Ain't nobody that can sing like meOne of my favourite singer / songwriters is Billy Bragg who is not afraid to combine music and politics together. He's able to mix the personal and the political in an entertaining way that also enables change. I'd heard a few of his recordings of some Woody Guthrie songs, but I didn't know the story until I saw the documentary about the recording of Mermaid Avenue, Man in the Sand. The film follows Billy Bragg as he works with Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora, who gave Bragg access to the huge library of unrecorded Guthrie songs to record some for the first time. Bragg brought the band Wilco to the project to collaborate with and the film about the project hints at some tension between them, but the music transcends that. The documentary is narrated by Nora Guthrie and she tells the story of her father as we see Bragg collaborating with the members of Wilco as well as Natalie Merchant in adding music to the lyrics that Woody wrote. It's fascinating to watch the process and to see Bragg with Nora as they talk about the man and his music. It's a great documentary that combines music, history and people together.
Way over yonder in the minor key
What matters is the journey.Cillian Murphy is wonderful as Patrick "Kitten" Braden in Neil Jordan's latest film, Breakfast on Pluto. It's based on a novel by Patrick McCabe (who cowrote the screenplay with Jordan) and there is a wonderful novelistic tone to the film which is divided up with handwritten chapter titles. The story is told from Kitten's point of view which gives the events a relentlessly positive tone, no matter how horrible things become. Set in Ireland and London in the 70s as Kitten the transvestite looks for his mother against a landscape of political conflict and violence. Gorgeously shot by Declan Quinn, it manages to mirror the spirit of the main character with perfectly composed and lit frames.
The music mockumentary is a difficult form due to some outstanding films that established the genre. It's All Gone Pete Tong starts off as an over-the-top mockumentary about a DJ that has many funny bits in the opening act, but they start to seem a bit routine. But then the film begins to shift tone as our hero, Frankie Wilde, begins to lose his hearing. The performance by Paul Kaye is amazing and he manages to go from slapstick to serious as the film progresses. His manager, played by Mike Wilmot as a sleazy self-absorbed show business-type perpetually on the verge of a heart attack serves as Frankie's connection to the world. Things start to fall apart for Frankie and his manager can't make any more excuses as the world goes silent for the DJ.
Up to this point I was a bit confused by the shift in tone, but one scene with the appearance of Beatriz Batarda as a lip-reading teacher, completely won me over. The film is visually and sonically gorgeous and the critical scene where Frankie learns to lip read is an amazing use of sound and visuals. The lighter tone of the earlier scenes didn't prepare me for that scene and it hit me just right and all my doubts about the film were erased. For the first time I have more of an appreciation and understanding of how it is possible to read lips. With the shift in tone in that scene the film pretty much becomes a drama that worked very well for me.
Shot and mixed in a bold and aggressive style, it's sophisticated and polished and I was even more surprised when I found out it was shot on HD. Structurally and in technique I loved the film. It begins as a mockumentary, then some of the over-the-top elements begin to drop out as it looks and feels more like verité, and finally it moves into more traditional drama. It's an unconventional structure and that's what threw me off, but I'm very glad that I stuck with it.
tags: film, review, itsallgonepetetong
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It's odd, but I realize now that I haven't written very much about podcasting here. It's been over a year since I started regularly listening to podcasts and now is a very good time to contextualize it all.
While I'm pretty good at staying near the leading edge of trends, I'm not as quick in creating things that are part of those trends. While I followed blogging for a long while, my domain and online presence didn't include a blog until I launched bitdepth in May of 2002. Soon I'll be launching a podcast along with a new site (but I'll save that for another time), so let me lay the groundwork here.
The first podcast that I listened to was Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, which is still one of the highest-profile podcasts out there. I used the beta of iPodderX to download the files and listen to them on my computer (since I didn't have an iPod) or to burn them on to CD to listen in the car during my 1 hour plus commute twice a day. Some time around December of last year I found Marie-Chantale Turgeon's Vu d'Ici / Seen From Here podcast and I really liked it. The combination of her unpretentious voice and great music exemplified all of the promise and magic of podcasting and she's still an inspiration to me. Another early inspiration was Tod Maffin who has been covering technology and the web for the CBC for quite a while. When I saw that he was going on a podcasting meetup tour across Canada and was stopping in Halifax, I knew that I had to go. Tod's site is filled with great resources and information about audio and he's a driving force within the CBC and will hopefully transform the corporation into a more relevant public broadcaster in the podcasting sphere.
The meetup was a lot of fun (with 10 people) and it was very cool to meet people who I had listened to and watched for a while in person. I also was embarrassed to admit that I hadn't listened to some of th epodcasts from the province, but now I think I'm up to speed with the local activity.
I arrived a bit early and realized that maybe it wasn't a good idea to meet at the Economy Shoe Shop unless you identified an area earlier to meet. It's a great bar, but it's made up of many smaller rooms. I knew that I'd recognize two of the people since I've seen Tod on tv and in photos as well as Jeff MacArthur from commandN (a great vidcast). As I wandered around the bar, someone guessed that I was looking for the meeting and I met Howard Harawitz (who I later realized that he wrote the first HTML editor that I used!). In talking with Howard I found out that he worked for the College and that we knew a lot of the same people. It's a very small world.
The new discoveries that I made were of the Spine.cx podcast with Steve Dinn along with Jeannine McNeil (who did a live version of the podcast) and Bruce Murray of the Zedcast, who recorded part of the evening. While I brought my minidisc recorder, I didn't record much, but decided to ask Tod for an ID at the end of the night outside. It became more complicated as a fairly intoxicated woman showed up with her friend and started talking with us. Of course, I kept rolling (and I may be able to work it into something later), and eventually got the IDs from Tod (who rescued me by moving away, which gave me a way to get out of the situation).
As I drove home late at night I was determined to get my podcast going, so it will show up very soon. I was tired the next morning, but I found that m-c had a new Vu d'Ici up. Driving in to Halifax while listening to m-c's voice, the warm blanket of the internet surrounded me as I remembered again that podcasting allows people to connect and share their stories, which is the most wonderful thing of all.
tags: podcasting, halifax, todmaffin, commandn, vudici, zedcast, spinecx
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What is the purpose of life?Niceland is a quirkly little film that takes us on a search for meaning. It's a simple story constructed out of complex characters. Set in a vaguely Scandanavian city and with an international cast with a range of accents but pretty much all in English (with English subtitles). All this results in a film that is set in a place that seems to be a strange hybrid that allows broader points to be made about consumer society. The good thing is that director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson wisely chooses to focus on the personal stories rather than the social commentary. The main characters are mentally challenged, but it's never explored or explained in any detail... it's about the people and how they relate to each other. I loved the characters and the answer to their problems is quite obvious from the beginning, but we watch as everyone tries to make things much more complicated than they are. It may not be for everyone, but I found it sweet and refreshing. tags: film, review, niceland, aff2005
Take the million, write something else.I don't know what it is, but it seems that if Patricia Clarkson is in a film, there is a strong possibility that I'll like it. She's one of the main actors in The Dying Gaul and she delivers another layered and nuanced performance. The Dying Gaul is based on a play by Craig Lucas and the film is also his film directing debut. It's an impressive debut and while the film has the focused characterization and simple locations of a play, it's very cinematic and I think that I'd like the film more than the play. The film is gorgeous with wonderful performances all around. It's a complicated, noirish story that doesn't lapse into formula. I'm glad that I knew very little about the film as it moved around in interesting and surprising ways.
I haven't been here for a long time. My plan was to write a lot during the Atlantic Film Festival, but I didn't. I wrote more in my Moleskine than online, and I'm thinking that in the long run it will be better, since I'll have more thoughtful writing here than rushing to put something up quickly.
