Effervescent Refractions
Stéphan Angoulvant blogs here, tweets, and sometimes has good ideas.
Posts tagged with “movies”
NPR has published three reviews of Watchmen from Bob Mondello, David Edelstein and Kenneth Turan. Ultimately they all say the same thing – namely that the film is difficult for the non-initiated to appreciate – but I think Edelstein provides the best commentary. Being new to the material myself, I found the movie conflicting and confusing but appreciable overall. Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as Rorschach is worth the experience in itself.
10:11 PM | Tags: reviews, movies, watchmen, comic books, npr, radioI’ve been keeping a close eye on Tarantino’s new project, Inglourious Basterds, since I first heard about it a year ago. The teaser trailer is out and has sadly attenuated my high hopes.
05:52 PM | Tags: tarantino, movies, trailer, ww2
Loving this spoof by Olly Moss of the famous Saul Bass poster for Anatomy of a Murder.
05:44 PM | Tags: graphic, design, humor, movies, posterThe trailer for Gary Hustwit’s new documentary Objectified is up. I can’t wait to see this film.
12:50 PM | Tags: design, moviesQuantum of Solace
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0830515/ →Finally had a chance to see the new Bond movie. For once I think the top reviews at IMDB are actually on point – too often they seem lenient with new movies. I just feel like breaking it down into a few bullet points.
- Liked the intro sequence. It lacked a bit of the pizazz from Casino Royale, but had a beauty reminiscent of Goldfinger’s (which has, by far, my favorite intro).
- The first quarter of the movie was very strong, with a classic cocktail of chase scenes and exotic locations. However – I must say the Bourne-esque, chopped up, nauseating editing made what ostensibly were well thought-out sequences, utterly confusing.
- The film gradually lost steam after that action-packed beginning. Key elements of the Bond franchise that even Casino Royale respected were entirely missing. I’m all for a visceral James Bond but a symbolic gadget and a slightly stranger bad guy would have gone a long way.
- Olga Kurylenko surprised me and was rather convincing in her role.
- Because Quantum of Solace picks up right where the story left off, you certainly feel that the film is integrated into a grander scheme. That’s good. Unfortunately QoS’s main purpose seems to be tying the loose ends for Bond to start on a clean slate in the third episode. That’s bad.
- I’m warming up to Daniel Craig as James Bond. He’s a bit too beefy and distinctive to be a spy in my opinion, but he’s a decent actor and represents a break in the series which I think was long overdue.
- Again I found Casino Royale to be a real breakthrough in bringing the series down to a serious level. The most positive addition QoS makes to this “realistic” setting was James doing some actual factual discreet spy work at the opera. If James Bond is to become a believable spy in his new adventures, he could – in addition to breaking people’s necks – do more sneaking around (uncovering secrets or what have you).
This morning I started working through a beautiful collection of DVDs entitled Contacts. Each of the 10-minute films highlights a famous photographer narrating the process of his or her work. It is enlightening to see the instants that came before and after famous photographs. Each photographer navigates through proof sheets describing how the moment evolved, how the scene took life with only subtle changes.
William Klein makes a rather poignant assertion in the second film:
A picture is taken at 1/125th of a second. What do you know of a photographer’s work? 100 pictures? Let’s say 125. Well, that’s a body of work. That comes to, all told, one second. Let’s say more like, 250 photographs. That would be a rather large body of work – that would come out to two seconds. The life of a photographer, even of a great photographer as they say: two seconds.
I’m loving the series so far. Can’t recommend it enough.
01:27 PM | Tags: photography, art, movies, dvdGary Hustwit’s new film Objectified — a movie about industrial design — certainly has a grander scope than his excellent foray Helvetica, but will its appeal be any greater? The thought of a feature-length documentary about a typeface inspires dread in most sane people, I’m not sure objects will sound any better. That said, I hope we can agree on how fantastic the logo is.
11:34 AM | Tags: design, movies“Swimming’s not a sport, swimming’s what you do so that you shouldn’t drown.”
Woody Allen in The Front
The Killing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049406/ →Young Kubrick makes a compact, straightforward film that you’d never expect seeing his later work. Great photography throughout but a longer run time would have allowed more careful character development.
06:18 AM | Tags: kubrick, movies, reviews