Category: Interesting

Chris Baker at Wired has compiled a list of the ten best movies in the public domain that can be downloaded via sites like PublicDomainTorrents.com or Archive.org.

They are:

1) Detour (1945)
Snappy dialog, femme fatale, guilt-ridden hero, flimsy sets – it’s protonoir that helped launch a genre.

2) Driller Killer (1979)
Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant) directs and plays a homicidal artist. Not the 1948 dance hit Killer Diller.

3) Night of the Living Dead (1968)
George Romero’s gritty classic out-brains the avalanche of zombie flicks it inspired. Mmm … brains.

4) Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
It’s a Wonderful Life is out of the public domain? So what. The interplanetary battle for Christmas rules!

5) Superman cartoons (early 1940s)
Modern superhero flicks got nothin’ on these perfectly drawn shorts.

6) The Battle of San Pietro (1943)
Forget Private Ryan and get into real WW II bunkers with this gripping John Huston documentary.

7) The General (1927)
Buster Keaton is still the king of physical comedy. This train-hijacking romp is his masterpiece.

8) The Lost World (1925)
We’ll take the stop-motion dinosaurs in this seminal f/x flick over Jurassic Park’s CG crap any day.

9) The Street Fighter (1974)
Quentin Tarantino’s idol Sonny Chiba literally tears bad guys apart in a graphic karate-palooza.

10) Reefer Madness (1936)
One puff of wacky tobacky turns Depression-era teens into sex fiends, pinkos, and jazz pianists.

My two favourites here are Night of the Living Dead and The General but Reefer Madness is also a complete hoot.

> Original article at Wired
> Wikipedia on the Public Domain and a comprehensive list of movies in it
> PublicDomainTorrents.com
> Archive.org
> Watch The General at Google Video

Thanks to Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere for linking to a very interesting LA Times piece by Reed Johnson on Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu that discusses their films and the faternity that exists between them.

It reminded me of a BAFTA screening of 21 Grams back in December 2003. Cuarón (who at the time was filming Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkabhan) introduced the film and sat in on the Q&A afterwards with Iñárritu. They were not only intelligent and engaging speakers but their deep respect and admiration for one another was clear. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (who has worked on all of Iñárritu’s films) also participated, even though London traffic meant that he turned up a little late.

I haven’t yet seen Babel or Pan’s Labyrinth but if either are as good as Children of Men then it will indeed be a remarkable trio of films from these directors.

> The LA Times article by Reed Johnson
> Official Site for Babel
> Official site for Pan’s Labyrinth
> Official site for Children of Men
> BBC News article on Children of Men with cast and crew comments
> Jeffrey Wells interviews Iñárritu about Babel back in May
> Cuarón discusses his influences in a short interview with New York Magazine
> Anne Thompson also profiles the “Three Amigos” at the Hollywood Reporter
> Rodrigo Prieto discusses shooting Babel with with Debra Kaufman of StudioDaily.com

Entertainment Weekly had a list of “The 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever Made” back in June but it got dugg recently so its worth linking to if you missed it.

Number 1 is rather predictable but there are some interesting choices, especially Alladin (!).

> The full list at EW
> BBC News on the list
> A list of banned films at Wikipedia

I just stumbled across an interesting interview The Believer magazine conducted with Steven Soderbergh whilst browsing around Jason Kottke’s blog. He talks about a few different things ranging from Brokeback Mountain to films of his that failed like Kafka. But the bit that stuck out for me was how cheaply films he thinks films can be made for and the problems they face getting distributed:

BLVR: When you shot Bubble, how much did the camera cost?

SS: It’s like four thousand dollars. You could do the whole thing for ten thousand dollars.

BLVR: How much did Bubble cost altogether?

SS: One point six million. Because I paid people. There’s a tipping point. If you’re going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right now for ten grand, if you have an idea. That’s the trick. I was watching Alphaville this weekend, and I’d love to do like a ten-minute version of Alphaville here in Manhattan. It’s so easy now. I don’t know what the ultimate result of that will be—whether you’ll see a sort of a film version of iTunes, where you can access things that have been made independently by people.

BLVR: Books, as well—you can self-publish your book easily, have them ship boxes of the book to you, but there’s no vetting process.

SS: You’re right. But then the question is—whose vetting process is this, and who are these people? A buddy of mine, I went and saw his art at DUMBO, and I asked him why his shit wasn’t showing in the big New York galleries. And he said he can’t get in there, he doesn’t know anybody. It’s just the way it works. Your response to that can be “Fuck them, I don’t need the imprimatur of a bunch of Manhattan gallery owners to know that I’m good,” and you’d be right. But if you’re a painter and you want people to know who you are and recognize your work, you’ve got to build some long-term value, you’re beholden to this cabal. I don’t know where the middle point is—“I can’t find anyone to vouch for the legitimacy of this thing that somebody’s asking me to download”—and access that’s being controlled by a bunch of people who, it’s possible, if you met, you’d actually hate.

I wonder if he is making an oblique analogy between New York gallery owners and Hollywood studios?

> IMDb entry for Steven Soderbergh
> Wikipedia entry for Bubble

The LA Times has a short but interesting interview with Devin Hawker from Gas Station Zebra. They are a company that helps copy write and cut trailers and he explains the art behind creating one. He also reveals why footage sometimes appears in the trailer but not in the movie:

“When I talk to people outside the business they think that’s some sort of devious thing going on. But what happens is that [the filmmakers] are cutting the movie the same time we are cutting the trailer. It is a concurrent thing and so they are making their decisions and the studio is making theirs on what the trailer should be so a lot of times the trailer will go out and two months later they will pull something out of the movie.”

> Gas Station Zebra
> Apple Trailers
> Google Video Movie Previews (why didn’t they just call it “Google Trailers”?)

Since 2001 artist Ahree Lee has been taking digital photos of her own face every day. In 2004, she compiled all of her daily images into a short film set to music. It is simply called Me and you can check it out here:

55YYaJIrmzo
55YYaJIrmzo

> More info on Ahree Lee at her official website
> Ahree Lee’s profile at YouTube

PkiyNPoEHo0

Back to the Future helped Michael J Fox to become a big star but one lesser known fact is that Eric Stolz was originally cast in the lead role of Marty McFly. BTTF.com has some interesting images from the original scenes shot with Stolz before he got replaced. (Link via Digg)

> Eric Stolz as Marty McFly
> Wikipedia with more on Michael J Fox vs Eric Stolz