It's interesting that I was able to keep posting a bit on 43things and 43places, and Flickr which have lower barriers to contribute. So I haven't disappeared online completely, but just changed where I am. Maybe podcasting will make it easier or posting from a cell phone... maybe next year, but now I'm still text and image based, so I'll keep doing that. So things will start up here again soon and I'll go back to my notebook and start posting more here. There's a lot to write about and many great films to see, so thanks for reading this and see you all soon.
tags: bitdepth, blog
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A thriller often is an interesting exercise. How are things arranged and how do they play out? A thriller can be constructed out of many well-worn plots and be reasonably pleasing depending on the skill of the director, the crew and the actors. The smart way to handle a thriller is to combine an interesting plot with some interesting characters. A film should never be just about the events, but the people.
In Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres) Jacques Audiard stylishly presents two unforgettable characters.
Emmanuelle Devos is great as Carla, a woman who is almost deaf and works in an office where she is overworked and ignored. When she is given the opportunity to hire an assistant she chooses Paul (played by Vincent Cassel), who has just been released from prison. They begin a strange friendship and the film constantly keeps you intrigued in figuring out what is going on between them. Is she someone who is plain and not noticed, a femme fatale, a victim, or a seductress? She is all of those things and more.
Far more interesting than the intricacies of the plot are the ways that parts of their personalities and desires are teased out of them. I would think that I understood what was going on, but then things would change. It's a somewhat twisted, somewhat sweet story about two people whose plain surfaces hide very complex and deep individuals within.
Shot in a distinctive, sensual style with an amazing soundscape, it looks, sounds and feels completely unique, just like the characters. There is a loving attention to detail and a subjective point of view that shows what is going on with an efficiency and style that I loved.
tags: film, review, readmylips
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I don't know how to describe the film other than to say that Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a film that Jim Jarmusch in 1999. Like many of the films by Jarmusch, it's a fascinating mix of well-crafted filmmaking with a diverse range of talents combining together to create something unique. While overall there are some parts that may not completely work, it has a remarkable range from broad comedy to scenes that are surprisingly moving as well.
Ghost Dog is built around the character played by Forrest Whitaker and he holds the entire thing together. He's a hit man who lives his life according to the Samurai code. All of the characters in the film seem to be slightly out of place in varying degrees. The ice cream man who speaks no English, the mobster who loves hip-hop music, everyone who watches tv seems to watch cartoons, and the little girl who carries around books in her lunch box, and Ghost Dog himself who communicates with his contact via homing pidgeon.
The film is lovingly constructed and like a great song you can get something different out of it every time you experience it. Everything fits together and I watched it twice in one day and saw different things. What does the colour red mean? What do the quotations from Samurai code mean? How does it all fit together? Why does Ghost Dog always set the volume of music to 21? The mixture of styles, characters, tone and technique combine to create something unique that sticks with you as you roll things around in your head.
tags: film, review, ghostdog
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The 1970s were a turbulent time in the U.S. and a lot of interesting films came out of that time. Niels Mueller firmly sets The Assassination of Richard Nixon in the 70s as he shows the transformation and decline of a man who slowly becomes disconnected from reality. Shot in an evocative high-contrast style (by Emmanuel Lubezki) that carefully mirrors the state of mind of Sam Bicke played by Sean Penn. It's another controlled burn with Penn trying to make sense of his life in an unrewarding job while separated from his wife and children. The world doesn't make sense and as he watches the news he begins to connect with those who fight the system and who are opposed to Richard Nixon.
The film feels as if it was made in the 1970s (in a good way) and I couldn't help but think of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver which also follows the decline of a man who doesn't fit in. But Sam Bicke isn't Travis Bickle and while Taxi Driver has a sense of dread from the very beginning and Robert De Niro has a sense of menace, Penn's Bicke is a person we feel sympathetic as the world doesn't make sense and he tries to do the right thing. But the routine grinds him down and he only seems to connect with things he sees in the media which helps him form his plan. A dark and precise portrait of a tragic figure.
tags: film, review, theassassinationofrichardnixon
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Just because he speaks a little guilty, that don't make him innocent, you know.Touch of Evil is a fascinating film in many ways. It was the final film that Orson Welles made in Hollywood, it could be considered one of the last of the classic film noir and I even think it seems like a precursor to the French New Wave. I haven't seen the version that was released at the time, only the restored version based on a long memo that Welles wrote after seeing the rough cut once. He wasn't allowed back into the editing room and never saw a version that followed his advice.
In 1967 Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth made the short film, Det Perfekte Menneske (The Perfect Human), which is a sparse short film that shows people doing things, presented in a slightly abstract sense in black and white. 34 years later Lars von Trier proposes a set of challenges where Leth will remake the film five times and we see it all in The Five Obstructions (De Fem Benspænd.)
While remaking the film with different sets of challenges, it's really about Leth, von Trier and their filmmaking philosophies. The glue that links the film together are the documentary segments where von Trier lays out the obstructions and Leth listens and writes them down. It's a great way to see how a filmmaker works and thinks and they respond to the challenges that they face. Von Trier constantly tries to trip up Leth with various challenges and the film surprised me several times. It's beautifully constructed and moves along quickly as we watch the battle between the two filmmakers, who once were student and teacher. The roles are reversed and there is a degree of perversity that is introduced as we wonder what the point is. They laugh about destroying the original film as they set off on the first obstruction. The various films are different and have varying levels of success, but overall the two oddly distant filmmakers manage to create a film that seems to transcend them both. Filmmaking can be a magical experience and this film is a singular and fascinating look at a game that reveals the players as we examine what a film can mean and how the process can shape the product.
Afterwards I thought about the obstructions and how it was similar to some of the things on "reality" tv. The arbitrary contests and obsessive attention to "the game" and how it is played. But while the obstructions were arbitrary at times, it wasn't about the obstructions, but about people and the creativity. Both filmmakers are not only trying to battle each other, but to understand their work and themselves. Ironically they seem to understand each other better than they understand themselves. It would be fascinating to see how other filmmakers would battle each other in remaking films, but I suspect that the unique combination and chemistry of von Trier and Leth would be very difficult to achieve.
tags: film, review, thefiveobstructions, documentary
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Maybe it's just the films that make it over here, but I've loved every film from Scotland that I've seen over the last while. The latest one is Dear Frankie, directed by Shona Auerbach, who also was Director of Photography. The film is built around the characters and the wonderful performances that the actors give. The key is in the writing which sets up a dramatic situation that highlights a story about a family dealing with a secret. Emily Mortimer is a mother who hasn't told her son that she is estranged from his father. She has told him that his father is away at sea and corresponds with her son as his father. But when the ship that she chose is coming in to port and she has to decide what to do.
While the plot moves the characters around, the film lingers on the characters as we watch them struggle with their lives. I loved the look of the film and the pace, which allows us to watch performances and interactions between characters. Mortimer is wonderful and much of her performance is in her face and body language. One of the things that I've been enjoying in many recent films is messiness in situations and characters. Things aren't neat and tidy, but with ambiguity and suggestion. I like it when you get a sense of watching something unfold... it's a better approximation of reality than so-called "reality" television. Dear Frankie is a great film about unconditional love.
tags: film, review, dearfrankie
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Filmmaking is a collaborative art that builds upon other media and the work that has come before. There are certain filmmakers who advance the art and have a powerful influence either directly or indirectly on those who follow. Sergei Eisenstein is one of those filmmakers. In Strike he tells the story of a factory strike in Czarist Russia. It's propaganda, but filled with bold techniques and experimentation. The editing of the film is outstanding with some very obvious symbolism, but also with sequences that are cut with a rapid pace. Many of the techniques that are still used were pioneered by Eisenstein. The easiest (and most effective) way to suggest violence and action is through rapid cuts juxtapositions. While Eisenstein's theory of montage and his demonstration of it in his films is well-known, it's easy to forget that he wasn't innovative in terms of montage. He also was able to construct memorable sequences that flowed very well and are textbook examples of how to put shots together.
tags: review, drama, strike, eisenstein
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Jim Jarmusch doesn't make big-budget or flashy films. They appear and slowly work their way through film festivals and around art-house theatres. You have to keep your eye out to be able to see one of the films in a theatre, but it's always worth it. With Broken Flowers it is getting a larger release and a bit more promotion. But the film, the approach and the filmmaker haven't changed. The film isn't focus-grouped or tested or easy. It's a subtle story of a man who is stuck at a point in his life where he doesn't have to do anything. If he wants he can just sit on his couch in a track suit and watch tv. Jarmusch is a master of stillness and silence and places outside of the mainstream. He explores the airport, the rental car, the motel room, the side streets, and backroads and captures interesting and wonderful moments there.
In a way, Broken Flowers covers similar ground to Stranger Than Paradise. They're both road movies where people deal with unexpected family surprises. Bill Murray is wonderful to watch as Don, a man who lives in a house that is dark and sparse, but his neighbour lives in a house filled with toys and love. The only time we see some spark in Murray is when he visits the house and interacts with the kids. His friend Winston is played perfectly by Jeffrey Wright. Winston wants to help Don find out who wrote a letter saying that he fathered a son with her 20 years ago. Winston plans a road trip for Don to visit the potential mothers and then Don goes off to explore his past. With each stop on his trip, we find out a tiny bit more about the women that Don knew and about him. The episodic structure allows for some great scenes between Murray and his ex flames and without a lot of expository dialogue. What do you say to someone after you haven't seen them for 20 years? The actors inhabit the spaces between the words as an unexpected man from their past shows up unannounced. We watch the uncomfortable moments to see if any of this is changing Don as he revists his own past.
tags: film, review, brokenflowers, jimjarmusch
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Whether he's making a thriller, a comedy, a drama, a music documentary or a documentary, Jonathan Demme is able to bring together the elements to create something interesting that also makes a statement. Demme tells the story of Jean Dominique in The Agronomist. It's a great documentary that carefully introduces the charismatic radio owner, broadcaster, and journalist as well as establishing the context of the situation in Haiti. In watching the film I found out about a man as well as a country with politics much more complicated than I thought. Jean Dominique is fascinating to watch in the film in archival footage and in several interviews. He had a great sense of how to be a journalist who could take a stand and speak (as well as listen) to people. The film also weaves in the story of Michele Montas, who was Dominique's partner in life as well as in running and reporting as part of Radio Haiti. It is a moving story about passion and the courage to do what is right in the face of danger.
tags: film, review, documentary, theagronomist
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In 2001 Woody Harrelson went on a tour to promote environmentally-friendly alternatives to our destructive lifestyle. Travelling in a bio-fueled bus and on bicycles, they went down the Pacific coast of California and Ron Mann made a film about that tour. Go Further skillfully combines a road movie with personal stories about how you can change your lifestyle and change the world. The ideas within the film are more fully explained and explored at Woody Harrelson and Laura Louie's Voice Yourself site about sustainable living and reducing your environmental footprint. A film about doing the right thing can be didactic or boring, but Mann wisely builds the story of Go Further around people and their relationships. Instead of having the focus on Harrelson, it is on Steve Clark, who joins the tour and tries to give up his fast-food lifestyle. It's a fun and entertaining documentary that educates along the way. I had a lot of fun and it gave me a few ideas as well.
tags: gofurther, ronmann, review, documentary
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Tim Burton brings his quirky and distinctive style to Roald Dahl's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's a wild and wacky ride of a movie that is much closer to the sensibilities of Dahl than the earlier and more musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Burton teams up again with Johnny Depp who plays Wonka as a slightly creepy man who has spent too many years inside a chocolate factory. There are wonderfully twisted touches throughout the film and the incredible attention to production design that is a hallmark of Burton films.
Charlie Bucket's family is very poor, but happy. All four of his grandparents live with him and his parents in an impossibly crooked house that looks as if it is located in a bomb crater. They make the best of things as they struggle away in the shadow of the enormous candy factory. The Dickensian crowded house with little food provides a stark contrast with the colours and sweetness of the candy that comes out of the factory.
The characters are heavily stylized to the point of being cartoonish. I don't know if it's a combination of makeup and colour-correction, but there is an air of unreality to the characters. They are instantly recognizable for what they represent. The children and parents who tour the factory each represent parenting styles and character types. In some ways the whole story can be viewed as a lighter version of Dante's Inferno with Hell as a chocolate factory. As each child is punished, the Oompah Loompahs (all played by Deep Roy) sing a song (with lyrics by Dahl) about the sins and predicament that the child is in. The singing is accompanied by elaborate production numbers with music (and vocals) by Danny Elfman. Each production number is done in a different style with a particular music and visual style. There is an infectious energy and sense of fun to the production numbers that more than make up for any of the uneven parts of the film.
I loved the film and it's a perfect for summer with Tim Burton getting back to a lighter, funnier tone.
tags: charlieandthechocolatefactory, review, film, timburton
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If you're gonna reach for a star, reach for the lowest one you can.How did I miss this? In 1999 Comedy Central began airing Strangers With Candy, a very dark comedy set within the framework of an after-school special. The series was created and written by Mitch Rouse, Paul Dinello (who played the art teacher), Stephen Colbert (who played the history teacher), and Amy Sedaris (who played central character Jerri Blank). I had vaguely known about it earlier, but it wasn't until I heard an interview with Colbert (whose work on The Daily Show is brilliant), where he talked about Strangers With Candy, that I wanted to see it. The way that he described it was that it was an after-school special where all of the characters consistently make the wrong decision.
This is the moment that you knowGentle, understated and evocative are the lyrics and music of Death Cab for Cutie. I first heard Ben Gibbard's voice and lyrics through The Postal Service and I just bought (from the iTunes Music Store) Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie. At times I feel as if I'm reading the journal of a slightly-angst-ridden young man (which could have been me at one point). A beautiful mingling of sweetness and pain.
That you told her that you loved her but you don't.
I've been listening to podcasts since last Fall and now that I have an iPod Shuffle, I'm listening to podcasts in a pod-like way instead of via burned CDs in the car or through the computer speakers. While I've been telling people about podcasting for a while, my less technologically experimental friends haven't taken the time to download beta software and dig around to find things to listen to. With the introduction of podcast support in iTunes, things have changed dramatically.
Podcasting makes a lot more sense to more people all of a sudden. The podcasts that I love are personal and are done by people who care. Passion is the key ingredient. Many of the podcasts that I listen to I found through blogs or from mentions somewhere, and not through a guide. In the iTunes guide to podcasting there doesn't seem to be a lot of independent stuff. In fact, there is a lot of Disney there with ABC or ESPN (both Disney properties) in all of the news slots. One of my favourite podcasts - Vu d'ici - Seen From Here by M-C Turgeon - is classified as an "Audio Blog", but if I had to narrow it down, I'd probably put it under "Music". M-C is annoyed at the iTunes thing and doesn't want those commercial, slick and boring podcasts.
A really interesting thing that I noticed is that after listening to podcasts via the iTunes guide, a friend of mine asked where he could find the real indie podcasts made by people in their basements. I think that people will want to wander outside of the slick guides and find things that really connect with them. The iTunes guide is a good place to start and I hope that more people go outside of it (or even realize that they can add whatever feeds they want).
