Pentax K1000 is the Camera You're Looking For (Probably)

The host of this video Mike Padua has a great shop for people who are into shooting film - Patches Stickers and More for Film loving Photographers https://shootfilmco.com


BONUS clips:

Pentax K1000 - Best Intro to Shooting Film




This is what I use
- GEF

THIS OLD CAMERA

Watch ‘The Slog Movie’ in its punk entirety below:

Oh Lovely Rock by Robinson Jeffers

The Classic JAY ADAMS photograph on my Instagram

JAY ADAMS knocking the coping out of its place at a back yard barging session in West Los Angels in the spring of ‘78. Attitude, Aggression and Style exemplified in the photograph as well as the incredible color has always made this a favorite. This photo was the lone skateboarding image on the cover of FUCK YOU HEROES, it appeared in that book, and first appeared in the 1st ever SkateBoarder magazine photo annual in B&W, and more recently as huge and as beautifully presented as ever in the MY RULES book. #SkateBoarding #JayBoy #Inspiration #Radical #Gnarly #ZEPHYR #Integrity #PoolSkating #BackYardPool #Trackers #Kryptos #SearchAndDestroy #GRIND #Frontside #Style #Aggression #DogTown #ZBoys #JayAdams #fuckYouHeroes #SkateBoarder

A post shared by glen E. friedman Ⓥ (@glenefriedman) on Jun 22, 2018 at 8:19pm PDT

Freedom Friday Film

Bucking the trend of non-stop adrenaline-fueled aesthetics, this short film about a kitesurfing adventure in Rugged Point Marine Provincial Park takes time to appreciate the stunning beauty of the Vancouver Island locale.

Riders of the Well of Death

15 MINS // HINDI [ENGLISH & SPANISH SUBTITLES] // 2016
A personal project shot in northern India. It's a short documentary about stunt drivers taking part in the daredevil sport known as "Maut ka kuan" (Well of Death).

The men risking everything for the thrill of the ride

Director Erik Morales of filmmaking collective Canada talks about Riders of the Well of Death, a film documenting stunt drivers taking part in the daredevil sport in Northern India:

“When people ask why I made this film my answer is always, ‘because it’s cars driving on the fucking walls!’ The well of death (or Maut ka kuan) is an incredible mix of acrobatics and sheer engine power, where the brave defy gravity and drive cars and bikes on the walls of a wooden pit. These arenas are a popular attraction at travelling fairs, where the tickets are cheap and the crowds are plenty. Viewers watch the action from a metal platform above the pit, while the magic unfolds beneath them—the riders, the cars, the bikes, the lights and the noise.

“It’s cars driving on the fucking walls!”
“I still remember the first time I saw this live. The show lasts for a few minutes but the experience you live through is intense. I was blown away by these guys who were risking their lives in this wooden pit—it was pure adrenaline. The purity of the riders fighting the laws of nature with these old vehicles and immense amounts of courage was what made me want to do this film; I wanted to know these ordinary guys who risk it all to do extraordinary things.”

Thanks Seth!

WHAT IS A GROUP? A film by IAN F SVENONIUS

WHAT IS A GROUP? A Film By IAN F SVENONIUS
"The first Sci Fi Documentary Rock 'N' Roll Exploitation Film"

Starring KID CONGO POWERS, KATIE GREER, DANIELE YANDEL, MICHELLE MAE, ALEX MINOFF, MARY TIMONY, FRANCY Z GRAHAM, ALYSSA BELL, ERICK JACKSON, IAN F SVENONIUS
With the voices of MADIE MCCORMICK & FRANCY Z GRAHAM

Produced, Directed, Written, and Edited By IAN F SVENONIUS
Camera & Lights by ERIC CHEEVERS & BRAD BAKER
Theme song By ALEX MINOFF
"Free Will" By CHAIN & The GANG
Sound & Noise by IAN F SVENONIUS

A STRAWBERRY CITY PRODUCTION

Spike Lee's "Wake Up" short film In New York vote today for Bernie Sanders

I whole heatedly support this great short film and candidate now.



