May 28
The second Alice Eve appeared in “Star Trek: Into Darkness”, all I could I think was how much she looked like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Should this change how I think about Marissa Mayer?
Alice Eve and Marissa Mayer
Something I did not know before today:
One would think it the most obvious thing in the world, but the opening and closing credits of a movie lay the emotional foundation and tone of a movie. Apparently this wasn’t clear until Saul Bass came along in the 1950s with his style of opening and closing credits as well as his movie posters accompanying the movie. I suppose now when I think about it that when a movie from the 1930s and 40s opened up, it was general orchestra music and canned credits flowing by before the first scene of a movie.
Bass was also an animator and won the Oscar for best animated short in 1968 for his cartoon “Why Man Creates.”
The passing of Roger Ebert last week has reminded me again how wonderful both he and Gene Siskel were to movies. They were very often the opinions that mattered most to me when considering whether to see a movie or not. And their TV show “Siskel & Ebert” was a great give-and-take on movie opinion.
Here is a wonderful collection of outtakes for a commercial plug for their TV show. In it you see not only their flubs trying to speak their lines but also the biting jokes that accompany it. While the two were frenemies, they clearly had a dynamic that brought out the best of both of them.
Here are 116 Hollywood stars in one large group shot. I love that Meryl Streep is at the very center. I bet those who weren’t invited are calling their agents about now.
Open Culture has the first episode of the epic documentary “Hollywood – Celebration Of the American Silent Film“, narrated by James Mason and released in 1980. After making it through the 13-part documentary, be sure to watch Unknown Chaplin, also narrated by James Mason and probably the best documentary about Chaplin that ever was.
Hollywood, Epic Documentary Chronicles the Early History of Cinema | Open Culture.
I saw “The Avengers” last night, which was okay. First half was rather slow and tedious, but the battle scene in the last third of the movie was not so bad. But anything nowadays that includes the Hulk reminds me of the greatest movie review ever written. I never saw the Hulk movies, but I can’t imagine them being nearly half as entertaining as this review that appeared in The Guardian:
Hulk. Smash!” Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk’s USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. Hulk crush all hopes of entertainment. Hulk in boring film.
…
Tim Roth come on. As evil soldier. Fighting Hulk personal for him. Roth typical evil Brit. Roth supposedly working for US army. Yet Roth Brit. Critic annoyed by stereotyping. Roth get injected with serum. Become Hulky supervillain. Smash cars. Tanks. Only with no trousers. Roth groin area ambiguous. Groin area look lumpy. Bumpy. Perhaps odd penis. Perhaps odd trousers. Critic … not sure.
I can’t think of a review more to the point than this one.
The storyboard is the genesis of most films, and sometimes it’s an entire art form all by itself. Here Ridley Scott describes the making of storyboards and how they help frame a movie before shooting begins. Pixar has really stunning story boards.
RMS Titanic, the actual ship, cost $7.5 milÂlion to build – equal to $167 milÂlion today. The movie made by James Cameron in 1997, cost $200 million (perhaps a lot more) to build. That stat kind of boggles my mind. What other movies depicting real-life events ended up costing more than the real life object/incident, even when factoring it in today’s dollars?
‘Rear Window’ is one of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies, not just because it has Grace Kelly in it, but because of the feeling and ambiance the movie sets in it’s focusing on daily life as seen through someone’s apartment window. Here is a brilliant little time-lapse film containing all the events that occur in the backyard throughout the film. This makes me want to pop the movie into my DVD player and watch it again tonight.
Ever since the book was released in 1957, Jack Kerouac wanted to have his novel “On the Road” turned into a motion picture movie. Now 55 years later, he is finally getting his wish, but not exactly the way he originally wanted. In 1957, Kerouac wrote to Marlon Brando asking him to buy the rights to the novel and then act the part of Dean Moriarty with Kerouac himself playing Sal.
I visualise the beautiful shots could be made with the camera on the front seat of the car showing the road (day and night) unwinding into the windshield, as Sal and Dean yak. I wanted you to play the part because Dean (as you know) is no dopey hotrodder but a real intelligent (in fact Jesuit) Irishman. You play Dean and I’ll play Sal (Warner Bros. mentioned I play Sal) and I’ll show you how Dean acts in real life, you couldn’t possibly imagine it without seeing a good imitation. Fact, we can go visit him in Frisco, or have him come down to L.A. still a real frantic cat but nowadays settled down with his final wife saying the Lord’s Prayer with his kiddies at night…as you’ll seen when you read the play BEAT GENERATION.
Brando never responded to the letter. It’s a cinematic what-if to think what the movie might have been like. The rights would eventually be sold to Francis Ford Coppola in 1968 (Wikipedia says 1979). I’d love to hear the story behind that and the reason why it took 44 years for him to finally turn it into movie form. I would think that turning a novel like “On the Road” into a movie would be extremely difficult and have a high likelihood for failure. But you never know. The trailer does look pretty good.
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