Akira Kurosawa, a master of movement
New Every Frame a Painting! In this installment, Tony Zhou shows how Akira Kurosawa used movement in his films to terrific effect.
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kottke.org posts about video
Hysterical Literature explores women, sex, and aging
You may have seen artist Clayton Cubitt’s NSFW Hysterical Literature project. On YouTube, the videos have been viewed nearly 50 million times. The recipe is simple: a woman, a book, and a Hitachi Magic Wand. In the latest installment, Janet, who’s in her early sixties, reads Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s a lovely meditation on women, sexuality, and age. The project is also on view at MASS MoCA’s Bibliothecaphilia show.
The first and final frames of 55 films
I really love this video featuring the opening and closing shots of fifty-five movies presented side-by-side, “First and Final Frames.” Created by Jacob T. Swinney.
My favorites: “Tree of Life,” “Raging Bull,” “Melancholia.”
Update: Swinney has released a second installment of First and Final Frames.
Mad Max: Fury Road international trailer drops, explodes in your face
The “Mad Max: Fury Road” international trailer features fire and blood, colorful explosions, and Charlize Theron screaming. What a lovely day, indeed. BRB, I gotta go get in line.
(via This Isn’t Happiness)
When Irish eyes are literally smiling
Copyranter says this is the best St. Patrick’s Day ad ever made.
See also: Mouth Eyes, Madonna’s “Bedtime Story,” and “Born with Three Mouths.”
This light blooms like a flower
These Shylights are amazing. Kinetic ceiling lights that resemble blooming flowers, unfurling parachutes, descending ghosts.
The concept is based on nyctinasty, the process by which flowers open and close due to light or temperature changes.
“We wanted to find this exact moment, where the difference is in an object, when it is dead or when it starts to become alive.”
(via This Isn’t Happiness)
How time changes when you’re dying
A week ago, Paul Kalanithi, who was 37, died from lung cancer. He had recently finished his neurosurgery residency at Stanford and was a father to an infant daughter.
He was also a writer. If you haven’t read his “How Long Have I Got Left?” or “Before I Go,” you should.
In this video, he talks about how time changes as you face your mortality. “Clocks are now kind of irrelevant to me,” he says. “Time, where it used to have kind of a linear progression feel to it, now feels more like a space.”
Bjork reveals her moving album cover for Family
Holy crap! Bjork’s released something she’s calling a “moving album cover,” although it appears it’s basically the video for the song “Family” on her Vulnicura album. It’s about the darkest, strangest, most beautiful thing I’ve seen on the internet in a while. The video is a collaboration between Bjork and Andrew Thomas Huang.
(thx This Isn’t Happiness)
Snoop Dogg’s Peaches N Cream lyric video
Snoop Dogg’s next album, BUSH, doesn’t drop until May 12, but until then, we’ve got a very cool lyric video for the first single, “Peaches N Cream,” featuring Charlie Wilson and directed by Wolf & Crow.
Fury end title sequence
I finally got a chance to watch “Fury” last weekend, and the part of the movie that was the most compelling to me was the end title sequence. The sequence terrifyingly captures the slamming chaos of war. (Contains graphic imagery.)
The main title sequence and the end title sequence were created by Greenhaus GFX.
Dalek Relaxation Video
It’s been a hectic week and now that it’s Friday, let’s all chill with this relaxation video narrated by a Dalek.
Exhale. EXHALE! EX!!!-HALE!!! Ps. Make your voice sound like a Dalek. (via digg)
Photoshop experts using Photoshop 1.0
Photoshop 1.0 came out in 1990 and didn’t have layers, live preview, multiple levels of undo, or many other features. See some current Photoshop experts wax nostalgic and wrestle with the lack of features in this entertaining video.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
Super slow motion video of popping a balloon underwater
This video, shot at 36,000 frames per second, shows a balloon popping underwater. I am not quite sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
For instance, the air bubbles do not immediately rise to the surface…it takes them about 20-25 ms to get in the mood. Compare with a slow motion video of popping a water balloon in air:
Again, watch how it takes for gravity to kick in. It’s like Wile E. Coyote after having run off a cliff, hanging in midair holding a sign that says “EEP!” (via @BadAstronomer)
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
HBO will premiere the critically acclaimed authorized documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck later this year on May 4. Here’s the trailer:
Looks promising. The film is directed by Brett Morgen, who also did the excellent The Kid Stays in the Picture documentary about Robert Evans. And the name comes from a late-80s mixtape made by Cobain.
We’ll Find Something
If you and a friend are walking around Manhattan trying to find dinner, this is how the conversation will go:
It’s funny because it’s true. That’s a clip from We’ll Find Something, a short film by Casey Gooden starring Upstream Color’s Shane Carruth and Amy Seimetz.
