Ethan Dean Art

Check out my art blog http://ethandeanart.blogspot.com/

Monday, January 30, 2012

'Room 237'

This is a cool write up in the NY Times about the documentary, 'Room 237.' 'Room 237' explores the theories about the meaning behind Kubrick's 'The Shining.' Cool read. I've also posted a couple links that I've found helpful analysis of 'The Shining.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/movies/room-237-documentary-with-theories-about-the-shining.html?hp


Friday, January 27, 2012

Week in Review

Finishing off my no good, horrible, bad week, I wanted to post several film related links I've discovered throughout the week. The first is a link to tourist video of San Francisco circa 1955. Really cool shots, music, and voice over. The next is a great movie review from the NYTimes about Liam Neeson's (Qui-Gon-Jin) new movie The Grey. I don't know why, but this movie looks fantastic. The next link is to a filmmaker's website, Benh Zeitlin. Benh just had a big debut at Sundance this week. A lot of people are praising it for its poetic sensibilities. There are a couple of his short films on the website. The next is a link to Fast Company's interview with Steven Soderbergh. Great stuff after that link.

1955 San Fransisco

NY Times 'The Grey' Review

Benh Zeitlin, Court 13

Steven Soderbergh Interview

Moonbot Studios, the next Pixar? Fun little interview about up and coming animation studio.

Great article about David Fincher and his frequent collaborators

Anyway, hope these are some good resources if you need to kill some time. By the way, my film list this week is:

Germinal
Claude Berri
Ryan's Daughter
David Lean
A Streetcar Named Desire
Elia Kazan
Black Narcissus
Emille Pressburger and Michael Powell (The Archers---->)
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Blake Edwards
War and Peace
King Vidor
The Gold Rush
Charlie Chaplin
and if I have time
The Towering Inferno
John Guillermen
Cinema Paradiso
Guiseppe Tornatore

Last weeks films included The Ides of March, Babel, The Lion in Winter, A Face in the Crowd, and Midnight in Paris

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Joe Reidy: Assistant Director

Below is a great article about AD Joe Reidy. He's worked with directors like Scorsese, Stone, Aronofsky, and many others. Assistant Directors do not get much attention from Hollywood press, and it's great to see a write up about the hidden talent in film.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/foreignc/2012/01/joe-reidy.html

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Can Small Theaters Survive The Digital Age?

Cool read. This article is about the recent, rapid progression to digital projection in theaters, and its impact on small theater owners.

Was not aware that currently all major studios have switched completely to digital.

'Rick Schmitt is a manager of Frankfort's Garden Theater. It reopened only 2 years ago. It cost nearly a half-million dollars to renovate. The Art Deco-style theater was originally built in 1923. It has 320 seats. The Garden shows first-run movies and independent and foreign films. Its basic goal is to break even and remain open through ticket sales. And it's doing pretty well. It's paying its bills and even investing in improvements. Restaurant owners close to the theater tell Schmitt they're doing better since the Garden reopened.

But now, there's a problem.

Schmitt says, "The movie studios are moving toward digital projection systems and that really is a threat to the single-screen art house theaters across the country and the Garden Theater is no exception to that."

Show Me the Money

That digital projection equipment is expensive. Schmitt says a used system would cost about 60-thousand dollars and a new one about twice as much. The Garden Theater has a perfectly good movie projector in its booth. But that is going to become obsolete - at least for showing first-run movies.

That's because the major movie studios are shooting no more movies - none - on movie film. And this change has happened so quickly that it's taken many theater owners by surprise.

Jenn Jennings has worked at the State Theatre.

She now lives in Boston and is making a documentary about the film-to-digital conversion. She's talked with dozens of small theater owners.

Jenn says, "A year ago, when I started asking the independent markets, 'You know, what are you going to do?' they all had the opinion, the majority of them had the opinion, 'Well, this isn't going to be my problem because film is always going to be available.'"

Fade Out

The movie studios still make film prints of their movies shot with digital cameras but fewer and fewer as time goes by. In fact, when the Garden Theater recently ordered a print of the hit film, "The Help," Schmitt had to wait three months to get it.

