Movie City Indie Archive for December, 2010

Calligraphing the new Wong Kar-Wai

So that’s what his swordplay pic’s about.

Kenneth Anger And Dennis Lim At The Ann Arbor Film Festival

[Via Mike Everleth.]

Did Anyone Tell Ira Glass?

Was looking for examples of  great poster art from 2010, and found THIS not-so-subtle Italian retitling of the Dave Eggers-Vendela Vida-Sam Mendes Away We Go.

Let It Snow: A Blizzard Symphony [UPDATED JAN 3]

An overnight drift, saluted by Roger Ebert, explained by filmmaker Jamie Stuart. [Stuart’s video went viral after Ebert’s oomph; he’s added a link to the press his sifty symphony has gotten—print, online and broadcast—here.]

Terry Gilliam’s 1884 Animation Test

To be produced by Mr. Gilliam and directed by Tim Ollive. [Via Cory Doctorow.]

SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY

This seems… scary. A much more entertaining, exploitation-style newspaper ad from the 1972 release BELOW.

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Teasing Kevin Smith’s Sundance-Debuting Horror, RED STATE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K-4aLeGWF4&feature=player_embedded

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Taiwanese News Animators On “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark”

WTF FTW: Trailering Hanna

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRUx88vRjIk&feature=player_embedded

A Fine Sundance-Bound Poster

David Lowery, whose St. Nick is very fine, posts this Sundance-bound poster. Here’s hoping the film is as fine. A story is offered at the link.

A Conversation With Paul Greengrass

A Well-Loved Christmas Tradition

I Know What You Did Last Year At Marienbad

The Inception of Movie Editing: The Art of D. W. Griffith

A video essay by Michael Joshua Rowin and Kevin B. Lee. Worth it for a glimpse of a tinted Intolerance backed by Hans Zimmer’s Inception score as well as its punchline.  Text. [Via Matt Zoller Seitz (@mattzollerseitz).]

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One Minkey and Many Birdie Num-Nums: Blake Edwards Was 88

Movie City Indie

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon