Trees and their indifferent majesty [...] teaches us how [insignificant we are] and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of a Hedgehog
Monday, May 31, 2021
Tree
Trees and their indifferent majesty [...] teaches us how [insignificant we are] and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of a Hedgehog
Sunday, April 4, 2021
The Queen’s Gambit
Created by Scott Frank, Allan Scott / Based on "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis / Written & Directed by Scott Frank /
Starring Anya Taylor-Joy
"Her mind moves upon silence." - W.B. Yeats
“Chess isn't always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful. It was the board I noticed first. It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it's predictable, so if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame." - Beth Harmon
Friday, February 26, 2021
Nomadland
Directed, Written, Edited, and Produced by Chloé Zhao / Starring Frances McDormand / Cinematography by Joshua James Richards / Based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 non-fiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century."
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Shakespeare - Sonnet 18
"The naturalistic approach meant Zhao’s script evolved with the workers they cast. Producers would arrive on location in advance of the shoot to record iPhone videos with possible characters, then send them to Zhao so she could work on her revisions.
'I tried to focus on the human experience and things that I feel go beyond political statements to be more universal — the loss of a loved one, searching for home.' - Chloé Zhao"
(source: IndieWire)
Monday, January 25, 2021
The Sound of Metal
"The world does keep moving and it can be a damn cruel place, But for me those moments of stillness, that place, that’s the Kingdom of God. And that place will never abandon you." - JoeDirected by Darius Marder / Music by Abraham Marder, Composer-Sound Designer Nicolas Becker / Story by Darius Marder, Derek Cianfrance / Starring Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric / Produced by Bert Hamelinck, Sacha Ben Harroche, Bill Benz Kathy Benz / Screenplay by Darius Marder, Abraham Marder / Cinematography Daniël Bouquet / Edited by Mikkel E.G. Nielsen / Production company Caviar Ward Four
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Practice humanity. We don't talk about practicing humanity, but now if ever there is a time to practice humanity the time is now. The time is now to show some kindness, to show some compassion to people, show some gentility [...] Yes, we have a problem. Yes, we will deal with it. Yes, we will overcome it. But let's find our better selves in doing it. - Governor Cuomo
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Monday, August 6, 2018
Jean-Marc Vallée
Director, Editor, Producer
(From an interview with DNA; about directing process on Big Little Lies)
JMV... "the way we shoot – handheld with available light, not blocking the light, not reflecting it – it creates a space. There's a feeling of reality; we're doing fiction but it becomes about capturing. I'll shoot the first rehearsal and I don't tell the actors where to go. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's good and then I react to that. I do coverage depending on the [character's] perspective, what they look at and where they go. If she starts walking and then she stops and he looks at her, or she looks at him - I cut from her perspective and use her looks to tell me where to cut there. [...] to shoot with no rehearsal."
"when I saw the Pacific Ocean over there, it was f***ing angry and violent. I've never seen waves like that and the sunset was so incredible. I thought, this has to be a character. And the sound – it would be the sound of the series. I thought, let's find houses where these women will have a connection to the ocean. The ocean is the mother of humanity. It's so powerful, strong and mysterious and such a good symbol."
(source: DNA article, written by Rucha Sharma. Photo credit: Michael Watier)
JMV... "the way we shoot – handheld with available light, not blocking the light, not reflecting it – it creates a space. There's a feeling of reality; we're doing fiction but it becomes about capturing. I'll shoot the first rehearsal and I don't tell the actors where to go. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's good and then I react to that. I do coverage depending on the [character's] perspective, what they look at and where they go. If she starts walking and then she stops and he looks at her, or she looks at him - I cut from her perspective and use her looks to tell me where to cut there. [...] to shoot with no rehearsal."
"when I saw the Pacific Ocean over there, it was f***ing angry and violent. I've never seen waves like that and the sunset was so incredible. I thought, this has to be a character. And the sound – it would be the sound of the series. I thought, let's find houses where these women will have a connection to the ocean. The ocean is the mother of humanity. It's so powerful, strong and mysterious and such a good symbol."
(source: DNA article, written by Rucha Sharma. Photo credit: Michael Watier)
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Six Feet Under
Created by Alan Ball
Performances by Frances Conroy, Michael C. Hall, Peter Krause, Lauren Ambrose, Rachel Griffiths, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez... / Written by Alan Ball, Nancy Oliver, Rick Cleveland, Kate Robin, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Scott Buck, Jill Soloway, Craig Wright, Laurence Andries, Christian Taylor, Christian Williams, Johnny Otto.
