Posts Tagged ‘cinema’
Hair today…
This outrageous display of facial hair configurations made an appearance at the 4th Annual National Beard and Mustache Championships in New Orleans earlier this month. Luckily Las Vegas-based photographer Greg Anderson was on-hand to give us a front-row seat as the bizarre spectacle of facial hair paraded in front of his camera lens.
The championships involved some 150 contestants from the U.S., U.K., and Canada who competed in 17 different categories. If this isn’t enough, here’s a giant gallery of 164 portraits from the event.
From This Is Colossal…
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As we think on tonsorial temerity, we might send illuminated birthday greetings to Louis Lumière; he was born on his date in 1864. The son of a portrait painter who added photography to his repertoire, Louis joined with his brother Auguste to pioneer cinema. Their father returned in 1894 from a trip to the U.S. where he’d been enchanted by Edison’s kinetoscope. The brothers (who’d already pioneered new darkroom techniques for still photography) were excited… until they understood that Edison’s display could only be seen by a single viewer at a time. Louis envisioned something different: a projected image that could be shared by an audience, in the same way that audiences share a play. With his brother’s help, Lumière designed the Cinematograph, a self-contained camera and projector that used a clawed-gear to advance sprocketed film. It was the first apparatus for making and showing films to audiences in a way that would be recognizable today as “going to the movies”; thus the Lumière brothers are often credited as inventors of the motion picture. In any case, the principle at work in the Cinematograph was the principle used in movie cameras and projectors for more than a century afterwards.
Traduttore, traditore…
Over at the always-fascinating Langage Log, Victor Mair responds to an amusing– but as he points out, slightly misleading– piece in The Daily Mail. In “Lost in translation: Hilarious advice signs from foreign airports… where their English leaves a little to be desired,” The Mail features a series of Asian signs awkwardly, if not entirely incorrectly, translated– like this one:
But as Mair observes, some of the signs featured are perhaps even more amusing, precisely because they are perfectly accurately translated:
Though the English may sound strange, neither of these signs is mistranslated. That’s what the Chinese really says:
yóuyú mǒuxiē yuányīn yánwù 由于某些原因延误
“delayed due to some reasons”wénmíng jīchǎng 文明机场
“civilized airport”These two signs are examples of what might be called “un-Chinglish”. Technically, their “lost” quality is due not to mistranslation but to unfamiliarity with the sociocultural expectations of the circumstances in which they are found…
… which is all just to remind us that the world is even more wonderfully weird than we know.
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As we treasure our phrasebooks, we might send epic birthday greetings to a man whose work transcended translation, Akira Kurosawa; he was born on this date in 1910. One of the most influential filmakers in cinema history, he directed 30 films in a 57 year career. His Rashomon, a surprise Golden Lion winner at Venice in 1950, went on to commercial success in Europe and the U.S., opening those markets to Japanese film. He went on to make such masterpieces as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Yojimbo (1961), Kagemusha (1980), and Ran (1985)… a body of work for which he won essentially every major film award offered in Japan, Europe, and the U.S., including a Lifetime Achievement Oscar (1990).
And in conclusion…
The final image in Russ Meyer’s epic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Monte Patterson has done us the terrific service of creating The Final Image, a Tumblr that collects– yes!– the final images of films. And by way of context, he’s included an illustrative introduction…
… Let’s examine the mise-en-scène of Big (1988, dir. Penny Marshall). After experiencing the age of 30 for a week, Josh, back a boy again, walks up a road with his best friend, Billy, much like the beginning, except this time new meaning is attached. The road seems wide and endless as it inclines out of the top-right quadrant of the frame, symbolizing the big road ahead for the boy. After a Josh reverts to his child form and is reunited with his best friend Billy. From these details, we can compile a list of the formal elements that comprise the mise-en-scène of this final image.
Formal elements of the Big final image:
- composition: wide shot
- subject framing: lower center
- sets: residential street
- props: bicycle, baseball bat, skateboard
- actors: adolescent boys, one who has lived as a 30 y.o.
- performance: the boys sing and leisurely walk up the street
- costumes: kids clothing, shirts untucked
- lighting: daytime, sunny
- camera movement: fixed
- sound: diegetic ambient, non-expository dialogue, film score
This list is the formula for a satisfactory emotional outcome of this film. As Josh ascends the road, we are happy he has returned home, and are aware of the wisdom he’s gained from what he experienced as an adult.
More of the essay, and many more final images at The Final Image.
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As we compose ourselves,we might recall that it was on this date in 1880 that Alexander Graham Bell transmitted the first wireless telephone message on his newly invented photophone from the top of the Franklin School in Washington, D.C. Bell believed that the photophone, a device allowed the transmission of sound on a beam of light, was his most important invention.
Bell’s photophone worked by projecting the voice through an instrument toward a mirror. Vibrations in the voice caused similar vibrations in the mirror. Bell directed sunlight into the mirror, which captured and projected the mirror’s vibrations. The vibrations were transformed back into sound at the receiving end of the projection… which is to say that the photophone functioned similarly to the telephone, except that the photophone used light as a means of projecting the information and the telephone relied on electricity.
It was many years before the significance of Bell’s work was fully recognized, as the original photophone failed to protect transmissions from outside interferences (such as clouds) that disrupted transport. Its practical application awaited the development of technology for the secure transport of light… which is to say that Bell’s photophone was the progenitor of modern fiber optics, the technology that is, with wireless, displacing Bell’s much more famous creation.
One of Bell’s drawing for the photophone (source)
Deja vu all over again…
Movie: Inception
Actor: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Location: Paris, France
Photographer: Jazz Gabriel
How does one combine one’s loves of movies and travel? Allen Fuqua created Movie Mimic.
Movie: Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Actress: Rebecca Hall
Location: National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Espanya)
With: Juan Sánchez
Photographer: Felipe ?
More, at Movie Mimic.
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As we position ourselves carefully, we might send terpsichorean birthday greetings to Frederick Austerlitz; he was born in Omaha, Nebraska on this date in 1899. Despite a producer’s verdict on an early audition– “Can’t act, can’t sing, balding. Can dance a little.”– Fred Astaire, as he was better known, prospered. In a career that spanned 76 years, the film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer, and actor starred in 31 musicals– and has been named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that “the history of dance on film begins with Astaire.” And beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers in other forms– Rudolf Nureyev, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine, and Jerome Robbins among them– also acknowledged Astaire’s importance and influence.
As for Ginger Rogers, with whom he co-starred in 10 films, her admiration was qualified: “I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss about Fred Astaire’s dancing. I did all the same steps, only backwards. And in heels!”
Almost the same as not being there…
Further to yesterday’s touristy theme, from the ever-interesting folks at Strange Maps, a guide developed in 1927 by Paramount Pictures, advising producers where to look for foreign locations… without leaving California:
More at “Scene to be Believed: California as the World.”
As we reconsider our packing strategies, we might recall that it was on this date in 1980 that CNN debuted– demonstrating that the whole world could also be found in Georgia.
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