Ploafmaster General

Crazy, trippy, fantastic:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1829835&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1
Metamorphosis from Bryant on Vimeo.

When I first watched Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country For Old Men I was filled with both a little confusion and a lot of disappointment. Confusion because I couldn't tell what the point was supposed to be, and disappointment because I felt as if the ending was one big anticlimax. I initially gave it 3/5 stars because, while the story felt like a trick, the acting and cinematography were at least high quality.

Tonight I finally got around to watching the movie a second time, and I certainly feel as if that helped. I won't go too deep into this because far more entertaining and capable reviewers have already said most of what can be said. I will say, however, that the whole point of the film seems to be that there is little point to life.

Tommy Lee Jones' soliloquy at the end sums it up perfectly. He recounts the second of two overnight dreams to his wife and describes how his father (a sheriff like Jones' character) rode ahead of him to make a fire in the darkness. No matter where he went, Jones' character knew that there would be that light in the dark.

And then he woke up.

4/5

RIP, Don LaFontaine.

Well, it seems that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is going to be delayed by about 8 months. It was originally scheduled to open really close to my wife's birthday, so she's NOT going to be happy about this.

The studio's main reason is because they want a guaranteed summer blockbuster in 2009. Oh yeah, and they threw a little blame at the writers' strike, too. You know, because the studio heads are classy like that.

So the mini-site for Francis and the Lights' EP, A Modern Promise, is making the rounds on teh interwebs, and I have to admit that I'm enjoying it quite a bit myself.

What I really dig about the mini-site, though, is the 35mm film for "The Top." Two things impress me about this: First, it sounds like he's singing live (varying sounds depending on his approach to the microphone) while still dancing around like a maniac. Second, and this is my absolute favorite part, once the music starts the whole thing is a single continuous camera shot (unless there's some genius editing that I've missed).

This is an expert little piece of film making for a short music video like this, and it doesn't go unappreciated. Oh yeah, and the music itself? Welcome back, 80's pop (in a good way).

UPDATE: Awww yeah, it's live vocals and a single shot as I thought. SUPER WOOT.

I was already a huge fan of Isiah Flores' short films, but below you can see him assembling beats in real time. I'm guessing many of them, if recorded, were edited later to smooth out the timing and what-not, but either way, I'd bump to these beats.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/1456446 w=580&h=437]
isiah flores live mpc beat making from Spencer Keeton Cunningham on Vimeo.

Oh sweet mercy.

Last night Valerie watched Love in the Time of Cholera while I was in the room, so while I wasn't actively participating in the viewing experience, I couldn't help but observe the ridiculousness.

I really don't mind spoiling anything here since you probably aren't planning to see it. If you were, well, I'm saving you the trouble. Here's the gist: Dude meets girl during late teens or something. Dude falls for girl even though he barely knows her. Girl's dad doesn't like it because dude is of little financial means. Dad takes girl away from dude, marries her off to doctor. Dude irrationally clings to memory of girl, plans to save himself for her no matter how long it takes. Until dude is pulled into a dark cabin on a river boat for some anonymous coupling. Now dude decides that sex dulls the pain of pining for this girl he met back in the day. Dude proceeds to nail any willing lady he meets, until one day when he's in his seventies, girl's husband dies. He meets her, writes to her, convinces her to be with him like he's always wanted. Hooray.

While even that shell of a summary is horribly stupid, the details are what makes it worse. The movie attempts to be romantic, but the dude actually keeps score of all his...um...scores. At several points throughout the film we hear him recounting his various adventures in love-making in between throw-away scenes of social/political upheaval and the girl's domestic life with her doctor husband. It's hard to take our protagonist's stories as anything other than comical, so we we're left with a story that plays at love and romance but fails utterly.

Even Valerie agrees with me in giving this movie a 2 out of 5 stars. It gets two because at least the lead roll was played sorta well by Javier Bardem, but he does little to salvage a ship that seems designed to sink.

Peep it - a totally sweet animated video for a blippy electronic club piece:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/1154958 w=580&h=326]
Ghislain Poirier - Hit & Red (official) from departement on Vimeo.

"Hit and Red" comes from Montreal musician Ghislain Poirier who seems to specialize in bumpin' beets.

Oi...as if the MPAA wasn't stupid enough.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/877053 w=580&h=326]
A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

This glorious animated short not only features one of my favorite Sigur Rós songs (Takk...'s "Hoppípolla"), but highlights a sweet blend of traditional stop-motion handicraft and digital artistry. Carlos Lascano describes the process (and is gracious enough to include photos) on his website.

I just caught the teaser for Terminator: Salvation on Yahoo!'s movie page, and I have to say, I'm actually intrigued. Christian Bale plays John Connor, and after serious awesomeness in Batman Begins, The Prestige, and most likely The Dark Knight, I take this as a good sign.

