Suffice it to say, Persepolis is quite a work. It’s a testament to the power of the graphic novel. The art’s simple linework helps the story feel unpretentious and direct. Persepolis was adapted as a 2007 French animated film, written and directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Among other honors, it was nominated for an Academy Award. Why would someone want to ban such a book?
posted by Artw
on Mar 16, 2013 -
33 comments
The Chopsticks Brothers (筷子兄弟)
[
Google translated bio] are Xiao Yang and Wang Taili,
Chinese indie musician/filmmakers making internet short films which generally function as extended music videos for their original songs.
Old Boys (42 min, english sub) October 2010
[
Youku copy] - over 52 million views
Short video on YouTube, english subtitles
[more inside]
posted by ctmf
on Mar 10, 2013 -
0 comments
Jon Brion gets around. As a composer, he scored some of the best movies of last decade and change –
Punch-Drunk Love,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Synecdoche, New York, and
I ♥ Huckabees. As a producer, he's worked with
Fiona Apple,
Kanye West,
Aimee Mann, and the excellent bluegrass outfit
Punch Brothers. He writes pop music like the best of them – witness
Meaningless,
Knock Yourself Out,
Here We Go, or
Didn't Think It Would Turn Out Bad for a nice sampler of his style and range. His live shows are notoriously whimsical and eccentric – he's apt to perform
Radiohead's "Creep" in the style of Tom Waits, or cover
Stairway to Heaven as a one-man band, recreating all the parts to its climax on the fly.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Mar 9, 2013 -
20 comments
"Oh, Anne! With your small head and pert nose and oversized, ready smile and glossy pixie cut and squeakily tuneful speaking voice, uttering lines like “It came true!” as you gaze at your newly won Oscar with moistened doe-eyes, wearing a powder-pink Prada gown adorned with diamonds and bows:
Why are you so annoying?"
posted by vidur
on Feb 28, 2013 -
140 comments
Makers: Women Who Make America is a sweeping 3-hour documentary of the movement for women's equality in the last half of the twentieth century. Airing this month on US public television, it's accompanied by an
online archive of videos of interviews with individual women in leadership across a variety of fields. Leaders and activists, celebrities and pioneers, and everyday women retell the story of their awakening, organizing, and world-changing efforts.
posted by Miko
on Feb 28, 2013 -
5 comments
Filmmaker Tim Sessler shot the short film
Drift during a flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City with his Canon 5D Mark III.
posted by bayani
on Feb 27, 2013 -
14 comments
6 Insane Stereotypes That Movies Can't Seem to Get Over. Cracked.com list of overused, tired and offensive stereotypes of Africa, Asians, women, and more that frequently pop up in mainstream films.
"Imagine if every single movie set in America was filmed in Alaska and focused on gang violence -- that's how Africans feel every time they watch a Hollywood movie about warlords fighting in the desert. Which is a problem for their tourism industry: A board member for the Association for the Promotion of Tourism to Africa even takes the time to explain that there are "middle class people in every African country commuting to work every day, complaining about taxes and watching their kids play soccer every weekend."
That's right: Instead of focusing on the rich wildlife and history, the tourism industry actually has to remind people that coming to their country isn't a fucking death warrant."
posted by sweetkid
on Feb 27, 2013 -
147 comments
Melton Barker and the Kidnappers Foil. From the late 1930s into the early 1970s, Dallas native, Melton Barker and his company, Melton Barker Juvenile Productions, traveled all over the country – from Texas and New Mexico to North Carolina and Indiana – filming local children acting, singing, and dancing in two-reel films that Barker titled The Kidnappers Foil. (
NY Times story)
[more inside]
posted by Bunny Ultramod
on Feb 24, 2013 -
1 comment
Donald Richie , American author, journalist, critic and expert on Japan, dies at 88.
Smilingly excluded here in Japan, politely stigmatised, I can from my angle attempt only objectivity, since my subjective self will not fit the space I am allotted . . . how fortunate I am to occupy this niche with its lateral view. In America I would be denied this place. I would live on the flat surface of a plain. In Japan, from where I am sitting, the light falls just right – I can see the peaks and valleys, the crags and crevasses.
