Movie City Indie Archive for February, 2011

The Selected Jane Russell From Howard Hughes’ THE OUTLAW

And from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
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Annie Girardot in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BySmN6t5ezs&feature=player_embedded

Charlie Sheen in FERRIS BUELLER: At The Station For Drugs

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

Happy 103, Tex Avery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlgHalJ1-p4&feature=player_embedded

Banksy’s L.A.test Outdoor Art

[Click for larger. Via.]

Trailering “Shaun Of The Dead Island”

Nice music! Where’s that from?

Chris Marker’s TEMPO RISOLUTO

From the “Kosinski”/”Guillaume” YouTube account, montage on revolt in Middle East and Northern Africa.

Happy 111, Luis Buñuel

“God, death, sex, dry martini, dreams.”

From “My Last Sigh,” Don Luis’ recipe for the very dry Virgin Martini. “To provoke, or sustain, a reverie in a bar, you have to drink English gin, especially in the form of the dry martini. To be frank, given the primordial role played in my life by the dry martini, I think I really ought to give it at least a page. Like all cocktails, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. At a certain period in America it was said that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative power of the Holy Ghost pierced the Virgin’s hymen “like a ray of sunlight through a window — leaving it unbroken.”

Another crucial recommendation is that the ice be so cold and hard that it won’t melt, since nothing’s worse than a watery martini. For those who are still with me, let me give you my personal recipe, the fruit of long experimentation and guaranteed to produce perfect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients — glasses, gin, and shaker — in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don’t take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Shake it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, shake it again, and serve. (During the 1940s, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York taught me a curious variation. Instead of Angostura, he used a dash of Pernod. Frankly, it seemed heretical to me, but apparently it was only a fad.)”

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AP Surfaces Color Home Movies Of JFK’s Last Night In Houston

Sofia Directs Natalie For Dior

Via Russian Tatler, with more stills from the shoot of Coppola’s commercial with Portman and photographer Tim Walker at the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yCw6Mvh69A&feature=player_embedded

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Michael Kahn’s A.C.E. Lifetime Achievement Tribute Reel

As shown at Saturday night’s American Cinema Editors awards. Edited by Carsten Kurpanek & Rosanne Colello.  Via Edgar Wright.

SxSW: Teasing Aussie Ha’penny Indie LBF: A POP-ART FILM

http://vimeo.com/14550093&feature=player_embedded

Based on the 2006 novel, “Life Between Fucks,”  by “Cry Bloxsome,” made over a period of months for under $25,000, according to the makers. A hot Australian summer… [Site.]

MNSFW: Trailering “Dead Island”

Yes, I now have an idea about the texture and mood of this game. Even beyond the great gushing geyers of grue. Wonder how much story there was to draw on for a terrific trailer like this.

Radiohead’s “Lotus Flower,” By Garth Jennings

Gosh. I mean, gosh. Goofy goofy beauty. The NME offers inventive explanations for Mr. Yorke’s moves.

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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