Of course McG, the director, has some pretty nasty stains on his resume, so we'll have to see how it shapes up over the next year as more details are revealed...

Dan in Real Life is a study in discomfort. In a movie filled with in-your-face metaphors and too-clever script contrivances, my main beef is the lengths to which this film goes to perpetuate an unrealistic and horribly tense family situation. Sure, there's decent acting, some good camera work, some touching family moments...but it's all over shadowed by the overwrought slow-motion train wreck that you can see from an hour away.

Two out of five.

Okay, there are enough gushing reviews of Pixar's latest release, Wall-E, that I needn't muddy the waters with my lesser writing skills. I loved it. Best movie of the year so far in my opinion.

This post, on the other hand, is about the brilliant end credit sequence. Not only do we catch a glimpse, in a combination of stills and light animation, what happens after the conclusion of the feature, but we also see the visual design of the titles transition from cave drawings through hieroglyphs, to impressionism, and even up to 8-bit video game graphics. Pixar outdoes themselves with their films quite often, and the attention to detail - artistic detail, mind you - in an oft skipped part of a movie was a surprise indeed. Give these folks a Best Picture nomination.

Oh boy, where do I start?

The only reason I went to see Shyamalan's waste of celluloid, The Happening, was because Val really wanted to see it, and wanted me along for the ride so she'd have an arm or knee to grab if it was frightening. I was glad to go out for the night with my wife, but WOW! was this movie horrible. The script, the acting (I hope just from bad direction), the direction, and worst of all the story were all third rate. I really can't tear apart the details any better than Christopher Orr over at The New Republic, so check out his review for a thorough take-down of The Hapless. I mean Happening.

This past weekend Val's mom showed us some old high school report cards from her husband which she dug up in the basement. The cause for interest was the grading scale - widely different from today's typical American report cards. The letters ranged from "A" through "G" and every letter in between, with "A" as outstanding, "B" as excellent, et cetera.

I give this R-rated feature a "G," for BAD FAILURE.

Here's a shocking message that arrived in my inbox this evening:



I have to say that I'm extremely pissed off about this right now. I subscribe to the two-at-a-time/unlimited-per-month plan, and Valerie and I split the two DVDs between separate profiles. This allows us to maintain our own ratings for movies we watch, and the recommendation system (one of Netflix's main strengths, in my opinion) for each profile remains unpolluted by each other's differing tastes.

I'm calling B.S. on their reasoning for the change, too. I followed the link to the help page, and the "Why?" portion simply repeats the third paragraph from the email. Netflix has a solid reputation for going above and beyond customer service expectations, so maybe they'll offer a better explanation when I call them tomorrow, but I can't help feeling like their public reason is a PR answer. How will taking away a very useful feature (that I don't think is very complicated) improve the website?

I seriously hope there's sufficient customer push back to this ridiculous move. Otherwise, it looks like I'm going to drop my subscription to a single DVD, and get a second subscription for Valerie. This will bump up our cost by about $4 a month, but at least Valerie's recommendations won't be affected by my art-house flicks, and my recommendations won't be affected by her chick flicks.

Not cool, Netflix.

There's really only one word to sum up Rebel Without a Cause:

ICONIC.

This quintessential James Dean film is a prototype to for teen angst cinema. Our protagonist has a history of making trouble, and the movie opens with young Jim picked up by the police for public drunkenness. We learn early that much of his misplaced anger stems from an emotionally emasculated father, an introduction to the overarching theme of broken fatherhood throughout the picture. This lack of adequate fathering may in fact be Rebel's true antagonist as we see every tense situation resulting from the side effects of absent or poor male parenting. Even the climactic struggle reveals the desire of a desperate teenager to regain the father figure he lost as a child.

That's a pretty easy segue to my feeling that the script is spectacular, and with the exception of a few events, is timeless. The dialog feels natural, the pacing is even, and the plot is simple yet complete. Excellent directing augments the story with camera shots to heighten the drama and emphasize the emotional gravity of each situation. And let me just say that, yes, James Dean passed too soon from this world. His acting alone makes this film worth viewing, but he's joined by two strong supporting actors in Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.

I'm telling you right now that you should see this movie. Make sure it's widescreen, and make sure you're not distracted so you can soak in every frame on the screen. I'm buying this when I get the chance, and I'll be proud to add it to my collection.

FIVE out of FIVE stars from me.

Oh boy. The Smurfs are going to have a movie of their own. This seems like a crappy idea intended to lure the nostalgic children-of-the-eighties parents into theaters, and I seriously hope it flops.

