Few audience members, except film buffs, realized that the recent silent film THE ARTIST used Bernard Hermann's score from Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO as the soundtrack for its climactic scenes. But Kim Novak, Jimmy Stewart's co-star in the older film, sure did. Oh, boy, did she ever.
posted by unSane on Jan 9, 2012 - 87 comments

French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius wrote and "directed" the film La Classe Americaine (YT clip/full) in 1993, comprised entirely of scenes from Warner Brothers movies. Warner agreed to let the French TV channel Canal+ use its 4000-movie catalog free of charge and rights for a month, resulting in a pastiche parody of Citizen Kane, in which two journalists investigate the cryptic meaning Orson Welles' last words.

After La Classe, Hazanavicius directed two films lampooning the James Bond ouevre : OSS 117 - Nest of Spies and 0SS 117 - Lost in Rio, both starring actor Jean Dujardin. Which brings us to 2011 - Hazanavicius and Dujardin have just released a new film (via Warner Brothers in America) entitled The Artist, a heartfelt, old-school romance without the aid of spoken dialogue or sound, [p]rojected in black-and-white in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio... [more inside]
posted by obscurator on Nov 4, 2011 - 14 comments

The Once and Future Prince [NYTimes link] Although Prince declined to be interviewed about “Planet Earth,” he has been highly visible lately. His career is heading into its third decade, and he could have long since become a nostalgia act. Instead he figured out early how to do what he wants in a 21st-century music business, and clearly what he wants is to make more music. Here's a YouTube celebration of some of man's hits over the years: Black Sweat, Let's Go Crazy, When Doves Cry, Purple Rain, Little Red Corvette, Nothing Compares 2 U (ok, the Sinead version), and finally, Prince's basketball showdown with Charlie Murphy.
posted by psmealey on Jul 22, 2007 - 29 comments