Film Projections

The Apartment (1960)

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:33:42 -0400

The Apartment (1960)

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Fri, 17 May 2013 14:58:00 -0400

Martin Scorsese delivers the 2013 Jefferson Lecture (video)

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:16:26 -0400

Martin Scorsese delivers the 2013 Jefferson Lecture (video):

Watch Martin Scorsese’s lecture, “Persistence of Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema” delivered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC., followed by an on-stage conversation with noted film-critic and long-time collaborator Kent Jones.

(4.1.13)

nprfreshair: Director Noah Baumbach tells Terry Gross why he...

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:45:33 -0400

nprfreshair:

Director Noah Baumbach tells Terry Gross why he decided to shoot Frances Ha in black in white:

I wanted to shoot in New York again and I didn’t really articulate a reason beyond that except that shooting that way in New York helped me … see the city with new eyes, I think. Also there was something about black and white that makes the movie almost immediately nostalgic. It’s a very contemporary story and Frances is such a contemporary character. … [Y]ou never know that moment when [something is] over and I think that black and white in some ways sort of underscores that. It adds this sort of sense of past to something that’s happening very much in the present.”

Image of Greta Gerwig (right) as Frances and Mickey Sumner as Sophie in Frances Ha

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Wed, 15 May 2013 13:21:59 -0400

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Wed, 15 May 2013 03:05:37 -0400

A Great Gatsby Book Report, By a Kid Who Only Saw the Movie

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:33:57 -0400

A Great Gatsby Book Report, By a Kid Who Only Saw the Movie:

By Jordan Asher Major Brogan III, age 16

The Great Gatsby is a very important and famous book which tells its story through many pages, all of which I enjoyed reading very much. It was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived from 1896 to 1940 and truly wrote many books. Through its use of characters, garbage falling from the sky all the time, and black people constantly playing the trumpet on a fire escape, The Great Gatsby is truly a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald about how you shouldn’t just buy a castle near your ex-girlfriend in the 1920s and then wait for her to fall back in love with you, because eventually you might get murdered by a poor person.

The main guy in the book is Nick Carraway, who seems like he probably has brown hair and blue eyes, not that I would know, as I only read about him in a book and haven’t seen what he looks like. Nick Carraway went to college and then moved to a dirty shack on Long Island, where he tries to make money using finance and mainly just follows his neighbors around staring like a weirdo. He is currently in a mental institution because he used to drink too much because of the ’20s, so he spends his time typing his recollections of Long Island on a magic typewriter that makes his words float up into the air like cheap visual effects in a movie. (Not that I watch movies. I prefer books.)

Nick Carraway has a cousin named Daisy. She’s married to Tom Buchanan, who is a really good actor. I mean character. He has a small mustache, probably. Daisy hates shirts, Tom Buchanan, and having a personality, but everyone seems to think she is a lot of fun to be around anyway. She’s pretty cute, I guess.

Next door to Nick Carraway is a big castle where a mysterious man named Gatsby lives. Gatsby is the most important man in town (and in the book—hence the title!!!), except that none of his friends or acquaintances has ever met or seen him, even though he is literally on the cover of the newspaper every day. Any time someone says “Gatsby,” everyone else is like, “Gatsby? Gatsby? What Gatsby? Where Gatsby? Show me the Gatsby!” but no one knows who he is. Gatsby is so mysterious, in fact, that even the drunk guy who lives in his library has never seen him! Until that stops being a convenient plot point, after which everyone is just like, “Oh, hey Gatsby, could you move, you’re blocking the polo game or whatever.”

So, Gatsby and Daisy used to date, before Gatsby had to go be in World War I and then hide so nobody would find out he was a secret poor. Now that he’s not poor anymore (because of alcohol crime) Gatsby throws a lot of parties hoping that Daisy will come over. The main thing you need to understand about life in the “roaring 1920s” is that it mainly consisted of a bunch of people standing in a fountain while a drunk guy played the pipe organ and servants dumped garbage all over the place and everyone is just screaming and screaming. The 1920s people loved it. As history shows, there were nine main people in New York at that time: Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, a black guy playing the trumpet on a fire escape, Daisy’s friend, a dirty mechanic, his wife who is amorous, and her sister who is also amorous. After some events, life would never be the same.

