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I love this quote from actor James Urbaniak, who said yesterday on Twitter:
‘The Great Gatsby 3D: Borne back ceaselessly into your face.’
I couldn’t remember the final bit of the novel so I did a bit of hunting and found this:
The book ends with:
‘Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… . And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’
SN: These words conclude the novel and find Nick returning to the theme of the significance of the past to dreams of the future, here represented by the green light. He focuses on the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the past. Yet humans prove themselves unable to move beyond the past: in the metaphoric language used here, the current draws them backward as they row forward toward the green light. This past functions as the source of their ideas about the future (epitomized by Gatsby’s desire to re-create 1917 in his affair with Daisy) and they cannot escape it as they continue to struggle to transform their dreams into reality. While they never lose their optimism (“tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther …”), they expend all of their energy in pursuit of a goal that moves ever farther away. This apt metaphor characterizes both Gatsby’s struggle and the American dream itself. Nick’s words register neither blind approval nor cynical disillusionment but rather the respectful melancholy that he ultimately brings to his study of Gatsby’s life.
This is pretty scary, it’s the sort of thing that would happen to me on my first day at work.
OpenCulture: During the late 1980s, two short films – Luxo Jr. and Tin Toy – saved Pixar from bankruptcy. During the late 1990s, another film, Toy Story 2, almost created a financial catastrophe for the company. In this clip excerpted from the Blu-ray version of the film, Oren Jacob (former CTO of Pixar) and Galyn Susman (Pixar producer) remember the time when Toy Story 2 nearly became the victim of the computers that generated it. One command — RM* — almost deleted an award-winning film that went on to make $485 million at the box office.
Listen to the Cannes press conference for Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly.
Andrew Dominik: I found the characters in George V. Higgin’s Cogan’s Trade wonderful. This book depicts criminality. When I began to adapt it, I realised that it was also the tale of an economic crisis, that of capitalism. It’s a never-ending story.
Chinchita Rationova from Radio Nacional De Espana: The question, you have children, no ,no, is not problem for you play one killer like this, in a film like this, please.
Currently watching the Bluray commentary for Submarine with director/screen writer Richard Ayoade and novelist Joe Dunthorne. It’s worth a watch/listen, they seem like very modest, funny guys with an extraordinarily detailed film history knowledge.
This scene with Oliver’s first kiss with Jordana is a homage to a scene at the start of Melville’s Le Samurai. Oddly enough, the other film that Ayoade often referenced is Taxi Driver, it’s very cleverly done as they initially seem miles apart.
This is a still from Jacques Tati’s Playtime
(Click here to watch this scene play out)
I’ve been reading some more of Edge.org’s brilliant anual experiment, asking genius’ from around the globe a simple question: What is your favourite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?
There’s a heap over at the site, but this one’s by Nicholas G. Carr. I thought this vision of modern cubicle office life illustrated this idea very well, I’ll post some more if i get around to it.
The Mechanism of Mediocrity
In 1969, a Canadian-born educator named Laurence J. Peter pricked the maidenhead of American capitalism. “In a hierarchy,” he stated, “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” He called it the Peter Principle, and it appeared in a book of the same name. The little volume, not even 180 pages long, went on to become the year’s top seller, with some 200,000 copies going out bookstore doors. It’s not hard to see why. Not only did the Peter Principle confirm what everyone suspected—bosses are dolts—but it explained why this had to be so. When a person excels at a job, he gets promoted. And he keeps getting promoted until he attains a job that he’s not very good at. Then the promotions stop. He has found his level of incompetence. And there he stays, interminably.
The Peter Principle was a hook with many barbs. It didn’t just expose the dunderhead in the corner office. It took the centerpiece of the American dream—the desire to climb the ladder of success—and revealed it to be a recipe for mass mediocrity. Enterprise was an elaborate ruse, a vector through which the incompetent made their affliction universal. But there was more. The principle had, as a New York Times reviewer put it, “cosmic implications.” It wasn’t long before scientists developed the “Generalized Peter Principle,” which went thus: “In evolution, systems tend to develop up to the limit of their adaptive competence.” Everything progresses to the point at which it founders. The shape of existence is the shape of failure.
The most memorable explanations strike us as alarmingly obvious. They take commonplace observations—things we’ve all experienced—and tease the hidden truth out of them. Most of us go through life bumping into trees. It takes a great explainer, like Laurence J. Peter, to tell us we’re in a forest.
Check out the awesome poster and tunes for Road to Salina by Georges Lautner 1970. The director also wrote the music, wow!
I love this quote by film critic Robert Colaciello: “If your taste runs to 70s actors having 60s sex in a 50s film so that a 40s star can suffer, then Road to Salina is for you’
With two radical films under his belt, Battle in Heaven and Silent Light, Carlos Reygadas can pretty much do whatever he likes, I think that’s what he’s doing here with the teaser for Post Tenebras Lux. (There’s another clip here)
IMDB: Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complementary or if they strive to eliminate one another.
The Great Gatsby
Has Baz Luhrmann finally gone too far? After the atrocity that was Australia, it’s certainly possible. It’s a pretty compelling trailer, well edited with what looks like some A grade emotional intensity from Leo set to a great U2 cover from Jack White, I’m intrigued but far from convinced. I hope it’s a return to Strictly Ballroom and Romeo and Juliet form, but it seems like his movies are getting increasingly worse. I wonder what F Scott Fitzgerald would think, I’d love to see him have a chat with Jay-Z & Kanye West about the film score.
Best to watch it in 1080 over at Apple
ESPN’s 30 For 30 is back with short films, if this trailer gives you a country code error, watch it here.
The best one of the last series had to be Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs The Knicks.
(Click to watch in full)
Here’s the first one Pete Rose Here Now
NYTimes: The first digital short, by Eric Drath, which will be posted Tuesday on Grantland, is an interview with Pete Rose, whose gambling on baseball earned him a lifetime ban in 1989. Rose, 71, Major League Baseball’s hits leader, is interviewed at the barren-looking shopping mall in Las Vegas where he signs autographs and other memorabilia, as employees act as barkers to lure shoppers into the store.
Some folks might remember this dude from Arrested Developement
Check out Bill Murray’s tour of the Moonrise Kingdom set, it helps that he’s got a half a bottle of Sailor Jerry rum in him. He’s got to be the coolest guy on the planet.
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