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I don't usually get sucked into random YouTube ads but this one made me watch all the way through.

There is more info about their true story here. 

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I think that's a lovely song and video. But ugh, the original Truffaut film looks just dreadful. The storyline, at least. I've never seen Jules et Jim but after reading about it, I'm sure that I don't want to. Plus it's Stephen Hawking's all time favorite film. Double ugh.

How Does an Editor Think and Feel?

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"People aren't machines, we need time to feel the emotion and if the movie doesn't give it to us, we don't believe it."  

Slowing Down The Past

After having just watched a lot of jerky, speeded-up World War I footage, the thought occurred to me: Why not digitize the frames and create interpolated frames between the real frames?  Then slow everything down and presto -- natural motion.

I assumed that early film technology moved too slowly -- that early film cameras couldn't blink fast enough to keep up with reality. Boy, was I wrong.  

Old movies look jerky because there is a fundamental mismatch between older projection speeds and modern projection speeds and television. People in theaters back then actually saw movies that looked natural and not jerky.

Why is this so hard to fix?

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I recently rewatched "My Fair Lady" and deborah's earlier post instantly reminded me of this song. The homoerotic undertones between Higgins and Pickering were too obvious. The film has a terrible ending as well. I may need to reread "Pygmalion" for a cleanser.  

Wait A Minute!

Overheard at Forbes:

Though these elite actresses are still well remunerated, the Hollywood pay gap has been well publicized. Lawrence made headlines this year when Wikileaks revealed she and her female American Hustle costar received a lower cut of profits than their male counterparts. The leaked Sony correspondence relayed Lawrence’s representatives complaining that male actors (Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner) received a 9% cut of profits, while Lawrence and Amy Adams pocketed just 7%. Link to source

I read this in two different ways, neither of which I like:

(1) Cooper, Bale and Renner each got 9% of the profits, while Lawrence and Adams each got 7%.

(2) Cooper, Bale, and Renner split 9% three ways or 3% each, while Lawrence and Adams split 7% two ways or 3.5% each.

The first reading is blatantly unfair to the women; the second reading is blatantly unfair to the men. There isn't enough information given in the cited Forbes article to decide between the two.

But my biggest problem with the first scenario is why the hell does nearly 41%* of the profit go to just five people?  That right there is the Hollywood problem in a nutshell: overly-paid actors. There are plenty of other people involved in filmmaking who deserve a piece of that pie. Do actors take it in the shorts when a film loses money? I suppose they do over time if they continually act in flops.

I would like to see numbers on how much profit went to actors in the decades past.

Actors and actresses need the shit taxed out of them because they mostly give those ill-gotten gains to bad causes.**
__________________
* 9 + 9 + 9 + 7 + 7 = 41

** Here's to you, Ike

[added] I just read that Jennifer Lawrence's newest film "Mocking Jay: Part 2" has severely underperformed expectations. I was a big fan of that series and even went to a theater to see the last one. Her loudmouthed antics are enough to keep me away this time.

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I happen to like how he says the word "granary" around the 1 minute mark.

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Now if Troop would only write some alternative dialog for the movie, I could chirbitize it!

The McCain Mutiny

John Roberts' bittersweet dissent in Lem's previous post reminded me of this scene in "The Caine Mutiny":

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And Deliverance From Evil

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Fifty years ago, white American poverty was synonymous with rural Appalachia, just as black American poverty was (and still is) with urban despair; LBJ's "War On Poverty" was a two front war. The worst Appalachian poverty was in eastern Kentucky. Nobody writes about that much anymore--instead we learn about it from shows like Justified.*

An ugly face was put on the people there sometime ago, perhaps after the movie Deliverance --mountain people become derisional characters, all too much to blame for their own misery.

I googled "Appalachian poverty" and the first hit is National Geographic piece called A Fresh Look At Appalachia--50 Years After The War On Poverty. If you're like me, you no longer trust National Geographic for impartiality.  This is sad because the magazine was a part of our growing up. Sure enough, the first photo does not disappoint:

The father of the young woman writes in the comments to the hit piece:

My daughter is the young lady getting out of the racecar, Kealey Lowe. She is not a hillbilly or a red neck. She races cars and she is also a member of the cheer leading squad at her high school. She has been involved with a ballet studio right here in Cumberland County since she was 2 years old. We have lived in Cumberland County all of our lives. I think parts of this story are great, but I feel as if there is not enough positive involved. There is still a lot of poverty in this area, but we are not backwards hillbillies. I work at Tennessee College of Applied Technology in Admissions. We are a technical college. We have the technology to educate people and the students to prove it, but the jobs are just not in the area. We need to start showing more of this side of Appalachian areas and the growth that has come and stop dwelling on the negative. We need to help the area grow with positive images and industry to attract companies to our area.

Bravo, dad!

