This Paris is full of surprises. Open a random door, expecting to find an interior, and step instead into an unroofed courtyard, overgrown with grass; the door only separates one exterior from another. Or a conglomeration of pipes and metal shards might be reconfigured as a fire-breathing dragon, who must be vanquished in order to reach the treasure he guards. The film is about playing games with reality, about the ways in which imagination and creativity can shape and alter the fabric of the tangible world, transforming a city into a playground. (via Only The Cinema: Le Pont du Nord)
Tarantino On McCabe & Mrs Miller
Using wide-angle lenses and shooting directly against the back wall of the set, Ms. Akerman turns the rooms of Jeanne’s small apartment into theatrical spaces, cramped stages on which the characters play out their lives. In the years since, this approach, in which the space of the shot becomes contiguous with that of the set — known in critical jargon as an aquarium shot — has become the de facto standard of the so-called art cinema, as sure an indicator of the director’s cultural ambitions as the fast, spatially disconnected editing of a Hollywood action film is an indicator of popular entertainment. (via DVDs - Men Carouse; Women Clean - Films by Cassavetes and Akerman on DVD - NYTimes.com)
.jpg)
Shanghai Jim (BBC Bookmark, 1991). For more JG Ballard videos, try the Blip.tv channel (Home, Thirteen to Centaurus, BBC Profile), the South Bank Show, Harley Cokliss’ Crash!, Solveig Nordlund’s Aparelho Voador a Baixa Altitude (Low-Flying Aircraft)
Leo Burnett stressed that the creator of an ad needed to somehow capture and reflect what he called the “inherent drama” of the product.
London Fog, an outerwear company that still exists somewhere on the fashion wrung below Burberry and above Patagonia, is trying to stay relevant by expanding their products. Don persuades them to keep the focus on the raincoat in their ads (the raincoat, of course, being the quintessential fashion accessory for subterfuge). And in that indelible Draper style, he describes an ad rife with sexual tension (though not overtly).
Here’s a similar, real life ad from the early 1960’s, that reflects Don’s/Burnett’s philosophy of an imposing image with dramatic undertones. Don’s tagline: “limit your exposure” fits with the ad’s couple who are graced with melancholy and intimacy.
Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which was released 50 years ago today, is a nearly unique thing in music or any other creative realm: a huge hit—the best-selling jazz album of all time—and the spearhead of an artistic revolution. Everyone, even people who say they don’t like jazz, likes Kind of Blue. It’s cool, romantic, melancholic, and gorgeously melodic. But why do critics regard it as one of the best jazz albums ever made? What is it about Kind of Blue that makes it not just pleasant but important? (via Why Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue is so great. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine)