Our death is our wedding with eternity - Rumi
Performances by Frances Conroy, Michael C. Hall, Peter Krause, Lauren Ambrose, Rachel Griffiths, Mathew St. Patrick, Freddy Rodríguez... / Written by Alan Ball, Nancy Oliver, Rick Cleveland, Kate Robin, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Scott Buck, Jill Soloway, Craig Wright, Laurence Andries, Christian Taylor, Christian Williams, Johnny Otto.
Our death is our wedding with eternity - Rumi
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Anne Frank
Anne Frank: "It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more" - Diary excerpt - July 15, 1944
Vasudeo S. Gaitonde
"The study of Zen has helped me understand nature... and my paintings are nothing else but the reflection of nature. I want to say things in few words. I aim at directness and simplicity." - Vasudeo S. Gaitonde
(source: MOMA, New York City, Dec 2017)
Monday, January 2, 2017
Andrea Arnold
"My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something." - A.A.
"I think the mystery in films is really important. And that if we try to explain things too much then you take out the fun of the film. [...] I think that [mystery] has to unravel in the film, and I leave room for people to put themselves - or to work it out or to go argue in the bar afterwards. But if I explain it, I feel like then we take the mystery of film away. And I feel like we overexplain everything in life, and I am desperate to leave it." - A.A.
WASP
AMERICAN HONEY
Written & Directed by Andrea Arnold
Starring Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf, Riley Keough, Raymond Coalson, Chad McKenzie Cox, Verronikah Ezell, Arielle Holmes, Garry Howell, Crystal B. Ice, McCaul Lombardi, Shawna Rae Moseley, Dakota Powers, Isaiah Stone, Kenneth Kory Tucker, Christopher David Wright, Will Patton, Bruce Gregory,
"I take most of my inspiration for each film based on the world that I’m exploring. I do a lot of research and immerse myself in the places and with the people that I’m going to make the film about. That’s absolutely where I get my inspiration from. I find real life and real people really inspiring." - A.A.
INTERVIEW
(Sources: The Guardian Article Andrea Arnold: 'I don't do easy rides' by Ryan Gilbey / NPR Fresh Air Interview with Terry Gross / IndieWire, Graham Winfrey Cannes: Andrea Arnold on the 'Difficult Times' Making 'American Honey' on the Road in the U.S.)
"I think the mystery in films is really important. And that if we try to explain things too much then you take out the fun of the film. [...] I think that [mystery] has to unravel in the film, and I leave room for people to put themselves - or to work it out or to go argue in the bar afterwards. But if I explain it, I feel like then we take the mystery of film away. And I feel like we overexplain everything in life, and I am desperate to leave it." - A.A.
WASP
AMERICAN HONEY
Written & Directed by Andrea Arnold
Starring Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf, Riley Keough, Raymond Coalson, Chad McKenzie Cox, Verronikah Ezell, Arielle Holmes, Garry Howell, Crystal B. Ice, McCaul Lombardi, Shawna Rae Moseley, Dakota Powers, Isaiah Stone, Kenneth Kory Tucker, Christopher David Wright, Will Patton, Bruce Gregory,
INTERVIEW
(Sources: The Guardian Article Andrea Arnold: 'I don't do easy rides' by Ryan Gilbey / NPR Fresh Air Interview with Terry Gross / IndieWire, Graham Winfrey Cannes: Andrea Arnold on the 'Difficult Times' Making 'American Honey' on the Road in the U.S.)
Monday, June 27, 2016
VICTORIA
Directed by Sebastian Schipper
Cinematography Sturla Brandth Grøvlen
Performances by Laia Costa, Frederick Lau,
Music composed by Nils Frahm
"The script was without dialogue, like a 20-page treatment. We knew the action but didn't necessarily know how the dialogue was going to develop. We split the film into ten parts, and rehearsed each part separately. This was in some ways script and character development. It was a great possibility for me to see what works and what doesn't. The actors were more or less free to do as they pleased. I didn't plan any specific camera moves, although I had ideas about how to get in and out of the car for the driving scene, and because I had rehearsed it my body kind of knew what to do. [...]