That's because small theaters like the Garden aren't exactly on the major studios' radar.

According to Schmitt, "The movie studios aren't real excited to send us a copy of that print because, when it comes down to dollars and cents, they can make more money sending a copy of that print somewhere else."

Meanwhile, many Frankfort theatre-goers went elsewhere to see it.

The major studios have said that no new movies on film will be available by 2013. That doesn't leave the Garden Theater in the best position.

Schmitt says, "Does it keep us up at night for the future? It absolutely does because if we were to have to purchase a digital projection system at the current price, based on our current volume, we're talking about years and years and years of saving money to able to afford that."

Fast Motion

Jenn Jennings also worries that digital technology changes so fast, that digital projectors won't be a one-time fee for theaters. The Garden's movie projector is vintage 1950.

She says, "They're already talking about rolling out another phase of digital projectors from what they installed, you know, five years ago."

And many film connoisseurs still insist that the look of digital will never rival the look of light being projected through movie film.'

Follow the link for audio.

http://ipr.interlochen.org/arts-and-culture/episode/17620

By the way, I was linke to this article from Brad Bird's Twitter page.



Monday, January 16, 2012

Touch of Evil


Write up by Connor Dean

I heard from my brother that this film was showing at the Detroit Film Theater this past weekend. The atmosphere of the classic theater itself set the stage for a great movie. I have seen Welles' Citizen Kane, and really enjoyed it. I had no idea what to expect from this movie though. This re-cut version of the film felt very modern. The pacing of the story was such that the sequence of events leading up to climax felt exact and precise. I kept trying to guess how it would pan out, but the lack of assurance in the characters' morals made me second guess myself. I hope the DFT is playing this movie, or other movies like it, sometime soon.

Write up by Ethan Dean

I recently saw Touch of Evil. Unfortunately, it wasn't at the Detroit Film Theater with my brother. However, that did not deter from the experience I had with this movie. The film deals a lot with perception and occupation. Therefore, introductions are everything in this movie. I had heard about the opening tracking shot before I saw this movie, and could easily say that it was far ahead of its time. Orson Welles is a master at creating dynamic visuals, editing shots together, composing sound, and really creating a spectacular overall flow. He's by far the most interesting man on the screen at all times. Against the other men in black suits, he sticks out in his light colored coat. In every scene it seems as though a little more light is being projected on him than the others. His physical presence on screen also gives him a sense of overbearing power over the other men.

There was a quote on the wall in one scene that read, "If you're mean enough to steal from the blind, then HELP YOURSELF." I love when a filmmaker has enough care for his craft to include details like this. They're not set dressers, they serve a purpose in the overall context of the story.

Also, I should mention that the sets are absolutely incredbile in this movie. The lighting is extremely dynamic, yet designed purposefully around the staging of the characters and overall composition. There's one scene where the cast shadow of a pillar leads your eye directly into the figure and maintains flow around the screen. It seems black and white cinematographers tend to be even more conscious of the light on form, contrast, and more design oriented principles. It's really fun to watch.

I really thought this was a tight script. Thematically the film was about the persversion of power. The dialogue was great. In many scenes the dialogue was overlapping making the editing job a little more difficult, and also making it difficult for me to discern who to listen to. However, in the end, everything felt like part of a grand design.

Roger Ebert and Film Revenue

I figure if I post this article someone will find it interesting. This is Roger Ebert's article 'I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping.' It gives six different explanations for why the movie industry has suffered this year. Great stuff, very interesting.

I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping...

BY ROGER EBERT / December 28, 2011

Box office revenue at movie theaters "lagged far behind 2010," an article by the AP's David Germain reports. Partly that was because the year lacked an "Avatar." Partly because a solid summer slate fell off in the autumn. Germain talks to several Hollywood insiders who tried to account for the general decline of ticket sales; 2011 had "smallest movie audience since 1995." I have some theories of my own, fueled by what people tell me.

1. Obviously, the absence of a must-see mass-market movie. When moviegoers hear about "Avatar" or "The Dark Knight," they blast off from home base and land in a theater seat as quickly as they can.

