Shooting Down Pictures

Another video for the Focus Features “Rewatch” series. This one took me a while, as I played a bit with the footage (both original as well as from the film) to tie into some of Laura Muley’s theories about sexual identification in film. But when this work involves watching Ludivine Sagnier semi- or fully nude for hours, what’s there to complain about?

“A Revolution on Screen” is a two-part video essay coinciding with the 2009 New York Film Festival Masterworks series “(Re)Inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society, 1949–1966.” This series is the first major U.S. retrospective of the films made during the “Seventeen Years” period between the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the Cultural Revolution.

PART ONE: MOVIES FOR THE MASSES (AND A SMUGGLING OF ART)

PART TWO: THE FLOWERING BEFORE THE FALL

Many thanks to Moving Image Source for hosting this effort – you can read the full text of the essay on their site.  And special thanks to Brandon Soderberg (aka one of the best hip-hop/music video writers I know) for the big assist on this baby. This was a fun one fu sho’:

This video essay was produced for The Auteurs Notebook as part of their coverage of the Nicholas Ray retrospective at New York’s Film Forum. It can be viewed exclusively on their site for this week, after which it will be posted on YouTube and Shooting Down Pictures.

Go to the original full entry on The Lusty Men.

Another video essay for the Film in Focus Rewatch series. This one’s on Lost in Translation, which many considered the best film of 2003 and one of the best of the decade. I personally wouldn’t go quite that far, but I’m glad to have someone like Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com to make the case in this video essay, by honing in on one moment and exploring what makes it, and Sofia Coppola’s direction, beautiful and unique among American films.

Also be sure to check out Stephanie’s recent interview with Dennis Cozzalio of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, where she dishes on her development as a film critic, what it’s like to be one half of a film critic couple, and films both recent and past that have brought out her true sensibilities as a critic.

This has been up at Film in Focus for some time, and I’ve been meaning to embed ever since – but getting settled into my new digs in Brooklyn has taken up much of my May. But since I just had another “Best of the Decade Derby” liveblogging screening (more on that tomorrow), I figured I’d better get this one up now. Presenting my second video essay for Film in Focus, on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, featuring on-camera commentary by frequent collaborator Matt Zoller Seitz. Watching this film with Matt it became very apparent how simply amazing and rich this film is, from its ingenious construction that demands multiple viewings, to its provocative questions about the emotional vagaries and ethical dilemmas that spring from love gone wrong. This almost certainly has a place in my top 10 of the decade – I only wish I had been able to put more time and preparation into this video so that it might reflect the complexity of its source. But I love this little video ditty anyway for its warmth and goofiness, and for Matt’s insight and sincere affection for this film. Enjoy.

I haven’t yet mentioned here that I’ve begun producing a series of video essays titled “REWATCH” for Film In Focus.  As Jim Jarmusch’s new film The Limits of Control premieres tomorrow, I thought I’d embed the first video essay I produced for REWATCH, on Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton.  I enjoyed producing this as it made me think about cinematic depictions of flirtation, something the film does rather strikingly (in fact one could even say that the film itself is one big flirtatious tease on the audience). Commentary by Jessica Winter:

Stay tuned as the second installment of the series, dealing with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of my favorite films this decade) drops in the next week or so…

View main entry

It’s a real pleasure to unveil this latest video essay for several reasons. First, because it marks the first of what I hope will be an ongoing series of videos produced in conjunction with the Greencine Daily, highlighting notable DVD releases. This initial video just happens to be on a TSPDT 1000 film that I blogged about towards the beginning of this online project: Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.  Interestingly, the three video clips I posted to accompany my blog entry have more views than just about anything else I’ve posted on YouTube. I think it has something to do with a) the film not being available for many years, even though it’s based on a book that’s still widely taught in schools; b) the film being referenced in Metallica’s video for their song “One.”  At one point I even put an open call asking if anyone knew of how to get the film released on DVD, since I was receiving dozens of similar inquiries through my YouTube account. At long last, the film is available on Shout Factory DVD.  And I must say, it’s a gorgeous transfer, miles better than the out of print VHS I used for my initial viewing. It even includes the Metallica video!

Here’s my video essay, which you can also watch on GreenCine Daily and on YouTube. Enjoy!

Since Amanda at the Filmlinc Blog reposted these, I figured I should too. Days and Nights in the Forest screens at Lincoln Center  Sun Apr 26: 4 or Mon Apr 27: 6:30.

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Analysis of the famous “Memory Game” scene

Part III: Interview with actor Soumitra Chatterjee, star of DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST and the Mastroianni to Ray’s Fellini (they worked on 15 films together)

The following is a rough translation of an essay by Michael Baute of the Kunst der Vermittlung project. I used Babelfish and Google Translation to stitch together the most coherent translation I could manage; by no means perfect but hopefully you’ll get the idea:

Three short films to Clint Eastwood

At the end of 2008, upon the American theatrical release of two films of Clint Eastwood (Changeling and Gran Torino), the New York Film Society Of Lincoln Center invited critics in a roundtable discussion about the films. One of the critics involved is Kevin B. Lee, who applied the audio recordings of the discussions later to images of the discussed films and assembled in three parts uploaded onto YouTube (1, 2, 3).

Speaking about current, new films seems effortless, if these new acquisitions are to appreciative a work already existing. It can then be docked on already and thinking and opinion and note. Such docking happens also within the roundtable discussion; especially the third of the three videos which tries to classify the films into the overall aesthetics of their works’ director. With limited proofs from several films of the director a possible ”Eastwood look“, the one constant use of negative space, that is unilluminated parts of the film image, darkness, in which figures act, is distinguished.

Also in the second part of the small Eastwood series, to its Gran Torino, this reference is made on the complete work. It is particularly motivated by the current reception of the film in criticisms and reviews in the word contributions. Unanimously it is described there that Eastwood of his persona in Gran Torino adds a further facet of the aging hero; also comparisons with John Wayne are cited.

What is remarkable in this second part – more still than in the two others – is above all that the film succeeds in integrating the six critic voices and viewpoints in an artifact without being harmonized. Each of the speakers meets Eastwood’s film with a different interest, each individual voice pursues a different perspective. These perspectives are not a concluding evaluation. It is not interest of the video to draw a conclusion over Gran Torino. The video aims rather to seize the comments and their different focuses in the linearity of a film documentary process and to supply them with their own evidence of the excerpts of the film coupled to them.