Je vous salue, Sarajevo. Dir. GODARD. 1993.

In a sense, fear is the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday night. She's not beautiful; mocked, cursed and disowned by all. But don't get it wrong: she watches over all mortal agony, she intercedes for mankind. For there's a rule and an exception. Culture is the rule, and art is the exception. Everybody speaks the rule: cigarette, computer, t-shirt, television, tourism, war. Nobody speaks the exception. It isn't spoken, it's written: Flaubert, Dostojevskij. It's composed: Gershwin, Mozart. It's painted: Cézanne, Vermeer. It's filmed: Antonioni, Vigo. Or it's lived, and then it's the art of living: Srebenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. The rule is to want the death of the exception. So the rule for Cultural Europe is to organize the death of the art of living, which still flourishes.

When it's time to close the book, I'll have no regrets. I've seen so many people live so badly, and so many die so well.

A mini-masterpiece! I've been searching for this for a while...
Via Chained to the Cinémathèque.

"Madame Tutli-Putli." Dir. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski. 2007.

Madame Tutli-Putli boards the night train, weighed down with all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past.

She travels alone, facing both the kindness and menace of strangers. As day descends into dark, she finds herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure. Adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons and is drawn into an undertow of mystery and suspense.

Official Website: Link.
Youtube: Part 2

"Ben and Me." Prod. Walt Disney. 1953.

The animator Ollie Johnston, the last of the Disney "nine old men," as the studio's core group of senior animators was called, died on Monday in Sequim, Wash.

The AP.

Youtube. Ben and Me: Part 2
Wikipedia: Ollie Johnston
Wikipedia: Disney's Nine Old Men

Portishead - "Machine Gun." 2008

And... 10 years later when Bristol meets Lo-Fi... new Portishead album Three gets released on April 28th.

Young Marble Giants - "Colossal Youth." 1980.

Tuesday Throwbacks
One of the only few videos I could find on youtube from Young Marble Giants. A "minimalist/lo-fi/post-punk" UK band that formed in the late 70s and broke up quickly after their debut album Colossal Youth. From wikipedia:

Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain, said in a 1992 Melody Maker interview, that Colossal Youth was one of the five most influential records he had ever heard.

YMG's sound predates bands such as Broadcast, Au Revoir Simone, The Blow, etc. Check 'em out!

Fansite: youngmarblegiants.com

The Outfield - "Your Love." 1986.

Tuesday Throwbacks...
This one goes to The Outfield and the meta music video for "Your Love."

Josie's on a vacation far away
Come around and talk it over
So many things that I wanna say
You know I like my girls a little bit older
I just wanna use your love tonight
I don't wanna lose your love tonight

That guitar riff... Too Good.

Cassavetes On Handheld Camera.

Short but great clip of John Cassavetes discussing a crazy handheld shot.

Damnation. Dir. Bela Tarr. 1988.

Two musical scenes from one of the BESTest films out in the last 20 years.

If you're in LA today (FRIDAY APRIL 28th) checkout Bela Tarr's latest film The Man From London at LACMA 7:30 PM.

My Blueberry Nights. Dir. WKW. 2007.

WKW's latest opens in LA at the Landmark April 4th.

In Wong Kar Wai's debut English language feature, the internationally acclaimed director of In the Mood for Love takes his audience on a dramatic journey across the distance between heartbreak and a new beginning. After a rough break-up, Elizabeth (songstress Norah Jones in her screen debut) sets out on a journey across America, leaving behind a life of memories, a dream and a soulful new friend, a café owner (Jude Law)—all while in search of something to mend her broken heart. Waitressing her way through the country, Elizabeth befriends others whose yearnings are greater than hers, including a troubled cop (David Strathairn), his estranged wife (Rachel Weisz) and a down-on-her luck gambler (Natalie Portman). Through these individuals, Elizabeth witnesses the true depths of loneliness and emptiness, and begins to understand that her own journey is part of a greater exploration within herself.

EXTRA EXTRA!
Rotten Tomatoes Interview with Norah Jones: link

Flight of the Red Balloon. Dir. Hou Hsiao Hsien. 2007.

LACMA Screening
April 5 (7:30 PM)

Commissioned by the Musée d'Orsay, Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao Hsien's first French-language film stars Juliette Binoche, in "perhaps the best and certainly the most eccentric performance of her career" (Dennis Lim), as a single mother so absorbed in her work as a puppeteer that she hires a young film student to help care for her seven-year old son. Though partly inspired by Albert Lamorisse's 1956 short Le ballon rouge, Hou's film is an entirely original and tender reimagining infused with the lyrical humanism and casual majesty of his weightless camerawork. "A quiet, unassuming and flawless tribute to Paris, to the spirit of childhood and to the ability of art to compensate for some of the painful imperfections of life."

