Public Enemies - What Did You Think?
3D Avatar vs. 2D Avatar, and the Importance of Aspect Ratios
Posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 by Brendon Connelly
Courtesy of an audio recording made by the Marketsaw folk, the vast majority of us who were not lucky enough to attend James Cameron’s special appearance at the Santa Monica Aero Theatre can now eavesdrop on all 43 minutes of it. Lots of discussion then, on everything from the film’s CG to the Simulcam system that Cameron is using to visualise the film’s FX on set, but the key detail was perhaps the rather surprising announcement that the 2D and 3D versions of Avatar will each be released in a different aspect ratio.
Cool Stuff: The Shining - Posters and Tribute Artwork
Posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 by Peter Sciretta
Yesterday we told you about Fantastic Fest’s geektastic party at the Timberline Lodge, the original shooting location for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. In the post I mentioned that one of the things that a Limited Edition Silkscreened Event Poster was being included in the packages. And you know how much I love Alamo’s tribute posters… The two posters are now available online. Billy Perkins and Jeff Kleinsmith (who recently when head to head on the Good Bad Ugly Posters earlier this year) have created two new posters for The Shining to celebrate the event. Both measure 24×36, and both are signed and numbered, and printed by D and L. Available on Mondotees for $30.
The Perkins print is also available in a blood red variant (seen above) for $50. Click on the designs to enlarge. And if you want one, snatch it up while you still can at Mondotees.com: Maze Poster, Blue Jack, Red Variant Jack
Completely unrelated to the Alamo/Fantastic Fest sponsored event is an art show called Artwork and No Play at the Phone Booth Gallery in Hollywood (which is running until October 31st). A number of the art pieces from the show are up for sale on PhoneBoothGallery.com, but I first want to point out the following two signed and numbered prints which are also available.
R Black’s poster for the “Artwork and No Play” show is available as a 3 color screenprint, signed and numbered (limited to 100 prints) on 18 x 24 Boise Smooth Opaque 100 pound cover stock for $49.
Kevin Tong’s “Wave of Mutilation” is available as a 2 color screenprint on 9.75 x 16.25 french paper. Signed and numbered (only 50 printed) for $40.
Check out some of the other original art available for sale after the jump.
Fantastic Fest is holding a party at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, the original filming location of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Check out the information below:
In 1980, Stanley Kubrick came to the Timberline Lodge to film one of the all-time great horror classics, THE SHINING. In the film, Jack Nicholson slowly loses his grasp on reality and loses himself in a hallucination of a 1920s era ball. Twenty-Eight years later, Nike Sportswear and Fantastic Fest have joined forces to recreate the very same ball at the very same lodge.
Two ticket options are available for this special night:
VIP Overnight Package:
Dinner at the Lodge
3 Cocktails per person
Live music and shows throughout the evening
Limited Edition Silkscreened Event Poster (seen right, also available on Mondotees.com)
A one-night stay at the historic Timberline Lodge
In-room screening of the film
VIP gift package
Continental breakfast the morning after the party
This VIP Overnight Package is designed for couples who want to stay the night. Ticket price is $100 per person ($200 per room). Note: the regular Timberline room rate is $220/night for just the room. As there are only 50 rooms available for overnight stay, we are offering a “the Gold Room ticket,” a discounted admission to the party for guests not staying the night.
The Gold Room Ticket:
Dinner at the Lodge
3 Cocktails per person
Live music and shows throughout the evening
Limited Edition Silkscreened Event Poster
Round trip bus service to and from the party
Only 200 Gold Room tickets are available for $25 per person.
Attire: Formal attire is mandatory, 20’s era formal attire is preferred. We will have special gifts for the best period attire of the night.
Schedule:
5:00 PM Boarding begins for Gold Room Ticket-holders in Portland (location TBA)
5:30 PM Gold Room Ticket-holder buses depart
7:00 PM Dinner begins at Timberline Lodge
9:00 PM Music, cocktails and entertainment begin
11:50 PM Return bus boarding begins for Gold Room Ticket holders
At the stroke of midnight, all VIP Overnight guests are required to return to their rooms and turn on their TVs for a very special screening of THE SHINING. All VIP guests will be watching THE SHINING simultaneously, but in the privacy of their own rooms.
Note: VIP guests will need to provide their own transportation to the lodge. VIP Overnight guest check-in begins at 6:00 PM on October 31 and check-out is at 11:00 AM on November 1.
Tickets for this event go on sale on Friday, October 10 at 2:00 PM PST at www.shiningparty.com, where you can find additional details and updates about the event. As tickets are extremely limited, we anticipate this show to sell out quickly.
Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes
The Pitch: Two years after Stanley Kubrick’s death, Jon Ronson was invited to the director’s estate to explore the hundreds of boxes the legendary film director had collected during his decades at Childwick Manor in Hertfordshire. He’s been returning ever since, and the story of Kubrick and the archive, now housed at University of the Arts London, is revealed in this fascinating 2007 television documentary. Ronson asks: is it possible to get to understand such a man – and his extraordinary working methods – by looking through the hundreds of boxes he left behind?
Video of the Day is a daily feature of /Film showcasing geekarific video creations. Have a video we should be feature on VOTD? E-Mail us at orfilms@gmail.com.
Welcome to another edition of Movie Playlist, where we talk to the writers, directors, and stars about their favorite films. I’ve always found the celebrity playlists on iTunes to be interesting. Most everyone in the film business moved to Hollywood after discovering their love of films. And I’ve always love talking to people about their favorite films. So talking to the people who make the movies about their favorite films just seemed like a natural idea.
In this week’s Movie Playlist we interviewed director Brad Anderson, who I first discovered through the wonderful but unseen Boston indie Next Stop Wonderland, which featured Hope Davis and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. In 1997, Anderson was named by Variety as one of the “Ten Leading New Independent Directors to Watch.” His filmography includes Happy Accidents, Session 9, and The Machinist. His television credits include episodes of Homicide; The Wire; The Shield; and Surface. His new film Transsiberian, which hits theaters today, is a Hitchcockian thriller which he also co-wrote.
/Film: I just want to start off saying, I’m a big fan of all your work. I’m from Boston,
Brad Anderson: Oh yeah, really.
/Film: so I’ve been following your career since Next Stop Wonderland.
Brad Anderson: Oh great, wow!
/Film: So this is great, so – I want to talk to you today, I’m not sure if they briefed you but we do a feature called Movie Playlist which basically talks about your favorite movies of all time, or maybe not even just your favorite movies but movies you watch a lot, or movies you love. What are some of your favorite movies?
Brad Anderson: Favorite movies? It runs the gamut, in no particular order and no particular preference, I just caught, anything by Stanley Kubrick, I can watch those movies again and again I don’t know why, but just something about what he invests in his films and the meticulous level of detail, and choreography that I just find as a filmmaker craft of film making is so apparent in his movies that every time you watch them it’s like being taught how to make a movie, so yeah, I just caught 2001 recently again and it’s just like the kind of thing you’re clicking through the channels and you sort of catch a piece of it and you’re like yeah, I’ve seen this about 20 million times and you’re about to switch to another channel and you just find yourself watching it and the next thing you know you’ve watched it all over again.
/Film: 2001 is one of those movies that if you come across on cable, basically you’ve lost three hours of your life.
Brad Anderson: [laughs] Yeah, it’s so amazing to me that movie and all his films, but that one in particular because it’s like, you think about it the way – I don’t know what you’d call it, it’s not a thriller, it’s not a straight out sci-fi film, it’s not necessarily a straight out adventure movie, it’s just a study in visual brilliance, you know, and the way that his use of sound and his use of music and anything by Kubrick.
Recreating The Shining by Channel 4
The Pitch: Channel 4 has painstakingly recreated the set of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining for this 65-second one-take tracking shot complete with lookalikes of the cast. “Viewers get Kubrick’s point of view as he walks through the set, ending up in his director’s chair as the crew prepare to shoot the famous scene of Danny Torrance, the son of Duvall and Jack Nicholson’s characters, riding round and round the deserted corridors of the Overlook Hotel.”
Video of the Day is a daily feature of /Film showcasing geekarific video creations. Have a video we should be feature on VOTD? E-Mail us at orfilms@gmail.com.
Welcome to another edition of Movie Playlist, where we talk to the writers, directors, and stars about their favorite films. I’ve always found the celebrity playlists on iTunes to be interesting. Most everyone in the film business moved to Hollywood after discovering their love of films. And I’ve always love talking to people about their favorite films. So talking to the people who make the movies about their favorite films just seemed like a natural idea.
This week’s edition is with Jonathan Levine, the writer and director of The Wackness and All The Boys Love Mandy Lane. I first saw The Wackness at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where the movie went on to win the audience award. I’ve seen the film three times since January, and it still remains on my list of the top five films of 2008. Levine is an up and coming filmmaker who is sure to impress in the years to come.
