Insomnia Festival 2010

Insomnia Festival 2010 Titles from Toxic on Vimeo.

This is just a little bit cool.

One Week Brief: Say it LOUD! - My inspiration

Seeing as you can't paste a video into a creative log, I thought I'd post it on here...
Click here to see the documentary that inspired me.

"A Clockwork Orange" directed by Stanley Kubrick (film)

I had read the book before I saw the film, for me I think this is the best way round as it allows you to imagine it all first before being shown someone else' idea of a book first.

The film was a lot more weird and surreal than I had ever imagines the book to be. Strange 70s fashion and decor. I was however impressed by Kubrick's take on the book as I think he captured the emotions of the youths well. He made up feel sorry of Alex at the end of the film despite all of his wrongdoings in the past.

A film well worth seeing, however read the book first!

Super mignon !

I love this little animation about how the French love a "petit café".

Inception

Whoa!

This film blew me away. It is the story of a time when the technology exists to enter people's dreams allowing thieves to extract secret information from people's subconscious minds eg, the combination to a safe... Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a successful theif, is asked by the owner of an energy company (Saito) to complete a mission in order to grant him entry to America to see his children again. Saito's main business competitor is an old man who is very sick, and his son is about to take over his father's company. Saito wants the son to break up his father's empire. Cobb agrees out of desperation to see his children again.

However instead of performing 'extraction' (getting information out of someone's head) he needs to perform 'inception' - the planting of an idea into someone's mind. This requires a team of people and creating dreams within dreams. As time passes much quicker in dreamstate than in normal life, this creates a multiplying effect - 5 mins asleep = 1hr in a dream, 1hr of a dram within a dream = 1 week etc.

The creators had really thought everything through very very carefully. One interesting aspect was that as they fall of a bridge, whilst asleep and dreaming, this affects the dream - there's no gravity!

The ending is very smart. It is a cliffhanger, but because of that it encourages you to really think hard over what you have just seen in order to fathom out the answer to the question left hanging.

How can I sum it up? "Watch it!"



Links: IMDB, Inception website

Mia's Website

I've been keeping an eye out for truly original website designs and I've definately found one.

Mia's website is mad. I don't think I have ever seen so many animated gifs at one time! I do however really love it. I felt like a hacker using the site, it feels like you have access to a personal computer and that you shouldn't really be using it.


Mia is well known for her political views. Recently she released "Born Free" which was accompanied by a video/short film directed by Romain Gavras which I know realise was acually working as a trailer for a film to be released in September this year, "Nortre Jour Viendra" or "Our Day Will Come".

Links :
miauk.com
dailymotion.com/
notrejourviendra.com/

Le scaphandre et le papillon

This film tells the true story of Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby after he suffers a stroke. He suffers from a rare condition of "Locked-In Syndrome" which means he is totally paralysed but still thinks normally, like being locked inside his own body. The title "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a metaphor for his condition. The Diving Bell (or better translated, Diving Suit - but one of the really old metal ones with the goldfish bowl hood) represents how he is locked inside his body and the butterfly represents his mind.

He is able to communicate however by winking his left eye after his desired letter is read out from the alphabet.

Jean-Do (as he is called by the people close to him) reacts at first, as anyone would, with a very negative outlook and even communicates to his therapist "I want to die" but after a visit from a friend who tells him about how he was held hostage for 4 years, an almost similar experience to Jean-Do's situation, he has a change of outlook. He decides to write a book about his experiences. Obviously it is going to be a slow process.

The camera work of this film is very well done. The first scenes are shot through the eyes of Jean-Do so the viewer experiences him waking up out of a 3 week coma bleary eyed and they discovering that he cannot speak and cannot move. It takes 30 minutes before we see the first glimpse of his face, which again is seen through the eyes of the protagonist in the reflection of a window. Again this was a really nice tough as we saw his appearance at the same time that he did.

I recently watched "Creation" the story of Charles Darwin (which i will have to write a post about) and that along with other things has got me thinking about life in general. I guess somehow i've been having some quite "hardcore" thoughts recently. One thing that made me stop and think in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was this scene:

Doc: "In the past, we would have said you'd had a massive stroke. You would very probably have died. But now we have such improved resuscitation techniques that we're able to prolong life."
JD's thoughts: "This is life?"
JD's thoughts: [repeats] "This is life?"
Doc: "Yes, prolong life"

And also when he later tells his mentor that he wants to die.

It made me think, for example, if a rabbit has a stroke it's the family of hungry fox cubs that benefits, that's life - something good actually happens. Yes it's sad for the rabbit, but the fox cubs get to eat plus it's good for the race of rabbits because that rabbit won't have children that are likely to have strokes so the species is protected. With humans however, we don't think like that. We think as individuals, not as a race. Is it better if someone with a hereditary disease dies or is it better if they are saved by doctors, have children and then the children suffer of the same disease and this goes on and on and spreads to more and more people? Big question! Food for thought....

I like these...

Paris Je T'aime

Paris, Je T'aime (Paris, I Love You) is a film like no other. It comprises 18 short films by directors including Joel and Ethan Coen and Gerard Depardieu. Each film is about love in the city of Paris. Story lines range from involing metro stations to grave yards to vampires. Actors include Juliette Binoche (Chocolat), Steve Buscemi (Pulp Fiction), Willem Dafoe (Spiderman), Natalie Portman (Garden State) and Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) amongst others.