A very encouraging development is Odeo, which just opened up a bit more today. At first they're providing a guide and a way to subscribe to podcasts. Later they'll be providing podcasting tools to let you create your own podcasts. I'm testing the beta subscription thing now and I like it. You can listen to podcasts on pages on the site and add comments about podcasts which can help you figure out whether you'll like the podcast or not. I didn't use it for a while after the new version of iTunes came out, but now I'm back to use it. A very good sign is that they're changing things quickly at Odeo and it's very easy to add your Odeo subscriptions into iTunes through an RSS feed that is generated. So now I have the best of both worlds.
What makes me more excited about Odeo are the possibilities of community and more feedback that it provides. The other thing that will help people find podcasts that they like is the support of tagging in Odeo. Tagging and folksonomies are what allow many connections to be made in systems like del.icio.us and Flickr, and it will help a lot with podcasting. Instead of a gatekeeper coming up with a way to categorize podcasts (hmmm... "music" or "audio blog"...) the people who produce and listen to the podcasts add tags to categorize it themselves. That's the way to do it. Down the road another feature for Odeo that I can see is people subscribing to certain tags via RSS feeds to be able to find new and interesting things.
We're moving out of the first stages of podcasting much as independent film did a few years ago. While now there are films with massive, multimillion dollar budgets that are called "independent", there still is a difference between a film with a marketing budget of several millions and a film made by people with a passion to tell a story and little or no money. That's not to say that people can't do good work for money in either podocasts or filmmaking, but the key is striking a balance and telling a story or creating something that connects with people on a personal level. Without passion you don't have much and that's what interests me in anything I consume.
technorati tags: podcasting, music, itunes, odeo
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One of the things about subscribing to a movies-by-mail service like Zip.ca is that my obsessive tendencies in watching films can be catered to. So one of the things that I'm doing is going through and adding many older films and collections of films. One of the collections that I'm going through are the early films of Woody Allen and I started with Take the Money and Run, which was his first feature film that he wrote, directed and acted in from 1969. Done in mockumentary style, it's filled with bits of Allen's standup and elements that show up in his later work. There are some great sight gags, non-sequiturs and strange situations. At times there is a feeling similar to later comedies such as Airplane! While it is a comedy, the skill in the film is how the cast plays it completely straight which allows Allen to riff and inject jokes into the scenes. The film also features one of my all-time favourite comedy scenes where Allen gives a note to a bank teller who has trouble reading it. The absurdity builds as the teller calls other coworkers over to help him decipher the note as Allen patiently waits and tries to explain.
Structurally it's more of a parody of prison and crime films, there are some nice moments between the characters that suggest elements that emerge in his later films. The film holds up very well with very few jokes that require a great deal of knowledge of the time. It's fascinating (and very funny) to see the early work of a director after seeing much of their later work.
technorati tags: takethemoneyandrun, review, film, woodyallen
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I've been brushing up on my cinematic history lately and was very glad to see Baisers Volés (Stolen Kisses), which is part of François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series with the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. It's light and fun and follows Doinel through a series of jobs and romantic entanglements. There is a wonderful improvisational feeling to the whole film as it moves along. Léaud is very watchable and is filled with nervous energy. Much of the enjoyment is watching him walk and move and squirm. It's a film that is light on plot and I loved seeing Antoine Doinel work as a private detective. He's not good at his job (he's not really sure what he wants) the work is really just a way to put him in to different situations. It's nice to see a film that is light and funny done with skill.
The DVD is part of the Criterion Collection's The Adventures of Antoine Doinel and it has a few features on the disc that provide more context for the film. While the film is a light comedy, the situation in France in 1968 was completely different with the events of May 1968 and the uproar and the firing of Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque Français. Baisers Volés begins with a shot of the front of the Cinémathèque and the camera then moves over to the military jail where we see Antoine Doinel. One of the extras on the disc is a newsreel of Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard calling for the Cannes Film Festival to be cancelled (which it was). There is also an exerpt from an interview where Truffaut talks about Baisers Volés and explains how it was written and dissects a scene. Now I have to catch up on Truffaut's other films.
technorati tags: baisersvoles, stolenkisses, truffaut, film, review
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The White Stripes are a simple duo that have a knack for catchy, quirky songs that I love. With a bluesy feel and a 70s rock sound I always seem to have the same reaction and the album grows on me. At first I think that it's ok and usually have an early favourite song that is the catchy single and then I listen a bit more and the other diverse songs start to grow on me. With Get Behind Me Satan, it's the same. The moods shift from song to song and you never know what to expect other than a lovingly-crafted collection of songs. My favourite quirky song on the album is "Little Ghost" which is the infectious and old-timey story of a man who falls in love with a ghost. Fun and sometimes I even sing along.
The other interesting thing is that it was the first album that I bought from the iTunes Music Store. It was a very simple process and I can see doing it fairly often. With this album I also got the music video for "Blue Orchid" (an energetic romp through an old house directed by Floria Sigismondi) as well as a digital booklet in PDF form. Neat.
technorati tags: whitestripes, review, music, getbehindmesatan
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Christopher Nolan revitalizes and restarts the Batman films with Batman Begins. A zeroing of the cinematic odometer was desperately needed with the Batman films. The last bunch of them were laughably bad... I don't think that I've actually watched all of any of the ones not directed by Tim Burton who struck a good balance between the humorous and the frightening. Batman Begins is built around fear and how we deal with it. It could even be a slightly transposed response to terrorism as this Batman first must struggle with his own demons (and the bats in his head) before he can fight crime. It's a clever and dark film that shows the process that Bruce Wayne followed to get into the costume. What was interesting in the film is the way that it doesn't completely sever the ties with the Tim Burton Batman and it has a neat ending that ties into the first film.
The cast of the new film is great and Christian Bale internalizes the darkness into his Bruce Wayne before Batman. There are also a surprising number of larger stars in supporting roles. I particularly enjoyed Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. They bring some wit and weight to the film, which could have been bogged down by seriousness and solemnity. Cillian Murphy is also great as the Scarecrow and Gary Oldman has a great interpretation as the cop who eventually will become Commissioner Gordon.
Most people have absorbed parts of the Batman story through the various incarnations over the years, and it's fun to watch how Nolan introduces various parts and adds his own spin to them. With the action he wisely chooses to keep things more suggestive than cartoony, which makes it more believable as well as establishing a level of plausibility. Filled with memorable images and production design, it shows us a few new things along a well-worn path. An entertaining summer movie with a bit more thought than the average summer blockbuster.
Another neat thing about seeing the film was watching it at the Valley Drive-in. It was great to see it on a big screen outside and once or twice I think that I saw a real bat flying around.
technorati tags: film, review, batmanbegins
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Birth is a odd, subtle, and haunting film about love and loss directed by Jonathan Glazer. The film is built around an amazing performance by Nicole Kidman as a woman who can't let go of her husband, who died 10 years earlier. Then a 10 year old boy appears and says that he is her husband reincarnated. What is great about the film is that it works very visually and has a wonderful ambiguity throughout. It's been a long time since I've seen a film the exists so much in a visual sense. Spaces and faces often tell the story which is constructed out of absences. We fill in the blanks that exist in the film and nothing is completely clear. The film is also manipulative (which I loved) and it slowly moved me toward one point of view and then switched it around. At times I was reminded of the films of Stanley Kubrick in the strong visual storytelling style and use of zooms. I love seeing a film that has the confidence to not tell me what to think through expository dialogue or other obvious techniques. You have to pay attention and watch as the pieces slowly begin to connect. Birth is a film that sticks with you as you roll the ideas around in your head for days. By shifting a situation that is common or cliché (lost love returns, someone begins an affair, jealousy over old boyfriend, can love ever die?) and adding a twist (lost love is a 10 year old boy) it allows us to see things that we wouldn't normally see. Where do you draw the line? We watch the characters struggle with these strange dilemmas that are disguised and transposed challenges that people face every day.
technorati tags: review, dvd, birth, film
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The very first online audio that I purchased was Skimskitta by Mira Calix. I found out about Mira Calix through a feature on CBC Radio 3 (click on the Mira Calix link on the Flash-enabled page). The sounds I heard there were intriguing as well as her process of creating ambient musical soundscapes with bits of sound from nature as well as electronic sounds. So I listened to the excerpts many times and kept my eyes open for any CDs. Eventually I found some, but they were a bit expensive. Then I found Bleep, which is Warp Records online digital music store. I was able to listen to all of the tracks on Skimskitta and I bought and downloaded the tracks.
It's hard to describe what she creates. It's ambient and rhythmic and I think that much of it works on a subconscious level. I have to be in a fairly receptive mood, but every time I listen I hear more. My absolute favourite listen to again and again and again track is I May Be Over There (But My Heart is Over Here). (If you have the Flash plugin installed you can listen to the track through an embedded player by clicking on the name of the track.) The emotion and progression of the sound is breathtaking. I don't know how to describe it, but it's as if she reached into my heart, transcribed the notes within and then constructed the sound so that it resonates in my soul.
technorati tags: miracalix, review, music, skimskitta
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Craig Baldwin's 1995 documentary Sonic Outlaws tells the story of audio visual artists and rebels who increasingly are being threated by laws that twist the notion of copyright and creativity. One of the stories in the film is that of Negativland and their battle with Island Records over their amazing reworking and recontextualizing of some audio by Casey Kasem and some of the band U2's song, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". The film is filled with appropriated images and sound and demonstrates the techniques through the interviews and excerpts from the work of the artists interviewed. Shot with a wide range of film and video formats (including the low-res Fisher-Price Pixelvision!), it's a constantly-changing audiovisual feast with images and sound that tap into our collective pop-culture memory. It also is an important account of the folk-art roots and history of cultural commentary and collage.
Things have become much more challenging since the release of the film. The media and electronics conglomerates have clamped down much more both legally and technologically to prevent the recording and reuse of material. The "record" button on VCRs in the future will not be controlled by you! While the situation for artists now is not great, in Sonic Outlaws we see those who fight for the right to remix and reuse and they do it with skill and humour.
technorati tags: film, dvd, review, copyright, copyfight, collage
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Scott Berkun is my favourite writer of essays on managing people. Through the essays on his site and his essential PM Clinic mailing list, you can seek out, find and share advice on the best ways to manage people and successfully complete projects. He's now written an amazing book, The Art of Project Management, that collects and distills years of experience and knowledge into an entertaining and comprehensive package. I feel as if I've taken a whole course in project management.
While I have some experience in managing projects, much how I do things is shaped by experience and trial and error. In reading the book much of what is said seems to be simple and common sense, but it's amazing how often we don't do the things that make the most sense. What is so valuable about the book is that it helps to understand why some things work and some things don't. I recognized many of the situations in the book and wish that I'd had the insight that I gained from the book when I was dealing with those situations.
The book is divided into three major sections: "Plans", "Skills", and "Management" and within each section there are a series of examples and processes for dealing with all of the stages that a project goes through. Within my context I'm thinking of how this all can be applied to filmmaking, but the context of the book is software development. What strikes me about reading the book is how similar the processes are. I've done both software and film development, so I've seen it up close, but I didn't realize that so many of the issues exist no matter what size the team is or what creative enterprise you are working on.
The philosophical core of the book is built around people and dealing with them. While some more manipulative techniques are described, there is always a warning about the short and long term risks of using those strategies. There is a refreshing candour and a lack of dogma in the methods described. I've read many books that excite me at first, but the ideas and philosophy are often more appealing than the practical application of the ideas. Berkun manages to strike a perfect balance between a management philosophy and a pragmatic approach. The book will definitely help you make things happen and get things done. You may also have more time to enjoy your work and your life.
While the book is well-written and structured, it feels like a nice long talk with someone who is being completely honest about the way things work. It's the talk that you have with someone that shapes your whole professional life. The moment when you figure out that you can do a good job, treat people with respect, and not waste too much time and effort on things that won't work. I'm going to keep the book close to my side and refer to it often.
technorati tags: book, review, artofpm, scottberkun, management, process
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Clothes maketh the man and the less there is of the man, the more the need of the clothes.David Cronenberg has had a fascinating career and it's interesting to see how he's progressed from low-budget horror films with creatures and exploding heads to more internalized horror and creepiness. With Spider, Cronenberg shows us the world of a recently-released mental patient brilliantly played by Ralph Fiennes. Spider is a broken man and Fiennes looks as though he is only being held together by the clothes that he wears. He barely speaks or looks at anyone in the film, but he is compelling to watch. The film is meticulous with production design that captures the sense that things are just a bit off. It seems to be set in contemporary times, but time and place seems to blend together and we're never really sure exactly where or when we are. It's an odd, subtle film that can be as enigmatic as the scribbles that Spider makes in his notebook. technorati tags: film, review, spider, cronenberg
It's taken a long time for this film to arrive. I'm not sure if any film could live up to the expectations for the adaptation of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. It's odd, but the first thing that popped into my head when I began thinking about what to say about the film was "Mostly harmless", which is the entry for planet Earth from the Guide as well as what John Leyden wrote in his review of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in The Register.
There isn't anything really wrong with the film and there are brilliant touches scattered throughout. The casting is great and many of the lines from the radio series survive completely intact, but some of them don't feel organic. What is strange is how Douglas Adams writing and wit infuse the whole thing and you can't help but forgive it when it slows down. Maybe I don't want to actually calculate how long ago I heard the radio series, but when I think about it I have to realize that it was over twenty years ago. I listened to the original radio series via a National Public Radio rebroadcast of the series sometime between 1979 and 1981. I actually recorded the broadcasts onto tape - 8-track tape - and I listened to them many times. Then I watched the tv series which I enjoyed, maybe because of the spirit of the series that came through. While I read the books (the first three), they didn't make as much of an impression as the radio series.
Maybe what made The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy click with me so well was that it combined my loves of Science Fiction, British humour, and radio together in a creative and entertaining way. A large part of any radio drama is in your mind, which can be why adaptations can be disappointing. The visualizations in the film are wonderful, especially the Vogons and some of the departures (the Americanization of Zaphod) work quite well. I wish that I was able to spend more time with the characters and see them develop more. But there seems to be a delicate balance at work within the film which is filled with subtle in jokes for fans, but I don't think that they would detract for others.
