributor to an Oscar-winning powerhouse that pumps out more movies each year than much bigger studios. See also The Cult of A24 (a good companion piece to the video above) and Every A24 Movie, Ranked.
I know, I know. Too much Wes Anderson. Too much AI. But there is something in my brain, a chemical imbalance perhaps, and I can't help but find this reimagining of the Lord of the Rings in Anderson's signature style funny and charming. Sorry but not sorry.
Drawing from the materials of The Roddenberry Archive, this video takes us on a virtual tour of the 3D rendered bridges of every iteration of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, from the original 1964 sketches to the final scenes of Star Trek: Picard. I've watched a bunch of Star Trek recently and it was neat to see the evolution of the design and presumed technology. Designing for the future is difficult and it's even tougher when, for instance, you need to design something that for the future that looks contemporary to now but also, somehow, predates a design that looked contemporary 30 years ago. (If that makes any sense...)
You can also head over to The Roddenberry Archive to check out all of the Enterprise designs in more detail, inside and out. (via open culture)
Finally: a full-length trailer for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, easily the movie I am most looking forward to seeing this summer. Dunkirk was one of my favorite films of the past few years, I've done quite a bit of reading about the Manhattan Project over the years, and I studied modern physics in college, so I am all the way in for this. Fingers crossed!
P.S. The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. Might have to read this one before the movie comes out.
Loving scrolling through this collection of sci-fi movie logos from Reagan Ray.
As is the case with most of my logo posts, it's been fun to pick up on the trends. There's the trick where they remove the segments from the top half of the letters like Blade Runner, or the embossed brushed metal of Robocop. Glowing letters were a big trend that started in the late 80s, most likely set off by the Alien franchise. And I can never get enough of the 3D type in early films.
You can check out more of Ray's logo collections here.
Ok, here's the first trailer for second part of Denis Villeneuve's Dune. Time to get hyped! It comes out on November 3 — we have until then to decide what "Timothée Chalamet rides the worm" is a euphemism for.
For his second Iconic Sans video, David Friedman tells us about an itinerant filmmaker who travelled the country from the 30s to the 50s making the same movie over and over again with different casts of local children.
Why would somebody remake a movie hundreds of times? Was he obsessed? Mad? Director Melton Barker was a traveling filmmaker (historians call him an "itinerant filmmaker") who went town to town from the 1930s to the 1970s convincing everyday folks to pay him to be in his movie "The Kidnappers Foil" over and over and over. He used the same script each time, with an all local cast. It's a fascinating bit of Americana and cinema history.
You can learn more about The Kidnappers Foil at this site from The Texas Archive of the Moving Image, watch several full-length versions on the film on YouTube, or use the script to make your own version.
It's a no-brainer: what if you handed over a visually rich sci-fi universe with slightly campy origins to a quirky auteur with an overwhelming aesthetic, just to see what you'd get? This short trailer imagines Wes Anderson at the helm of his very own Star Wars movie, complete with Bill Murray as Obi-Wan and Owen Wilson as Darth Vader (wow).
See also, from back in 2012, Conan O'Brien's take on Wes Anderson's Star Wars, A Life Galactic. I would totally watch either of these movies tbh.
Wow, I'd never seen these before today! For the 1999 MTV Movie Awards, Wes Anderson created three promo spots, each one a staged re-creation of a nominated movie in the style of the Hollywood-inspired plays in Rushmore (Serpico & the Vietnam War one). All three shorts (Armageddon, Out of Sight, The Truman Show) star Jason Schwartzman as Max Fisher, along with the rest of the Max Fischer Players. (via open culture)
The Fictional Brands Archive is a collection of fictional brands found in movies, TV shows, and video games — think Acme in Looney Tunes, Pixar's Monsters, Inc., and Nakatomi Corporation from Die Hard. Very cool. But gotta say though, the dimming mouseover effect makes this more difficult to use than it needs to be... (via sidebar)
I have very high hopes for Greta Gerwig's Barbie. It would be incredible if it lives up to them and the first two teaser trailers are a good start.
Also, I love how completely and utterly thirrrrrrsty the video's description is to establish the bona fides and pedigree of the movie's cast and crew:
From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig ("Little Women," "Lady Bird") comes "Barbie," starring Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie ("Bombshell," "I, Tonya") and Ryan Gosling ("La La Land," "Half Nelson") as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera ("End of Watch," the "How to Train Your Dragon" films), Kate McKinnon ("Bombshell," "Yesterday"), Michael Cera ("Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," "Juno"), Ariana Greenblatt ("Avengers: Infinity War," "65"), Issa Rae ("The Photograph," "Insecure"), Rhea Perlman ("I'll See You in My Dreams," "Matilda"), and Will Ferrell (the "Anchorman" films, "Talladega Nights"). The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne ("Little Women"), Emma Mackey ("Emily," "Sex Education"), Hari Nef ("Assassination Nation," "Transparent"), Alexandra Shipp (the "X-Men" films), Kingsley Ben-Adir ("One Night in Miami," "Peaky Blinders"), Simu Liu ("Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Ncuti Gatwa ("Sex Education"), Scott Evans ("Grace and Frankie"), Jamie Demetriou ("Cruella"), Connor Swindells ("Sex Education," "Emma."), Sharon Rooney ("Dumbo," "Jerk"), Nicola Coughlan ("Bridgerton," "Derry Girls"), Ritu Arya ("The Umbrella Academy"), Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren ("The Queen").
