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Category: Film

Published July 23, 2011

A History of the Title Sequence

A History of the Title Sequence is a short film by Jurjen Versteeg. It charts the development of film title sequences by displaying the names of influential title designers in the style of their own work. In other words, it is a film about title sequences that looks like a title sequence. How great is that?

The film references the following designers and their titles:

Georges Méliès, Un Voyage Dans La Lune; Saul Bass, Psycho; Maurice Binder, Dr. No; Stephen Frankfurt, To Kill A Mockingbird; Pablo Ferro, Dr. Strangelove; Richard Greenberg, Alien; Kyle Cooper, Seven; Danny Yount, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Sherlock Holmes.

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Published July 21, 2011

The Ultimate Hitchcock Cookbook

Hitch is an animated homage to Alfred Hitchcock by Felix Meyer, Pascal Monaco, and Torsten Strer, students at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover:

(via Quipsologies)

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Published July 12, 2011

Les Diaboliques | A. O. Scott

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott turns his attention to the 1955 French thriller Les Diaboliques directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot:

Les Diaboliques was based on the novel Celle qui n’était plus (She Who Was No More) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac and before Clouzot bought the rights to the screenplay, Alfred Hitchcock was apparently about to do so. Coincidently, Robert Bloch, author of Pyscho, was a fan of Clouzot’s movie.

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Published June 29, 2011

When Movies Mattered | The Marketplace of Ideas

Film critic Dave Kehr discusses the cinema of the 1970’s and his book When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade with Colin Marshall for The Marketplace of Ideas podcast:

THE MARKET PLACE OF IDEAS: Dave Kehr When Movies Mattered mp3

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Published June 17, 2011

J.J. Abrams | Fresh Air

One last miscellaneous post before the weekend…

Filmmaker J.J. Abrams  talks about his new movie Super 8 and, perhaps most interestingly, his storytelling process with Terry Gross for NPR’s Fresh Air:

In a movie like “The Graduate,” Ben and Elaine had their first real date and they’re, you know, sitting at a restaurant eating in his convertible car and people are being very loud and they put the top up. And they’re having this conversation and you can’t hear it, but you’re watching it. So you get to sort of, you know, fill in the blanks and I think there is a sort of – almost a reflexive reaction that we have to fill the blanks in when there’s something of some substance and pieces are missing. You sort of fill it in.

I think there’s something about the unseen and the unknown that has real value in moments. But I do think that, you know, you can’t apply a magic box approach to everything. And if you go to see a movie or if you watch a show, you better have something of substance that you’re building to. The whole thing in itself can’t be a magic box.

NPR FRESH AIR: J.J. Abrams: The ‘Super’ Career Of A Movie-Crazed Kid

The full transcript is here.

(via The Cultural Gutter)

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Published May 25, 2011

Withnail & I | A. O. Scott

The New York Times movie critic A. O. Scott on the aesthetics of failure in Bruce Robinson’s 1987 film Withnail & I:

Not only is the film largely autobiographical, it is apparently an adaptation of an unpublished novel Robinson wrote in 1969.

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Published May 21, 2011

Stanley Kubrick: A Filmography

I posted this on my other site, The Accidental Optimist, yesterday and it got a nice response so I thought I would post it here as well seeing as it’s a long weekend in Canada.

The video is a short animated filmography of Stanley Kubrick by French graphic designer Martin Woutisseth:

If you don’t know about it already, The Accidental Optimist is where I post things I find on the web — usually related to design, architecture, photography, and film — that don’t have a natural place here. You can follow a combined feed of both The Casual Optimist and The Accidental Optimist on Tumblr and Facebook.

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Published April 19, 2011

100 x 100: IBM Centennial Film

Moving chronologically from the oldest person to the youngest, 100 x 100 features one hundred people presenting the achievements of IBM recorded in the year they were born. The film gives a brief history of the company and features — as you might expect for the company that worked so closely with Paul Rand — some lovely typography:

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Published April 7, 2011

The French Connection | Critics’ Pick

The New York Times movie critic A. O. Scott looks at the enduring appeal of The French Connection:

William Friedkin’s 1971 film was a fictionalized adaptation of the nonfiction book The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy by Robin Moore, first published in 1969.

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Published March 29, 2011

Akira Revisited

New York Times movie critic A. O. Scott discusses Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 anime classic Akira and Japan’s pop culture obsession with apocalyptic disaster:

The film was based on Otomo’s original six-volume, 2182-page epic, which is thought to be one of the first works of manga to be translated into English in its entirety.

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Published March 22, 2011

“Fuck The Midtones” — How To Make A Book With Steidl

Screening at MoMA next month, How To Make A Book With Steidl is an award-winning documentary by Jörg Adolph and Gereon Wetzel about book publisher Gerhard Steidl:

(via Coudal. Of course.)

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Published March 8, 2011

Making Books, 1947

Here’s a fascinating 1947 documentary produced by Encyclopedia Britannica Films about the mass production of books:

(via Brain Pickings)

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