“Last Day Dream” (2009) by Chris Milk

A short and stunning film piece by director Chris Milk. It was produced for the 42 Second Dream Film Festival in Beijing, China. Its synopsis: “a man watches his life pass before him.” A topic that most likely will touch every person who watches it, because in life we experience good and bad moments. And it is best to make use of every moment to the fullest.

Chris Milk is known for his music video work with artists such as Kanye West, U2, Green Day, Audioslave, Gnarls Barkley, and others.

Click here to see the video.

Movie Stars: Camcorders

From National Geographic Adventure Magazine:
"Sure, you can take good video with still cameras. But if you want to make a full-fledged movie, a camcorder is still the only way to play. These three are at the top of their game."
Text by Steve Casimiro; Photograph by Joshua Scott.

Click here to see the cameras.

My Toughest Shot

An eagle hunter in Xinjiang, China (courtesy of Philipp Engelhorn)

2009 Outside Exposure Special:

"We asked 16 photographers to share their hardest-won images and the wild, sometimes foolish, and invariably bold adventures behind them. From a nomadic Kutchi camp in Tajikistan to a frozen lake in Siberia, and everywhere in between, these pros show--and tell--how they got the job done."

Click here to see them.

SFFS FALL SEASON 2009

The San Francisco Film Society is proud to present its robust Fall Season for adventurous Bay Area viewers interested in the finest regional and international cinema.

November 6-8: Taiwan Film Days
A multifaceted look into the vibrant Taiwanese film culture and industry. Landmark's Opera Plaza Cinema.

November 11-15: SF International Animation Festival
The boldest and most exciting animated films from around the world. Landmark's Embarcadero Center Cinema.

November 15-22: New Italian Cinema
Celebrating the rich cinematic tradition of Italy and its newest generation of filmmakers. Landmark's Embarcadero Center Cinema.

December 12-13: KinoTek: Catherine Galasso, Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice
A live multimedia performance that surveys the life of a man who has been struck by lightning seven times. SOMArts Cultural Center.

Visit sffs.org for tickets and information

FILMHOUSE OPEN HOUSE

SFFS FilmHouse Residencies is holding its Fall Open House, Thursday, November 5, 6:00-8:00 pm. Come see the diverse and dynamic works-in-progress of current residents: Serge Bakalian, Christian Bruno, Eugene Corr, Kristine Enea, Marcia Jarmel, Melissa Regan, Rajendra Serber, Sahra Walker, and their teams.

FilmHouse is located at Pier 27 on the Embarcadero, in a white 1950's office building between Bauer's Limousines (to the right) and Teatro Zinzanni (to the left). The six-month residency program is currently accepting applications for the March 2010 cycle. Submit applications by December 1, 2009 at sffs.org.

The FilmHouse Residencies make 2,800 square feet of production office space available free of charge to support local independent filmmakers actively engaged in various stages of film production.

Going Home (A short film on Dementia)

"Watch this prize-winning video produced by Vinn Bay and Tee Boon Leng for a video competition as part of the ADI (Alzheimer's Disease International) conference in March 2009.

The Health Promotion Board would like to thank the Alzheimer's Disease Association (ADA) for granting permission to screen this video on our website. This video is the property of the ADA. You may view its contents for personal and non-commercial purposes only. Its contents may not be re-produced, distributed, transmitted, published, displayed, broadcast,stored, adapted, licensed, altered, hyperlinked or otherwise used in any manner or means without ADA's prior written consent. "

Landmark Theatre Release

Opening Friday at Embarcadero Center Cinema is ANTICHRIST, a psychological horror film by Lars von Trier.

Also starting Friday at the Embarcadero is the U.K. sports drama THE DAMNED UNITED, starring Michael Sheen (The Queen).

Opening Friday at Lumiere is ONG BAK 2: THE BEGINNING, showcasing Tony Jaa as a master of a wide range of martial arts styles.

Opening at the Lumiere is BIG FAN, by writer/director Robert Siegel (The Wrestler). SPECIAL APPEARANCES: Producer Nick Gallo and cast member Gino Cafarelli in person Friday, October 23 at 7:10pm.

Also new at the Lumiere is the Chris Rock comedic documentary on hairstyles, GOOD HAIR.

