I’ve Died and Gone to LA

All the cars glisten like the smiles of their drivers. I would say their eyes do too, but I’ve never seen anyone’s eyes in Los Angeles. I can definitely tell you their sunglasses glisten.

No doubt you’ve heard the sun always shines. It’s rarely anything but a pleasant day out here. After the sun sets, the nightly breeze from the ocean promptly cools any façade of heat that the day once held like clockwork. It’s as if nature hated change as much as the people.

Underneath this smooth veneer is a town teeming with people held sane only by one undeniable fact: today will be exactly the same as the day before. That painstakingly particular latte is available every .24 miles no matter where you are. That small salad will taste delightfully meager on an umbrella-laden patio. Your inbox and notifications will serve as impenetrable armor from personal contact.

a-bittersweet-life:

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.’
Quentin Tarantino

Roundtable interviews — the clips are great but the real meat is in the uncensored, hour+ videos. The interviewer is a jerk, the microphone is bad, but the content is priceless.

• Full actresses roundtable
• Full actors roundtable -  George Clooney, Christopher Plummer, Gary Oldman, Christoph Waltz, Albert Brooks, and Nick Nolte
• Full actors roundtable - Jesse Eisenberg, James Franco, Mark Ruffalo, Colin Firth, Ryan Gosling, and Robert Duvall
• Full writers roundtable
• Full producers roundtable
• Full directors roundtable
• Clip directors roundtable - Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Jason Reitman, and Lee Daniels
• Clip writers Aaron Sorkin, Simon Beaufoy, Michael Arndt, John Wells, Todd Phillips, and David Lindsay-Abaire
• More roundtable interviews

LA Times: The Envelope director’s roundtable — Quentin Tarantino, Katherine Bigelow, Lee Daniels, Jason Reitman, and James Cameron

• Full Transcript
• Envelope Directors Roundtable: The challenges of marketing a film
  Envelope Directors Roundtable: Sequels and board games vs. original work
  Envelope Directors Roundtable: ‘The scene I had to cut’
  Envelope Roundtable: ‘The moment I became a director’

DP/30 — Not always the greatest sound or video, but come on! Interviews!

• Hugo, editor Thelma Shchoonmaker
• More interviews

Directors Panel — again, it’s not visually compelling but…come on! Awesome.

• James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Lee Daniels, Pete Doctor, and Quentin Tarantino
• More interviews and panels here

Awesome

(Source: 17272dorsetave)

(Source: cronopio, via a-bittersweet-life)

January 20th, 2009

It was a cold day on January 20^th, 2009 in Santa Fe, NM. I avoided the patches of snow littering the ground walking to my friend’s dorm room.

“I hope this thing doesn’t go long,” I thought. I had a class at noon, after all.

This was the first presidential inauguration that I had ever watched in my life. I was too angsty to care in 2001 and probably watching “Sonic the Hedgehog” and eating a bowl of fruity pebbles in 1993. So, what was the big deal about these things, anyway? The President will say something vague about his big plans to make America great (or keep America great depending on the administration before his).

Politics had always been something older people cared about because it seemed to concern only them. I was in college. I had papers to write. I had films to dissect. What could he possibly say that had to do with me?

“Yeah, this better not go long.”

He knew just how prophetic both his words and the film were.

a-bittersweet-life:

As if Japan weren’t small enough to begin with, I fail to understand why it is necessary to think of it in even smaller units. No matter where I go in the world, although I can’t speak any foreign language, I don’t feel out of place. I think of the earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice how foolish international friction is, and they would put an end to it. We are, after all, at a point where it is almost narrow-minded to think merely in geocentric terms. Human beings have launched satellites into outer space, and yet they still grovel on earth looking at their own feet like wild dogs. What is to become of our planet?

Akira Kurosawa

(Source: strangewood)

An open love letter.

calebbryantmiller:

Austin

I’m John Hodgman and right now I could kiss Justin Long (even more than usual).

Of course I’m referring to the infamous Mac vs. PC ads initiated by Apple starting in 2006. The ads are pretty funny, if not inherently smug. Today, however, on the day that Microsoft unveiled an in-depth look into their next operating system in Barcelona, I could kiss the next Mac user I see (and in LA, in the entertainment industry, I don’t have to go far). “Why,” you may ask? What does an announcement about Windows 8 have to do with their “rival” company who is readying their own unveiling next week about the iPad 3? Put quite simply, everything.

a-bittersweet-life:

Important.

a-bittersweet-life:

Robert Bresson and Charlie Chaplin, two filmmakers with a great understanding of cinema.

31 Horror Movies You Likely Missed (And Shouldn’t Have)

#1: Martin (1976) - George A. Romero is a man who knows his zombies. He invented the rules about the living impaired that other filmmakers bend, break and steal. But in the in the decade long breaks between Dead films, Romero made several films that too often get overlooked.

Eight years after Night of the Living Dead, and two years before Dawn of the Dead, Romero made Martin. Even though Romero had a lot of maturing to do as a filmmaker at this point in his career, look past the superficial cracks and you’ll see a haunting portrait of a disturbed young man. Since Romero hadn’t settled into any groove, it feels much more personal than a lot of his other work. This one will stick with you: “I think I might know who the Count is…”