Collision: Award-Winning Film Explores Politics Through Shapes

in Art, Film, Politics | May 18th, 2011

The Ger­man mul­ti-media artist Max Hat­tler describes his award-win­ning short film “Col­li­sion” (2005) as “Islam­ic pat­terns and Amer­i­can quilts and the col­ors and geom­e­try of flags as an abstract field of reflec­tion,” which will make no sense what­so­ev­er until you watch the video. It’s bare­ly over two min­utes long, so just give it a shot and let the images do their own explain­ing. Be sure to wear head­phones, or at least keep the vol­ume low … but not off. The expe­ri­ence is def­i­nite­ly equal parts sound and sight.

via @matthiasrascher

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Free Vintage Cartoons: Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop and More

in Art, Film, Television | May 17th, 2011

Don’t vis­it Vin­tage Toon­Cast (or its iTunes chan­nel) at the begin­ning of a busy work­day. You’ll start by promis­ing your­self to watch just one, like, say, “The Wab­bit Who Came to Sup­per,” which we post­ed above. But then, of course, you’ll want to check out the famous Bet­ty Boop episode, “Min­nie the Moocher,” fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway, which will lead you to “Cas­par the Friend­ly Ghost,” “Pop­eye,” and final­ly 16 glo­ri­ous episodes of “Super­man.”

The site hosts more than 80 videos, most of them stel­lar, which means you could end up killing the whole day. Don’t say we did­n’t w‑w-w-arn you (sor­ry).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orig­i­nal Super­man Car­toon Series Now Online

Disney’s Oscar-Win­ning Adven­tures in Music

Fan­tas­magorie: The First Ani­mat­ed Film

 

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Free Short Films by Osamu Tezuka aka “The Japanese Walt Disney”

in Art, Film | May 16th, 2011

Over at Metafil­ter, Kári Tulin­ius has a post­ed a nice selec­tion of exper­i­men­tal short films by the great Japan­ese ani­ma­tor and man­ga artist Osamu Tezu­ka. Tezu­ka died in 1989, and although he’s most famous in the US for chil­dren’s car­toons like Astro-Boy and Kim­bo the White Lion (bet­ter known to every­one but the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny’s lawyers as The Lion King), his achieve­ments extend­ed well beyond those two US hits. In his home coun­try, The God of Man­ga is right­ly con­sid­ered a nation­al trea­sure, and his mas­sive body of work includes a man­ga adap­ta­tion of Crime and Pun­ish­ment, a 12-vol­ume fan­ta­sy saga about immor­tal­i­ty, and the world’s first fea­ture-length ani­mat­ed porn movie.

These shorts pro­vide an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to Tezuka’s many moods and styles, from the inno­cent whim­sy of Mer­maid (1964), about a boy who falls in love with a mer­maid at sea.…


… to the caus­tic humor of Mem­o­ry (1964), a bit­ing med­i­ta­tion on our rose-tint­ed view of the past:


…to the light exu­ber­ance of Jump­ing (1984):


… and final­ly the full-blown apoc­a­lyp­tic dark­ness of Push (1987), as rel­e­vant now as it was 25 years go — if not more so:

See also: Male (1962), Bro­ken Down Film (1985), The Drop (1965), Sto­ry of a Street Cor­ner (1962), Gen­e­sis (1968), Mura­masa (1987), and this inter­view, in which the Tezu­ka dis­cuss­es his short exper­i­men­tal films…

via @brainpicker

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions (1917 to 1931)

The Art of Hand-Drawn Japan­ese Ani­me: A Deep Study of How Kat­suhi­ro Otomo’s Aki­ra Uses Light

Watch the Old­est Japan­ese Ani­me Film, Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (1917)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

The City Limits: Beautiful Time Lapse of Five Cities

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | May 13th, 2011

In this superb time lapse video, Dominic Boudreault presents five urban cities — Mon­tre­al, Que­bec City, Chica­go, Toron­to, and New York City — and what he calls the “the dual­i­ty between city and nature.”

Most fas­ci­nat­ing is the high van­tage point from which much of the footage was shot: watch the col­or­ful lights adorn­ing the Empire State Build­ing, and just a minute lat­er, cars shoot­ing down the free­way next to Lake Michi­gan in snowy Chica­go. The City Lim­its was shot in late 2010, ear­ly 2011.