At the core of this, what I think I'm trying to say, is that maybe I've changed (and I know that the world has changed) and the film as it is would have been seen by me differently 10 or 20 years ago. It's not dated, but director Garth Jennings chose to be respectful and faithful to Adams' vision. I liked the film, but didn't love it...so much of the universe that Adams' created is in my brain I couldn't believe how clear it remains. I don't think that I've read the books for 15 years or so or heard the radio series for almost as long or maybe longer (the 8-track hasn't worked for a long time...) but I know the lines and situations. So again I circle around, but I think that it was done well and can be the foundation for something greater cinematically if there are sequels. The world has been so vividly created in my mind that maybe what was most surprising for me was the lack of surprise...it was all just right and I guess that there is nothing wrong with that.
technorati tags: film, reviews, h2g2, hitchhikersguidetothegalaxy
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It wasn't really about the money.I usually see films that I like more than once, but not usually in the same week. I saw Millions for the second time today, this time with my son, John. He liked it as well. The film kicked off the ViewFinders Film Festival for Youth in Halifax last Thursday as the opening gala and it was a great film to start that festival off. Danny Boyle has a great visual sense that comes through in all of his films. They're quirky and exciting and have generally covered topics that tended toward the seedier side of human existence. What's fascinating about Boyle's films is that you can see elements that are common to all of them in terms of subjects, characters, themes and visual elements. Interesting things will be discovered and then show up in other ways in sometimes drastically different contexts. I've seen most of the films that Danny Boyle has directed (with the exception of The Beach) and I've enjoyed them all.
One of my favourite films that I saw in 2002 was All About Lily Chou-Chou, which I saw at the Atlantic Film Festival. It was released on DVD a few weeks ago and I thought that I'd be able to get it somewhere. But it appeared that nobody had heard of it and it wasn't even listed in a lot of catalogues of the stores. But I was able to find it on Amazon, but I wanted to rent it. Then I decided to finally sign up for the DVD rental-by-mail service Zip.ca when I was able to find All About Lily Chou-Chou. So I signed up and was able to watch it again.
Sometimes when you see a film the situation or time or place or mood can heavily influence how you respond to it. I loved the film even more the second time I saw it. It's a sometimes intense and powerful drama from Japan that is built around a group of 14-year old schoolchildren who share a common interest in a fictional pop star named Lily Chou-Chou. We see the daily lives of the teenagers and see their postings to the fan site. Seeing it a second time was a bit easier as I could follow things more. The text from the chat is superimposed over the images at times and reading the subtitles means that you need to pay close attention. It's a gorgeous film shot on video with a range of different styles and a quirky, somewhat rambling rhythm that takes a while to get used to. But it's probably following the pacing and structure of a chat room or discussion board and it worked for me.
I think that writer/director Shunji Iwai perfectly captured teen angst and the sense of community and belonging that exists in various fan and online communities. Being 14 isn't easy and the awkwardness is set against beautiful landscapes and light-filled rooms. Haunting, understated and enigmatic, the film stays with me.
The process and story behind the film is fascinating as well. Iwai first began telling the story through a BBS called Lilyholic where postings began to tell the story. The BBS was open and others could post which meant that they were participating as well. The story was told and later the film was made of the story. Maybe the interactive nature and particpation of many people in the online version enhanced the film. It was a unique process to follow and it resulted in one of my favourite films.
technorati tags: film, reviews, lilychou-chou
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There is something neat about a paper magazine. I often forget about that as so much of what I read now is on a screen. It's very nice to be able to sit down and read through a magazine and with O'Reilly's Make, now I am spending a lot of time reading a paper magazine. The only other magazine that I regularly read is 2600, which I've been reading for a long time. But 2600 is mostly text-based and filled with all sorts of great information and opinion. What is fascinating about Make is that it's very visual and while much of the information is current, it will be useful for a long time because it's filled with lots of interesting projects to make.
I stopped reading Wired magazine regularly a few years ago, but during the first few years the feeling that I had reading it was the same feel that I have now reading Make. What I think is happening now and is happening then is that the magazines have captured the zeitgeist of the time (or at least of what I'm interested in) and they help understand and magnify what the readers are want to hear about and do. When combined with the web site and the Make: blog it's a neat way to harness the ways that people can hack and build and understand the world.
technorati tags: make, oreilly, magazine, hacks
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How quickly can you figure something out? Apparently if you're good at it, you can tell with very little information very quickly. Malcolm Gladwell explores rapid cognition and what you can figure out without really thinking about it in Blink. It's remarkable how people can "thin slice" and look at minute (but significant) amounts of data and make decisions. Evolutionarily it makes sense that we have this ability to see small signs that could indicate danger and allow us to react, but generally most of us are not in life-threatening situations, but we still thin slice the data. One thing that I think that I'm good at thin slicing is a film. I'll generally know if I'll like a film within the first few minutes or even seconds. The title sequence and style of shooting or music will be enough. Why is that? For me I think that it is attention to detail. The story and feeling have to be just right with a film and if they get it right at the beginning, it almost always continues through. If they're sloppy at the beginning of the film, they'll probably not be careful with the rest of the film.
Thin slicing works with people as well. I usually can tell if I like someone right away (as I think most people can). How many times have you heard or thought "I don't know what it is, but I don't trust that person..." Some people can even tell if a couple will stay married based on a few minutes or even seconds of observation. Gladwell gives both positive and negative examples of when making a choice in the blink of an eye can save a life or end one. So many things in the world are tenuous, random and fragile and understanding how our brains work and how quickly we can know is a step toward making the world a better place. It's fascinating to think about how just the right amount of data can enable us to know something without even consciously understanding why we have the feeling that we're right.
technorati tags: book, review, blink, malcolmgladwell
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Jean-Pierre Jeunet's films have a very distinctive look and an obsessive attention to detail that result in the creation of gorgeous cinematic worlds. I was completely amazed when I saw Delicatessen which was dark and funny. I also loved Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, which almost seemed to be built around Audrey Tatou's eyes. In A Very Long Engagement (Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles) we have a story that mixes both the dark and light in a feast for the eyes. You want to savour every frame. I'm a sucker for sappy romance done well and I was completely sucked in. Combining the darkness of World War I with a romantic story is a fascinating way to explore how war affects those who fight and those who are left behind.
For Jeunet it seems as if casting is a very important step and the actors, costumes, sets, and even the lenses and lighting are all perfectly matched. Any film with epic, sweeping shots risks alienating the audience as you look at the technique and lose the story, but I never dropped out once I entered the world. The frames of the film look as though they are painted, but it's not a series of paintings. There are some wonderful moments between the characters with a diverse range of pseudo-archival photography and footage as well as seamless effects integration. A wonderful film that I'm glad I was able to see in a theatre.
technorati tags: film, review, averylongengagement
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At times when I was watching Sideways I felt as if I was watching an infomercial for California wine, but overall it's an entertaining look at a somewhat unlikely friendship between a writer who teaches and an actor. One of the things that I liked about the film was that it didn't go into depth about why they are friends, which is good. It's not relevant to the story, so we didn't see it. There are some nice subtle touches like that throughout the film which I appreciated. But there are also things that aren't so subtle, so overall it's not a great film, but a very good one. The characters and performances are finely-tuned with Paul Giamatti delivering another great curmudgeonly performance with a great chemistry with Thomas Hayden Church who manages to bring a bit of sympathy to his philandering character. There are some great moments between the characters as their deal with middle age, but occaisional lapses into slapstick are funny, but overall it could have been a bit shorter and more focussed on the characters instead of the situations.
technorati tags: film, review, sideways
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I love Malcolm Gladwell's writing and while his best known and most influential book is The Tipping Point, I hadn't read it until a few months ago. I picked it up because I knew that I was going to be reading Blink as soon as Carolyn finished reading it. The Tipping Point is a great exploration of the idea of rapid change and epidemics. It's about people and ideas and how some things can rapidly change and other things don't change at all. The way that Gladwell tells the story and explores the ideas is through fascinating people that he meets. What I love about the book is that it made me think about all sorts of things that I've been seeing develop lately from Moleskine notebooks to podcasting to RSS feeds to tagging. It's fascinating to see how obscure films or web sites or ideas take hold and spread rapidly, even though they may have been dormant for a long time. Tracing this stuff is a lot of fun. I love it when you can apply ideas from a book to new things, which is probably an indication that the book is fairly solid and won't seem to be dated as time goes by. I love the way the Gladwell thinks and now I'm reading Blink and loving that as well.
technorati tags: tippingpoint, malcolmgladwell, book, society
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The recent death of Hunter S. Thompson has probably prompted many people to watch the films connected with the good doctor that founded and practiced Gonzo journalism. I went looking for Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas, but they were all out, but they did have the documentary Breakfast With Hunter, directed by Wayne Ewing, so I rented that. At another video store I was able to get Where the Buffalo Roam, which I watched before the 2003 documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, so I was able to see Bill Murray's interpretation and then the man himself in a documentary that I didn't know much about. I was pleasantly surprised and saw a side of Thompson that I heard about, but hadn't seen. The documentary follows Thompson through a drunk driving charge and the days before and during the shooting of the adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The most fascinating scene was a visit by writer Tod Davies and Alex Cox who was slated to direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where you see why he didn't end up directing the film.