Each of the films are situated in a different province of Paris so not only do you get to enjoy the dialogues and stories in the collection but you also get a tour of Paris.

Film Noir, A Bout de Souffle

I watched Jean-Luc Goddard's A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) in 6th Form when I was studying french, but I didn't really get it. I watched it again the other day to see what I would make of it a second time around.

The film is very cool, american-french with a sexy jazz soundtrack. It is typical of the french nouvelle vague (new wave) and has clear ties with Film Noir.This spurred me on to watch The Rules of Film Noir (find it on BBC iPlayer until 2:24am Thursday 10th September 2009) a documentary all about this dark genre of film.

I would like to sum up the genre using some words and phrases I picked up from watching the programme:

Shadows, carved up faces, guns, paranoia, sex, leading the viewer's eyes, voice overs, hard boiled, pulp fiction, suspence, touch guy, to the point, everyone for themselves, lonely, gloomy, pessimistic, fog, cigarettes, WW2, make it any colour as long as it's black, german expressionism, dream sequences...

La Haine - Hatred

It's the story of a society in free fall. To reassure itself, it repeats endlessly. "So far so good, so far so good, so far so good..." The important thing isn't the fall, it's the landing.

This film is the story not only of three teenage "banlieusards" (people of the suburbs) but also the story of life in the less affluent areas of Paris, stuck in a life of hatred, violence and drugs that they can't get out of.

Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, the film is set in black and white, there is no beauty or happiness in the film. It represents a time when there is nothing good, the suburbs have nothing to offer and the world is black.

One of the youths, Vinz, finds a gun and feels that this earns him respect. When one of his friends dies after being involved in a riot, Vinz feels he has to "restore balance" by killing a police officer. His older and wiser friend Hubert realises that this is not the appropriate thing to do and does not believe that Vinz will be able to do it. The third teenager, Said, sides with the police officers trying to make Vinz see sence.

Hatred breeds hatred. Gun crime leads to gun crime.

After disaster strikes the trio, we are left with a cliffhanger as to who pulled the trigger in the final few seconds of the film. The ending few words are the, several times repeated throughout the film, words I started this post with.

Old Boy

I couldn't help but be reminded of our Design Theory exam when I saw the various wallpaper designs that reminded my of (unsuccessfully) trying to learn wallpaper pattern classifications. If you can work this one out then congratulate yourself, I have no idea!

Love's a Bitch

This is a Mexican film about how several peoples lives are affected by one car crash. It's a fantastic film about loss and betrayal with an ending that leaves the viewer to make up their own mind about the fate of the characters.

A hitman/tramp is left to reconsider his actions when he suffers a great loss. I don't want to give too much away as it really is a great film well worth seeing.

Guerrilla Shorts

So yesterday night I went along to the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds to watch "Guerilla Shorts" a collection of short films and an event held once ever two months.

Last night's short films included "Deep Six" a re-edited narrative from a Hollywood b-film in which repeated footage give the viewer the opportunity to really analyse what they are seeing instead of forgeting or overlooking subtle clues like in usual films. The film had been made by contact printing hand-photocopied strips of overhead transparencies onto 35mm film.

The second film was called "Necrology (Roll Call of the Dead)" a video of the late-1960s general public ascending an escalator in Grand Central Station, New York. The film shows them disappearing into a shadowy abyss with the suggestion of the people on their way to hell. The idea of the film is to leave the viewer pondering their fate.
"La Jette" is a fictional film about a man's life in Paris after the Third World War. He is used in experiements to travel back through time in order to get provisions from the past and bring them to the future to help their survival. He encounters a woman in his memories during the experiements and they share wonderful but mysterious moments. The entires film is made up of images held for a few seconds with an accompanying third person narrative and music. The only bit of footage is of the woman opening her eyes from sleeping. I have to say I the film gave the impression to me as just an excuse to film a woman who the director was besotted by!

After the intermission "UNdone" was shown. A 5 minute animation about an Irish scientist orbiting the Earth while the world collapses into nuclear Armageddon. Only the heads of state can flee and make a new life living on Mars.

"The Man Who Planted Trees" is a film I think everyone should see. It is an animation about a man who lives up in the French Alps as a sheppard who plants 100 acorns every day and eventually plants and grows an entire forest which the people of France can enjoy and love. It showed how man can make a possitive impression on climate change and that happiness can be found in even the most "dull" of lifestyles.

Finally a film which did not appear in the program, an animation about a carpenter and the rocking chair that he makes. It dragged a bit I have to say until the end where the director took the mick out of modern art. The art gallery in the film shows off stereotypical modern art such as a blank, white canvas with an admirer bent over looking through a magnifying glass at it. A carefully and cheekily placed second admirer behind the first did make a few eagle-eyed viewers laugh.

Jim Carey has impressed me!

Now I'm not a Jim Carey fan but this film was very impressive. It tells the tale of a couple who have the memory of each other erased. It reminded me quite a lot of Fight Club, there was a lot of hidden detail which I think you could pick up on a lot more if you watched this for a second time around. The editing was exceptional, giving the illusion of memories merging into one another and of the couple running away from a memory into another. I highly recommend that you watch this film!