The camera is a fly on a wall, and an extra character. [...] The real-time aspect of it does something to the perception of the movie. You don't feel manipulated. It was important to me that it had poetry, and had a style. It wasn't just trying to catch the dialogue, but also trying to catch poetic moments. We did light the film and try to work with colours. But it doesn't feel like something that is put on top of it, it's something integrated."
- Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, Cinematographer
(source: Canon 2015, interviewed by CPN writer James Morris)
Cinematography Sturla Brandth Grøvlen
Performances by Laia Costa, Frederick Lau,
Music composed by Nils Frahm
"The script was without dialogue, like a 20-page treatment. We knew the action but didn't necessarily know how the dialogue was going to develop. We split the film into ten parts, and rehearsed each part separately. This was in some ways script and character development. It was a great possibility for me to see what works and what doesn't. The actors were more or less free to do as they pleased. I didn't plan any specific camera moves, although I had ideas about how to get in and out of the car for the driving scene, and because I had rehearsed it my body kind of knew what to do. [...]
The camera is a fly on a wall, and an extra character. [...] The real-time aspect of it does something to the perception of the movie. You don't feel manipulated. It was important to me that it had poetry, and had a style. It wasn't just trying to catch the dialogue, but also trying to catch poetic moments. We did light the film and try to work with colours. But it doesn't feel like something that is put on top of it, it's something integrated."
- Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, Cinematographer
(source: Canon 2015, interviewed by CPN writer James Morris)
TRUE DETECTIVE - Season 1
Written by Nic Pizolatto / Directed by Cary Fukunaga
Performances by Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle, Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart, Michelle Monaghan as Maggie Hart
Cinematography by Adam Arkapaw
"Just gotta look a man in his eyes. It's all there. Everybody wears their hunger and their haunt... Just gotta be honest about what can go on up here. The locked room." - Rust Cohle
Performances by Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle, Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart, Michelle Monaghan as Maggie Hart
Cinematography by Adam Arkapaw
"Just gotta look a man in his eyes. It's all there. Everybody wears their hunger and their haunt... Just gotta be honest about what can go on up here. The locked room." - Rust Cohle
Friday, March 25, 2016
The VVITCH
Written & Directed by Robert Eggers
Performances by Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson
Performances by Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Horror
"I’ve seen horrors, horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
....Horror. Horror has a face...And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces...Seems a thousand centuries ago...We went into a camp to innoculate the children. We left the camp after we had innoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried...I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought: My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling...without passion...without judgement...without judgement. Because it's judgement that defeats us."
- Marlon Brando, in Apocalypse Now
Written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Adapted from Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness"
- Marlon Brando, in Apocalypse Now
Written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Adapted from Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness"
It Follows
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
"But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all -but the certain knowledge that in an hour - then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now -this very instant- your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man -and that this is certain" - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
"But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all -but the certain knowledge that in an hour - then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now -this very instant- your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man -and that this is certain" - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Friday, May 1, 2015
Ex Machina
Written & Directed by Alex Garland / Produced by Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich / Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Sonoya Mizuno, Oscar Isaac / Music by Ben Salisbury, Geoff Barrow / Cinematography Rob Hardy / Edited by Mark Day
"Now I am become death, the destroyer of the worlds"
- Robert Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad Gita (BhG.XI.32)
"Now I am become death, the destroyer of the worlds"
- Robert Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad Gita (BhG.XI.32)
Saturday, March 7, 2015
The Fault in Our Stars
Written by John Green (book)
Screenplay by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Directed by Josh Boone
Performances by Shailene Woodley & Ansel Elgort
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Screenplay by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Directed by Josh Boone
Performances by Shailene Woodley & Ansel Elgort
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Jim Gianopulos
USC School of Cinematic Arts 2014 Commencement Speech
A pretty smart guy once said, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” That was Albert Einstein. Your questions will become the stories you’ll tell, because ultimately, filmmaking is story telling. And stories are told by people with a sense of wonder, a desire to explore new ways of looking at the world, to relate to what’s there and to explore what others don’t see. The best filmmakers I know are always the most curious. They’re travelers, readers, lovers of art and food and music, of new experiences. They’re the explorers, the searchers, the inventors. [...]
You’ve been given a great education in the art of story telling—the best in the world. And now you are being given a great opportunity to use your acquired skills to tell new stories in new ways. The questions you ask through your stories can be incredibly powerful. They can change the way people think and feel, alter the way they see themselves and others. If you assemble the right images and right words, sound, and music you can make something that changes the world through the boundless potential of creativity. And it all starts with the questions you ask. - J.G.