Saturday, August 1, 2009

Throw a neg? #6: Funny People

look at the shorts
Judd Apatow sure does love his family. Every shot of Leslie Mann gleams, every shot of daughters Maude and/or Iris Apatow holds just too long. It's not like hiring Janusz Kaminski to light his pictures into "pretty" makes Apatow any better a filmmaker. But the problem isn't directing, per se, it's scope; which points to writing, which points to editing, which of course points to directing, too (we're after harmony after all, aren't we?). Endless coverage and endless post-production work shouldn't really be a problem, in theory, because you'd hope that editing was actually editing, or trimming--cutting off some fat. Hell, it's a recurring joke that Seth Rogen's gotten skinnier since the last time he was on screen. More, Apatow's trying to tell two too many stories at once, and each one is so moral. Granted, I felt good walking to the car; and, I suppose, self-reliance is a about as good a thing to preach as any. But, for every dick joke and for all the let's-get-serious talk, there's still a gauze on mess. It's a satisfied picture, no doubt, happy to know what it knows. It's Hollywood; it's fantasy. Solutions seem easy. After watching so much Hawks recently (a terrible and unfair comparison, I realize, but what are standards for?), I get that, for all his assurance of how the world works, Hawks is more about letting things play--or following a course as it leads. Despite the bloat of the running time, you can feel Syd Field all over Apatow's screenplays/outlines. Bottom line: gimme more movies about competition and more Aubrey Plaza telling our dummy boy-man Rogen she can fuck whoever she wants. --RWK

Friday, July 24, 2009

Candles #7: I see a new earth

Candles #6: There are smart people


Say what you will. This makes me feel great. He's such a real person, it's amazing. Biggest sign, clearly, is his commitment to work, and girls. --RWK [via carlton, via filmdrunk]

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Bag Raiders "Shooting Stars" Music Video



Instead of making some crap video of the two guys in the band taking a faggy walk down some Lawnmower Man/Miami Strip re-creation, they should have just filmed a young, beautiful multi-ethnic group of friends driving around in a convertible (slightly drunk) in LA because that's all anyone thinks when they hear this song.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Design Poach #19: Hitchclock


What: Hitchcock Chromotography
Stolen from: Hitchcock Wiki Blog via @dwhtwit.

Be sure to click through and look at the big versions. This kind of obssesive project is what the internet was made for. --RWK

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Throw a neg! #5: Harry Potter 6

through something
As soon as he says that line, you know it's over. Or, I did. I got up premature and beat it the hell out of the parking lot. No need to soak credits. For a film that long, with that much "plot," it's pretty damned minor. Yates seems to have a few good ideas about lighting, and jostling the screen sometimes, but there's a certain embalming patina over most things in the movie. It's definitely a movie of things, too, as all these Potter books/movies are, except for when Cuaron really turned the central thing into a theme in his picture. Now, this one cannot be deemed a nadir by any means, but it certainly doesn't mean much to state that. Nor does it mean much by itself, as all the things are just things, attached to very little. A film/story this reliant on "memory" should be a little bit more about the mind, don't you think? (Something Yates' #5 got, kind of.) No, this one's just a different kind of faithful to the book, exclusively a plot delivery machine, even though the color and consequence of the final confrontation/s has been transposed down, dampened or muted, and, quite honestly, smoothed over. We (or I, or other dummies like me who've read the books) know that the series won't deliver on all its mythological possibilities, but there's still hope, maybe, that the next two films (of one book! money! cash! greed!) will at least be loud. God knows there won't be any less exposition. Even without Gambon asking, in just about every scene, "You must be wondering why I've brought you here." My query is why I want to be lead, or why I keep on following.