Manhattan, written and directed by Woody Allen
“Just because of the sweeping kind of romantic scope of it and also the humor and the way it looks.”
Billy Madison by Tamra Davis
“I think it’s just really fucking funny.”
Band of Outsiders by Godard
I really like, well Godard, I think is, I really really like the way he makes films and the way he plays with form is really interesting to me. And I think it’s actually in many ways kind of consistent with hip-hop and sampling things and just the things he does with music and sound. I think he’s like a one of a kind, very unique, and I like to rip him off as much as I can.”
La Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni
Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick
“It’s just like a tone, you know? As much as Woody Allen kind of revels in the emotion, those guys kind of have a healthy distance from the emotion that in many ways is just as impactful. There’s a misanthropy to it that is not cynical. It’s like you’re showing that the worst side of people but in doing so, you’re allowing… you know, it’s Tom Cruise, you’re like ‘oh shit! Like Tom Cruise is this scumbag… he has the weirdest thoughts and his wife wants to cheat on him with a marine and he’s Tom Cruise but he’s so fucking fucked up by it that he has to go put on a mask and go to an orgy.’ But you identify with these base desires and with the worst part of human beings and then you realize all right, it’s not that bad. The movie ends on this note where it’s like, oh yeah, we got fucked. I really liked that movie. It might not be my favorite movie… the only one of those movies that constitutes my favorite movie is Manhattan but the other ones do really interesting things that I respect out of movies.”
Check out Jonathan Levine’s latest movie The Wackness, which hits limited release this Friday.
Stanley Kubrick fans have new computer desktop wallpaper. Kol created this Hal 9000 wallpaper depicting the infamous computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Download now on Deviant Art. Be aware, You need to use the Download link in the left sidebar to access the higher and lower resoltuion versions.
Cool Stuff is a daily feature of slashfilm.com. Know of any geekarific creations or cool products which should be featured on Cool Stuff? E-Mail us at orfilms@gmail.com.
via: SuperPunch
Uma Thurman Talks Stanley Kubrick’s Wartime Lies, Role of Her Career
Posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 by Hunter Stephenson
When I think of actresses lucky enough to have a perfect part, one tailored and empowered with the entire spectrum of human emotion and not simply the giddy sex appeal that plagues Hollywood films, I think of Uma Thurman and Beatrix Kiddo/The Bride in Kill Bill. She should have received an Oscar nom for either volume, and won. While the following quote is in no way a slight at Tarantino, it was surprising to hear her say the following to MTV in regards to a role in Stanley Kubrick’s Wartime Lies, neither of which happened, obviously…
“It was devastating because it was an incredible part,” she confessed. “It would have been the part of my career, the best part I ever had been offered or had written for me, or anything.”
In no way am I comparing Tarantino to Kubrick right now, but it seriously caught me off guard, especially the “writing” part. Kubrick’s Wartime Lies, based on Louis Begley’s acclaimed novel, would have had Thurman play a Jewish woman who cares for her orphaned nephew as they face Nazi atrocities in Poland during the Holocaust and resort to taking the disguise of Catholics. More Uma…
“I was going to make a film with him - for a long time I was scheduled to make a film with him,” she said of “Wartime Lies,” a movie she was signed on to make with Kubrick in the early 90s. “I was contracted to do it and things happened and he shelved the film. He never made the film.”
An adaptation is currently being worked on by The Departed’s ever-busy William Monahan, but Thurman didn’t discuss whether she’s still being sought for the part. Let’s hope, because she belongs in higher-brow fare than My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
Discuss: Thoughts? Â
Movies That Should Have Won an Academy Award, But Didn’t
Posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 by Peter Sciretta
Have you ever seen the movie How Green Was My Valley? Me neither.
Have you even heard of the movie? Didn’t think so.
Yet John Ford’s film somehow won 5 Oscars including Best Picture. But what’s more shocking: It beat out such classic films as Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon for the top honor. (Note: I’m not saying that Ford’s film is a bad movie. I’m just saying that in terms of reviews, user ratings, and all time-top 10 lists, it’s not to the level of Kane and Falcon)
How can that be? As it turns out there are a lot of movies that should have won Best Picture but somehow didn’t. Some of them weren’t even nominated!
Let’s take a look at the list.
Clint Eastwood admits Scorsese may win first Academy Award
Posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 by Peter Sciretta
Clint Eastwood believes that Martin Scorsese will finally claim the Academy Award he so rightfuly deserves, and beat him to the Best Director prize.
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