Showtimes and tickets here.

The All Roads Film Project Proudly Hosts at the 2009 AFI Fest
The Two Horses of Genghis Khan (Chingisiyn Hoyor Zagal)
All regular screenings are free!
Friday October 30, 10 p.m., Mann 1

National Geographic's Photo of the Month

by Anke Seidlitz, 2009 International Photo Contest.

Crooked Beauty

Click on the pic to go to the site.

Sign Up Now for the Dallas Photo Seminar

Photo: Eddie Soloway

Wander off the beaten path with National Geographic Traveler photographer Michael Melford and well-known nature photographer and lecturer Eddie Soloway as they reveal the secrets of good nature and outdoor photography. See inspired photos and learn the methods that our experts used to create them. For more information and to reserve tickets to the November 8 seminar in Dallas, visit NGTravelerSeminars.com.

A letter from the director and producer of THE HORSE BOY

From Landmark Theatres Film Club Newsletter.

Dear Film Club Member,

I want to take you into a different world. A world where the borders between perception, reality and the spirit world blur. A world where horses can heal, and where the wilderness offers sanctuary, as well as danger. A world where love is tested to its limits, where shamans dance among the mountains, and where one small boy can change the life of everyone around him.

In 2004 my son Rowan was first diagnosed with autism. The feeling was like being hit across the face with a baseball bat. Grief, shame—this weird, irrational shame—as if I had somehow cursed this child by giving him my faulty genetics. Watching him recede, float away from me, as if separated by the see-through barrier of a dream.

I had to find a way into his world. I found it, incredibly, through a horse—Betsy.

When Rowan first met Betsy, her reaction to him was so gentle, so submissive that—as a lifelong horse trainer—I knew he had some kind of direct line to her. The first time I put him up on her back, he began to speak. I had found my way in.

What I could not know in that first, miraculous moment, was that this first day on a horse in rural Texas would take us halfway across the world in search of a healing that many—sometimes even myself—thought was madness.

This is not a story about the tragedy of autism. This is a story about how, as a family, we took a leap of faith that resulted in—well—the defining experience of our lives.

Please come with us.

—Rupert Isaacson, producer and author of the book The Horse Boy

---

I first met Rupert Isaacson at a book talk he gave on Botswana’s Kalahari Bushmen. We talked about the possibility of a film about the Bushmen, one that would help them in their fight for survival. A few months into pre-production, I was sitting with Rupert in his kitchen. He said, “Michel, there is something else I would like you to consider.”

Rupert told me about his son Rowan. He had decided to take Rowan to Mongolia and travel on horseback throughout the country in search of the mysterious shamans he was somehow sure could help heal his son. He asked me to come with them and record their trip. With a gulp, I said, “Yes, of course.” How could I pass up such an opportunity? It has been my dream as a filmmaker to be able to work with such material.

So off we went—into the magnificent, unknowable land of Genghis Kahn, where horseback riding started, where the word Shaman (“one who knows”) originated and where shamanism is, even today, the official state religion.

But the incredible landscapes and harrowing ascents on nearly wild horses are merely a backdrop for the story of a family willing to transcend logic and science in order to find a way into their son’s world. This was the most important message that we could share with the world, no matter what the outcome of our trip. That knowledge allowed me to relax and let the story unfold as it would and did, in ways that I would never have predicted.

—Michel Orion Scott, director

The Zumi Digital Camera-Dreamy Stills and 8MM Style Video

From a Photojojo website. Go to the link to see sample videos.

Photojojo: The Zumi Digital

"Missed connection: you and your creativity

It's time you realize that there are other cameras in the sea -- like the Zumi Digital. True, she's no megapixel marvel. She has no interest in aperture or telephoto zoom. She doesn't even have a legitimate viewfinder ...

But if you were to take the Zumi on a date to the movies, she'd pick a documentary over a romcom. Then she'd bring her own snacks, laugh at your dumb jokes, and make all the first moves.

You see, the Zumi has been carefully crafted to take digital images and videos that have the look and feel of vintage film (lens flare, vignetting and all). Her "perfectly flawed" processing chip combined with a macro setting make digital 8MM magic -- making your everyday life look like an art house flick.

The Zumi is unusual, unpredictable, oh-so inspiring and fits in the palm of your hand. It's probably about time you and your DSLR had a "talk".

(Yes, we often fantasize about dating a camera. What?)"

Family Guy Offers Hyper Animation, In Triplicate

Cleveland from The Cleveland Show, left, and the characters of Family Guy.
By James Poniewozik on Times.com


Fox, never one for verbal restraint, calls its hit Sunday-night cartoon block Animation Domination. And there is one animator who dominates it: Seth MacFarlane, the writer — producer — voice actor who calls the toons on three of the four shows. It's a turnaround for MacFarlane; Fox canceled his Family Guy in 2002, then brought it back after it proved hugely popular on DVD. In 2005, Fox added MacFarlane's American Dad, a war-on-terrorism-era CIA spoof. This fall came The Cleveland Show, TV's unlikeliest spin-off since The Ropers, focused on Family Guy bit character Cleveland Brown. For 90 minutes a week, MacFarlane has the loudest megaphone on TV. Is he saying anything with it?

The trouble with Family Guy is that it seems to want to say everything. It's The Simpsons on Red Bull, with a dysfunctional family — the Griffins of Quahog, R.I. — but twice the outrageousness and thrice the pace. Its signature move is to cut away from a story line for a non sequitur gag (a pop-culture parody, a celebrity spoof, a Star Wars reference). The Simpsons is a satire, but it's rooted in its family. Family Guy is less a half-hour narrative about characters than a delivery system for unconnected jokes the writers can't bear to part with. (See the top 10 TV dads.)

The series is often hilarious; there are so many jokes, it is statistically impossible for it not to be. It has a fantastic sense of showmanship (MacFarlane, who voices dad Peter and others, loves writing musical numbers to show off his Broadway side) but suffers from comic ADHD. A send-up of Family Guy on South Park revealed it to be written by manatees picking colored balls with random joke topics inscribed on them.

But the show's fans love the randomness. This season's premiere (a spoof of the sci-fi series Sliders) was almost self-parody: evil tot Stewie invents a dimension-travel device and takes talking dog Brian (the best-developed "person" on the show) to a series of parallel universes, where we see them drawn as Disney characters, Washington Post cartoons and so on. The manatees were working overtime. (See the 100 best TV shows of all time.)

The Cleveland Show was meant to be a kinder, gentler Family Guy. The Griffins' African-American neighbor Cleveland returns to his hometown, where he marries his high school sweetheart. The pilot showed promise: Cleveland, a good-hearted sad sack, is sweeter and more sympathetic than Peter, and he has actual motivations — starting his life over and connecting with his awkward son and two stepkids. But Cleveland pretty quickly became Family Guy II, with similar characters and dynamics (Cleveland's toddler stepson Rallo is essentially Black Stewie) and the same taste for quick-fire cutaway jokes and pop-culture references (including self-conscious ones about white writers making sitcoms about black people).

MacFarlane's best show, American Dad, is also his lowest rated — maybe because it isn't simply a remake of Family Guy. Yes, its protagonist, CIA agent Stan Smith, is a nuclear-family patriarch. And where Family Guy has a talking dog and Cleveland a talking bear, Dad has both a talking alien (a show-tune-obsessed card with a voice like Paul Lynde's) and a talking goldfish. (See the worst TV spin-offs of all time.)

But next to the frenzied Family Guy and Cleveland, Dad is practically Mad Men. What makes Dad good isn't its political point of view. (MacFarlane, whose liberalism sometimes surfaces on Family Guy, uses Stan to send up post-9/11 jingoism.) It's that the show has a point of view at all. It's about something — satirizing the war on terrorism — and it invests time in its characters without ping-ponging between gags. It's still outrageous: the season premiere had Stan take nerdy son Steve to a Vietnam War re-enactment to toughen him up. (Sending up Vietnam-flick clichés, it played "Fortunate Son" over Viet Cong paintball ambushes.) But by focusing on father and son trying to connect, the episode also ended up touching and real.

It's too bad the same can't be said of MacFarlane's other shows. Sitcoms like The Office (and, still, The Simpsons) prove that the best comedies aren't always those with the most jokes per minute. MacFarlane has the talent to be in their league. But he needs to control his gag reflex.