VOTE TODAY.

VOTE FOR A BETTER FUTURE.

WE MUST TRY & NOT GIVE IN OR GIVE UP.



BONUS:
Bernie Sanders Interviewed by Spike Lee for THR New York Issue:

SUPERFLY One Last Deal A mini documentary on the 1972 classic film

"Martin Scorsese Directs"

from Dangerous Minds

 

Martin Scorsese started making movies when he was a kid. He suffered from asthma which meant he spent time a lot of isolated at home in bed. He couldn’t play like the other kids. Instead he watched them from his bedroom window running free, playing baseball and getting in fights. His bedroom window was his first viewfinder. He watched the world outside and imagined stories about the people he saw. His imagination was inspired by the movies at the local cinema—films starring Victor Mature, or those made by Powell and Pressburger.

Scorsese was raised a Catholic. He was an altar boy and his parents thought one day he might become a priest. In church Scorsese saw the power and drama contained in the religious statues and paintings—the pieta with its crucified Christ draped across his mother’s lap. The martyred saints showing their wounds and pointing to unknowable heavens. Imagery was a visceral source of communication. At home in bed he created his own movies, spending hours painstakingly drawing storyboards, frame by frame, for the imaginary films he would one day direct.

In his teens he gave up on being a priest and went to the film school at NYU. He made the short films What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) and The Big Shave (1967). Scorsese’s greatest films are the ones informed with his own personal experience and knowledge of the world. Catholic guilt (Who’s That Knocking at My Door?); machismo posturing and violence (Mean Streets); violence, redemption and isolation (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull).

Much of this is well covered in Joel Sucher and Steven Fischler’ profile of Scorsese. Made for the PBS series, American Masters  in 1990, this documentary follows the director during the making of Goodfellas.  It contains superb interviews (most delightfully Scorsese’s parents), choice cuts from his films and contributions from actors (Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Amy Robinson), producers and fellow directors—like Steven Spielberg who says the intense emotional turmoil of Scorsese’s work, “Sometimes you don’t know whether to scream or to laugh.”

 

 

FUGAZI instrument Documentary Sunday

Sunday History Lesson on NEW YORK CITY Interesting indy mini Documentary FILM

"The South Bronx burned, Harlem overdosed, and Brooklyn was ruled by the knives and bicycle chains of feral gangs. Then it got worse. The Mafia poured tons of China White onto the street and 13 year old warlords peddled vials of cocaine to passing cars. The media, and our own memories, present us only with a photo album of these times; an incident here, and incident there; the 77 Blackout, Bernie Goetz, crack heads, John Gotti. Streets of New York brings the fragments of New York s social unraveling circa 1970-1990 into a contiguous form, so that we may inspect it for clues about how we may more precisely control the social order in all of our cities. The documentary subtly explores issues of race, and the media prism that separates criminal events into levels of importance by geography and social standing of criminals and victims. A treasure of archival television footage was unearthed to catalogue such phenomena as the Devil s Rebels gang terrorizing Bushwick Brooklyn in 1976, police involvement in Harlem s heroin trade, crack users getting high on camera, the worst mass murder in recent New York history, and the implementation of Rudy Giuliani s Compstat program in the War on Crime. Eleven New Yorkers talk about their own experiences from the streets to Riker s Island. We follow NoNo, a former gang member from 70 s era Sunset Park, Brooklyn, from being stabbed in a pizzeria at age 11 to crossing paths with the Son of Sam in prison; noted rapper Thirstin Howl III (former partner of Eminem) from his days robbing people for their coats in Times Square to starring on MTV s Lyricist Lounge television show in the late 90 s; and the best friend of the infamous Pistol Pete Rollack tells us how the Soundview section of the Bronx still has the cloud of death and prison hanging over it to this day. The tales of crime are placed within the larger socio-economic context of ethnicity, gentrification, and politics, through unique statistics and visual elements.

from: http://www.alprofit.com

Michael Moore's new film Attacks US government's state of 'infinite war'

from The Guardian

Where to Invade Next, made in secret because of surveillance concerns, satirises ‘constant need to have an enemy to keep the military-industrial complex alive’


Moore and myself at St. Marks Books some years back.

Michael Moore’s new film, Where to Invade Next, explores how the US government maintains a state of “infinite war”, according to the Oscar-winning documentary film-maker.

Moore revealed rough details of the project, which he has been making “in secret” since 2009, in his first Periscope broadcast. He answered questions from fans posted on Twitter and started by saying he’d like to “say ‘Hello!’ to my NSA friends that are watching right now”. He’s been a vocal critic of the agency’s mass surveillance practices – revealed by the Guardian in 2013 – and called whistleblower Edward Snowden “the hero of the year”.

Here's the 6-min video from the Periscope I just did regarding my new film, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT. #W2IN #TIFF15 https://t.co/lKhLhTPUpn

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) July 28, 2015

He said Where to Invade Next, which was filmed across three continents, was “epic in nature”, but made quietly with a small crew. “There’s usually someone chasing us,” he said. It seems the film, which premieres at the Toronto film festival in September, will cover some of the same ground as his Palme d’Or-winning Fahrenheit 9/11, a critique of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” detailing the various dictatorships that have been supported by the US administration in the interests of maintaining conflicts that profited America. Fahrenheit 9/11 is the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking close to $120m (£75m) at the US box office.

“The issue of the United States at infinite war is something that has concerned me for quite some time, and provides the necessary satire for this film,” said Moore in the Periscope broadcast.

“[There’s] this constant need it seems to always have an enemy – where’s the next enemy so we can keep this whole military industrial complex alive, and keep the companies that make a lot of money from this in business. I’ve always been a little bothered by that, so that’s where the comedy comes from.”

The blurb on the the Toronto festival website for Where to Invade Next suggests Moore will again use prank-based journalism to satirise US foreign policy. “Moore tells the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ – he will do the invading for America from now on,” it says.

When asked by a Twitter user if he thought it was more important to make people laugh or deliver a message, Moore said “both”.

“Humour is a great vehicle to make social commentary about things that are going on these days,” he said, echoing a speech he gave at Toronto last year in which he told documentary film-makers to be more entertaining.

“People don’t want medicine, they want popcorn,” he told a crowd of industry guests. “Entertainment is the big dirty word of documentary. ‘Oh no! I’ve entertained someone. I’ve cheapened my movie!’”

“People want to go home and have sex after your movie,” he said. “Don’t make them feel ‘Urggggghhhh’. Don’t do that to your fellow sexually active people.”

YES. At 79, Woody Allen Says There's Still Time To Do His Best Work

from NPR


When asked about his major shortcomings, filmmaker Woody Allen says, "I'm lazy and an imperfectionist."

Woody Allen is a prolific filmmaker — he's been releasing films pretty much every year since the mid-1960s. (His latest, Irrational Man, is now in theaters.) But Allen isn't exactly prolific as an interview subject. When film critic Sam Fragoso sat down with Allen in Chicago, the filmmaker revealed his insecurities (well, not so much revealed as reiterated), and discussed why actors like to work with him and what he regrets.

Allen also discussed his relationship with his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, whom he met when he was in a relationship with actress Mia Farrow. Previn is Farrow's adopted daughter and is 35 years younger than Allen.

Sam Fragoso: You're more prolific than most people.

Woody Allen: But prolific is a thing that's not a big deal. It's not the quantity of the stuff you do; it's the quality. A guy like James Joyce will do just a couple of things, but they resonate way beyond anything I've ever done or ever could dream of doing.

Would you say your quality, in spots, dipped because of the quantity?

It always [has]. When you start out to make a film, you have very big expectations and sometimes you come close. When I did Match Point, I felt I came very close. But you never get that thing that you want. You always set out to make Citizen Kane or to make The Bicycle Thief and it doesn't happen. You can't set out to make something great head-on; you just have to make films and hope you get lucky.

Have you considered scaling back, making a film every few years?

It wouldn't help. It's not that I feel, "Oh, if I had more time or more money, I could make this better." It's coming to terms with the shortcomings in one's own gift and one's own personality.

What are your major shortcomings?

I'm lazy and an imperfectionist. Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese will work on the details until midnight and sweat it out, whereas for me, come 6 o'clock, I want to go home, I want to have dinner, I want to watch the ballgame. Filmmaking is not [the] end-all be-all of my existence. Another shortcoming is that I don't have the intellect or the depth or the natural gift. The greatness is not in me. When you see scenes in [Akira] Kurosawa films ... you know he's a madman on the set. There would be 100 horses and everything had to be perfect. He was crazy. I don't have any of that.

You wouldn't consider yourself crazy?

No, no. My problem is that I'm middle-class. If I was crazy I might be better. That probably accounts for my output. I lead a very sensible life: I get up in the morning, I work, I get the kids off to school, do the treadmill, play the clarinet, take a walk with my wife. It's usually the same walk every day. If I were crazy, it would help. If I shrieked on the set and demanded, it may be better, but I don't. I say, "Good enough!" It's a middle-class quality, which does make for productivity.

You're never bored.

Look, we all have to make a living in life and do something. Making films, by the general standard of jobs, is a very good one. You work with very gifted people. I work with beautiful women and good men.

Most performers want to work with you.

There are two factors:

1) I give them good parts to play and they are artists and they don't want to keep doing blockbuster movies. They want to act in something.

2) But they want to work with me when the blockbuster movie hasn't offered them anything. If I offer them something and then Jurassic Park offers them something, they take Jurassic Park because of the money.

The way you describe filmmaking, it comes across as a job first, passion second, so where do you find happiness?

It's not a tedious chore; it's a pleasant way to make a living. I like playing music, I like being with the family, but I don't have any ecstatic highs. I'm not like Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I enjoy working. If it's 7 in the morning and you're on the set and there's Scarlett Johansson or Emma Stone, and you're dealing for a year with costumes and music ... it's like arts and crafts, you're making a collage. But I'm not someone who does heroin.

Have you experimented with drugs recreationally or for creative purposes?

I've never done any drugs whatsoever. I've never taken a puff of marijuana. I've never taken a recreational pill of any sort. I can barely bring myself to take two Extra Strength Excedrin.

Not once?

No, and I don't even have the curiosity. People say all the time, "Aren't you curious?" But I'm not a curious person. I'm not curious to travel, but I do because my wife likes it. I'm not curious to see other places, I'm not curious to try new things. I go to the same restaurants all the time, and my wife is always saying, "Let's try something new!" I don't enjoy that. When Elaine's was open in New York, I ate every dinner, seven nights a week, for 10 [to] 12 years.

I'm still surprised you've never taken a hit from a joint.

And I was right in the thick of it. I would play [the Chicago nightclub] Mr. Kelly's and the [San Francisco nightclub] Hungry I and college concerts in the '60s, and afterwards everyone would be doing it. All the folk acts, the rock acts. The subject of drugs never interests me. There are a lot of subjects that don't hold my attention. I'm not interested in technology. I don't have a computer. I'm not interested in traveling, popular music. I can't bring myself to get motivated.

And yet you're making a series for an online audience with Amazon.

Right, I've never seen one. I think they're going to be embarrassed. They're going to regret that they started up with me. I'm doing my best. I'm working a six-episode series.

They're no good?

I have grave doubts about them. I thought it was going to be an easy score. Movies are not easy, but it's not a cinch. I don't want to disappoint them.

After all these years of making movies about death (the fear of it, how to beat it, etc.), do you feel, at 79, any better about it all?

You don't beat that anxiety. You don't mellow when you get older and gain a Buddhist acceptance.

Is it worse now?

It's not worse; it's the same. If you wake up in the middle of the night, at 20, contemplating your extinction, you have the same feeling at 60 and 80. You're hardwired to fight to live. You can't give logical reasons why, but you're hardwired to survive. You would prefer not to. You would prefer that the life story was a different scenario, but it's not.

How long have you been seeing an analyst?

Well, not continually. I was in analysis when I was 20 and then stopped for a while, then saw a shrink when I was a little older. I've been in and out. Now I check in once a week just to charge the batteries.

Has it helped?

It's funny, it's helped, but not as much as I've wanted. Years ago, I remember, I brought my clarinet into the repair shop, and the guy took two weeks and put new pads on and everything. When I went in, I said, "Thank you, but am I going to sound better?" And he said, "Yes, you will sound better, but not as much as you'd like to." The truth is you can't get what you want.

Are you suggesting people can't get better?

I do think you get better to a certain degree. Every case is different. It depends how close you are to getting better by yourself. If someone is close to it, the shrink can give you that little push and they make it.

Where/when have you experienced that push?

When I first started to be a comedian, I used to have the fantasy all the time that they'd hate me. I'm going to get on stage and they're not going to like me. The problem was — psychologically, but unbeknownst to me — I was worried I was not going to like them. And that was causing me anxiety, which I transferred to, "They're not going to like me." That was a significant contribution of relieving the anxiety of going on stage.

Also, when I was 19 I was married.

What was that?

It was fine! It got me out of my parent's house and got me into New York City and reality. My wife was a nice, smart person, but I would sometimes become nauseated during the night and I kept thinking it was the food. "Oh, I shouldn't have eaten at the Chinese restaurant, the Italian food." It was anxiety, and when someone finally pointed it out to me that it wasn't the food causing me those stomach problems, it was a big help.

You didn't like the people.

I never liked people.

What's your problem with people?

I think some of them are wonderful, but they are so many of them that are not. I was one of the few guys rooting for the comet to hit the Earth. Statistically, more people that deserved to go would go.

Would you consider yourself a good person?

I would consider myself ... decent as I got older. When I was younger I was less sensitive, in my 20s. But as I got older and began to see how difficult life was for everybody, I had more compassion for other people. I tried to act nicer, more decent, more honorable. I couldn't always do it. When I was in my 20s, even in my early 30s, I didn't care about other people that much. I was selfish and I was ambitious and insensitive to the women that I dated. Not cruel or nasty, but not sufficiently sensitive.

You viewed women as temporary fixtures?

Yes, temporary, but as I got older and they were humans suffering like I was ... I changed. I learned empathy over the years.

Do you have any major regrets?

Oh! My biggest regret — I have so many, trivial ones and big ones — is that I didn't finish college. I allowed myself to get thrown out. I couldn't care less about it at the time. I regret that I didn't have a more serious life; that my films were too entertaining when I started. I wanted to be [Ingmar] Bergman.

But you contributed joy to the world through laughter.

Yes, that's what got me by. It saved me. But it was the easy road when I started, and I did it. If I had it to do over again, I would be a more dedicated artist. I would've been more serious right from the start. People could look at that and say, "You're nuts. Those are the only movies of yours that we enjoyed. Whenever you've tried to be serious or tried to be meaningful, we walk out."

That's dialogue from [your film] Stardust Memories.

You're right, and it may just be that the amount of depth I have, and the talent to amuse that I have, goes up to three, and that's where it is and I did very nicely with it.

You make it sound like your life is over.

Well, I am 80 in a few months. Who knows what I can count on? My parents lived long, but that's not guarantee of anything. It's too late to really reinvent oneself. All I can do is try to do good work so that people can say, "In his later years, in his last years, he did some of his best work." Great.

Since you are nearing 80, I'm curious: Do you still believe "love fades," as Annie Hall claims?

It fades almost all the time. Once in a while you get lucky and get into a relationship that lasts a very long time. Even a lifetime. But it does fade. Relationships are the most difficult thing people deal with. They deal with loneliness, meeting people, sustaining relationships. You always hear from people, "Well, if you want to have a good relationship you have to work at it." But there's nothing else in your life that you really love and enjoy that you have to work at. I love music, but I don't have to work at it. A guy likes to go out boating on the weekends, he doesn't think, "Oh, I have to work at it." He can't wait to leave work to get to it. That's the way you have to feel about your relationship. If you feel that you have to work at it — a constant business of looking the other way, sweeping stuff under the rug, compromising — it's not working.

Do you feel that way now with [your wife] Soon-Yi Previn?

I lucked out in my last relationship. I've been married now for 20 years, and it's been good. I think that was probably the odd factor that I'm so much older than the girl I married. I'm 35 years older, and somehow, through no fault of mine or hers, the dynamic worked. I was paternal. She responded to someone paternal. I liked her youth and energy. She deferred to me, and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of so many things. She flourished. It was just a good-luck thing.

Luck is something you play with in your movies often.

Yes, I'm a big believer in that.

But when you found Soon-Yi, when did you know that this relationship worked? I must say from afar — to the general public — it's a bit harder to understand.

I thought it was ridiculous.

So run me through your thought process back in late '80s.

I started the relationship with her and I thought it would just be a fling, it wouldn't be serious. But it had a life of its own. And I never thought it would be anything more. Then we started going together, then we started living together, and we were enjoying it. And the age difference didn't seem to matter. It seemed to work in our favor, actually.

She enjoyed being introduced to many, many things that I knew from experience, and I enjoyed showing her those things. She took them, and outstripped me in certain areas that I showed her. That's why I'm a big believer in luck. I feel that you can't orchestrate those things. Two people come along, and they have a trillion exquisite needs and neuroses and nuances, and they have to mesh. And if one of them doesn't mesh, it causes a lot of trouble. It's like the trace vitamin not being in your body. It's a tiny little thing, but if you don't have it, you die.

The separation between church and state, artists and their personal lives — do you think the allegations [that you sexually abused your adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow] have affected how people approach your movies?

I would say no. I always had a small audience. People did not come in great abundance, and they still don't, and I've maintained the same audience over the years. If the reviews are bad, they don't come. If the reviews are good, they probably come.

You really don't believe they carry that external baggage into the theater?

Not for a second. It has no meaning in the way I make movies, too. I never see any evidence of anything in my private life resonating in film. If I come out with a film people want to see, they flock to see it, which means they see it to the degree of Manhattan or Annie Hall or Midnight in Paris. That's my outer limits. If I come out with a film they don't want to see, they don't come.

At the end of it all, what do you want to be remembered for?

People always ask me this now that I'm turning 80, but I don't really care. It wouldn't matter to me, aside from the royalties to my kids, if they took all my films and dumped them. You and I could be standing over [William] Shakespeare's grave, singing his praises, and it doesn't mean a thing. You're extinct.

Sam Fragoso is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Playboy and elsewhere. A book of his interviews with emerging filmmakers, titled Talk Easy, will be published by The Critical Press in 2016.

Hitchcock 101: Alfred Hitchcock on how to make movies

from Dangerous Minds:

 

Alfred Hitchcock thought the invention of “talkies” was unfortunate as movies assumed a theatrical form overnight. Films, he told Francois Truffaut, stopped being cinematic and became “photographs of people talking.”

When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in a cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.

In writing a screenplay, it is essential to separate clearly the dialogue from the visual elements and, whenever possible, to rely more on the visual than on the dialogue. Whichever way you choose to stage the action, your main concern is to hold the audience’s fullest attention.

Summing it up, one might say that the screen rectangle must be charged with emotion.

Hitchcock developed this theme in an interview with director Bryan Forbes at London’s National Film Theatre in 1969, where he explained how work on a movie “starts” for him:

Well, for me, it all starts with the basic material first. Now, the question of when you have the basic material… you may have a novel, a play, an original idea, a couple of sentences and from that the film begins. I work very closely with the writer and begin to construct the film on paper, from the very beginning. We roughly sketch in the whole shape of the film and then begin from the beginning. You end up with around 100 pages, or perhaps even more, of narrative, which is very bad reading for a litterateur. There are no descriptions of any kind—no ‘he wondered’, because you can’t photograph ‘he wondered.’
No ‘camera pans right’, for example
Not at that stage, no. It’s as though you were looking at the film on the screen and the sound was turned off. And therefore, to me, this is the first stage. The reason for it is this—it is to urge one to, to drive one, to make one work purely in the visual and not rely upon words at all. I am still a purist and I do believe that film is a series of images projected on a screen. This succession of images create ideas, which in turn create emotion, just as much as in literature words put together form sentences.