2. Ticket prices are too high. People have always made that complaint, but historically the movies have been cheap compared to concerts, major league sports and restaurants. Not so much any longer. No matter what your opinion is about 3D, the charm of paying a hefty surcharge has worn off for the hypothetical family of four.

3. The theater experience. Moviegoers above 30 are weary of noisy fanboys and girls. The annoyance of talkers has been joined by the plague of cell-phone users, whose bright screens are a distraction. Worse, some texting addicts get mad when told they can't use their cell phones. A theater is reportedly opening which will allow and even bless cell phone usage, although that may be an apocryphal story.

4. Refreshment prices. It's an open secret that the actual cost of soft drinks and popcorn is very low. To justify their inflated prices, theaters serve portions that are grotesquely oversized, and no longer offer what used to be a "small popcorn." Today's bucket of popcorn would feed a thoroughbred.

5. Competition from other forms of delivery. Movies streaming over the internet are no longer a sci-fi fantasy. TV screens are growing larger and cheaper. Consumers are finding devices that easily play internet movies through TV sets. Netflix alone accounts for 30% of all internet traffic in the evening. That represents millions of moviegoers. They're simply not in a theater. This could be seen as an argument about why newspapers and their readers need movie critics more than ever; the number of choices can be baffling.

6. Lack of choice. Box-office tracking shows that the bright spot in 2011 was the performance of indie, foreign or documentary films. On many weekends, one or more of those titles captures first-place in per-screen average receipts. Yet most moviegoers outside large urban centers can't find those titles in their local gigantiplex. Instead, all the shopping center compounds seem to be showing the same few overhyped disappointments. Those films open with big ad campaigns, play a couple of weeks, and disappear.


The myth that small-town moviegoers don't like "art movies" is undercut by Netflix's viewing results; the third most popular movie on Dec. 28 on Netflix was "Certified Copy," by the Iranian directorAbbas Kiarostami. You've heard of him? In fourth place--French director Alain Corneau's "Love Crime." In fifth, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"--but the subtitled Swedish version.

The message I get is that Americans love the movies as much as ever. It's the theaters that are losing their charm. Proof: theaters thrive that police their audiences, show a variety of titles and emphasize value-added features. The rest of the industry can't depend forever on blockbusters to bail it out.

Here's a link to the web article on Roger Ebert's site.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111228/COMMENTARY/111229973

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Holiday Season Film List

This is a list of several films I've seen in the past month or so. I figured I'd share them with you and list them in terms of favorites. I've included some thoughts on each of them

1 Hugo

My only disappointment while seeing this film was that I didn’t burst into tears when it finally ended. This is one of my favorite films of all time. Scorsese proves mastery over the craft of filmmaking. I should also mention I saw this in 3d and like my experience with Tangled I really enjoyed it.

2 It Happened One Night

Frank Capra, the great Frank Capra. This movie has some of the most incredible acting I’ve seen, ever. It’s a love story, a contemporary love story, made in 1934. Who would have known that filmmaker’s back then could make films as good as those today? You can’t take your eyes off Claudette Colbert, and I really can’t think of any actresses today giving a performance as intriguing as Colbert’s. Clark Gable plays the apathetic lover, less than gently courting the young rich girl as she escapes her father’s reign of control. This movie is astounding. Frank Capra is a genius when it comes to working with actors. All of his movies prove it.

3 Nashville

I saw this movie because of Robert Altman, and because PT Anderson mentioned this when talking about his favorite films. I thought the film was really good, and the acting incredible. It definitely is a lot different than I expected, and I can now see the influence in PTA’s Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Altman is a master with the camera, and can really pace a movie like no other director. I saw Gosford Park and 3 women before seeing this, and I have to say that Altman has a visual style that’s only as distinctive as maybe a Spielberg. This film kept making me think about how later generations will look at film and attempt to understand the world at that time through the actors and the subject matter and the visuals, much like we analyze Renaissance art today. I think Altman’s decision to highlight the music in Nashville so prominently was inspired. This film will last a long time.