Quick Lit Shit #25: Eyes Wide Shut [BFI monograff]

A fine elucidation that pays strict attention to the film itself and hardly interprets away from what we're given. I wish I was as rigorous to stay within the film as Chion. This isn't to say he doesn't talk of associations, or of the filmmakers and their process, but that all his interpretation is grounded, firmly, in details from the film. Also: I dig its simple, intuitive structure. The best film criticism reorganizes the film in a particularly non-linear way that activates the film again and again in flashes for the reader; this does that. --RWK

Quick Lit Shit #24: Vulgar Modernism

Wish I had more free time to spend with this but from my thumbing (no, didn't read it cover-to-cover) it proves, again, how talented and sharp and well rounded Hoberman's criticism reads. Also cool to see what was happening in the NYC film world before VHS and Laserdiscs and DVD changed (devalued?) rep and foreign programming. --RWK

Quick Lit Shit #23: Hitchcock's Films Revisited

Wood's is a fine primer. And a thoughtful guide for the familiar, too. Still a few things I'd challenge, though, like all that talk of identification solely in terms of a equals b techniques without further investigation. --RWK

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Design Poach #18: Heights


What: A cover of Wuthering Heights, which I've never read, but want to for the number of film adaptations there are, including one by our man of the moment, Mr Manipulator himself, Rivette.
Stolen from: An article in the Independent about the art of book covers, of course. Found via this recent 3:AM link dump.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Candles #5: Best Death Metal Elevator From London

slide
Pretty amazing. Pretty damned amazing, Carlton. Imagine I'm yelling, imagine I'm John Darnielle:

Let's save our pennies and dimes! Let's get along real well!
Let's go ahead, let's book a flight, let's find things to sell!
Oh I want to slide dow that tube; oh I want it, I want it oh so bad.
OH I can't find my right mood, oh I want, I want to never be mad!
Jump into that chute!
Jump into that chute!
Let's jump intooOOOooo that chute.

More pix over here. --RWK

Friday, July 10, 2009

Freaks Flock Together

The Hunger, 1983, Tony Scott

Utterly bewildered to find this "vampire lesbo" movie is actually a stately, gorgeous piece of movie making, and it's directed by Tony Scott. It's like Dan Brown coming out with The Road and then he goes onto Oprah and says "I just wanted to write this quick, fun little apocalypse novel while I was researching the next Da Vinci Code sequel." Fuck you.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Two Goths, The Desert & Karl Lagerfeld




Teasers from the new Jonathan Glazer-directed DEAD WEATHER video. Did anyone see BIRTH? I mean, come on, it was the fucking shit wasn't it??

Friday, July 3, 2009

Enjoy the Fireworks, my Young Comrades


San Francisco has a nice way of dulling the 4th of July, not intentionally of course, but atmospherically. Who can get in the spirit of things American, such as explosions, if fog guards their glory? This year, the forecast is the same, and to tell you the truth, this time around, this particular summer, so varied and abstract for me, I would prefer a deep and disguised rumbling of the clouds to just about anything else. For all seven of you though, if any of you barbeque and party the night away tomorrow, I wish you the best, on our sweet collective birthday. In other words Blow (it) Up.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Encounter #145: Watermelon in Spain

seeds
Seeds spring life. I've never been to Spain. I'd like to go there. Everybody I know says it's the best. --RWK

Candles #4: Oh Three, Twenty One

Juan's Place

Monday, June 29, 2009

What Community? #92: Vervet blitz - UPDATED


Vervet monkeys steal alcohol (and other drinks) from "unaware" tourists at some kind of "resort" and get real wasty, falling and tripping and making a racket. Parallel lines. Except, I've not had a single drink in a week, and I feel fine, though the thirst is there. I haven't seen any bikinis here, either, for the record. --RWK

UPDATE:
Whoops, forgot the [via Carlton] tag... as this tweet will tell you.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Throw a neg! #4: Transformers 2

look up so we can look down
I'm happy this was the first flick I saw in the Green Country Cinemas. And I'm happy the crowd was talkative. I'm happy I could point out who was an Autobot and who was a Decepticon in some of the "fight scenes" to the kid on my right. Maybe I'm just worn out, or maybe I just have way less invested in getting riled up at windmills, but I couldn't muster the kind of anger this idiotic mess warrants on an ideological level for the simple fact that Michael Bay makes images that swoon and pop, burn and thud, go bang and lazy, and all at once, as it's true spectacle: always in motion, always useless beyond aesthetics and the pleasure of light and color. But there is a soundtrack, and dialogue, and, as many have griped, some really fucking terrible attempts at comedy -- plus, of course, all the obnoxious hate one can expect from a lame-brain adolescent -- not to mention it's 150 minutes without previews. And, while we're at it, we might as well mention how terrible Ms Fox is (and how crazy Bay's idea of sexuality is; ditto "love") despite, somehow, in the midst of the wooden line readings and anime posturing, she's still pretty sexy in a middle school fantasy way. The most dispiriting thing about the enterprise is just how much fucking money this will make, and how much fun that is for those involved, since I don't get paid to do what I love, and since I think this thing is genuinely cancerous for culture. Still, I had a fine time. Orange is a good color. --RWK

No Capes #15: Seberg


Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Candles #3: Entertain good dreams, and live here

hullo
It is part of our understanding of our world, and of what constitutes an historical event for this world, that Luther redefined the world in getting married, and Henry the Eighth—one of the last figures Shakespeare was moved to write about—in getting divorced. It has since then been a more or less open secret in our world that we do not know what legitimizes either divorce or marriage. Our genre [of the comedies of remarriage] emphasizes the mystery of marriage by finding that neither law nor sexuality (nor, by implication, progeny) is sufficient to ensure true marriage and suggesting that what provides legitimacy is the mutual willingness for remarriage, for a sort of continuous reaffirmation, and one in which the couple's isolation from the rest of society is generally marked; they form as it were a world elsewhere. The spirit of comedy in these films depends on our willingness to entertain the possibility of such a world, one in which good dreams come true.

—Stanley Cavell, of course, from the chapter in Pursuits of Happiness about that flick up top

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Rep Tie






Via A Continuous Lean. TAKE IVY (love the weird title) is an extremely rare, influential Japanese book documenting late sixties Ivy League style. What a great day to be white!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Candles #2: Don't need a smile to light


Trolling, laying, trolling in bed in the half-light, I realized that my list of favorite movies on some sidebar "application" on facebook was, surprising to me, rather accurate despite missing a few here and there. Then, after I added a new favorite to the end to make it an "even" 15, I thought I'd share it here. But rather than just some list, how about some pictures? Images celebrate better than words. --RWK
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

Thursday, June 11, 2009

ZION I AGAINST I



My friends Priya & Dan (collectively M.A.Y.O.) directed this insanely good video for Zion I. The track production is pretty commercial (I have no problem with that). Maybe he wants to live in Marin County real bad, who the hell knows??

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

What up London


Its odd how blogging can literally be intimate. Who the fuck am i talking to anyway? Where is everybody?./

Encounter #144: Stupidities


Trying to figure out how to reckon and rise above my own stupid stupidities over here, it helps to have a beacon like this dude. Definitely my favorite Herzog. --RWK

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Thursday, June 4, 2009

I wrote, directed and Star in this mini-drama


Obviously, I didnt do any those things. But this came out today and all 17 of you faithful followers will enjoy it.

Encounter #143: Why don't you open your eyes?


Move like this. But, really, open your eyes if you're gonna feel this love thing. --RWK [via bale]

Monday, June 1, 2009

One for the Family


does anyone think the trailer for Year One is pretty funny?? i think i do.

Always Sunny ...


... B/c its perpetually foggy here in SF. This is a rare glimpse into something I truly value, readers.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

GayFI



(Click to enlarge)

Thanks to my various friends (you know who you are) who came up with the gems for this little list. I have far too much free time at work in the company of Photoshop.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Post 500: CRUSHIN

cease!
Can't embed the vid, so, click away and dream back. Dream back and groove. Groove and freak. Freak and funk. Perfect for a early summer breeze through the open window. Wish there was more straight RAP music these daze. (Then again, I do dig that thing Bill sent us, too, like, a lot.) --RWK

Omar S - via Bill - "Id like to Thank my own blogging abilities for this post"





Finally, heres the track you donkeyfucks