[Added] I think the banjo player shuns the guitar player in the Deliverance scene because the latter breaks the 3rd Commandment (twice).

My 2015 Oscars Predilections

Having seen only two of this year's Best Picture nominees, I can't offer superlatives. I saw American Sniper and gave my thoughts here. Last night, I watched Richard Linklater's Boyhood and in my opinion, it's the better picture.

I like most of Linklater's movies - perhaps because he is my age and he knows the 1970's Zeitgeist and beyond from my perspective.  I've liked his movies ever since Dazed And Confused -- a vastly underrated movie in my opinion.

Boyhood uses Linklater's original lapsed-time cinematography which is an art form unto itself. I liked it in his Before...trilogy and I like it in Boyhood.  Of course, it portends there being a subsequent film called Manhood. :0

Boyhood is really a movie for people who had kids during that time period. The back talk scenes are priceless as are the moments when parents and child really do connect. And there is something very alluring about Patricia Arquette which made me realize that Nicholas Cage is a fortunate man.

My Oscar predictions: Either American Sniper or Boyhood for Best Picture. I'd be happy with either.

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According to Wiki, the song "American Girl" never charted for Tom Petty. That doesn't seem right, somehow.

The video features a gorgeous collection of female faces from the golden era of American cinema. 

Oh and the guitar is very Byrdsy.

#AmericanSniper

I saw American Sniper yesterday with my son. The other half of my family expressed no interest in seeing it nor even hearing what we thought of it. That probably represents America in a way.

My first reaction afterwards was to call my mother to get some PTSD family stories straight. Her brother-in-law (my uncle) had served in WW II and had survived fierce hand-to-hand combat at Guadalcanal, and had had problems. I was way too young to remember anything about that or the aftermath and she's my only living link back now. I will let those stories be, as horrific as they were, out of respect for the dead and for the living as they still affect the next generation(s). I also wanted to know more about an older cousin who had fought on helicopter gunships in Vietnam. He was older than me by 10 years and so I never knew him well as a kid like I did other cousins. I do remember his going over there -- conscripted. And I thought about him during scenes of "American Sniper." He returned home to a small Wisconsin town --the same one where my parents grew up and which I knew as a kid. I remember hearing about how dynamite explosions at a local stone quarry used to give him the jitters. My mother told me some detail about how his later marriage dissolved that I had never heard. I will not repeat those stories either, out of respect for the living but suffice it to say it could not have been his fault.

"American Sniper" isn't supposed to be about those wars but it is somehow. It's supposed to be about the Iraq War.  I have no family who served there, but only a dearly loved neighbor who did two tours in Iraq as a Marine. I wrote about him here. I thought about him too.

I felt a jumble of other emotions: guilt, anger, pride.  The anger came from critics dissing this movie as "pro-war." I mean, WTF?  Another piece of residual anger comes from unresolved issues dating back to Vietnam and its aftermath. When I was 19, I saw members of a mayoral administration openly cheer the "anti-war" killers of an innocent man -- one of whom is still at large. I can never "unremember" that.  That story doesn't belong here and I already wrote about it here. I see the same attitude today. I cannot square it with reality. The guilt part is more complex and I'm not quite willing or able to confront that yet, let alone talk about it.  The pride part come from the sense that somebody can still make movies like "American Sniper."  See it -- I think it's supposed to disturb you.

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Heard through the bovine in another thread:

Bovine: "My envy runs deep for that wood pile
You have an exceptionally nice wood shed."
Biker: "People never said that about me when I was younger and single.

That reminded me of a favorite movie called "Cold Comfort Farm":

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The Foo Fighters' "The Colour and the Shape" was the very first CD I bought. I used to love to blast it at night on I-5, weaving through traffic. Well, that actually came later because in 1998 I was still driving a 1960's car which had only AM radio.

Speaking of Dave Grohl, his movie last year -- Sound City -- is awesome. It's a real labor of love and you can tell. I won't give away much but if you're the sort who likes documentaries about how pop culture things happen -- especially music -- you'll love that movie. It reminded me of "In The Shadows of Motown" and "The Wrecking Crew."  Here is the trailer:

"Dazed And Confused" in 10 Minutes

Instapundit has a link up right now about Richard Linklater's "Dazed And Confused."  It is one of my all time favorite movie comedies because it hits so close to home in so many ways (class of '78 here).

Great soundtrack, too.

Fire and Ice

Offered as a parallel reaction to Chip's post of the dramatic fire rescue in Houston. This dramatic ice rescue was captured on film in D.W. Griffith's "Way Down East."

Please turn down the sound in this clip to better enjoy it.

There's No Butter In Hell!

Lem was looking for movie suggestion the other night. "Cold Comfort Farm" is a favorite of mine. Here's a clip that reminds me of Fred Phelps: