ah, remember the days when filmmakers and their stars put up every poster for their movies by hand? and suddenly i feel compelled to head over to ebay…
Marcello Mastroianni (left) & Federico Fellini (right)
I never thought I’d use Terrance Malick and prolific in the same sentence but I may have to reconsider because the elusive man who’s directed only five films in 38 years will churn out four in the next few. Here’s the list:
- Lawless starring Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett
- Knight of Cups with Bale, Blanchett and Isabel Lucas
- The Burial with Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem
- And Voyage of Time, a documentary on The Tree of Life narrated by Brad Pitt, which includes testimonial letters from Coppola, Scorsese, and Spielberg, promising it to be “a memorable combination of art and science”.
All great news, but do we really need these directors vouching for Malick at this point?
Can’t wait!
‘Pray’ at Myrtle-Wycoff Station, Bushwick
via Brooklyn Theory
Jim Jarmusch, Klaus Nomi, and Christopher Parker, The Bowery photographed by Godlis, 1978
via Godlis
good:
A reminder that most things, if not everything, are remixes on an old idea.
Remix or Rip-Off? Deconstructing ‘The Matrix’
Making the case that nothing, not even The Matrix, is totally original, Everything Is a Remix is back with a stunning shot-by-shot breakdown of the dozens of references and influences that shaped the Hollywood blockbuster.
This video was edited by Rob Wilson and co-produced by Kirby Ferguson, the creator of the series, and written by Cynthia Closkey. In an interview with The Atlantic, Ferguson makes the case for rethinking our definitions of creativity and ownership:
I wanted to address the hypocrisy of property-centric views of creativity. Corporations — and even many authors — want monopoly rights that are as broad and enduring as possible, but the gaping hole in that approach is that all creations contain chunks of other creations. It’s a blurry boundary between where one work ends and another begins. We all copy, we all transform, we all combine.
The interview is continued here, and previous episodes of Everything Is a Remix can be found on the Video channel. Everything is a Remix is self-funded, and welcomes donations from viewers via their website.
“His concern was always what it is to be a human being - that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal.”
—
David Foster Wallace on Dostoevsky (via maxistentialist)
I would argue most literature and film, even all art, deals with this issue. Recently, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life made the most impressive visual answer to this question.
Tree of Life.
