Filmwell’s Book of Filmmaker Wisdom, Excerpt 13: Robert Altman
On directing actors: “I want to see them do the work. All I’m trying to do is make it easy on the actor, because once you start to shoot, the actor is the artist. I don’t say, ‘Here’s the way I want it done,’ because I want to see something I’ve never seen before. How can I say what that is? I’ve got to let them know that if they stretch and they do... Read More
Gardens, Cinema, Battlefields…
My derth of posting is due to an attempt to rescue my yard and garden from an encroaching forest. To that end… From the Mysteries of Lisbon DVD liner notes, Ruiz says: “While I was shooting Mysteries of Lisbon, I often thought about Linné– a garden is a battlefield. Any flower is monstrous. In slow motion, any garden is Shakespearean.” Read More
Filmwell Icons: #1. Truman
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If winter won’t leave, let’s call it springtime at the movies.
It’s a grey and dreary downpour of a day here in Seattle. Help all of us in the Pacific Northwest fight this oppression. I’ve just posted this plea for help on my Facebook page: What are the most colorful movies you can think of? Read More Read More
Good Cinema Is Diagnostic
Here I am hunched over another impression of the brain with its wads of flat batting and weird yarn, thinking how can I read these films without a light board— (continue…) “Interpreting the Film” is a tragic poem about a different type of film, but a slight shift in the semantic domain of the word makes it applicable nonetheless. Perhaps there is another great... Read More
The World of Japanese Cyberpunk Cinema
Midnight Eye’s Mark Player has written a fascinating and very in-depth essay on the sub-genre of Japanese cyberpunk cinema and its major figures (e.g., Shinya Tsukamoto, Shozin Fukui), notable films (e.g., Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Electric Dragon 80,000V, Akira, Rubber’s Lover), and themes. The world of live-action Japanese cyberpunk is a twisted and strange one indeed; a far... Read More
One look at this, and Marathon Man will never be scary again.
Thanks to A Conversation On Cool for sharing this revelatory moment from the set of Marathon Man. Read More Read More
Best Film Writing of 2011? Let’s make a list…
I have always wanted to put an annual list of my favorite filmwriting together, but never actually get around to it. If I did make such a list for this year, Darren Hughes’ commentary on the Toronto International Film Festival at Senses of Cinema would be somewhere on it. His description of Low Life is thrilling for us Klotz admirers. So would an item or two that has popped... Read More
Filmwell’s Book of Filmmaker Wisdom, Excerpt 12: Charlie Kaufman
“The story can only be told in a particular form. It can’t be told in a painting. The point is: it’s very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you’re doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can’t think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn’t need to be done.” - Charlie... Read More
Dau vs. Dogville
A recent longread in GQ provides a rare glimpse into the film project by Ilya Khrzhanovsky that has managed to cobble together funding for a five year Stalin-era installation in a small Ukranian city. The slow trickle of anecdotes related to this project have intimated that this is not your average film set, but this essay on “The Movie Set That Ate Itself” is the first... Read More
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