Final scene from Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood, (My Name is Ivan).
Film
Shakespeare Sunday: Kenneth Branagh Interview on “Hamlet”
According to my Twitter feed it’s #ShakespeareSunday, so I thought I’d share this 1996 Kenneth Branagh interview on Hamlet:
Here’s a scene from the movie:
It’s International Observe the Moon Night
It’s officially International Observe the Moon Night! There’s lots of great moon footage around, but I wanted to focus on the idea of reaching new spaces and really liked how this scene from “View From a Blue Moon” (2015) tied the moon landing in with a surfer’s dreams.
“View From a Blue Moon” Trailer:
The song in the trailer is Kishi Bashi’s “I Am The Antichrist To You” –
He released this story with the official video (below):
“Once he belonged to someone.
He had a big floppy ear like a puppy and a tiny tail like a bunny.
Nobody knew what he was, but it didn’t matter to them anymore.
He was abandoned on the street. There he found a hat that was also dumped, and they both decided to take a journey in search of a better place.
The puppy and the hat sailed away in the dark ocean…
One day, they arrived to The Island, where All the creatures were once someones’
family, friend or lover.
No one can visit the island except the ones who came here abandoned…
He met there the pink bunny with whom they spent many years rediscovering happiness again. Then the numbers from their other world arrived…”
Robin Joseph’s Beautiful Short Film “Fox And The Whale” is a Touching Tale of Curiosity
With a mix of drawings and computer animation, Robin Joseph and animation partner Kim Leow have created a beautiful short film that centers around one fox’s curiosity. Director/Producer Joseph elaborates:
The inspiration for ‘Fox and the Whale’ was the pursuit of curiosity. Not so much a primal curiosity behind food, shelter, or even play. It was more about the grey areas and often abstract pursuits. The drive of wanting to know what lies beyond the abyss. The ambitions at the fringes of it often seem one step beyond reach. The fact that we still try instills a sense of awe and wonder. At the other end is an idea of failure, or at least what is perceived as failure. The fortitude to move forward and keep searching in spite of it. It’s a fragile state of mind at times, but to me it holds such optimism.
Enjoy twelve minutes of pure wonderment:
Fox And The Whale from robin joseph on Vimeo.
The “Fox And The Whale” music was written by John Poon.
Link Love: Blade Runner 2049 Exclusive Photos
This morning I went to see the new “Blade Runner 2049,” which I touched on in yesterday’s post, and I found it to be an incredible sequel filled with spectacular scenes. It was truly the best movie I’ve seen all year.
I found the entire movie to be visually stunning, and if you want to view some new photos from the film, then head on over to ew.com where they just posted some exclusive pictures, with this description:
In the hands of director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger A. Deakins, nearly every frame of this much-anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi original — which resumes the story of bounty hunters called blade runners who “retire” factory-made replicants — dazzles.
I’m just going to go bask in the glory of the movie for a while now.
Blade Runner 2049
Last month I rewatched Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” in anticipation of “Blade Runner 2049,” which came out today. I hadn’t seen the film in over fifteen years and I believe I came to appreciate its beauty and intricacy even more this time around, especially the final rooftop scene featuring replicant Roy Batty’s speech (played by the incredibly talented and amazing Rutger Hauer), the “Tears in Rain” aka “The C-Beams Speech,” which has to be one of the best cinematic scenes ever.
The sequel, arriving 35 years after the sci-fi masterpiece, has already received a number of really good reviews, including a five out of five-star review from Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw who describes the film as a “gigantic spectacle of pure hallucinatory craziness.” I was also happy to read in the review that the sequel promises more of those wonderful futuristic rain scenes:
There are poignant theme-variations on memory and crying in the rain and a cityscape full of signs in different languages (Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Korean), ghostly VR advertising avatars and flashing corporate logos, playfully including the obsolete PanAm.
On a side note, I found it a little bit fascinating that Elon Musk’s plans to colonize Mars were revealed around the same time that this movie was being made. The original “Blade Runner,” based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is a sweepingly gorgeous display of neon and flying cars, but also full of warnings of a destructive future where robots are “more human than humans.” The first movie is set in a ravished Los Angeles in November 2019, where inhabitants could blast off of the planet to a new promise in space, with “the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.”
While the predictions of Blade Runner may not be as close as fictionalized here in the year 2017, we do have Elon Musk seriously tackling a colonization of Mars at the moment. This is not to say that Musk’s ambitious dreams are purely escapist, he does offer some very viable environmental solutions for good old planet Earth too, including an offer to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid using solar technology.
My ambitious dream is to get to the theater early tomorrow morning to see it in a quiet setting.