Because of an editing error, the original version of this article incorrectly suggested that the entire series Family Guy is a spoof of the sci-fi series Sliders. In fact, just this season’s premiere is a spoof of Sliders.

Selective Focus SLR Camera Lenses

Start a journey of creative discovery with Lensbaby's Creative Effects SLR lens system. The Lensbaby Composer™ offers you smooth and precise control over depth of field. Just tilt and focus and start taking amazing, original photographs.

Those who prefer a fast and loose shooting style can try out the Muse™ and table top photographers can enjoy the Control Freak.™ Lensbaby's unique, SLR lenses will break you out of your creative box.

Click here to go to the lensbaby.com

Social Life, With Friends (kinetic typography)

Saturdays. Great films with something to say. Watch at 8. Talk at 10.

Click on image to see the trailer!

Catch the big Duct Tape episode of Mythbusters tonight.

Click on the picture to go to the site!

Optical and audio illusions: 15 videos to keep you entertained on your lunchbreak

From Telgraph.co.uk article.

The internet is awash with optical illusions and other tricks to fool our senses. Many are diverting; a handful are truly amazing. Here is our pick of the best on YouTube and Vimeo.

1. The cup and ball trick, with a modern twist.

CHOP CUP from :weareom: on Vimeo.

To watch the rest go to the article.

Paranormal Activity: A Horror Phenomenon

From Times.com article.

Oh, sweet Jesus, that nice couple Kate and Micah are about to go to sleep again! But they already suspect that their house is haunted. Micah has propped up his video camera in their bedroom, to record any unusual phenomena, so they know what awful thing happened last night, while they were sleeping. The bedroom door moved a couple inches, and then... moved back!

Big hairy deal, say cynics who've been bred on gross-out horror movies. Show us heads exploding, chests busting, legs sawed off. Yet the packed audience at a late-night screening of Paranormal Activity on Times Square this week didn't need gore effects to be scared witless. Yes, they knew it was only a movie — one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used "found footage" to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events dreamed up by writer-director Oren Peli and endured by actors Micah Stoat and Katie Featherston (using their real names). But when that door moved, the crowd's collective gasp just about sucked all the oxygen out of the theater. (See the top 25 horror movies of all time.)

The campaign to bring Paranormal Activity to the public is already a movie industry legend. Shot three years ago by Peli, an Israeli-born videomaker, for $11,000, in a week, in his own house, the picture played a few fright festivals in 2007. While DreamWorks considered buying the rights to do a remake with stars, Steven Spielberg took PA home to watch; and when he'd finished screening it... he found his bathroom door inexplicably locked. (He thought the DVD was haunted.) Two weeks ago, Paramount started playing Peli's film at midnight in 16 college towns. Many showings were sold out. Sorry, come back next week, if you dare. No tickets created a hot ticket — the movie grossed $1.2 million in its early, limited engagements — and Paramount stoked the fever by urging fans to go online and "demand" a wider release. More than a million such requests came in, allowing its web site to brag that PA is "the first-ever major film release decided by You."

This weekend, PA has expanded to all-day runs on 159 screens in 44 cities, and according to early reports, it's headed for a box-office breakout — perhaps the highest three-day gross of any films showing in fewer than 200 venues. "Look out cuz there's a freight train coming," an executive from a rival studio told Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke, "and Paramount is going to make a TON of cash on this pickup. Cuz they ain't spending anything on it, and who knows where the ceiling is!" The box-office figures will make headlines, give the movie more free publicity and lure bigger crowds eager to learn what all the screaming is about. (See the 100 best movies of all time.)

Beyond the viral ingenuity of the marketing, what's cool about Paranormal Activity is that it's not just a fun thrill ride, but an instructive artistic experience. A horror-movie revisionist, Peli follows a less-is-more strategy; he knows that waiting for the big scary jolt does more damage to the nervous system than getting it. The tension builds slowly, as the very apprehensive Katie, a student, and the skeptical Micah, a day trader, feel the first little emotional tremors. The movie keeps us in its grip — because we never leave the couple's haunted property, and because all we see is what the camera has recorded when held by Micah or Katie, or left on at night to monitor their bedroom. That claustrophobia creates a bond between the couple and the audience; they can't escape, and neither can we.

