Here’s an absolutely wonderful animated short named Out of Sight, a final project by students at the National Taiwan University of Arts.
Taiwan Today has an interview by Grace Kuo with Yu Ya-ting, the director of the film.
Saw Drive a while back. It’s a tough film to process after only one viewing. The film’s sparse dialogue is unusual for a what is, plot-wise, a cookie-cutter heist movie; though that’s not to say Drive will bore you. If anything, it’s a film that demands your attention — it certainly commanded mine.
Here’s a fine example of how Drive pulls this off: During an early conversation between Carey Mulligan’s and Ryan Gosling’s characters, we’re shown with a reverse shot of Mulligan looking at Gosling. In the frame with her is a mirror which shows a silhouetted Gosling. Tucked into the mirror is a photo of her absentee (incarcerated) husband. This is the language of Drive: not dialogue, not really even acting (which is quite good but understated) but photography.
There’s a lot more to say about the movie — including heaping praise on the fantastic soundtrack — but the above should constitute something resembling a recommendation. The film comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today — I recommend giving it a spin.
Oh, apparently 21 Jump Street is now a comedy starring Jonah Hill. That’s cool I guess.
Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir writes of Iranian writer-director-actor Rafi Pitts:
[He] has clearly absorbed both European and American influences; although the spare, alienated, almost wordless style of “The Hunter” recalls ’70s art-house cinema, it’s also a movie about a lonely guy in the big city with a car, a hunting rifle and nothing to lose.
The film looks great.
‘Manos: The Hands Of Fate’: Carefully Restoring The Opposite Of A Masterpiece
Chris Heller with a piece for NPR’s Monkey See blog about Ben Solovey’s Manos: The Restoration project:
“There’s a very distinct feeling in the episode of, ‘What is this movie that we’ve discovered?’” said Ben Solovey, a 26-year-old Florida State film school grad who’s behind Manos: The Restoration, a project to repair an original 16mm workprint of Manos. “Even though there’s these long stretches where they’re not making jokes, it doesn’t matter. It feels like you’re watching a film from another planet.”
So great.
So it seems that the upcoming (in the U.S.) film The Adventures of Tintin, which is based on three classic Tintin comics from the 1940s, is the “perfect cross” between Pirates of the Caribbean (a 2003 film based on a 1967 ride) and Indiana Jones (a 1981 film).
I do believe that the feeling I am currently experiencing is nausea.
ATLAS SHRUGGED Inadvertently Releases Collector’s Item
Press release from the folks behind the Atlas Shrugged film adaptation:
Atlas Productions LLC announced today its plan to replace more than 100,000 title sheets appearing on the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 DVD and Blu-ray versions sold through major retail outlets. These retail versions were packaged with an inaccurate synopsis of Atlas Shrugged. Not affected were the “Special Edition” versions sold online at AtlasShruggedMovie.com.
The 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, is known in philosophical and political circles for presenting a cogent argument advocating a society driven by rational self-interest. On the back of the film’s retail DVD and Blu-ray however, the movie’s synopsis contradictorily states “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
Whoops!
I put this video up on Youtube over five years ago, and I haven’t learned much more about it since. What I do know is that there was an attempt to produce an animated feature film of The Incal, and that this attempt failed. What I think you see here is a reel put together to bait more financiers into the project. Curiously at the end, there is an animated Arzach sequence and what looks like a Starwatcher sequence. This thing is baffling. And gorgeous. As far as I’ve heard, both Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky were involved in the production, but I haven’t heard either of them mention it directly.
This looks absolutely incredible — I’d never heard of L’Incal before.
There seem to be a couple of different editions of the comic in English — if anyone can recommend a particular edition, chime in on Quora.
(Via Aaron Diaz.)
Hercules [1983]: in which Lou Ferrigno, Lasers, & Space Improve the Peplum
Tenebrous Kate:
Have you ever watched a movie and been disappointed that no one throws a man in a bear suit into space? After watching Luigi Cozzi’s “Hercules,” I realized that I’ll forever be disappointed in movies that don’t include a man in a bear suit being thrown into space. It’s rare that a movie embodies the mercurial beauty of “So Bad It’s Good” cinema the way Cozzi’s “Hercules” does. Cozzi is a director whose career is studded with knock-off films: “Starcrash” is his “Star Wars,” “Contamination” is his “Alien,” and this movie is his “Clash of the Titans.” What sets Cozzi’s knock-offs apart is the fact that they are crammed to bursting with STUFF HAPPENING—you may be baffled by what’s on screen, but you are guaranteed to never, ever be bored. Cozzi’s muse is all hopped up on sugar cereal and sparkles with gloriously absurd ideas, every one of which the director is dedicated to capturing on film, always punctuated with an exclamation point.
“Hercules” starts off by disorienting its audience with a melange of repurposed alchemical mysticism, patchwork Greek mythology, and dicey astronomy that attempts to explain the creation of the universe. To sum up: the fire of chaos created four elements (day, night, air and matter) which in turn created Pandora’s Jar which exploded and then that created the planets—all of which is presided over by the space-deities Zeus, Athena and Hera. In order to fight the evils that have been unleashed by the breaking of the jar, the gods create Hercules and then proceed to fuck with him for pretty much no reason at all until he can prove he’s really a hero.
I just watched this with Colin, and I’m pleased to report that it really was every bit as terrible as I was hoping it would be.
And yes, someone throws a man in a bear suit into outer space.
When, in early-1986, Disney executives decided to change the title of their upcoming animated feature from ‘Basil of Baker Street’ to the less ambiguous ‘The Great Mouse Detective’, its production team were less than pleased. One animator in particular, Ed Gombert, harnessed his displeasure to comical effect by creating, and circulating, the following: a fake memo purportedly from then-head of department, Peter Schneider, in which he announced the retroactive renaming of Disney’s entire back catalogue, bar The Aristocats, in a similarly bland style.
This is the funniest thing I’ve read on Letters of Note in a while.