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Category: Film

Published August 17, 2012

Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island

Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island, directed by Jake Gorst and supported by Design Onscreen, explores the work of the region’s notable postwar architects and designers, including Albert Frey, Wallace Harrison, Herbert Beckhard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Horace Gifford, Edward Durrell Stone, Marcel Breuer, Andrew Geller, Philip Johnson, Charles Gwathmey, Barbara and Julian Neski, and others. The film features interviews with architects and historians, as well as friends, families and clients of these influential designers:

ArchDaily has more on the film and the modern architecture of Long Island.

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Published June 6, 2012

Montreal in the 60’s

Montreal in the 60’s is a short film by assembled by Jim Dayshine from archival images from the National Film Board of Canada.

I posted this at the other place earlier today, but I’m re-posting it here because it is beautiful and more people need to see it.

(Thanks Derek)

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Published April 18, 2012

The Art of Film & TV Title Design | Off Book

The new episode of PBS Arts documentary series Off Book takes a look at the art of the title sequence. The designers of the titles for Blue Valentine, Mad Men, The Pacific, Se7en, and Zombieland discuss their work, and there’s a lovely bit at the end when they all talk about the influence of the mighty Saul Bass:

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Published February 8, 2012

Tops

I finally saw  EAMES: The Architect and The Painter at the weekend. One of the many things that grabbed my attention watching it was a clip of mesmerizing short film called Tops made by the Eames studio in 1969. In the film, all manner of spinning tops and toys are wound and released. It is beautiful and hypnotic (thanks partially at least to the score by Elmer Bernstein). But there is also a moment about halfway through when a thumb tack is spun across an architectural drawing. It is a wonderfully understated metaphor for the creative process and it changes the whole tone of what you are watching. Lovely.

Here Tops in its entirety:

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Published January 25, 2012

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Inspired by the Wizard of Oz, Buster Keaton movies, and a whimsical love of books, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is an award-winning 15 minute animated short by William Joyce, Brandon Oldenburg and Moonbot Studios:

The film is one of five animated shorts nominated for an Oscar this year,  and there is an interactive version of the story available for the iPad from the app store.

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Published January 12, 2012

PressPausePlay

The full-length documentary PressPausePlay is now available to watch on Vimeo. The film, which somehow manages to be simultaneously both inspiring and melancholic, looks at the effects of digital technology and the Internet on the creative economy. Worth watching if you have a spare hour (although depending on your attitude to these things it might make you smile in joyful validation or retreat to your bed for about a week to weep quietly to yourself:

PressPausePlay was made by creative agency House of Radon.

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Published November 24, 2011

Francis Ford Coppola at TIFF

You know, what was top of my mind when I was making [“The Conversation”] was I wanted to make the film as beautiful as “Blow-Up.” You know, I had seen “Blow-Up” by Michelangelo Antonioni and I said boy, that’s the kind of film I – those were the kind of films I want to make. I – something that’s unique and it occupies its own kind of thing, and I made “The Conversation.” I sat down to write that after being so enthusiastic about seeing “Blow-Up.” And throughout my career, I have seen great films that have just filled me with pleasure and said, I want to make a film like that. And I think that’s OK for young people to do, you know, because it’s impossible. You set out to imitate something you thought was beautiful but in the end you can’t. You’re going to end up with what you have to say, you know?

Broadcast by NPR’s Fresh Air, director Francis Ford Coppola discusses his career with Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival, and answers questions from the festival audience:

NPR FRESH AIR: Francis Ford Coppola Reflects On His Career mp3

You can read the transcript of the interview here.

AND if you’ve never seen Coppola’s 1974 film The Conversation, you really should make time to watch it…

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Published November 14, 2011

The Title Design of Saul Bass (A Brief Visual History)

I’ve been waiting for a book about Saul Bass since I was bookseller. Now Saul Bass: A Life In Film & Design is finally in bookstores, Ian Albinson of the brilliant Art of the Title has put together a brief visual history of some of Bass’s most celebrated work:

(For the record: Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design is published by Laurence King and distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books)

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Published November 8, 2011

The Wild Bunch | A. O. Scott

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott on Sam Peckinpah’s fantastic 1969 Western The Wild Bunch:

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Published October 13, 2011

The Unofficial Adventures of Tintin

Animator James Curran has created a wonderful unofficial title sequence for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin , featuring elements from each of the 24 books (love this):

(via Quipsologies)

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Published August 16, 2011

Dirty Harry | A. O. Scott

Dirty Harry

I was reading about Clint Eastwood’s 1971 film Dirty Harry this week for a long, much overdue (now almost mythical) post I’m supposed to be writing, and so I have to share A. O. Scott’s video review of the movie for The New York Times:

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Published August 9, 2011

M*A*S*H | A. O. Scott

New York Times film critic A. O. Scott revisits Robert Altman’s 1970 film MASH:

The film was based on MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by former military surgeon Richard Hooker, first published in 1968.

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