Overall Breakfast With Hunter is an entertaining documentary that gives you a glimpse at a rare writer who had fun while telling his stories.
technorati tags: film, review, breakfastwithhunter, documentary, huntersthompson
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Lynne Ramsay is able to capture real moments between people. A big challenge when creating a film is to show character through action and not dialogue. In her first feature, Ratcatcher, she presents stunningly beautiful images that reveal the lives of people surrounding a boy in Glasgow in the 1970s. The film slowly reveals itself to us with crisp sound and disturbing scenes of the decaying conditions during a garbage strike. It's dark, but beautiful and haunting. It sticks with you and you feel that you've really spent time somewhere else. Not a film for those who like tightly plotted, dialogue-driven films, but for those who like poetic, comtemplative works that suggest meaning and don't impose it.
I rented the Criterion DVD and it also includes three short films by Ramsay: Small Deaths, Kill the Day, and Gasman that establish the look and tone that continues through her other films. Evocative work that is driven by emotion and ellipsis.
technorati tags: film, review, ratcatcher
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What if you made a film and nobody saw it? What if you made a great film and nobody saw it? The film Stander, directed by Bronwen Hughes falls into that category. Based on the true story of a gang that robbed banks in South Africa in early 1980s, it's not a straight-ahead drama based on true life. The film is stylish, surprising and moves along at a great pace and manages to combine heart-wrenching historical details with more tradition action film details. You go on a journey and the film changes tone from time to time and subverts your expectations. I can understand why the studio would have a hard time promoting the film. It exists somewhere between an art film and an action film. Bronwen Hughes is a fascinating director. She's nominated for Best Director in the Genie Awards and is choosing fascinating projects to develop and direct from her earlier work directing some of the filmed segments for Kids in the Hall to a children's feature such as Harriet the Spy. What is great to see in a director is a willingness to face challenges and not to keep making the same films again and again. Of the Genie nominated directors this year, Hughes is the best, but I wonder how many of the Genie voters will have seen the film. But that doesn't really take anything away from the film. I think that it will become a slowly-growing gem that people will gradually discover and wonder, "why haven't I heard about this film?"
technorati tags: film, review, stander
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Watching a film is a voyeuristic experience and Mike Leigh structures things so that the conditions are right to increase the chances of real moments between actors, which means that you feel as if you are watching private experiences that are both small and powerful. Assembling a crew and casting are parts of a delicate and magical process that is similar to cooking. With Vera Drake the ingredients are perfectly matched and balanced to create a work that is greater than the sum of its parts. Thoughout the film everything is quiet and subtle and understated. It slowly sucks you in and then takes a long time to leave you. You watch a family experiencing life through a series of small moments that add up to a larger story that touches on larger issues. It's not about the issue but how people live their lives and it lets us share in something remarkable. This is what filmmaking can do better than anything else.
technorati tags: film, review, veradrake
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There is nothing so dangerous as a virtuous man.You can't find a better dramatic situation than a character who has to struggle with moral decisions. The more difficult the situation, the more drama. If you have great characters that are well-rounded and distinctive, it's even better. With Dirty Pretty Things, Stephen Frears has a great script by Steven Knight and a great ensemble cast with Chiwetel Ejiofor as an illegal immigrant in London who works in a hotel with other immigrants, including Audrey Tatou as a Turkish refugee. The relationship between the characters is complicated and real, with a nice sense of humour that provides just enough light to the dark story of struggle and survival. I enjoyed every minute of the film which was filled with pleasant surprises. Dark and beautiful and perfectly balanced. technorati tags: film, review, dirtyprettythings
Martin Scorsese knows how to make a film. How to make it look, sound, and flow. While The Aviator isn't Scorsese's best film, it's great to watch. The weakness with The Aviator is in the script. With a better script, Scorsese would have made a great film. The performances are solid and the deep love of filmmaking that Scorsese has translates well to the screen. The film is enjoyable and great to watch. Fun and harrowing at times. A sequence where Hughes crashes a plane is frightening and viseral and seamlessly combines effects, sound, shooting and editing together. Thelma Schoonmaker is a gifted editor who is able to cut (or not) at the perfect moment to move the story along, draw our attention to a detail or give us time to think. As the film progresses the look changes to mirror that of different film stocks with their own particular colour responses. Every time I see a film by Scorsese I learn something and the Aviator is no exception.
technorati tags: film, reviews, theaviator, scorsese
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Sometimes small, independent films miss my radar. A few nights ago I was able to see Maria Full of Grace at the Al Whittle Theatre as part of the Fundy Film Society Winter program. It's a great film, but it isn't showy. What is striking about the film are the performances and the understated direction. The subject matter (drug smuggling) could be sensationalized, but it is humanized and it grows out of the characters and their struggles. Catalina Sandino Moreno is perfect as Maria. While I was watching the film I was thinking, "What an amazing person" and not "What a great performance"... but that's the sign of a great performance when you aren't watching someone acting as hard as they can. One thing leads to another and the film follows along on a journey from Columbia to New York. Maria Full of Grace is the feature debut of Joshua Marston and he manages to weave together two main threads - the drug smuggling story and the more personal thread of a woman trapped in a small town who wants out. Filmmaking is not so much about talking as about listening and observing and reflecting the insights back at us. Marston seems to have a gift for this.
technorati tags: film, reviews, mariafullofgrace
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Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.It's good when people take a chance. Zach Braff is primarily known as an actor on the tv series "Scrubs", but with Garden State he also shows that he's a talented director. It's taken me a while to see the film, but I'm glad that I did. It's visually clever and has a great script that follows a depressed actor as he returns home for the first time in a decade. What I loved in the film were the performances and the gaps. The spaces between people and the gap between who you are and who you were. Coming home is always interesting with what you remember coexisting with what has changed. Have your memories changed, has the placed changed or are you seeing what was there, but you couldn't see it when you were there. What helps the film work is that it happens over a series of days as our hero returns home. There is a great cast with solid chemistry and characters who are more complicated than in most mainstream films. I'm convinced that any artistic endeavor that is taken on by a cast crew that is excited and committed to the project will have a great time and make some great work. I got that sense from Garden State.
One of the signs that things are maturing with information on the Web is that things are becoming much more closely linked together. A few days ago I was thinking that Technorati's watchlists were cool and today they unleashed their tags. I'm very impressed. One of the things that I've been wanting for a little while is a way to tag blog entries. Categories are good, but after using del.icio.us and Flickr I've started to realize that having more than one way to classify is a good thing. But having multiple tags doesn't really do a lot for you unless you can do something with it and now you can. I'm sure that blogging systems will quickly evolve and you'll choose tags and categories (there are already plugins), but it's fascinating to watch the development of folksonomy happen so rapidly. It was neat when I was able to see my Flickr photos show up beside my things on 43 things. But that's nothing compared to looking at Flickr photos, blog entries and del.icio.us links all together on the same page. I really fell in love with tags when I looked at the view of tags on Flickr where the font size of the tags reflect their popularity. Technorati has the same thing and as more people tag stuff it will be a great way to visualize what people are talking about. It's developing so rapidly that Technorati Tags have rolled out before it was completely done, so there aren't RSS feeds yet.
