A decade on, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated
O Brother, Where Art Thou? [alt] is remembered for
a lot of things: its sun-drenched, sepia-rich
cinematography (a pioneer of
digital color grading), its
whimsical humor,
fluid vernacular, and
many subtle references to Homer's
Odyssey. But one part of its legacy truly stands out:
the music.
Assembled by
T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack is a cornucopia of American folk music, exhibiting everything from
cheery ballads and
angelic hymns to
wistful blues and
chain-gang anthems. Woven into the plot of the film through radio and live performances, the songs lent the story a
heartfelt, homespun feel that echoed its cultural heritage,
a paean and uchronia of the Old South.
Though the multiplatinum album was recently
reissued, the movie's medley is best heard via famed documentarian
D. A. Pennebaker's
Down from the Mountain, an
extraordinary yet
intimate concert film focused on a night of live music by the soundtrack's stars (among them
Gillian Welch,
Emmylou Harris,
Chris Thomas King, bluegrass legend
Dr. Ralph Stanley) and wryly hosted by
John Hartford, an accomplished
fiddler,
riverboat captain, and
raconteur whose struggle with terminal cancer made this his last major performance. The film is free in its entirety on
Hulu and
YouTube -- click inside for individual clips, song links, and breakdowns of
the set list's fascinating history.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 22, 2011 -
107 comments
With digital cinema on the rise, and DSLR video shooting becoming increasingly popular for low-budget and independent film making, expectations were high for
Canon's big announcement at Paramount Studios today. And Canon delivered, the
C300 is a DSLR-like camera that uses Canon or PL mount lenses (two different models), with no autofocus, S35mm sensor size, full HD to a 50Mbps 10-bit 4:2:2 stream, shipping in January 2012 for $20,000. They also announced a new range of
high-resolution affordable zoom and prime lenses for cinema use, and, as an extra bonus, they announced they were developing a similar camera that could record 4k video for release at some time in the future. It all looked like a big win for Canon...
But, a few hours later, the always controversial and disruptive
Red Digital Cinema, makers of the ubiquitous
Red One and the relatively new 5K, 120fps
EPIC, announced the EPIC's little sister, based on the same sensor, the
Scarlet, a
camera that also uses Canon or PL mount lenses, with an interchangeable lens mount, autofocus on Canon lenses, S35mm sensor size, 4k video (with HDR option) and 5k stills to a 400Mbps 16-bit compressed raw stream, shipping December 1st for $9,750 for the body (under $14,000 for a full, ready to shoot kit with media, card reader and 5" touchscreen, minus the lenses).
posted by Joakim Ziegler
on Nov 3, 2011 -
59 comments
For the past year, director Stephen Soderbergh
has been recording and sharing a list of the books that he has read, and films that he has watched. The writers at Flavorwire noted Soderbergh's decision to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark in black & white three times, and have
compiled a list of color films that work better in monochrome.
[more inside]
posted by schmod
on May 24, 2011 -
59 comments
In The Mood For Chris Doyle "The most Chinese white man to have ever lived...the incomparable, incredibly talented Chris Doyle... is a highly acclaimed, AFI Award-winning cinematographer, known for his use of extreme angles and vanguard color grading. He has won, amongst other accolades, the Cannes Technical Grand Prize, Golden Osella, the Golden Horse awards (four times), and Hong Kong Film Award (six times). Doyle is an affiliate of the Hong Kong Society of Cinematographers." (
more)
posted by vronsky
on Aug 25, 2009 -
30 comments
"Because the camera is so close to the character(s) being followed, we feel that we're physically attached to those characters, as if by an invisible guide wire, being towed through their world, sometimes keeping pace, other times losing them as they weave through hallways, down staircases or through smoke or fog." A video montage and essay by Matt Zoller Seitz. All shots are identified at the end; you may know more of them than you think. (
via)
posted by maudlin
on Jun 3, 2009 -
15 comments
Sven Nykvist leaves us. A master at the subtle manipulation of light, the multiple academy award winner and longtime Ingmar Bergman collaborator (including Persona, and the Through a Glass Darkly/Winter Light/The Silence trilogy) has passed away at 83.
more obits [1] [2]
more about him [1] [2]
posted by juv3nal
on Sep 21, 2006 -
22 comments
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the
1956 Hungarian Revolution. A key documentary artifact of the uprising is
Magyarország lángokban (Hungary in Flames) [embedded .wmv], partly composed of footage shot by two young film school students using whatever equipment they could find. Narrowly avoiding capture by the Communists, the duo smuggled 10,000 feet of film out of the country in spare tires and potato sacks; there's much more to the story, but better to hear Vilmos tell it
in his own words. [.rm] Eventually, they made their way to America, where
László Kovács, ASC (
Five Easy Pieces,
Ghost Busters,
more) and
Vilmos Zsigmund, ASC (
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
Deliverance,
more) became two of the most prolific cinematographers in Hollywood history. [more inside]
posted by milquetoast
on Aug 8, 2006 -
7 comments
