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Orson Welles in Rio de Janerio Carnival 1942
Photos: Hart Preston
This is a series of images of film director Orson Welles partying and working in Rio, first published by Life magazine in 1942. Click through to read the original article, it’s pretty crazy that back then they were happy to show him wasted on Ethyl Chloride, squirting it everywhere out the front of the Copacabana Palace!
The story of Welles in Brazil was the other stand out in his biography, boy he really knew how to party. Wiki has a great summary of the ill fated production.
Catriona McKenzie’s debut feature Satellite Boy is headed to the Berlin festival
Some more killer Emmanuel Lubezki cinematography here in Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder.
I hope that at least one of the characters makes it out of the field they’re stuck wandering around in.
Nice looking field wandering though.
Pump this up to at least 720p!
Hope it didn’t deserve the boos it received at the Venice Festival
The Twin Shores of Agnès Varda
“Having filmed the seaside and the beach so much, I could be taken for a specialist. Here I show a photo of the sea and we can imagine the wind which, at that moment, whips the crest of a wave up into jets of water. I also propose that the movement which continues the image is cinema, another representation of the seaside, we hear the last wavelet that comes and flattens itself on the sand, well, the sand is real sand, it’s reality,” says the iconic New Wave film director Agnès Varda about her new exhibition at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Cntemporaneo in Seville, Spain. The exhibition, entitled The Twin Shores of Agnès Varda, presented in collaboration with the Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo, shows short films, photographs and installations by the French filmmaker.
If you’ve not seen her autobiographical documentary The Beaches of Agnes, make it your business.
I missed this film from 2008, written and directed by Gerardo Naranjo who more recently made the excellent Miss Bala. Checking it out tonight.
The peeps at TheWeek have asked a Doctor to analyse the nasty injuries sustained in Home Alone. I’d like to see the film remade but with Joe Pesci playing Nicky Santoro from Casino.
The injury: Handling a burning-hot doorknob
The set-up: While Marv is getting an iron to the face, Harry tries to enter the home through the front door. The first attempt doesn’t go well, as the stocky burglar slips on the icy steps and falls to the ground, landing with a thud on his back. Easing up a second time with the help of the railing, Harry makes it to the front door, reaches for the doorknob — which we see is literally burning red — and grasps the searing handle, the pain of which forces him once again down the icy steps.
The doctor’s diagnosis: ”If this doorknob is glowing visibly red in the dark, it has been heated to about 751 degrees Fahrenheit, and Harry gives it a nice, strong, one- to two-second grip. By comparison, one second of contact with 155 degree water is enough to cause third degree burns. The temperature of that doorknob is not quite hot enough to cause Harry’s hand to burst into flames, but it is not that far off… Assuming Harry doesn’t lose the hand completely, he will almost certainly have other serious complications, including a high risk for infection and ‘contracture’ in which resulting scar tissue seriously limits the flexibility and movement of the hand, rendering it less than 100 percent useful. Kevin has moved from ‘defending his house’ into sheer malice, in my opinion.”
Here’s a segment of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, which is comprised of several thousand film segments, all featuring a clockface. The entirety of the work runs for 24 hours and the clocks shown on screen match up with the time in real life. Wow.
The word Abendland literally means “evening land”, but beyond that i’ve got no idea what’s going on here…
This topped Fandor’s list of the top political documentaries of 2012.
Stoked that Adam Curtis came second.
1. Abendland (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)
Politically suggestive but without a didactic message to impart, this Austrian film synthesizes of the cool gloss of Michael Haneke with the observational techniques of Frederick Wiseman. A status report on Western Europe’s soul, it shows immigrants working menial jobs and being deported while Europeans are busy calling suicide hotlines and keeping the Oktoberfest emergency room occupied.2. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Adam Curtis)
Made as a mini-series for the BBC, Curtis’s three-hour film has no U.S. distributor, but it made the festival circuit this year. Curtis proves himself to be a descendant of Chris Marker’s cinematic essays. Here, he explores the ways in which computer technology and ideologies ranging from Bill Clinton’s neoliberalism to Ayn Rand’s libertarianism have promised liberation but turned out to be traps.3. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
When does a video diary become a political film? When the subject is under house arrest, banned from filmmaking (hence the ironic title) because the Iranian government feels threatened by his work. Under such circumstances, chronicling one’s everyday life, with humble tools (including an iPhone), becomes an act of resistance.4. The War (James Benning)
A complete departure for Benning, this found-footage assemblage was made from clips taken by and of the Russian artist/activist group Voina. Without knowing Benning’s intentions, it appears to mix sympathy and critique, as Voina don’t come off too well—their actions, such as public masturbation in a supermarket and tipping over police cars, often seem either silly or dangerous. Nevertheless, The War conveys the real perils and bravery of activism in Russia.5. How to Survive a Plague (David France)
Jean Cocteau once suggested that cinema was a form of death at work. France’s documentary about ACT-UP, taken mostly from archival footage shot by AIDS activists in the late eighties and early nineties, bears that out. In the wake of Occupy, it’s a reminder of the value of street-level activism. Its ending may be overly optimistic, given that millions of people still can’t afford medication to treat HIV, but who can blame the ACT-UP members whose lives were saved by protease inhibitors for their cheer?6. Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul)
More than a simple, nostalgic music documentary, this is an optimistic story about the sixties counterculture. Its subject Rodriguez’s protest songs, inspired by a crumbling Detroit, helped influence white members of the South African antiapartheid movement. The musician himself is remarkably zen, far from a music industry casualty.7. The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield)
Suggested alternate title: Laugh at the 1%. Greenfield’s film somehow manages to synthesize compassion and ridicule in its examination of the decline of a wealthy family. While it shows them wallowing cluelessly in privilege (by taking a limo to McDonald’s, for instance), it suggests that losing your home is a horrible trial, whether you owe millions or thousands. Unlike the reality TV shows it superficially resembles, The Queen Of Versailles never glamorizes its subjects, but its critical gaze is fair.8. The Law in these Parts (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz)
Interviewing Israeli judges on a stylized set, Alexandrowicz examines how the notion of Israel’s right to defend itself after occupying the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1967 led to ludicrous miscarriages of justice like a Palestinian woman being sentenced to prison for giving bread to a “terrorist.” His film resembles Errol Morris’ The Fog of War, with the crucial difference that Alexandrowicz is a tough, adversarial interviewer.9. The Central Park Five (Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon)
Working outside PBS and collaborating with two other directors, Ken Burns thankfully abandons his now-cliched trademarks like zooms into photos. The Central Park Five resurrects the paranoid atmosphere of late ‘80s New York, where five teenage boys were falsely convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park. Its strongest moments are videotaped false confessions, but it also ably evokes the hysterical, racist tabloid media that’s still with us.10. The Invisible War (Kirby Dick)
An anti-recruitment film par excellence, The Invisible War gives a voice to male and female soldiers who’ve been raped and then been ignored by military leadership. While it never examines the issue in a larger context, such as the way rape has often been used in war to punish enemies, it’s the only film on this list, as far as I know, that’s had a concrete influence on policy.
Timelapses are a dime a dozen on the interwebs. The only thing coming in cheaper are tilt shift timelapses. However this short made by the so called ‘godfather’ of Tilt shift is surprisingly effective. It’s worth it just to see Carnival 2011.
Some Hollywood dudes are playing themselves with some limited success in This is the End
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