Peli downplays shock, emphasizes suspense: a shadow creeping across a wall, or the ripple of an unseen form under the bedsheets. The gore scenes in splatter movies carry a sadistic punch, but those are outside most moviegoers' experience. What Peli's interested in is dread, a feeling everyone is familiar with. (Will I lose my job? Has she found someone else? Why hasn't our kid come home yet? What's that strange rash?) Movies take that anxiety, crystallize it and, because fiction demands an ending, resolve it. The threat is provided, the fear made flesh, the monster confronted. All gone — feel better? Horror movies provide vicarious psychotherapy in an hour and a half. PA is different: at the end, it doesn't let viewers off the hook. It leaves them hanging there, and dares them to turn that last shiver into a laugh of relief that the delicious ordeal is over. (See 10 lessons from the summer box office.)

PA really has less in common with modern gore movies than with certain avant-garde films of the late '60s, like Michael Snow's Wavelength, a murder mystery in the form of a single, slow, 45-min. zoom shot through a room, and Morgan Fisher's Phi Phenomenon, an 11-min. shot of a wall clock without a second hand. In Fisher's film, viewers were meant to concentrate so intently that they can see the minute hand move. PA uses a similar strategy: the stationary camera in the overnight bedroom scenes has a time code at the bottom right of the frame. Sometimes the clock spins like mad to show the passing of hours between phenomena — or, in one super-creepy scene, the image of Katie standing motionless, as if still asleep, for two hours straight. It's even more chilling a few nights later, when Katie, clearly the more haunted of the two, again stands still for hours but this time on Micah's side of the bed.

If you're a horror-movie fraidy cat, know that most of the spooky stuff occurs in the bedroom, so — as with The Exorcist back in 1973 — you can steel yourself when the couple goes to sleep. Then too, you may not be scared at all by Paranormal Activity; but as you sit in a movie house you should feel some fraternal pleasure in noticing that the folks around you are preparing or pretending to be scared. And you should be heartened to realize that — in an age of YouTube, iPod and DVR, where people get their visual media one by one — watching a fictional narrative can still be a communal activity. A thousand people sit as one in the dark, as fretful and enthralled as a child hearing a bedtime story, and wondering, What happens next? No, I can't bear it! No, I have to see!

Tipografia

Passing Strange The Movie

Go here.

5 Minutes Of Heaven

From the Academy Award®-nominated director of DOWNFALL comes FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN, a thriller inspired by true events. Winner of the World Cinema Directing and Screenwriting awards at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, the film stars Liam Neeson (SCHINDLER’S LIST, TAKEN), James Nesbitt (BLOODY SUNDAY ) , and Anamaria Marinca (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS & 2 DAYS) in a compelling human drama about two men haunted by a tragic act of violence. In 1975, 17-year-old Alistair Little assassinated 19-year-old Jim Griffin. Jim’s murder was witnessed horrifically by his 11-year-old brother, Joe, and the impact of the death destroyed Joe and his family. Little was arrested, convicted and sent to prison. In this fictional exploration of the lives of real men, Alistair and Joe are given the opportunity to reconcile 30 years after the terrible event. Can a killer and his traumatized victim make peace?

The Page.

Coco Before Chanel

Audrey Tautou is Coco Before Chanel.
Premiere in SF Oct 9th, click here for release dates.

Clooney Soars in Two Films at Toronto Film Festival

From TIMES.com article:

Actors are salesmen. Stories, characters, movies are their product, and their physicality is the seductive packaging. That makes movie stars the industry's supersalesmen. And no one closes a deal with more assurance or grace than George Clooney. Not that all his pictures are blockbusters. Since A Perfect Storm in 2000, only the Ocean's (Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen) capers have topped $100 million at the domestic box office. But Clooney — handsome and affable, and blessed with a wit that can charm and cut — is surely the modern idea and ideal of stardom. Other celebrities seem tortured by public attention; Clooney bathes in it. He loves making the sale.

