Here’s a funny lil follow up on the Moonrise Kingdom post I made a few days ago. Check out this run-through of the movie, cast, and director, by a disheveled, rum-buzzed Bill Murray.
Wonder how much $ they got on that Sailor Jerry plug.
- James
Have ya’ll seen John Carpenter’s They Live (1988)? Do aliens already live amongst us??
We’ll be answering that question soon. Stay tuned.
- James
PS: “You, you’re ok. This one? Real fuckin ugly” hahahaha
You guys seen this new Wes Anderson trailer for Moonlight Kingdom yet? It is really REALLY Wes Anderson looking if you know what I mean. He seems to have taken some elements of Fantastic Mr Fox into real life. I (James) used to be a Wes Anderson superfan when I first got into films… he has pissed me off a couple times in the past, let’s see if this lives up to how fun the trailer is. He’s worked with Roman Coppola in the past (Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Limited, both my least favorite Anderson films), so this should be interesting.
I like this Youtube comment: quite possibly the most wes anderson thing that wes anderson has ever made
- James
James’ ‘Valley of Saints’ Review
Friday night I went out to the 2012 LA Asia Pacific Film Festival with Byron and David (Charlie in BANG BANG) to see Valley of Saints, the festival’s Int’l Centerpiece Gala film. This thing won the World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic and split the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at Sundance, as well as appearing in a ton of world-class film festivals internationally.
It takes place in Dal Lake, an important environmental and cultural asset in the beautiful Kashmir region of Northwest India. A large population of people live in and around the lake, which dominates the activities of their daily lives. It tells the tale of Gulzar, a young working class tourist boatman, as he navigates not only the waters of Dal Lake, but his own relationship to it and to his community living there. He and his best friend Afzal plot to leave Kashmir for the lights of the big city, hoping to leave the poverty and war of Kashmir behind them. Meanwhile, Asifa, a young woman scientist, comes to the lake village to study its increasingly polluted waters. An unlikely relationship blooms between her and Gulzar, putting into clearer focus his true desires and place in life.
Valley of Saints is a gorgeous, poetic, moving narrative feature debut for writer/director Musa Syeed, a Kashmiri-American, who puts his documentary background to good use. It was shot guerilla style with a skeleton crew (producer running sound!) and first time actors on a Canon 5D. What a true testament to guerilla filmmaking; the production value and cinematography rivals many films of huger budgets, more expensive cameras, and bigger crews. In many ways, all of the parts of this film: the locale, the director (and his relationship to his ethnic homeland), the actors, guerilla filmmaking, all came together in a very specific way to create this very specific work.
Valley of Saints is one of those great cinematic gems: a simple story told simply and elegantly without getting bogged down by its own plot, yet multifaceted in its themes and subjects. It is about love, loss, friendship, responsibility, community, personal identity, family, the environment, living in civil unrest and the waters of Dal Lake. Highly recommended. See the trailer below.
Check out the homies Westscape Media’s new music video: Sam Kang - Love Drama
This was most definitely a labor of love:
- 7 months
- 3-4 man crew
- 3000+ photos shot frame by frame, printed, and individually hand cut
- All props, toy models, and landscapes hand crafted
- Then entire stop-motion video was re-shot frame by frame
(And those were only the technical hurdles)
(Source: youtube.com)
Check out the trailer to our boy Jay Drose’s short, ‘ROYAL COTTAGE HOTEL,’ that I (James) helped on a few months back.
(Source: vimeo.com)
HUNGER GAMES REVIEW by our Intern Corinne Abbiss!
The Hunger Games
The weekend after the premiere on a rainy Sunday, two of my friends and I decided to go see what all the hype was about. I haven’t read the books and anticipated the final battle to be a massive show down. Instead it was a much more passive way of defying the Capitol. When the film ended, I was left not knowing where the sequel will go next.
The weekend after the premiere on a rainy Sunday, two of my friends and I decided to go see what all the hype was about. I haven’t read the books and anticipated the final battle to be a massive show down. Instead it was a much more passive way of defying the Capitol. When the film ended, I was left not knowing where the sequel will go next.
What does our fascination with brutality and primal connection with survival of the fittest say about us as human beings? We are not much different from our ancestors watching gladiators fight in the battles of life and death. As a filmmaker living in LA, I couldn’t help but be drawn into Katiness’ struggle. We are all trying to keep up appearances, catch people’s attention, gather support. And when the games begin, we can trust no one. The acting and shaky cam. (sometimes overused and hard to even know what is happening) can’t help but draw you into the gruesome, brutal reality of the world that Katiness lives in. The sacrifices she makes and the risks she takes make me question my own humanity. What would I do to survive? What would I do to save a friend?
Even though some of the shaky cam was a little too much and the antagonists weren’t proactive enough, it was an entertaining movie. For such an internal story, the film did a great job showing us what Katiness was thinking. For a film that has a huge amount of hype, it did a good job delivering what it set out to do.
Review by Corinne Abbiss (Intern)