Gerwig directed "Barbie" from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach ("Marriage Story," "The Squid and the Whale"), based on Barbie by Mattel. The film's producers are Oscar nominee David Heyman ("Marriage Story," "Gravity"), Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner, with Michael Sharp, Josey McNamara, Ynon Kreiz, Courtenay Valenti, Toby Emmerich and Cate Adams serving as executive producers.
Gerwig's creative team behind the camera included Oscar-nominated director of photography Rodrigo Prieto ("The Irishman," "Silence," "Brokeback Mountain"), six-time Oscar-nominated production designer Sarah Greenwood ("Beauty and the Beast," "Anna Karenina"), editor Nick Houy ("Little Women," "Lady Bird"), Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran ("Little Women," "Anna Karenina"), visual effects supervisor Glen Pratt ("Paddington 2," "Beauty and the Beast"), music supervisor George Drakoulias ("White Noise," "Marriage Story") and Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat ("The Shape of Water," "The Grand Budapest Hotel").
Is that....everybody? In the world?
Well this is some bizarre good fun — turns out that the campy goofiness of Star Wars and the campy seriousness of high fashion make for a pretty good combination.
See also Lord of the Rings by Balenciaga and Game of Thrones by Balenciaga. Oh, and Hipster Star Wars.
You've probably seen the work of animation pioneer Max Fleischer; he made the old Popeye, Superman, Betty Boop, and Koko the Clown cartoons waaaay back in the early-to-mid 20th century. Films from back then are often not well-preserved, so when a copy is discovered in a film library or private collection, great care must be exercised in restoring the film for future generations to enjoy.
This video follows the restoration process of Fleischer's 1924 Koko the Clown film Birthday, from scanning a 35mm print from 1930 to the digital retouching. The fully restored print doesn't seem to be online anywhere, but you can see a couple of before-and-after comparisons here and here.
Insider has been doing a whole series of videos on how movie props are made (view the entire thing here) and I found this one on how prop makers rely on noiseless props to be particularly interesting. To cut down on distracting on-set noise (so dialogue can be heard, for instance), they swap racquetball balls for pool balls, silicon chunks for ice cubes, and paper bags made out of coffee filter material for real paper bags. So weird to watch those objects in action without their usual sounds. (thx, caroline)
The top two comments on YouTube sum this trailer for Asteroid City up pretty well: "Just when you don't think it can get more Wes Anderson, it gets more Wes Anderson." and "You know a Wes Anderson movie is a Wes Anderson movie, but you can't really describe a Wes Anderson movie to someone who has never seen a Wes Anderson movie." Here's the synopsis:
The itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention (organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowship and scholarly competition) is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.
Does it even matter to know this? At this point, you're either throwing money at the screen after watching this trailer (*raises hand*) or you're just not interested. For those in the former camp, Asteroid City opens in theaters on June 16.
Update: Asteroid City marks the first Wes Anderson movie without Bill Murray since Bottle Rocket — the actor came down with Covid-19 just before filming began and had to withdraw.
I'd seen Titanic with a Cat but hadn't realized there were a whole collection of videos featuring OwlKitty cleverly edited into them. I really like the Jurassic Park one embedded above. The licking! The purring! Fantastic, no notes.
You can check out a bunch of other movies featuring OwlKitty on YouTube (LOTR, Top Gun, Home Alone, John Wick, Mandalorian), including some behind-the-scenes of how they're made. Here's how they did the Jurassic Park one:
The power of at-home filmmaking software and equipment is just incredible.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of the 2001 romantic comedy The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain, has recut his beloved movie into a cheeky short film that reveals that Amélie was actually a KGB spy.
Did no one ever wonder how a young waitress afforded such sophisticated decoration for a flat in Montmartre, one of Paris's most expensive districts?
Film editors are magicians. (via @pacanukeha)
Do you want to sit in on a 30-minute cinematography masterclass with Roger Deakins as he talks about the process behind some of his most iconic films? We're talking Sicario, The Shawshank Redemption, 1917, Fargo, Blade Runner 2049, and No Country for Old Men here. Of course you do. And when you're done with that, you can listen to all of these other filmmakers and actors talking about their films.