4 East of Eden

I can’t applaud James Dean enough for his performance in this film. It was incredibly bold and brave, and something I didn’t at all expect from a guy who really isn’t remembered so much for his incredible acting talent. Elia Kazan proves that he’s a FILM director. I knew his background was in stage production, but his intuition with the camera was incredible. His tilted compositions, especially the one with James Dean and his father was brilliant. I wish they made more movies like this one. Like Frank Capra, Kazan seems to be one of the best actor’s-director. It seems he can get performances out of people that no one else can.

5 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I purposely didn’t read the books or see the original film when I heard David Fincher was going to direct the American adaptation. I should say that I’ve been watching the Social Network on repeat because of this movie. David Fincher is my idle, and he did an incredible job with this material. I don’t think he really adapted this as far as he could have, but he definitely knows how to make a movie. This movie was absolutely beautiful and worth another couple dollars to see it again while it’s in theaters.

6 Shame

I saw Steve Mcqueen’s Hunger before break, and was really impressed with the film. I had heard mostly good reviews about Hunger, and I was excited to see this new film by him. I had been reading interviews with Mcqueen and Fassbender for some time, in anticipation for Shame, and I simply had to see it. Shame left me feeling much the same way afterwards as last years Black Swan. It was an incredibly taxing journey into this man’s world. I don’t think the story was as refined as it could have been, but Fassbender and Mulligan worked absolutely incredible together.

7 The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin utilizes the same technique of motion capture James Cameron used in Avatar, and Peter Jackson will use in The Hobbit. The only difference is that although Cameron used the technology to create great panoramas in Avatar, Spielberg used the technology as a storytelling device. There are action set pieces in this movie that are all one take, the camera flowing through the CG environment. Flashbacks are told with the zooming in and out of the camera on a singular element to draw attention away from the changing environment around it. No other filmmaker could pull off two movies as impressive as War Horse and Tintin in the same year. This is a really fun movie. Watch it.

8 War Horse

This is Spielberg, maybe not at his best, but certainly in good form, which means he’s better than 99.9% of other filmmakers today. War Horse was an incredible journey. It’s a movie that you cannot appreciate for innovation or creativity in story telling, but it’s certainly a masterwork.The most memorable shot in the this film is the final scene when the boy returns home, the frame tinted out in burnt orange, the figures silhouetted against the sky. This film is astounding and beautiful. Should win some Oscars.

9 Young Adult

Charlize Theron is an incredible actress. I’m convinced she can play any role out there. In Young Adult she brought an incredible amount of attitude and honesty to her performance. Oswalt was equally as impressive. It was refreshing to see two actors work really well together again. Diablo Cody’s script was also very well written.

10 The Darjeeling Limited

After seeing this movie on the shelf at a local video store I realized that I hadn’t seen any movies by Wes Anderson yet. So the next day, I went back and rented this movie. I seem to get Anderson mixed up with Spike Jonze a lot, although, Anderson definitely is the better filmmaker. Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited follows the ‘spiritual’ journey of three brothers (Schwarzmann, Wilson, and Brody) along an Indian railway. We find out later they are searching for their mother, who abandoned them some time ago. This movie was stunningly beautiful, and it’s apparent that Anderson takes pride in his compositions and sets. Great movie.

Ben Hur

This was another film I wanted to see for some time. The visuals in this movie are stunning. It’s fun to see a movie that puts you back onto the big Hollywood Studio sets of the 50’s. The movie was really long, and it took a couple sittings to finish it, but overall I enjoyed it.

The English Patient

I had heard about the English Patient in interviews, and made a point to see it. Luckily it was on Netflix Instant and so I decided to finally watch it. I thought the story was pretty cool. The film was really well done, and in total homage to David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. The visuals were stunning, and the acting fantastic. Interestingly enough, I saw Fog City Mavericks as well over the break, and found it interesting that this film, the English Patient, wasn’t anticipated to be as big a hit as it was. Shows what studio guys know eh?

Jack Cardiff

I can’t remember how I came upon this film, but it was really cool to hear about a man who has quietly impacted the film industry for decades. Of course, he’s well known within the film community for his work with several British filmmakers (namely Powell and Pressburger). I saw a bit of his work on The Red Shoes and was impressed by the very contemporary look to his work. It’s always fun to hear filmmakers speak highly of others, especially Scorsese.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Let’s be honest, I wouldn’t have seen this in theaters if Brad Bird weren’t directing. I wholly expected this film to be fun and entertaining. It was.