Another example of how fast things happen now: from the time the first notice I saw in my feeds (on Joho) to the afternoon, Matt from Oddiophile whipped up a bookmarklet to create tags (and I have to change my stylesheet to incorporate this new class). I used it for my first tagged post over at bitdepth digest and I'll use it to paste the code in this entry as well (which I'm writing in BBEdit). Tags and Technorati - this rocks so hard.
technorati: tags, folksonomy, web, blog, technorati
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Just follow your heart. That's what I do.After many people telling me to see the film and few people describing it much, I finally saw Napoleon Dynamite. Well... It's an odd film that I enjoyed far more than I thought I would or maybe than I even should. There isn't a lot to the film, not much dialogue or plot, but a lot of character. I laughed out loud many, many times while watching the film. Then I watched it again and laughed again. The tone is odd with an 80s feel, but it is contemporary with characters that seem to be stuck in the 80s. In a very odd way I identified with Napoleon and the high school scene. I don't think that I was as quite as much of a misfit as the guy in the film, but there were elements.
One thing that I've noticed is that I'm increasing my presence online. I don't know if the quality is increasing or if it is just more stuff, but I think that one of the reasons that I'm more prolific now is that is easier. I love using Blosxom to blog because I can create the entries with any text editor, but I always use BBEdit to write for bitdepth. But the bitdepth entries aren't as frequent as I wanted them to be, but now with my increased use of Blogger for Screen Arts and now bitdepth digest, I blog more often using Blogger. The other things that I use often are Flickr and, increasingly, 43 Things. One thing that all these sites have in common are their fairly flexible and open APIs, which allows the information and the sites to interact with other applications and sites. What it means practically is that I now am able to blog using Flickr and 43 Things and to have Flickr images automatically show up on my 43things page as well as here on bitdepth.
Very exciting things are also happening with Technorati adding watchlists where you can follow discussions in the blogosphere based on keywords. I keep track of just about all of this stuff using NetNewsWire as if there isn't an RSS feed, I'm not as interested in it as I don't want to spend the time looking around to see if anything has changed. While Flickr and 43things are very fun and aren't technically oriented, Technorati is a geeky data-rich backend that is starting to have some very cool applications built on their API.
So the exciting thing now is that we're moving away from needing to use one application to view and share and just find and create and share. It's exciting when you don't have to code or understand how to code to use things (but if you can, it's even more exciting now as you have a lot more to play with).
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The online world was very exciting for me in 2004. Blogging kept plugging away and I rediscovered Blogger which Google purchased. The great thing with the evolution of the Web is that finally CSS started to be embraced. With Blogger there was some great Javascript that made blogging even easier and faster. They also removed the ads on the Blogspot hosting, but opened the possibility of revenue from Google ads if you want.
The other cool Google-related discovery for me was Gmail, which has changed the way that I look at email. I try to keep everything organized and I've been using email for a long time and I don't easily switch email programs. While I use Apple's Mail a lot, I find that I'm using and loving Gmail a lot now and I think that I'm starting to use Gmail more than Apple's Mail program. The Gmail beta is fascinating as it is viral. You can't really sign up, you have to be invited by someone who has it. It's an interesting way to beta test something like a mail service as you want to have people who use it and the alpha geeks who are testing it will tell other alpha geeks about how cool it is.
The biggest chunk of my time online recently has been spent in the completely addictive Flickr. When I started it was just to share a few pictures with family and friends, but when some of the public photos that I posted received comments I started to get more of a sense of the community that was there. I didn't think that I would like the social component of it, but I started to realize that I shared a lot in common with the people who were looking at my photos. It's a great way to communicate visually and I notice that the community is more international than many communities that depend on language as the primary means of communication. The response to the photos that I post shape what I now choose as a subject. While I only joined Flickr in August, I posted 1424 pictures last year. My posting (and photography) increased dramatically as the year went on to the point where I posted 700 photos in December. I don't think that I'll continue at that rate, but I will probably post over 2000 images in 2005 I gladly paid for a Pro account which gives me a gigabyte of uploads every month (and my 700 photos last month got close to 50% of the capacity). I just realized some of how Flickr works thanks to the antenna blog which points out the Flickr is based on online gaming code. It's like a game where the object is the share your photos. You have quests with fellow group members and share your triumphs. It's great to be part of the community.
The tags on Flickr enable lots of connections between the images that you have uploaded and the images that others have classified in the same way. The tagging on Flickr is based on the tagging that takes place on del.icio.us where you create your own tags to classify links. It's been called a folksonomy and now I store a lot of my bookmarks in my del.icio.us space to keep track of things. The next step for me is to use my del.icio.us bookmarks with some of the other stuff I'm doing on my blog.
Viewing the web and keeping track of what's happening on sites and especially blogs has been made much easier with NetNewsWire, which continues to evolve and is the other program other than Mail that I constantly run. Now if I site doesn't have an RSS feed, it isn't as interesting to me. While there are many options for RSS readers, I love how NetNewsWire works and as MarsEdit (a weblog editor) evolves I think that I'll use it more and more as well.
The combination of RSS with audio enclosures caused podcasting to burst out onto the world. It's an exciting development that is really only months old, but is evolving incredibly rapidly with Adam Curry at the forefront with his Daily Source Code podcast setting the pace for what a podcast is, as well as highlighting what is happening in the podcasting world which is a close cousin to the blogging world. It's changed things so fast that the latest beta of NetNewsWire supports podcasting and now I'm using it to download podcasts. Podcasting will be very big in 2005.
Yesterday I began to explore 43things, which I looked at before, but now it really clicked as I became a member. 43things is like Flickr for to-do lists. You share your list of things to-do and things you have done as well as leave messages and comments about what you want to do and what others have done. With gentle prompting and an understated interface, I realized right away that I'd be spending a lot of time there. It connects you with people through tasks and tags and collaboration seems to be built into the DNA of the site. While I just started yesterday, I've already connected with strangers and realized that the whole thing is a way that people who may not blog or want to blog will be blogging without knowing it. I'll write more about 43things later, but I think it will be another big thing in 2005. Exciting times ahead online as we focus less on the technology and more on the people and community.
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It's fun to make lists and I think that I have my top ten films for this year. Looking back I had 5 favourites for 2002 and 7 for 2003, so I figured that I'd be more traditional this year and have 10. What always happens near the end of the year is that a bunch of films are released in time for the awards season, but don't get out that wide... so this list exists without me seeing The Aviator, House of Flying Daggers and A Very Long Engagement which I think may make my list for next year. The other fascinating (at least to me) thing about the list for this year is that I have the DVDs of half of the films on my list and will get the DVDs of the others as they come out.
Here is my alphabetized list:
Older Bitdepth
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
2004
2003
2002
Categorized Bitdepth
art
articles
books
film
film: festivals
magazines
music
people
podcasting
software
sound
television
web
Regular Stops
Odeo
O'Reilly Network
The Register
Metafilter
Technorati
Relevant
My Bitdepth Digest
Tricia's Blogosphere
Design the Web
Echoes in the Rink
When Voices Rise...
Screen Arts blog
My Mac.com Site
My ZeD Space
my del.icio.us links
my 43 things