-- from The Japan Journals, 1947-2004
[more inside]
posted by Ice Cream Socialist
on Feb 19, 2013 -
23 comments
The
Nigerian film industry known as Nollywood started humbly about 20 years ago. Nollywood movies were shot as cheaply and as quickly as possible, then released straight to VHS. The majority of Nollywood films are still sold offline, in outdoor markets from wheelbarrows or by the roadside from street vendors. In the early 2000s, Nollywood distribution shifted from VHS to discs — and now, the movies are also beginning to stream online.
iROKO, one of the first companies to take Nigerian films online, is carefully tracking the viewing patterns of its growing audience. While
Nigerian internet access is often subpar, streaming services are catering to the international diaspora.
iROKOtv is a hub for streaming movies, with plenty of free movies alongside movies available as part of monthly membership. Their website grew out of
their YouTube channel, which had
over 400 movies online in 2011, though recently they are mainly posting trailers. If you're not sure which movies to see,
Nollywood Forever has plenty of reviews, and
Nollywood.com has a ton of African movie trailers.
posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 16, 2013 -
19 comments
Foodfight! is an computer-animated
"movie" starring Charlie Sheen, Hillary Duff, Eva Longoria, Wayne Brady, and Christopher Loyd. Set in a supermarket that transformed into a city when the lights came off at the end of the day and inhabited by mascots for food products coming to life.
After a theft of company's computers in 2003, and numerous other delays, the film would not see the light of day until 2012
[more inside]
posted by hellojed
on Feb 10, 2013 -
277 comments
The Q&A With Jeff Goldsmith is an irregularly released podcast where Mr. Goldsmith interviews, at length (each episode runs an hour or more), working Hollywood and foreign screenwriters. The most recent episode is a panel conversation with the year's Oscar-nominated screenwriters. You can listen to the podcasts on his site or subscribe in iTunes or on Android.
Goldsmith is also the publisher of the terrific screenwriting magazine
Backstory--currently only available for the iPad but coming (eventually) to the web and Android. You can download the first issue (which is wonderful, and contains full length scripts along with the interviews and stories) for free.
posted by dobbs
on Feb 7, 2013 -
5 comments
Mamá. The sphincter-tightening short film by Andres Muschietti that inspired the
movie of the same name, with an introduction by producer Guillermo del Toro.
posted by gottabefunky
on Feb 6, 2013 -
20 comments
Auxiliofaux is the photography Tumblr of Richard Auxilio, a Los Angeles-based photog whose current project is symmetrical double exposures.
posted by klangklangston
on Feb 4, 2013 -
9 comments
At a time when the Lord of the Rings didn't exist as a film
or a book trilogy, Fritz Lang created the 5-hour-long film
Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs, 1924), based on the 13th-century poem Die Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs). A short clip of
Siegfried slaying the dragon was used as a trailer for the restored edition of the film.
[more inside]
posted by ersatz
on Feb 3, 2013 -
28 comments
"There are reasons why this film is obscure. It is, in the most charitable possible evaluation, a mess: Bowie has described it as "my 32 Elvis films rolled into one." And yet life on that ever-dwindling island of not-on-region-one DVD films is a harsh fate for any film and particularly for this one, which is at least as interesting as its cast suggests and a good deal more. You don't need to dig out the VHS player to watch Mick Jagger run an agency of gigolos in The Man From Elysian Fields—you shouldn't have to do so to watch Bowie play one. "
David Bowie's Lost 70s-era Weimar Berlin Movie: Just a Gigalo.
posted by The Whelk
on Feb 2, 2013 -
17 comments
"You may find my actions extreme, but for a crew of sufficient numbers, if a suitable destination could be found, no return destination would be needed.
Therefore, I have had to improvise, with our ship, with our crew." The goal was to make a short sci-fi film, but without CGI, greenscreens, or other digital trickery, instead relying on camera tricks, miniature photography, and stop-animation. And now it is done:
C 299,792 km/s [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 30, 2013 -
41 comments
Each space shuttle launch was documented by 125 cameras aimed at its engines, solid rocket boosters, orbiter, and umbilicals. The 45-minute film
Ascent compiles the "best of the best": astounding 400 fps footage from three missions (STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124), produced by NASA aerospace engineer Matt Melis, and narrated by Melis and photographer Kevin Burke.
posted by googly
on Jan 28, 2013 -
27 comments