This is is what Hitchcock called “pure film”

The point is that pure film is montage, which is the assembly of pieces of film, which in their turn must create an emotion in the audience. That is the whole art of the cinema—the montage of the pieces. It is merely a matter of design, subject matter and so forth. You can’t generalise about it. You can only hope to produce ideas, expressed in montage terms that create an emotion in an audience.

Hitchcock was a cinematic purist—which ultimately made him a control freak. Everything was planned and worked out long before the actors rehearsed their lines or the first shot was taken. “Actors,” Hitchcock once said in his famously quoted line, “should be treated like cattle.” They were there to collaborate and serve his vision. That’s why he preferred working with actors like James Stewart or Cary Grant rather than “method” actors like Montgomery Clift or Paul Newman. Indeed, during the making of Torn Curtain, Hitchcock became so fed up with Newman continually asking about his motivation that he eventually told him, “Your motivation is your salary.”

The method actor is okay in the theatre because he has a free space to move about. But when it comes to cutting the face and what he sees and so forth, there must be some discipline. I remember discussing with a method actor how he was taught and so forth. He said, “We’re taught using improvisation. We are given an idea and then we are turned loose to develop in any way we want to.” I said “That’s not acting. That’s writing.” And that is why method actors today always turn up on set with a new script.

Hitchcock’s interview with Bryan Forbes was originally broadcast as an hour-long program on the BBC, but this edited version highlights the great auteur’s wit and wisdom on filmmaking.

After the Kodak Moment A New York Times short video

BY Colin Archdeacon and John Woo | Mar. 20, 2015 | 5:33

Kodak has prioritized its patent portfolio and the Eastman Business Park since it declared bankruptcy in 2012. Despite some success, the company might never live up to the legacy of its own past.



pretty fucking sad for people who still shoot film, as I still do...

OH SHIT! Here's it comes Straight Outa Compton, The Movie

Bring back the feminists of W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell)!

from Dangerous Minds

1969 WITCH protest in front of Chicago Federal Building.

Of all the second wave feminists who exploded into action over the 1960s and 70s, no group seems to have had quite as much fun as WITCH—the fabulous acronym for Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. Like so many other groups, WITCH was formed from a split, this one from New York Radical Women. Their counterpart, Redstockings, became the more famous “intellectual” feminist group, producing such visionary minds as Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone (who, among many other far out things, argued for the option of robotic wombs to liberate women from childbirth). WITCH on the other hand was the wild and wooly protest group, easily identifiable by their Halloween get-ups.


Protesting beauty pageant circa 1969.

The group specialized in disruption of the sensational bent, shrieking and chanting in black clothing and white face paint, and “throwing hexes” at enemies of the people. Among their many targets were beauty pageants, Wall Street, bridal fairs, Chase Bank, the presidential inauguration, and even sexists in the politically left anti-war movement. Some of the more famous work was actually quite modest in its goals (hey, all politics are local politics), including protesting public transportation fare hikes with this little hex:

Witches round the circle go
to hex the causes of our woe,
We the witches now conspire
To burn CTA in freedoms’ fire.

Bankers gall, politicians guile,
Daley’s jowl, lackey’s smile,
Trustee’s toe, bondholder’s liar
These we cast into our fire.

Meetings held, messages sealed
When the fare hike is revealed
We, the people, are the prey
Of the demon, CTA….

WITCH were one of many radical feminist groups of the second wave (1960s and 70s), and one of many that is sadly understudied and overlooked. Luckily women like director Mary Dore work on projects like She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, a new documentary that chronicles the feminist lay of the land in the days of the counterculture revolution. It’s baffling to think that explicitly socialist groups like WITCH and the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union started out on the same footing as Hillary Clinton boosters like the National Organization for Women, but we all know that even in the feminist movement, the game is rigged towards Wellesley girls.



