A great old film noir from 1955 starring Cornel Wilde. The Big Combo, directed by Joseph H. Lewis is about a tormented detective, Leonard Diamond, who becomes obsessed with taking down a nasty gangster called Mr. Brown. There’s a woman stuck in the middle and Diamond wants to save her.
The film is loaded with superb noir imagery and maintains a good level of tension all the way through. There are also lots of choice tough-guy lines.
The great American filmmaker, Kenneth Anger, has made a new film called Missoni. He shot it for the Italian fashion house Missoni as part of their Fall 2010 advertising campaign. The film includes members of the Missoni family engaged in dance-like movement and poses. Can advertising be art? Yes, when it’s done by an artist.
Anger has made another beautiful and mysteriously layered film. Apparently, he has gone digital, using something called a RED digital camera. It has some characteristics in common with 35mm cameras. Anger appears to be using it as freely as he used 16mm cameras.
What’s really interesting about this whole project is its reason for existing. I think the Missoni advertising angle is just an excuse. I think they just wanted to be in a film by Kenneth Anger.
Here’s a gallery of photographs made by pinhole cameras. This image is by Noriko Ohba.
Making a pinhole camera is pretty simple. In some cases you can simply take the lens off of a camera and replace it with some tape that has a hole in it. Here are some instructions.
Via Submitterator
As the 2010 Tour de France bike race winds its way through the French Pyrenees mountains, cyclists and fans everywhere are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first time a stage of the race went up the Pyrenees. The range is rugged and steep, presenting the riders with a greater challenge than the more gradual ascents of the Alps. In 1910, riders first hazarded the devastating climbs. Now, bike clothing manufacturer Rapha has produced this beautiful film about four riders celebrating the Tour’s Pyrenees anniversary by riding up a mountain called the Col du Tourmalet. That’s the mountain that the current Tour de France race is on at the moment. These four riders pay their respects to the 1910 racers and their equipment by enjoying every hardship presented to them by the mountain and the wet weather.
I do a lot of mountain road riding in California and I can appreciate the difficulty of this incredible Col du Tourmalet climb. I’d love to do it myself. Equipping yourself with water, food and repair items to set out over remote slopes is a very focused and exciting thing to do. I recommend it to anyone.
The real problem with feeding the world properly is the production of meat. Meat is a very destructive product because it is a huge polluter and uses land inefficiently. Denis van Waerebeke made this instructive short film about world hunger.
A nice little love couple enjoying a simple meal together with plenty of food and knives and forks to throw. A messy relationship. Strong table required. Israeli filmmaker Dafna Axel made this as her graduation project film.