- A.O. Scott, The New York Times

EXTRA CLIP!:
Also inspired by The Red Balloon, is this clip with Thomas the Tank Engine.

PiKAPiKA THE MOVIE ~GO! GO! PiKAPiKA!!~. Tochka. 2008.

The latest film project from Tochka, an Osaka-based duo (Nagata Takeshi and Monno Kazue) best known for their flashlight animation aka Lightning Doodle Projects... Or the inspiration for the latest Sprint commercials.

For more light doodles. http://tochka.jp/pikapika/

There Is Only One Sun. Dir. WKW. 2007.

I'm behind on my WKW and I'm scrapping for any news besides bad reviews for My Blueberry Nights when it gets released later this year. Found a commercial that was shot for Phillips in 2007. Very reminiscent of 2046... an operatic Alphaville full of saturated colors. Here's a few stills.

Checkout the full movie at the website: www.seductionbylight.com.

Or skip the advertising and download directly here (right click and save as).

Passage. 2007. Jason Rohrer.

Jason Rohrer's gem of a game submitted for Kokoromi's Gamma 256 event explores momento mori in ways that makes me cry. Life and death told in 100 by 16 pixels, walk around find love and treasure chests too!

Here's a helpful hint, you can also move up and down. Also, the game only lasts 5 minutes, so give it a try. Here's a quote from Rohrer's statement:

[Passage] presents an entire life, from young adulthood through old age and death, in the span of five minutes. Of course, it's a game, not a painting or a film, so the choices that you make as the player are crucial. There's no "right" way to play Passage, just as there's no right way to interpret it.

Checkout Rohrer's other game, Gravitation, if you found Passage interesting.

Available for all systems, Mac/PC/Linux. Follow the links and download.

Project Website: link
Jason Rohrer's Statement: link

There Will Be Milkshakes for Old Men. 2008. SNL.

Seems like SNL got a fresh start after the WGA strike.

Prologue (Visions of Europe). 2004. Dir. Bela Tarr.

Bela Tarr's entry for Visions of Europe.

The idea is simple:
Twenty-five countries, twenty-five visions from respected film directors from each of the respective countries that form the new European Community. Each director will give a personal vision of current or future life in this coming cultural melting pot.

The conditions are equally simple:
Absolute freedom of expression.

Tarr has a series of screenings at LACMA coming up, including his latest The Man From London and also the full eight hours of Satantango.

Reel Epics: The Films of Béla Tarr
March 7 - March 28

Hungary's Béla Tarr is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the last twenty years, yet he remains little known in the U.S. This series tracks Tarr from the stripped-down naturalism of his early works to the mesmerizing formalism of his recent masterpieces. With subtle, textured sound design and spellbinding camerawork, Tarr depicts the relationships among charlatans, demagogues and luckless peasants trapped in crowded city apartments or in remote towns.

March 7 7:30 PM Werckmeister Harmonies
March 8 7:30 PM Damnation
March 14 7:30 PM Family Nest
March 14 9:20 PM The Prefab People
March 15 7:30 PM The Outsider
March 21 7:30 PM Almanac of Fall
March 22 2:00 PM Sátántangó
March 28 7:30 PM The Man from London

iBand. Jamsessions?

"the world's first iphone band."

more at: iband.at

The Dot and the Line. 1965. Dir. Chuck Jones.

"This is the anguished tale of a sensible straight line who falls in love with a dot. The dot, however, finding the line stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The story ends with a punning moral: "To the vector belong the spoils.""

Be Kind Rewind. 2008. Dir. Michel Gondry

Jack Black stars in Be Kind Rewind, a one-of-a-kind comedy from the mind of writer/director Michel Gondry (Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Black stars as a loveable loser stuck in a life that's too small for his big dreams. But when he unintentionally erases all the tapes in a video store where his best friend works, he devises a plan to satisfy the store's few loyal customers by re-creating and re-filming every movie they decide to rent. Be Kind Rewind features a cast that includes Mos Def, Danny Glover, and Mia Farrow.

Michel Gondry's latest film Be Kind Rewind gets released this Friday, Feb. 22. This version of the trailer takes on the same "swede"ing techniques found in the film. Gondry finds himself destroying the original trailer while projecting it. He then recreates it by filming himself as all the characters and then using lo-fi tricks to remake the rest. Brillant!

C'était un Rendezvous. 1976. Dir. Claude Lelouch

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.

(via jerrykindall.com)

Wiki. Link.
Google Map of the path driven. Link.
Satellite Map. Link.

Also appropriated as a video for Snow Patrol's "Open Your Eyes"

David Lynch's "iPhone Commercial"