Update: The full film has been released online and it is excruciating to watch if you’ve ever had bad relationship moments while traveling.
Back in Time, a Back to the Future documentary
2015 seems like a pretty good year to do a documentary about Back to the Future. Here’s a trailer:
The scope of the film has changed since the project started — it was originally just about the DeLorean Time Machine — and so the production team has gone back to Kickstarter to fund completion of the film. (via @ystrickler)
New trailer for Inside Out
Ok, I’m starting to feel better about Inside Out, Pixar’s upcoming animated feature that takes place mostly inside the mind of a young girl. The first trailer featured a bunch of gender stereotypes and mostly left me scratching my head, but the second trailer is solid:
No-talent ass clown
Funny or Die digitally inserted the singer Michael Bolton into Office Space, where he plays Michael Bolton, the Initech programmer.
(via devour)
The Century of the Self
From filmmaker Adam Curtis, a four-part documentary series on “how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy”. Here’s part one:
And continue with the rest in this playlist. Here is a good review:
This is a powerful and arresting documentary series — I ended up watching all four episodes back to back in a marathon effort. It was that gripping. I had felt similarly about his more recent documentary about the rise of neo conservatism and arab fundamentalism and the similarity in their techniques for recruiting followers (and their mutual need of each other in that project) — but ‘The Century of the Self’ (TCS from now on), is much grander in its scope. It seeks to analyse the different conceptions of the self in the twentieth century, and how these conceptions were ultimately used by corporations to manipulate consumers into purchasing their products. Curtis takes large swipes at corporate capitalism in this documentary, but his target is even wider than this — he seeks to tell a story about the relationship between the differing conceptions of individualism and the capitalist, democratic institutions (corporations and governments) which organise themselves around these conceptions.
(thx, kyle)
Long wave is looooooong
Koa Smith rides in the barrel of a wave for almost 30 seconds…it just goes on and on and on.
This video is a bit misleading. The ride is shown twice but the first time through it’s slowed down so it lasts more than a minute. The full-speed replay starts at 2:01 and is still impressive. (via digg)
Mr. Holmes
In Mr. Holmes, Ian McKellen plays a post-retirement Sherlock Holmes who has moved to the country to take up beekeeping. Here’s the trailer:
Update: Not that the first trailer was bad or anything, but this new one provides much more of a sense of what the film is about.
I’m going to watch the shit out of this movie.
The Himalayas from 20,000 ft.
Beautiful video of the Himalayas shot from a helicopter flying at up to 24,000 feet high.
(via ★interesting)
Shot on iPhone 6
For their new ad campaign, Apple gathered some photos that people had taken with their iPhones and are featuring them on their website and on billboards. Here are a few I found particularly engaging.
I’ve said it before and it’s just getting more obvious: the iPhone is the best camera in the world.
Update: Apple has added a section for films shot on iPhone 6.
Man violates laws of gravity while pouring tea
I love watching people who are particularly adept at food prep and this guy preparing teh tarik certainly fits the bill. His pour seems to violate at least two of Newton’s three laws of motion.
This guy has some serious skills as well.
These gentlemen making parathas is still my all-time favorite food prep video, but these are good as well. (via cyn-c)
Google’s new offices
The plans for Google’s new offices in Mountain View blew me away. Not so much the reconfigurable office spaces1 but the greenhouse canopies. If those canopies actually work, they could result in a workspace that combines the best parts of being outdoors (the openness, the natural light & heat, greenery) with the benefits of working indoors (lack of wind & rain, moderate temperatures).
I’m skeptical. Can spaces made for any purpose be right for any single purpose? Swiss Army knives aren’t that great at slicing bread.↩
Messi scores 64 goals at once
Here are 64 goals scored by FC Barcelona legend Lionel Messi, presented simultaneously in one frame.
Fusion’s Cara Rose DeFabio has dubbed this type of video The Superfuse.
A Few Silent Men
Someone edited the courtroom scene from A Few Good Men and took out all the dialogue, leaving just the reaction shots. It’s surprisingly coherent and dramatic.
See also Dr. Phil without dialogue and musicless music videos. (via @pieratt)
Errol Morris’ short films for ESPN
Director Errol Morris has directed six short films for ESPN collective titled “It’s Not Crazy, It’s Sports.” The films will air on March 1 and then be released online during the following week. The trailer:
The films’ subjects include Mr. Met, streakers, sports memorabilia fanatics, an electric football league, and Michael Jordan’s stolen jersey. I’ll post the films here as they’re released online. Morris previously did a film for ESPN about the sports-themed funerals of die-hard fans.
Update: Grantland has posted the first short film in the series about an electric football league that’s been running in a NY basement for over 30 years.
Update: All of the Morris’ shorts have now been posted on Grantland. Go. Watch.
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