Yikes…
Hitler, as “Downfall producer” orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.
Archive for the ‘Film and Video’ Category
Hitler and Copyright
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010Cool Video
Monday, November 16th, 2009theOwl
OK – the music is just fine, but it’s the video concept here…
Learn To Fly
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009theOwl
Watch the video. Uplifting. By filmaker Christian Letruria.
Learn To Fly from Christian Letruria on Vimeo.
I found this video at the Daily Dish.
Pee in the Shower
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009theOwl
From Discover:
Deadline
Sunday, July 12th, 2009theOwl
From The Daily Dish. This one is worth sharing, and very much cleverer than the average art school project…
Bravo.
By the way, the music, which I like even though techno pop is generally not my cup of tea, is by Royksopp. Here’s a link to the video page at their site.
So…I went and looked and listened around. Truly the video is more interesting than the music. In the Deadline piece, they at least had a harmonic change thrown in at one point. A lot of the music just repeats the same thing over and over and over…
There is a problem implicit in using too many primitive 21st century thinking machines while writing music. The music gets locked in as code in an embryonic 21st century computer, and never has a chance to self-organize in the mature technological environment of the human bio-computer – which, after all, has been evolving for thousands, nay – millions of generations (if you count apes and early mammals and reptiles and whatever else we’ve evolved from all the way back to the most primitive self-organized nervous systems…)
Oh well.
(Updated a couple of times 7.12.09)
On the Waterfront
Sunday, June 28th, 2009theOwl
Film is different from theater. This much I’ve figured out….
Here are Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando, directed by Elia Kazan in On the Waterfront...
Check out the rhythm/groove of the machinery (locomotive?) at 3:00 into this clip. Karl Malden and Marlon Brando…
I just read a book on directing film by David Mamet, wherein he says film is all about the cut – the juxtaposition of uninflected images in the mind of the audience in such a way as to force the audience to create a “meaning” of the film out of its own associations to the juxtaposed images.
I’m still chewing on this…
In the Hands of A Very Safe Driver
Thursday, May 28th, 2009theOwl
I was listening to an interview of the English novelist John Fowles (The Magus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Daniel Martin), wherein Fowles is asked about screen adaptations of his novels. Speaking of Harold Pinter, who wrote the screenplay for The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles said that with Pinter he never worried about the course of the adaptation – “It’s like being in a very safe driver’s hands…”
That is precisely how I’ve felt on those few occasions when I have been fortunate enough to have renditions or productions of my work overseen by people who have my complete confidence. I relinquish the driver’s seat, the steering wheel, the accelerator, the brake and the map book. If consulted, I make myself available and as helpful as I can contrive to be – though my impression is that it’s OK for me to take a nap if I am so inclined.
It’s best for me to just cool out and let the work find its way.
This is a very good feeling indeed.
(UPDATED on 5.31.09)
Star Trek – Barack is Spock
Monday, May 11th, 2009theOwl
(image from the New York Times)
UPDATE – I get it now. Spock is now President of the United States!!! American mother, Kenyan father – Human mother, Vulcan father. That’s what’s so cool, and part of what feels so good about Obama’s Presidency – we are living in Star Trek, and we have elected Spock President, knowing full well that he is half Vulcan.
For one can be half Vulcan and totally human, just as one can be half Kenyan and totally American.
Yes, I know that Kenyans are not aliens, but from the point of view of many Americans throughout our history, they might as well be.
How very cool!!!
For Mother’s Day the girls and I took Karen to the movies to see the new Star Trek prequel:
The show was strangely moving, despite what I would consider its many flaws.
Kirk behaves in a way that would earn him a Court-martial in any real military organization, yet inexplicably winds up as Captain of the Enterprise anyhow. Probably by necessity, the physics essential to the story rushes by in a flurry of hand waving. There are unnecessary monsters, outrageous coincidences, gratuitous sword fights, danglings from heights, bam bam boom – etc.
And yet I liked the show and was at times moved by it.
Me
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009theOwl
The things we find at YouTube…this is worth a look.