(via Joshua Blankenship)

What happens when summer blockbusters collide? McSweeney's imagines the answer with Jill Morris' SEX AND THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

This is probably one of the most clever song covers I've seen. Old electronics used to play "Nude" from Radiohead:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/1109226 w=580&h=326]
Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

(via kottke)

In what was, in my opinion, one of the most beautifully filmed and cleverly directed movies of 2007, Julian Schnabel adapts Jean-Dominique Bauby's autobiography The Diving Bell and The Butterfly with startling emotional force.

The camera shots are at first simply disorienting and discomforting, representing Bauby's waking from a coma. This transitions to an even more unnerving choice of camera work; the majority of the film proceeds as a series of static camera placements moving slowly about each set like the single functioning eye of this paralyzed man, occasionally "blinking" for Bauby's communication. I've never felt so trapped in place from watching a movie, and I've never experienced film direction so effective at generating audience empathy.

It certainly helped that the acting was excellent all around, the screenplay was well done, and the soundtrack was full of fine choices. This is highly recommended to anyone who appreciates the artistic side of film making, and doesn't mind reading subtitles.

Five stars out of five, and I may have to add this to my collection.

Tonight, while Valerie is away in Michigan visiting the Herman Miller headquarters, I attended a Movie Reduction Film Festival at my friend Eman's house. This is my friend Peter's idea, and here's how it works (from the Evite):

Find a movie that you love, and distill it down (reduce it) to a 1-7min clip that, in your opinion, describes why you love that movie. The sharer, cues up the DVD (or VHS tape) and unveils the clip to an audience. To add a bit of mystery, the audience doesn't know what movie or clip you are going to present until you unveil it. Before the clip is shown, the presenter can say why they love the scene or movie but shouldn't reveal its title.

What it boils down to is a very social way for people at a party to introduce movies to each other with added personal relevance. It solves the social problem of watching movies with friends, where you have to sacrifice either your attention to the film or your attention to each other. I stayed until the end, through all 18 clips (including mine), and it was a blast. I met some new folks, learned about some movies I'd never seen, and was reminded why I enjoyed some films I HAD seen. I highly recommend this party format.

Anyway, here's the list of all the movies selected (and there were a few breaks peppered in there for more beer, popcorn, pizza, etc.):

1. Stranger Than Fiction
2. Brother Sun, Sister Moon
3. Nowhere in Africa
4. Emma
5. Serenity
6. The Namesake
7. Across the Universe
8. Raising Arizona
9. The Piano
10. Dead Poets Society
11. To Kill a Mockingbird
12. Garden State
13. The Two Towers
14. Breaking Away
15. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (my selection, and my all-time favorite!)
16. Kill Bill, Volume 2
17. The Departed
18. Three Times

My interest is certainly piqued for some of these movies (Three Times, Nowhere in Africa), and my desire to see some others is much stronger now (Across the Universe, Breaking Away). Brilliant idea, and brilliantly executed by the hosts.

Call this one of my "late to the party" film reviews, but I finally got a chance to see Juno tonight, and it was worth the wait.

I'm a bit tired and therefore less coherent, so I'll hit a few salient points:

1. The acting was wonderful. I wish Michael Cera was at least nominated for Best Supporting Actor - his Paulie was such a sympathetic character that I couldn't help rooting for him and cheering inside when Juno confessed her love for him. And Ellen Page! She deserved every bit of her Oscar nomination. I honestly think she's poised to become quite the great actress if she plays her career right.
2. The script was mostly solid. I agree with several reviewers who were almost fed up in the first fifteen minutes by the almost-too-clever-rapid-fire dialogue, but at least it was fairly intelligent. Honestly, the sarcasm gave way to the right balance of humor and a contemplative look at the protagonist's situation.
3. Finally, I felt like Juno maintained just the right level of sweetness; not to saccharine to the point of gagging on plastic emotionality, but not so casual about its subject matter to miss the gravity.

I came in to this movie a little skeptical. The last time a Fox Searchlight film was lauded this widely (in my memory, at least) was Little Miss Sunshine, and I didn't digest that one so welld. This, though, for the reasons listed above, ended up as Five of Five. I think this is my likely my next DVD purchase.

...was awful.

Heavy-handed and preachy. Plenty of over-acting. Glaring holes in logic. Valerie fell asleep in a hurry, and this was HER Netflix choice.

2/5

This is perhaps one of the coolest music videos I've seen in a long time. The jury's still out on the song (it's not horrible, but not amazing, either)...

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kxDxLAjkO8&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&hl=en&w=580&h=485]
(via 37signals)

Tamara Jenkins' The Savages was one of the most beautifully filmed movies I've watched in a couple of years. The cinematography by W. Mott Hupfel III was gorgeous - sometimes saturated, sometimes like a still-frame from a photographic camera. All of this was, of course, complemented by spectacular acting from Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The story was a little slow (and a little long), but I would recommend watching this to anybody with both an appreciation for dark humor and sympathy towards broken family relationships.

4/5