Here’s a great recording of an interview with Stanley Kubrick. Done during the shooting of 2001, A Space Odyssey. It’s very interesting to hear Kubrick’s voice and he tells some informative tales. Check it out.
I’ve been in a Buster Keaton mood lately, so here is a little masterpiece, SHERLOCK JR. I understand it was not a hit when it came out, as a matter of fact I think it was his poorest performer at the Box Office. Since then it has risen quite a bit in the public’s esteem. I believe his masterpiece, THE GENERAL was not a big hit either and now is recognized for the work of genius that it is. Anyway Buster Keaton we salute you. Your work is getting the respect and admiration it deserves.
And here is a short about the making of SHERLOCK JR.
I just watched Faust again last night. I bought the BluRay put out by Kino and it looks terrific. You can really appreciate the time, effort and artistry put into making this film. UFA gave Murnau unlimited money and time to make the best film he could. He succeeded marvelously. The imagery is superb.
So many amazing miniatures were built, especially memorable is where Mephisto looms over the city and the flying POV over mountains and water, a huge miniature filmed with a camera on a small rollercoaster track. When Faust summons Mephisto rings of fire rise up around him, this same effect was used later by Fritz Lang in his epic Metropolis. Something I did not know, Murnau disliked the script he was given and secretly collaborated with Thea Von Harbou. She would later write Metropolis and Marry fritz Lang!
There are other parallels with Metropolis, the biggest one being burning the woman at the stake as the climax of the film. The lighting is amazing as well. The sets beautiful. Back then they could not make dupe negatives of good quality so they filmed with 2 cameras and did alternate takes for different world markets. I think there were 7 complete negative versos of Faust from which they struck the hundreds of prints for distribution. It is incredible to think that a hand cranked little machine ( the early motion picture camera) could create such sensations in millions of people. It is almost like Magic or witchcraft. Incredible. I also noticed for the first time that William Dieterle was in the cast. No wonder he became such an amazing director. Working for Murnau, learning everything from such a maestro. Check out his films, especially Portrait Of Jenny.
In any case watch Faust, get the Blurry, it’s worth it and experience one of the most influential films ever made. I mean this and Nosferatu are maybe the 2 most influential films made by the same director.
There is a new restoration of Aleksandr Ptushko’s masterpiece, Ilya Muramets. I ordered a copy but have not got it yet. The image quality looks amazing and I believe it contains scenes that were cut from the old American release. Here’s the trailer for the new restoration, by Deaf Crocodile. Check it out.
Bruce Lee , the amazing martial Artist/ Movie Star/ Filmmaker was working on this film when he died. A version of it was finished a year later. Now someone has found lost footage of Bruce and it’s pretty cool. this is an edited sequence that I assume Bruce put together with his editor. I don’t really know the whole story but I’ll try and find out. Any way I love Bruce Lee, I met his daughter after the premiere of Man With The Iron Fists, a film I edited. I told her how much I admired her father, she was very nice. But check out these action sequences, too Bad he didn’t get to finish the film.
Asghar Farhadi
I just watched A Hero by the great Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi. An excellent film, the story of a man who tries to do the right thing and is of course punished by Society. I have seen almost all of his films, they are all great, wonderfully written, acted and directed. Moral puzzles, all worth watching. I was lucky enough to see him speak at a screening of The Salesman, a truly great film, that posed some very complicated questions and did not give you the answers. Something I like in a film. Farhadi himself said he did not know the answer to these questions, he had a feeling what had happened but he the filmmaker did not know for sure. Amazing! He left it up to the audience to decide! On the way down to the parking garage, a man in the elevator expressed his view vehemently! “He definitely raped her!” He proclaimed. This is great Cinema, it has the power to create dialogs that last long after the film has been projected. Filmmaking through time. Also, we are at odds with Iran, our governments are almost at war, yet Cinema has the power to show the humanity of the people living in the Forbidden Country, what a great gift.
A Hero is also in my opinion a homage to the great Luis Bunuel Film, Nazarin. A film where a simple country priest(in Mexico) tries to live according to the true teachings of Christ. And of course is spurned and eventually arrested. In A Hero the daughter of the Creditor that our hero owes money to is named Nazarin, also at the end of Bunuel’s film, a peasant woman taking pity on Nazarin, who she assumes is a criminal because he’s being led to jail in chains, gives him a pineapple. At the end of A Hero, he gets a box of baklava.
Here on You tube you can watch the whole Let’s Get Lost, a beautiful documentary on the late great musician Chet Baker. Made by the great photographer Bruce Weber, this film is a minor masterpiece. Edited beautifully by Angelo Corrao, it is a real pleasure to watch. When I lived in NYC I was friends with a wonderful guy named Leo Mitchell, a jazz drummer, he always wanted to play Rock and Roll music with me because he had grown up as a Jazz musician and never played straight ahead Rock. What a great guy. He toured with Chet Baker in Europe several times. Years later I asked my friend Jack Nitzsche about an album he had done with Chet Baker called A Taste Of Tequila” or something like that. He said “Don’t listen to that album. It’s horrible. Chet and I both needed the money.”
Anyway watch the film and be amazed.
Here is a cool documentary, shot on the set of the seminal film Silent Running. I saw this in the theater when it came out and really enjoyed it. Ahead of it’s time, the environmental message that’s even more relevant today. Bruce Dern is great and the double amputees that play the robots are really cool. They’re all teenagers, who knew. I later worked with two key players from this film, Michael Cimino, who was one of the writers and John Dykstra a VFX supervisor. Anyway check it out and see the film!
I justwatchedAgnesVarda’s great documentary Black Panthers and was surprised to see the name Michel Hugo in the credits as one of the cameramen. I took a course in Cinematography he taught at the Hollywood Film School back in about 1977. He was a great guy. He shot a lot of cool movies including Jaques Demy’s Model Shop, a movie I love. I didn’t know this until today! Check out his credits! A lot of great films!
The great DP, Michel Hugo
Anyway here’s a clip from Black Panthers.
Andas an added bonus a sequencefrom Lions, Love, (Lies) Agnes Varda’s LA film. Some of the street signsare very close to my house. I love the way these French filmmakrers show Los Angeles, so dreamlike and so real.
Here is a silent serial that was a big hit with the Surrealists back in the day. One look at the imagery in this trailer and you’ll see why. Elements of Grand Guignol A French Theater of Shock and Horror popular at the time) and a newspaperman/Detective hero give it a contemporary relevance, but especially the wonderful, Irma Vep, a female super villian. Ahead of it’s time! Check out the trailer and watch the whole thing on the Criterion Channel. This is excellent silent film making, location shooting, death defying stunts, headless corpses, the list goes on. It is sort of a film version of a comic book, but in my opinion much better than these CGI laden bloated monstroisities from Marvel that are ruining the Film Industry. So Check it out and Enjoy!
Here is a very cool film dirrected by the master opf atmosphere Jean Negulescu. Based on a very good book by Eric Ambler, the greatest thing about this film is the re-pairing of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, fresh off their intial work together, Casablanca. Negulescu started out as a painter and his visual sense is evident throughout his films, especially his Film Noirs, like this one. Anyway Enjoy! I found a link to the whole movie on the Internet Film Archive. But first here is the trailer.
https://archive.org/details/1944maskofdimitrios
Here is a documentary about the amazing Delia Derbyshire, a pioneering electronic musician, probably best known for the Dr.Who theme. She never got official credit and therefore any music rights, i.e. money. She changed music.