Posts Tagged ‘film history’
Sunday In The Park With George (Lucas)…
From the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, “Top 10 Movies Made in the Parks.” (Readers should be sure to scroll through the comments, to see– indeed, to add– alternative suggestions…)
[TotH to friend MK]
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As we slip popcorn into our picnic lunches, we might send culture-capturing birthday greetings to Norman Percevel Rockwell; he was born on this date in 1894. Famous as a painter and illustrator in the U.S. through much of the 20th Century, Rockwell created such iconic images as the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, Saying Grace(1951), The Problem We All Live With, and the Four Freedoms series. Perhaps because he published in such settings as Saturday Evening Post and enjoyed so much popular acclaim, Rockwell was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. But as The New Yorker ‘s art critic Peter Schjeldahl said of Rockwell in ArtNews in 1999: “Rockwell is terrific. It’s become too tedious to pretend he isn’t.”
The Problem We All LIve With, depicting an incident in the Civil Rights struggle of the early 1960s, when Ruby Bridges entered first grade on the first day of court-ordered desegregation of New Orleans, Louisiana, public schools (November 14, 1960). Originally published in Look magazine.
(S)he’s not there…
How can we accept that we are changing?
How can we accept we hardly recognize ourselves in certain situations?…
Barcelona-based PoL Úbeda Hervàs has answered his own questions with a series of photographs in which, as he observes, “my shadow is there but I erase myself because I don’t know who I am any longer…”
See them all at his Flickr stream “I’m Not There.”
[TotH to Laughing Squid]
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As we put away the sunscreen, we might send vividly-imagined birthday greetings to Federico Fellini; he was born on this date in 1920. A screenwriter, director, and producer who began in the Italian Neo-Realist movement, Fellini moved beyond realism to make such fantastic, dream-like films as La Dolce Vita, 8½, Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, Casanova, Amacord, and City of Women. Widely-honored (among his many prizes, a Lifetime Achievement award from Cannes and five Oscars, one for Lifetime Achievement), he was also widely-influential: he’s been cited as an inspiration by film makers including (in no particular order) Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, John Waters, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam, Pedro Almodóvar, Dariush Mehrjui, Darren Aronofsky, Asghar Farhadi, Nanni Moretti, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Emir Kusturica, Glauber Rocha,Jean-Luc Godard, Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, Girish Kasaravalli, David Cronenberg, and François Truffaut.
You exist only in what you do
– Federico Fellini
Be deliberate in all things…
Laughing Squid reports:
For ECAL’s “Low-Tech Factory” exhibition, design students Laurent Beirnaert, Pierre Bouvier and Paul Tubiana created Oncle Sam, a popcorn machine that pops just one kernel at a time. At the final stages of the process, this contraption even butters and salts the single piece of popcorn that was produced. Watch this video to see the machine in action.
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As we turn up the heat, we might pause to send amusing birthday greetings to Al Christie; he was born on this date in 1881. An early motion picture director, producer, screenwriter and studio head, Christie ran the first ever movie studio to be built in Hollywood
(Nestor Studios, opened in 1911) and is credited with having produced the first film comedies there. In all, he produced more than 700 films before retiring in 1942.
Shadows on the wall of a cave…
Detail
2000 films. 20 genres. 100 years… The History of Film.
Created by Larry Gormley, the timeline…
…chronicles the history of feature films from the origins in the 1910s until the present day. More than 2000 of the most important feature-length films are mapped into 20 genres spanning 100 years. Films selected to be included have: won important awards such as the best picture Academy Award; achieved critical acclaim according to recognized film critics; are considered to be key genre films by experts; and/or attained box office success.
It is resolutely seen through the eyes of a U.S. cinema-goer (so misses many European, Latin American, and Asian candidates); but still, much fun!
click here for zoomable version
Special exuberant extra:
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As we shake a little extra salt onto our popcorn, we might recall that it was on this date in 1968 that the Motion Picture Association of America’s film-rating system was introduced. On the heels of the release of films like The Pawnbroker, Blow-Up, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, MPAA President Jack Valenti was under pressure from studios and exhibitors alike to find a replacement for The Hayes Code, which had been in effect since the early 30s. The result was the G- PG- R-X rating system that lasted until 1990, when X was replaced by NC-17.
For a peek behind the curtain at how this self-regulatory system does (and doesn’t) work, readers can screen Kirby Dick’s doc, This Film is Not Yet Rated.
Beating the rap…
Liz Fosslien “likes to turn numbers into pictures and ideas into charts”– from “Crime Patterns in Chicago” to “How to Get Hired,” she’s created infographics galore. Indeed, one of her visual essays is a quiz, “Name that Song“; two sample questions (answers, below):
Take the test here.
Answers:
# 4- “Sexy and I know” LMFAO
# 8- “No Church in the Wild” Jay-Z and Kanye West
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As we bust our beats, we might send birthday smiles to actor, writer and film director Arthur Stanley “Stan” Jefferson… or as he was better known, Stan Laurel; he was born on this date in 1890. Laurel came to the U.S. from his native England as Charlie Chaplin’s understudy in a touring acting troupe. Laurel stayed behind, first as an actor in two-reel comedies, then as a writer-director for Hal Roach. Laurel intended to remain behind the camera, but stepped under the lights again when an accident left Oliver Hardy without a co-star. The two became friends and went on to make first a series of shorts (one of which, The Music Box, won the Academy Award for Best Short in 1932), then features– over 180 films in all. In 1961, four years after Hardy’s death, Laurel was given a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for his pioneering work in comedy.
If anyone at my funeral has a long face, I’ll never speak to him again.
Stan Laurel
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