Contempt

Jean Luc Godard’s Contempt I believe is his third movie. It was baffling to me that his original intentions weren’t to make this movie in cinemascope because of how well it was used. That adamant desire to not film in cinemascope might have had to do with formatting and how the actors fit in the screen. There are a lot of takes where the actors stand tall in the frame. Of course this movie was a movie about making a movie. It’s not something I haven’t seen before, nor do I think is that creative or original, but Godard’s definitely got a flavor to his films. I see Godard as a rebel, and this movie felt very contemporary and in opposition to what had been happening in Europe up to that time. I have to say that Brigitte Bardot really took over this film. I think she’s absolutely beautiful, as Godard intended to highlight, and she can act.

Two in the Wave

The documentary about filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard is really insightful for someone who doesn’t really know much about the French New Wave. This film really covered the whole range of topics, from the directors thoughts on filmmaking in France before they began making films, how that informed their films, and especially the differences of opinion between the two men so often considered in the same light. I thought it was really interesting how the documentary went into the details about the decision making of the two directors, who their influences were, and their thoughts on early cinema. I believe Bernando Bertolucci’s film The Dreamers occurs in the same timeline that the two filmmakers were making movies in France. Really good stuff.

Fog City Mavericks

About the filmmakers from the San Francisco area, this film is a really interesting, quick listen. The majority of the film highlights probably the two most prominent filmmakers from the area, Frances Copolla and George Lucas, but also covers studios like Pixar and ILM.

Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese

I walked away from this movie feeling like I had just gone through a semester’s worth of film history. This was incredibly insightful and helpful to those trying to understand film history. Scorsese takes us through the silent era, to the invention of sound, to the small town dramas of the fifties. It’s incredible how deep Scorsese’s knowledge of film goes. It’s also very intimidating.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

This is the original version from the seventies. I thought this film was really fun to watch. The writing may have not been the best, and the plot, not the greatest, but it had everything you wanted out of a movie, suspense, drama, the hero, the bad guy. I thought the production design was fantastic, and made me jealous that I didn’t grow up in the seventies (so many good movies).

Contagion

Steven Soderbergh, what can I say? This film is fantastic. It’s a little slow at times, but it really does a great job with the material. Scott Z. Burns, the screenwriter, can really write a great script, and Soderbergh’s technique is something else. Filmmakers like Soderbergh, PT Anderson, and Fincher give me hope that the seventies can be paralleled in terms of production design and art direction.

Hunger

Not sure if it’s fair to include this in the list as I saw it early in December, but I’d like to talk about it. This is Mcqueen’s first movie. It follows the story of Bobby Sands played by Michael Fassbender, a man who became the face of the Irish people during their strife with Britian in the 70s. Fassbender’s range of emotion in this film is incredible, and the physicality of this role would scare any other actor away. This is incredibly powerful film. Mcqueen’s minimalist style is captivating and beautiful even though what’s happening on screen is anything but.

Newlyweds

Though I didn’t like this film at all, I want to talk about it’s importance in the broader film market today. This is a ‘micro budget’ film, meaning it was made on an incredibly low budget. It was directed by actor Edward Burns, and made on a budget of around $125,000 (though much of the cost comes from post-production expenses). The amazing thing is that it cost only $9000 to shoot this film in New York. Now, I want to do a write-up later about why this is significant, but it tells me that there are many ways to make a film these days. If you can picture yourself as a young filmmaker in the silent era, on the edge of discovering a new artistic medium, then the possibilities would be endless in your mind. Micro budget is the future of filmmaking.

Certified Copy

Juliette Binoche is fantastic in this film by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. I wanted to see this movie back in 10 when it was showing in theaters not too far from my house, but I was unable to see it. Though the film isn’t necessarily a show boater, or something that will amaze you, the acting is more than solid, and the filmmaker extremely brave in his choices of shots. Many scenes are long, drawn out takes of the two main actors walking along the streets of an Italian city. The film is impressive looking back on it. There’s so much to learn from.