ABCs of Death 2 - Search for the 26th Director

The competition to find the 26th horror short to be included in ABCs of Death 2 produced a few gems, proving cinema is alive and well, thank you very much. 

M is for Masticate (Robert Boocheck, 2013)

M is for Meat (Wolfgang Matzl, 2013)

M is for Middle (Soichi Umezawa, 2013)

M is for Middle was not selected to be in the final 12, and as such, it won't be included in the collective film, but that's ok, because Soichi Umezawa has the brightest future of them all. What a doozy!

Kick-heart (Masaaki Yuasa, 2013)

At the age of 48, Masaaki Yuasa creates with the unfettered imagination of a 5-year-old.

Bless him.

Hayao Miyazaki

"Airplanes are the most beautiful when they are in the air. I wanted to see a Zero flown by a Japanese aviator, not an American. My fantasy was to see it flown under high-voltage power transmission cables next to Studio Ghibli in western Tokyo. But my wife told me to stop being such an idiot, and that was that."

— Hayao Miyazaki


Interview with Hayao Miyazaki at The Asahi Shimbun

The Future Is Now #2

Sur un air de Charleston (Jean Renoir, 1927)

Shoes

David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee 2.2 (2013)

Images of shoes in film are a rare thing. Feet rarely get a close-up of their own, and since the current aspect ratios are not made to accommodate the whole of the human figure, and the feet are the farthest away from the face (the part of the human body most closely associated with personal identity, and as such, the most prevalent in narrative filmmaking), it's unlikely that they will show in the frame accidentally.

Once in a while, however, feet do get a close-up of their own. That choice is worth noting.

Johnnie To

"Most of the films are made for the industry, and to sustain my company. I can count on one hand the films I really enjoyed making:  The Mission, PTU, Exiled, Sparrow and Life Without Principle. That’s  just five! And the rest are, shall I say, business projects."

— Johnnie To


via The Hollywood Reporter

La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser (Davide Manuli, 2012)

Silvia Calderoni cuts an astonishing figure in Davide Manuli's La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser, her body constantly bouncing to a silent beat, as if her heart was a drum machine, a kinetic energy that is both awkward and awe-inspiring. A true messiah.

Addicted to Love (Griffin Dunne, 1997)

A stunning moment in Griffin Dunne's Addicted to Love, a camera obscura projection of a window across the street, an ex-girlfriend turned object of desire, magically "lit up" by virtue of a brokenhearted man's misguided (but oh so earnest) fixation.

All romantic comedies should be this perverse.

The Future Is Now #1

Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012)

The Son of No One (Dito Montiel, 2011)

Queensbridge looks eerily beautiful from above. Strange-looking structures surrounded by trees, scattered around with no apparent criteria, as if they had sprouted from the earth, it almost looks like something from another world. 

Dito Montiel's cinema is essentially impressionistic. Recollections of moods, places, events, people. Always too richly detailed to have been entirely made up. In The Son of No One, when his camera repeatedly hovers over the neighborhood, it's as if these buildings are hiding a million different stories, and he knows every single one of them.

R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen

Mysterious Island (Cy Enfield, 1961)

If it's easy, what's the point?

Ray Harryhausen's contribution to the art of cinema is ever more meaningful in an age where countless new films try (and fail) to convince me I should be in awe of their unbelievable (literally, not believable) CGI spectacles.

He has shown me things I might otherwise never have seen. For that, I will be forever grateful.

Veronica (Griffin Dunne, 2013)

Admittedly, the screenshots don't do justice to the tone of romantic despair that Kieran Culkin and Emma Stone convey so beautifully.

Griffin Dunne's Veronica is at odds with everything else in Movie 43. No irony, no faux-edginess; it's all heart. A real treat.

Deadfall (Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2012)

Deadfall is a classic example of a film that lives on the strenght of its director's virtuosity. Given a terrible script to work with, Stefan Ruzowitzky makes the most of it by focusing on the basics of each individual moment: how do you shoot a car crash? How do you shoot a murder? How do you shoot a sex scene? Taken as a whole, the film doesn't make a lot of sense, but moment to moment, it's beautifully realized.

Buñuel Ever-present

 

This is 40 (Judd Apatow, 2012)

 

Vamps (Amy Heckerlink, 2012) 

Two movies watched yesterday.

Flight (Robert Zemeckis, 2012)

I

 

II 

III 

IV

V

Five great scenes from Robert Zemeckis' Flight, a film so packed with cliches and heavy symbolism that only at the hands of a master craftsman could it have turned out as good as it is. Zemeckis is the most modern of filmmakers working in the classical Hollywood mold.

China, China (João Pedro Rodrigues e João Rui Guerra da Mata, 2007)

Trapped in a life she doesn't want, China finds her freedom in small moments of bliss she invents for herself, and in those moments, China, China comes alive like few other movies do.

This scene, a 3-second handrail slide that's made to last 10 seconds — because that's how long it takes to really appreciate it — is probably my favorite in all of João Pedro Rodrigues' work.