Relat­ed: if you’re a fan of time lapse videos, don’t miss this one of the Big Apple.

via Curios­i­ty Counts

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

64 Years of Posters for the Cannes Film Festival

in Art, Film | May 11th, 2011

The 64th Annu­al Cannes Film Fes­ti­val opens tonight, and the cineast­es among you have prob­a­bly already book­marked the film site MUBI, where you can find all things Cannes (and all things inter­na­tion­al cin­e­ma, for that mat­ter) at the site’s blog: the MUBI Dai­ly.

Edit­ed by Daniel Kas­man, the MUBI Dai­ly fea­tures stel­lar writ­ers, includ­ing Glenn Ken­ny, Ignatiy Vish­n­evet­sky, and the won­der­ful David Hud­son, whom you may rec­og­nize from his days at Greencine and IFC.  You’ll find review round-ups, com­men­tary, inter­views, updates, trail­ers for many films at Cannes, and final­ly, quirky entries like this one: Con­trib­u­tor Adri­an Cur­ry’s com­men­tary on a L’Ex­press col­lec­tion of 64 year’s worth of offi­cial Cannes Fes­ti­val posters. Cur­ry high­lights the best and worst of the lot (along with a spe­cial wince d’or for 1995’s pas­tel night­mare of a seascape, to which design­er Ryszard Horowitz may as well have added rain­bows and uni­corns).

The site is def­i­nite­ly worth keep­ing tabs on, espe­cial­ly this week, when they’ll be offer­ing a vir­tu­al tick­et to the south of France, minus the lines, mobs, and high like­li­hood of lap­top theft.

A last note: you can find sev­er­al prize-win­ning films from the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val (includ­ing two by Andrei Tarkovksy) in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via MUBI and A Life in Film

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

via

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Bubbles Over Stinson Beach

in Art | May 6th, 2011

Ster­ling John­son, oth­er­wise known as the Bub­ble­smith, goes to work at Stin­son Beach, a lit­tle north of San Fran­cis­co. Mark Day cap­tures the artis­tic dis­play with his Canon 550D, and it’s all set to Bach’s Pre­lude in C Major. Like the kid said in Amer­i­can Beau­ty, “Some­times there’s so much beau­ty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in…”

via Sci­ence Dump

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Cinemagraph: A Haunting Photo/Video Hybrid

in Art | May 4th, 2011

As gim­micks go, the mov­ing GIF is almost as old as the inter­net itself. But artists Jamie Beck and Kevin Berg have tak­en their ani­mat­ed pho­tographs, or “cin­ema­graphs,” as Beck calls them, far beyond the orig­i­nal gim­mick. While some of their images tend towards kitsch, fea­tur­ing clich­es like long hair rustling in the breeze, or wine pour­ing from a bot­tle, the duo (see a col­lec­tion of their pho­tos here) has also pro­duced sev­er­al shots of star­tling beau­ty: A sin­gle news­pa­per page rus­tles in a frozen park. The reflec­tion of a taxi­cab glides like a ghost across a win­dow. A beau­ti­ful woman sud­den­ly seems to catch you star­ing at her. The effect is pure para­noia, like ear­ly Polan­s­ki, or a morn­ing walk on no sleep.

So is the cin­ema­graph the future of pho­tog­ra­phy, or just a neat trick? You can join that debate over at flickr.

Thanks to Eric Strenger and @eugenephoto for the tip.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Orion: The Beauty of South Dakota Nights in Time Lapse

in Art | April 29th, 2011

This past Feb­ru­ary, Randy Halver­son ven­tured forth into the frigid South Dako­ta night to cre­ate a painful­ly pret­ty time-lapse film. He called it “Sub Zero,” an apt title giv­en that tem­per­a­tures fell to ‑25 degrees Fahren­heit.

With the approach of spring, Halver­son returned to the great out­doors to shoot “Ori­on,” which fea­tures con­stel­la­tions track­ing across his fam­i­ly farm. The film starts in an old grain dis­tillery, then moves out­side, and gets down­right mes­mer­iz­ing around the 1:45 mark.

In case you’re won­der­ing, the film does­n’t take its name from the Ori­on con­stel­la­tion. Rather it comes from the Ori­on tele­scope head used to shoot the film. That gear appears at the 2:09 mark.

You can read more about “Ori­on” in Wired as well as on Vimeo. And stay tuned for more: Halver­son hopes to shoot South Dakota’s bad­lands and the Rocky Moun­tains this com­ing sum­mer…

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast