The Seventh Art is an independently produced video magazine about cinema with three sections: a profile on an interesting group/company/organization in the industry, a video essay and a long-form interview with a filmmaker.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy
on Feb 10, 2012 -
1 comment
Yet by 1944 the IRS named Barbara Stanwyck the highest-paid woman in America. From 1930-57, she did a minimum of two pictures a year, sometimes even four or five. Yet it wasn't workaholism, according to the actress: "I was afraid they'd get somebody better, frankly. I never really thought I had any clout. For a lot of years I was free-lancing, by choice, but I think discipline stays with you. It's this fear that maybe somebody can come in and take over. Maybe a Redford or a Streep can take the luxury of a year off, but I never thought I could. Of course, we were more workable in those days. And they make more money now. Anyway, I never had self-assurance about leaving."
posted by Trurl
on Nov 27, 2011 -
41 comments
Leonard Michaels' "The Zipper":
Rita Hayworth is never seen disrobed in the movie, though it is threatened more than once. The atmosphere of dark repression and mysterious forces – the mood or feeling of the movie – might be destroyed by the revelation of her body. It scared me as she began her striptease dance in the nightclub. I didn’t want everybody to see her body, or even to see that Rita Hayworth had a body. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Sep 5, 2011 -
14 comments
An unbelievable collection of Roddy McDowall’s never-before-seen silent home movies from the summer of 1965 were uploaded onto YouTube yesterday, featuring impossibly young, impossibly gorgeous stars like Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Hope Lange, and Rock Hudson frolicking on the beach. You simply MUST go to the website and watch them all. The takeaway for me, though, is Sal Mineo slinking out the back door with a guilty-looking blond who may or may not be Bobby Sherman. What were THEY up to? Also mesmerizing: The closeup of Natalie Wood’s freckles, Jane Fonda sticking out her tongue, and Paul Newman’s hunky son.
posted by BoringPostcards
on Sep 5, 2011 -
46 comments
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library today launched its latest online research tool, the Production Art Database. The database contains records for more than 5,300 items from the library’s collection, including motion picture costume and production design drawings, animation art, storyboards and paintings. Nearly half of the records include images, making this an invaluable online resource for researchers interested in motion picture design.
posted by Trurl
on Jul 2, 2011 -
7 comments
First, there was
colossal miscalculation. Something so bad it could
make parable a four-letter word. Didn't faze him. His next was
"bizarrely compelling... Slower than watching a train wreck," but yet invoking,
"that same level of disbelief." It was also like swallowing spiky
clusters of manure. Maybe he had
lost his mind? But yet he rose again... Or should we say he blew? No really, it was the wind this time .
A feeble gust of an environmental horror story. "You feel like you're not watching the end of the world but the end of a career." Alas, like the undead, you cannot stop him. His latest, sitting at a paltry 0%* on the
Tomatometer, is
whitewashed, and offers an experience that's a
headache-inducing,
joyless,
soulless, husk that Roger Ebert called
"agonizing... in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented." It enchantingly makes,
"Jake Lloyd’s performance in The Phantom Menace look studied." And,
"the Golden Compass... look like a four-star classic." With
$150 million spent on production, and $130 million on marketing alone, has this
"auteur" finally created his
masterpiece? Or will it be the Last Straw® (in
3d!)?
[more inside]
posted by PBR
on Jun 30, 2010 -
267 comments
Toy Story 3 hits theaters today, and it's already winning
universal acclaim as an enchanting and heartbreaking wonderwork, employing
understated 3D and a
"real-time" perspective that
deftly capitalizes on the nostalgia and can't-go-home-again angst of a generation that grew up with the series.
It has a strong pedigree, with 11-year-old predecessor
Toy Story 2 the rare sequel to equal its forebear, 1995's
Toy Story (itself the first CGI feature in history).
And it joins a lofty stable of films: over the last 15 years, Pixar has put out an unbroken chain of
ten commercial and critical successes that have grossed over $5 billion worldwide and collected
24 Academy Awards (including the
second-ever Best Picture nom for animation with
Up), a legacy that
rivals some of the greatest franchises in film history.