Gatsby is obsessed with this green light across the water from his house. The green light represents Daisy, because Gatsby is “green” with envy that Tom Buchanan gets to hang out with her all the time, and also because green is the color of “go” and Gatsby would like to “go” over there.

Eventually Daisy comes over and says she would like to break up with Tom Buchanan and marry Gatsby instead, because of shirts. Everyone has a fight and eventually Gatsby dies, which represents death. The most important metaphor in The Great Gatsby is the shooting stars, which happen in the sky at least twice in every scene. The shooting stars represent the fact that Gatsby is the “star” of the book and somebody “shoots” him at the end. Aren’t we all a little bit like Gatsby in this modern world?

The Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines “conclusion” as “the last part of something.” In conclusion, this is the last part of my report on The Great Gatsby, which is a very expensive book about confetti. It is truly the best book I have ever read all the way through.

The cast of Mad Men “performs” Rick Astley’s...

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:52:04 -0400

The cast of Mad Men “performs” Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

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Mon, 13 May 2013 23:38:29 -0400

"Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:12:04 -0400

“Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”

- Andrei Tarkovsky (via muscovite)

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Sun, 12 May 2013 02:04:15 -0400

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Drop Dead Fred (1991)

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:34:50 -0400

Drop Dead Fred (1991)

"As an amateur, then, I must as well as I can simultaneously recognize my own ignorance and feel no..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:42:43 -0400

“As an amateur, then, I must as well as I can simultaneously recognize my own ignorance and feel no apology for what my eyes tell me as I watch any given screen, where the proof is caught irrelevant to excuse, and available in proportion to the eye which sees it, and the mind which uses it.”

- James Agee

laughingsquid: Game of Thrones Art Prints in the Style of Saul...

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:36:16 -0400

laughingsquid:

Game of Thrones Art Prints in the Style of Saul Bass by Fernando Reza

Woody Allen Extremely Busy Updating WoodyAllen.com (The Onion)

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:02:16 -0400

Woody Allen Extremely Busy Updating WoodyAllen.com (The Onion):

sometimesagreatnotion:

Everything about this is the best.

“Additionally, Allen recently incorporated an integrated blog where the 77-year-old posts entries about his personal life several times a day. The posts range from shorter entries such as “It’s a gorgeous day in New York City! What do you guys like to do when it’s nice outside?” to longer musings in which Allen openly discusses the ups and downs in his relationship and his past marital troubles.

Saying that engaging directly with your fanbase is more important than ever, the Husbands And Wives director also added an “Ask Woody” section in which he answers fan emails by recording his responses into his webcam.

“I’d say in any given week, I spend about 40 percent of my time on my creative projects and the other 60 percent updating my site,” said Allen, explaining that while he “has a guy to help with the more technical stuff,” he updates the website himself and has even picked up some basic HTML and CSS coding. “It’s worth it, though. Not only can I post new pages of the script I’m working on, but then my fans can give me feedback on what they like or don’t like.”

“I love getting their input about my work,” Allen added. “The fact that they get to be included in the creative process is wonderful.”

“There are two things you can’t argue in film: comedy and...

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:35:55 -0400

“There are two things you can’t argue in film: comedy and erotica. If something doesn’t make you laugh, no one can tell you why it’s funny, and likewise, it’s hard to argue someone out of an erection.”

- Roger Ebert

branduponthebrain: To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2013)

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:26:13 -0400

branduponthebrain:

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2013)

"…Art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it’s because..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 03:00:19 -0400

““…Art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it’s because we are a species that’s driven by narrative. Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost achieve that thing that’s impossible which is entering the consciousness of another human being—literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute you’re experiencing that piece of art, you’re not alone. You’re connected to the arts. So I feel like that can’t be too bad.
Art is also about problem solving, and it’s obvious from the news, we have a little bit of a problem with problem solving. In my experience, the main obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be. Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model.””

- Steven Soderbergh

You’ve probably seen this everywhere, and if you haven’t yet, make the time to read it.
(via restinvermont)

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:28:48 -0400

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

the-overlook-hotel: The iconic carpeting of The Shining and...

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:20:22 -0400

the-overlook-hotel:

The iconic carpeting of The Shining and Twin Peaks collide.

Artist: Jared Lyon