This is a clever little promo from A24 for the rerelease of Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, a concert film from 1984 featuring The Talking Heads — it, the promo, features David Byrne dropping into his dry cleaners to pick up an old, big suit. As for the film, it's getting a 4K restoration and will be out sometime later this year.
"Stop Making Sense" stars core band members David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison along with Bernie Worrell, Alex Weir, Steve Scales, Lynn Mabry and Edna Holt. The live performance was shot roughly 40 years ago over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December of 1983. It features Talking Heads' most memorable songs, including "Burning Down the House," "Once in a Lifetime" and "This Must Be the Place."
"There was a band. There was a concert," the Talking Heads said in a statement. "This must be the movie!"
The legendary New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael loved the film, calling it "close to perfection" in this contemporary review:
The director, Jonathan Demme, offers us a continuous rock experience that keeps building, becoming ever more intense and euphoric. This has not been a year when American movies overflowed with happiness; there was some in Splash, and there's quite a lot in All of Me — especially in its last, dancing minutes. Stop Making Sense is the only current movie that's a dose of happiness from beginning to end. The lead singer, David Byrne, designed the stage lighting and the elegantly plain performance-art environments (three screens used for back-lit slide projections); there's no glitter, no sleaze. The musicians aren't trying to show us how hot they are; the women in the group aren't there to show us some skin. Seeing the movie is like going to an austere orgy — which turns out to be just what you wanted.
I loved Everything Everywhere All at Once so much when I saw it in the theater last spring. It caught me in a low moment and swept me up in a protective embrace; it was magic. I was afraid this joyously weird movie would get lost in the Very Serious Film shuffle come awards time but I was beyond thrilled when I woke up this morning to the news that EEAAO swept the major categories for which it was nominated at the Oscars. Here are all the film's wins from last night:
Best Picture - Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, and Jonathan Wang, producers (acceptance speech).
Best Director - Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (acceptance speech).
Best Actress - Michelle Yeoh (acceptance speech).
Best Supporting Actor - Ke Huy Quan (acceptance speech).
Best Supporting Actress - Jamie Lee Curtis (acceptance speech).
Best Original Screenplay - Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (acceptance speech).
Best Film Editing - Paul Rogers (acceptance speech).
So happy for Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan in particular! Here are their acceptance speeches:
I am disappointed, but only slightly, that Stephanie Hsu didn't win Best Supporting Actress — her audition for the role of Joy/Jobu Tupaki is amazing if you haven't seen it. (And she also sang with David Byrne (who wore hot dog fingers) last night?)
The Oscars are this weekend and in this video, some of the nominees — Paul Mescal, Rian Johnson, Todd Field, Camille Friend (hairstylist for Wakanda Forever) — read rave reviews of their work from Letterboxd. Watch to the end — Ke Huy Quan's letter, and his reaction to it, is especially wonderful.
Ten years ago, I met the founders of Letterboxd in New Zealand. The site was tiny then and had just gotten out of invitation-only mode. But they were enthusiastic and had a vision of making an online space for discussing and reviewing movies. It's wonderful to see the site become such a key part of the film industry. (via @jasonsantamaria)
A beautiful scene from the 2014 Mauritanian film Timbuktu (which was recently included on Slate's New Black Film Canon), in which young men under the rule of Islamic extremists quietly and defiantly play a forbidden football match with an imaginary ball. (thx, caroline)
Bill Neil is a movie trailer editor at Buddha Jones and in this video he guides us through a short history of movie trailers — from Dr. Strangelove in the 60s to Neil's own Nope trailer — and gently picks them apart to show us how they work. I enjoyed hearing all of the vocabulary for the techniques that they use: rug pull, bumper, diegetic, rise, and signature sound (aka leitmotif).
The promise of 3D movies is that they are supposed to draw the viewer further into the world of the film — the all-important immersive experience. In this video, Evan Puschak argues persuasively that the 3D effect actually has the opposite effect, for four main reasons:
1. The different focus and convergence points.
2. The darkness of 3D movies
3. 3D glasses shrink the screen
4. 3D forces you to look at only what's in focus
I've long disliked 3D movies so Puschak's explanation makes me feel vindicated about my stance. I've only ever seen two of them that were any good: the original Avatar and Tron: Legacy. Tron in particular was one of my peak movie-going experiences: I saw it, nearly alone, in a 3D IMAX theater from the best seat in the house. When the lightcycle match started, the 3D effect brought the playing field right into the theater a few inches from my nose and I just gaped in wonder like a little kid for the rest of what is essentially a 125-minute Daft Punk music video (nothing wrong with that!). If all 3D movies were like that, sign me up! But otherwise, I'm gonna stick to 2D.
