"
How to make sense of Conspiracy Theories" [Part 1 of 9 from YouTube] Rob Ager is best known for his very thoughtful analyses of films such as
The Shining [see also this analysis of the
Overlook's geometry,
previously],
A Clockwork Orange [and
supplement],
Psycho,
Pulp Fiction,
Aliens,
Taxi Driver and
others. He has recently completed an analysis of the subject of
conspiracy theories. "All of us, from time to time, will believe that two or more people in a particular context have conspired to achieve a mutual aim – be it cheating in a card game or engineering an international war. It isn’t by definition a lapse in logic to believe that a conspiracy has or is going to occur in a given situation. Conspiracies do happen and it is a natural facet of healthy thinking and self-preservation to seek out awareness of conspiracies that may affect our lives." [
Text version, Ager's
Collative Learning site]
posted by McLir
on Jan 18, 2012 -
53 comments
<<Vertigo is an impossible object: a gimcrack plot studded with strange gaps that nonetheless rides a pulse of peculiar necessity, a field of association that simultaneously expands and contracts like its famous trick shot, a ghost story whose spirits linger even after having been apparently explained away, and a study of obsession that becomes an obsessive object in its own right, situated likewise on the edge of unreality. This video series avoids assigning the film any determinate shape and tries instead to enter it through a number of side doors, each indicative of a way of seeing.
Part 1 (QT dl ~500mb) explored some of the ground-level weirdness of the film’s construction, offers a suggestion that the film may exist in its own unique tense, and examines two iterations of the (Chris) Marker Hypothesis*.
Part 2 (QT dl ~1.5gB) is spooky, reading the film through a phantom appendage then laying down a sort of Vertigo tarot before moving onto slightly more solid ground with a new consideration of Hitchcock’s concept of the MacGuffin.
Part 3 (QT dl ~1.9gB) takes the zoom-in-track-out as an emblem, reconsiders the issue of point of view, then throws all the pieces back up in the air. That’s a thematic rundown, from the position of the narrator. The images have their own agendas, which often coincide but sometimes don’t.
>> [more inside]
posted by carsonb
on Dec 29, 2011 -
13 comments
Though Roald Dahl is better known in this day as the author of stories for children, he had a parallel career as the author of
short stories with more adult, macabre sensibilities. Some of those stories became part of a short-run series to fill the slot of to not
one but
two ill-fated Jackie Gleason shows. But instead of another game show or talk show, CBS wanted something to pair with the Twilight Zone. That show was
Way Out, though it didn't rate well and only ran for
14 episodes (and
5 episodes are on Archive.org). 18 years later, Dahl returned to TV with his sinister stories, but this time it was in the UK, where
Tales of the Unexpected lasted 9 seasons,
112 episodes in total. You can view
23 or so episodes online, split into parts (YT Playlist).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 22, 2011 -
27 comments
The long take, an uncut, uninterrupted shot in film, is
seen by some as the counter to CGI, the last great field for cinematic art. The linked page features six clips from 1990 on, plus
the opening shot from Orson Welles' 1958 film,
Touch of Evil. Alfred Hitchcock's film from a decade earlier,
Rope, took the long cut further, with the whole film shot in eight takes of up to 10 minutes each,
a decision shaped by the limit of the physical recording media. With digital media, the long take could be pushed further, as with
Russian Ark, from 2002. The movie was shot in one long take, with the narrative working through the history of Russia,
set within The State Hermitage Museum, and captured in one day on the 4th take. If the long takes are a tad long for you, try the "short" long takes that are
one-shot music videos [videos inside]
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 28, 2010 -
74 comments
Mr. Bungle Monday!!! In their 15-year career, the band only made one music video and it was banned by MTV for being ... well, generally deranged.
Quote Unquote was originally called
Travolta but Warner Bros. pressured them into changing the title.
Luckily, their 3rd and final album left enough of a lasting impression to warrant fanmade videos. Thus, we now have:
a)YT user tkan's Chris Cunningham-inspired
Retrovertigo & the Hitchcock-esque
Pink Cigarette clips;
b)YT user Illusionoel's
Goodbye Sober Day, which reworks footage from Baraka; and
c)
Vertigo, a beautiful medley of the album itself, California, performed by a highschool drumline
[more inside]
posted by mannequito
on Sep 27, 2010 -
28 comments
Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Alfred Hitchcock reflects on his career in movies, discussing among other things, the origin of the term "MacGuffin", his creative process and what his earliest fear was.
posted by empath
on Dec 17, 2007 -
7 comments
Hitchcock's infamous shower scene from Psycho overlayed with the '98 remake by Gus Van Sant:
.mov
(via Waxy)
posted by dirtylittlemonkey
on Apr 21, 2005 -
22 comments
TCM is playing tribute this month to Archie Leach, better known to the world as
Cary Grant. The range of films, the types of roles, the co-stars. Makes you long for another era of american film-making. Of interest to you
architect types might be
Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House of 1948, with the fabulous
Myrna Loy - whose 1947 film The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer partly occupies that special message place on my answering machine. Grant's films with Hitchcock - especially North by Northwest with its great fake FLW house and fantastic Saul Bass titles - Cukor, and Hawks are well worth searching out. Don't miss his final role - Walk Don't Run - a film set at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and itself a remake of The More the Merrier of 1943. Who said that Hollywood couldn't do remakes?One of the most interesting items to come out of the TCM documentary is Cary's embracing LSD in the early pre-illegal tests of it.
posted by grimley
on Jun 1, 2004 -
25 comments