But there's rumbling on the horizon. Although the studio has been
hailed for its originality (of the 50 top-grossing movies in history, only nine were original stories -- and
five of them were by Pixar), two of their upcoming projects are
sequels, both of them based some of their least-acclaimed films (
Cars 2 in 2011 and
Monsters, Inc. 2 in 2012). And while 2012 will also bring
The Bear and the Bow Brave, the first Pixar flick to feature a female protagonist
[previously], fellow newcomer
Newt has been
canceled. With
WALL-E/Up/Toy Story 3 guru Andrew Stanton focusing on
his 2012 adaptation of
John Carter of Mars and with
forays into live-action already in development,
does this mark the end of the golden age of Pixar? Or is this latest entry lasting proof that even the toughest case of sequelitis can be raised to the level of masterpiece?
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 18, 2010 -
227 comments
Those who have watched a lot of Hollywood movies over the past few years may have noticed a trend: many of these films
sport a uniform palette of teal and orange, a result of the availability of digital colour-grading. Originally derived from applying complementary colour theory to human skin tones to make them stand out more, the teal-and-orange rule has spread, and is now being lazily applied across the board, whether appropriate or not.
posted by acb
on Mar 19, 2010 -
125 comments
M. Sartre goes to Hollywood. In 1958, John Huston asked Jean-Paul Sartre to write a biopic of Sigmund Freud. "The
Huston-Sartre collaboration fell apart in 1959, when Sartre travelled to Huston's home in Ireland to work on the script. The two didn't work well together. 'There was no such thing as a conversation with him,' Huston later recalled. 'He talked incessantly, and there was no interrupting him. You'd wait for him to catch his breath, but he wouldn't.' Meanwhile Sartre, in his letters to Simone de Beauvoir, described Huston as 'perfectly vacant, literally incapable of speaking to those whom he has invited.'"
[
via Bookslut] [more inside]
posted by Paragon
on Mar 1, 2010 -
27 comments
"The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to one’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the tendency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida."
-
Carrie Fisher goes from
writing the occasional book to
daily blogging, from substance abuse to abusing punctuation
posted by crossoverman
on Feb 3, 2009 -
66 comments
Hollywood fights back: is this the year Hollywood finally nails its political colours to the mast, or are we seeing just the latest salvo in
a battle for the political heart of the industry? [NYT registration required.]
In the red corner,
"uninformed, misleading, money-hungry, two-faced, elitists" making films about
gays, feminists and commies. In the blue corner,
"towering intellectuals, hard-core conservatives, supermen and superwomen, and just good common people" making films about
god, democracy and family values.
And if you wonder what difference it makes anyway, just ask eBay founder
Jeff Skoll. He thinks films have the power to shape public opinion, and has launched a
website to galvanise support for social change.
posted by londonmark
on Jan 20, 2006 -
41 comments
Hollywood Propaganda
The Manchurian Candidate remake has all the makings of a cunning piece of republican political propaganda. The most obvious theme of the movie warns a politician war hero is a danger to the country.
The movie has all the makings of a good thriller. However, the script and screen play are so heavily slanted the movie comes across as a commercial just like other movies geared towards one political ideal.
posted by lightweight
on Aug 12, 2004 -
36 comments
Hollywood? Old. Bollywood? That's soooo 2003. Make room for
Nollywood, Nigeria's own film industry which is growing by leaps and bounds every year, and is currently worth about
$45 million dollars. About 400 Nollywood films are produced every year many on a budget of around $15000 and are distributed almost entirely by VHS and VCD. The stories are very much
simplistic and pulpy (check out 419 Stalk Exchange. Yes, 419 as in the email scam) but are much
preferred by local residents and emigre's than the usual arthouse fair one often thinks of when talking about African cinema. Now if you'll excuse me there's a bucket of popcorn and a copy of
GSM Connection waiting for me in the living room.
posted by PenDevil
on Jan 19, 2004 -
13 comments