You can find a screening of She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry here, and I say it should be mandatory viewing for all girls under the age of eightteen. Where else are we going to get the next chapter of WITCH from?

 

Via Mother Jones

A new Evel Knievel documentary premiering at Sundance

Dope poster! with Matt hoffman on board as well as Johnny Knoxville, i've got high hopes for this one.

from EW:



Sundance exclusive: Johnny Knoxville promises 'big revelations' in Evel Knievel doc

Evel Knievel is synonymous with daredevil, but unless you saw him at his heights in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it’s difficult to imagine how he built that reputation into something millions of people actually cared about. Beginning with Knievel’s disastrous attempt to jump the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in 1967—which made him a star once it aired on ABC’s Wide World of Sports—millions tuned into his stunts to see if he could defy death one more time.

In Being Evel, the documentary that debuts on Jan. 25 at the Sundance Film Festival, director Daniel Junge (They Killed Sister Dorothy) tells the real story of Robert Craig Knievel, the charismatic showman who discovered the most lucrative way to support his family was to risk life and limb in highly orchestrated and heavily promoted motorcycle leaps.

If it sounds hokey in hindsight, it wasn’t so at the time—and a generation of kids eagerly inhaled the danger and the glamour. One of those was Johnny Knoxville, who brought Knievel’s rebellious and thrill-seeking spirit to the Jackass stunts that made his crew famous. “I think we’re hovering right somewhere in between bravery and stupidity,” Knoxville admits, describing the thin line that he and his idol straddled. “Possibly more on the stupidity side.”

Knoxville teamed up with Junge, and producer pals Jeff Tremaine and Mat Hoffman to reexamine Knievel’s life—not just the showstopping highlights everyone remembers, but the tough behind-the-scenes events and relationships that were kept mostly out of the spotlight. “We take a very honest look back on his life,” says Knoxville. “He lived a certain way and we talk about that. We worked a lot with [Evel’s son] Kelly Knievel and the family and couldn’t have made it without the family being involved.”

Knoxville, who’s currently playing Elvis’s bodyguard Sonny West in Elvis & Nixon, with Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon, spoke to EW about his hero in advance of the doc’s Sundance premiere. And EW also has the exclusive poster for Being Evel, which demonstrates how he liked to live close to the edge.

EW: When I was a kid, I had this awesome Evel Knievel crank-up motorcycle doll that would rev up and fly across the wooden floors in my house. It was the best. I didn’t really understand who or what he was in real life, but he was this super-sized personality—almost this indestructible human doll because of the things he did.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He was a superhero, a real living superhero. That doll is probably my favorite toy of all time. I think a lot of guys who grew up in the time we did feel the same exact way about it. I bought a couple—one for my son when he got old enough and another for me last year. I got the vintage one, still in the original box. My kid loves it, and I love it as much as I did when I was little.

EW: The great thing about it was that it wasn’t perfect; it would go for only so far before wiping out. But hey, that’s exactly what Evel did too.

JK: Exactly. Evel didn’t land it every time. [Laughs]

EW: It’s not difficult to see how Evel’s DNA is sprinkled into what you’ve done with the Jackass crew over the years.

JK: [Evel’s] spirit hangs over Jackass and inspired all of us, and we teamed up with Mat Hoffman, who’s our generation’s Evel Knievel and who has a friendship with the Knievel family. So we all did this together out of our love for Evel. The doc focuses on all of his immense accomplishments, but also what his life has spawned. You know, there would not be an X Games without Evel. No one ever went for it, laid it all on the line, like Evel Knievel. You watch the X Games, and they are laying it all on the line. And that spirit came from Evel, I believe.

read the rest of the interview HERE.

here's a short talk with the director

No Doubt Looking Forward to this!!

NO-NO : A DOCKUMENTARY FREE screening in LA tonight!

The Dock Ellis Documentary I worked on will be playing tonight near where Dock grew up, It should be a very colorful evening with some of his friends and family expected to attend as well. I hope to make it down with a few friends.




(click to enlarge flyer for details)


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