This time of year, the salesman goes on the road to showcase his new wares at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. He showed up last week on the Lido, a couple of hundred miles from his vacation villa on Lake Como, both to present his Iraq war comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats and to unveil his new inamorata, TV presenter Elisabetta Canalis. When the film broke down at the evening screening, Clooney serenaded the audience with a comic-opera rendition of O Sole Mio that wouldn't make Placido Domingo envious but did wow the crowd. This weekend he's in Toronto with two films, Goats and Jason Reitman's Up in the Air — which, to end the suspense right here, is one of the festival's and the year's best movies. At a press conference yesterday, when asked why he doesn't have a Facebook page, Clooney smilingly answered, "I'd rather have a prostate exam on live TV by a guy with very cold hands." (See a photo essay on the 65th Venice Film Festival.)

There shouldn't be that many paying customers for Goats, which opens commercially Nov. 6. It's based on Jon Ronson's book about the U.S. military's secret "remote viewing" missions, in which soldiers were trained as "psychic spies." With the proper concentration and intuition, men could run through walls, or, as one GI explains, "kill animals just by staring at them." Clooney plays Lyn Cassady, a vaunted veteran of the program, who's trying to harness his superpowers for the allied superpowers in the early days of the Iraq adventure. His student and dupe is Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a naive journalist trying to get a scoop for his Midwestern newspaper. Cassady tells him of the time he used an ancient Chinese maneuver, the Death Touch, on an adversary. And was the man killed instantly? "No, he died eight years later. That's the thing about the Death Touch — you never know when it'll take effect."

Is this fact or fantasy? At the beginning of the film, we are told, "More of this is true than you would believe." And as a military device, remote viewing is surely no wackier than detecting weapons of mass destruction in a country that didn't have any. But as written by Peter Straughan (who also connived in the movie botch of the nonfiction book How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) and directed by Grant Heslov (screenwriter on the Clooney-directed Good Night, and Good Luck), Goats strains as hard to find a coherent comic craziness as Cassady does to make clouds part with the force of his mind. Over and over, the movie smashes into the wall of plausibility it's trying to run through.

The difference between Clooney in kooky farces like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Goats and Clooney in more realistic movies like the Ocean's series and Up in the Air is the intensity of his playing. In the farces, he wears his heroic grin with a subversive idiot twist; his steely-eyed certitude reveals just a flick of lunacy. Otherwise, Clooney is reasonable, understated, channeling his charisma without really trying. When he tamps down the movie-star magic and just lets it seep out, it glows all the brighter.

That's quite a feat in Up in the Air, since his character, Ryan Bingham, is a management consultant hired by other companies to tell their employees they're no longer employed. He's a fire-man; he keeps his job by relieving other people of theirs. And he does so with such ostensible sympathy and sincerity, with helpful suggestions on other lines of work, that the victims often leave the interview not wanting to give Ryan the Death Touch. He's a head chopper acting like a grief counselor.

Reel Impact: Split Estate

Planet Green Newsletter:

"Planet Green's Reel Impact documentary series continues with Split Estate, a look at Garfield County, Colorado, where the natural gas industry has been drilling in front yards and communities—without being held to environmental accountability regulations like the Clean Water Act. From the benzene pollution in a stream so toxic that one resident lights the water with a match to the health issues facing the town's adults and children, see how these ordinary citizens are fighting for their lives and land."

Go here.

A Beautiful Life

A Beautiful Life.
Directed by Alejandro Chomski.

Lumiere Theatre (California St) Tickets & Showtimes.

2 Tag-team Photo Projects For You + Your Pal

From Photojojo newsletter:

You already roped them into wearing the “Be Fri” bracelet that matches your “st ends.” Now it’s time to convince your bestie to do a collaborative photoblog!

Here’s the big idea: You and a buddy each post a photo a day side-by-side. It’s a simple concept but the results are often brilliant.

Two of our all-time favorite collaborative photoblogs: Minty Forest, the work of good friends Nina and Josh, and Don’t Wiggle, featuring BFFs Ranjit and Spatialk’s daily photos inspired by Webster’s word of the day.

Grab a pal, grab a camera, and get snapping.

the Minty Forest and Don’t Wiggle

via reader Matt Nuzzaco

9.99 trailer

9.99: Movie Trailer - The best video clips are right here

Muslim Celebrities

Top 10 Muslims Making Strides in Hollywood.
Click here.

36 Skaters Make Downhill Neon Video Game w/ Freebords