Category Archives: Movies

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The Limits of Control: Jim Jarmusch Film and Interview

by Editor

Here’s the trailer for The Limits of Control, a new film by Jim Jarmusch. I’m always very impressed by Jim Jarmusch when he speaks.  Extremely intelligent and serious artist working in film.  In fact, he might be one of the only serious artists working in American film at present.  He’s kind of scary and punkish and seems more like a rock star than a film director.  I’d probably run screaming from the room if he came in to talk to me.  But maybe not.  I always find a person’s weakness and exploit it.  Jarmusch’s weakness is Bill Murray.  Too much focus on stars in Jarmusch films.  He shouldn’t do this.  Great directors in the 21st Century should not cast so many stars.  Stars ruin movies.  Imagine reading a great novel in which every single character is played by a movie star.  Sort of like when you buy a novel that’s been adapted to film and right there on the cover you see a big fat picture of Leonardo DiCaprio.  Ruins the entire book.  Ruins a serious film quite often too.  Why movie stars have become so essential to film is a total mystery.  A great director spends all his energy trying to direct the movie in circles around his star performers.  What a waste.  A movie that becomes a parade of the director’s movie star friends is not worth watching.  He should make new friends.  There’s nothing more time-consuming than watching a movie star pretend to be an artist.  It would serve Mr. Jarmusch better to find people on the street and use them instead.  He needs to get over this Bill Murray fixation and move on.  Murry is a deadly boring actor with a frozen face.  These stars are a major headache and a distraction from what the director has to say with film.  By the way, here’s a fascinating interview with Jim Jarmusch that is casting off sparks of connective ideas all over the place.  They talk about novels, essays, poetry, William Burroughs and the cut-up technique, secret societies, Scientology, Stanley Kubrick, and more.  Fascinating talk.  I really wish he’d stop hiring movie stars.  Jim Jarmusch is not a good director of movie stars.  This guy would be a real artistic threat if he’d just run around with a video camera and work that way.  Why he would want to be eating catered food with the walkie-talkie brigade is simply beyond me.

Life Inc.: A Book About How the World Became a Corporation

by Editor

Life Inc. is a book by Douglas Rushkoff that details the invention and evolution of the corporation as a means of privatizing life and maintaining economic power in the hands of the few. In the film above which promotes the ideas of his book, Rushkoff talks about how our entire lives are spent working for some corporation and searching for mass-produced items that we think we need in order to be happy. He describes how this creates isolation and destroys communities because we are all in competition with each other all the time – even when we are doing something as simple as cooking on a barbecue.

The WotWots: Excellent Pre-School TV Show

by Editor

Two fantastic, insane and rambunctious little alien characters travel around in a steampunk spaceship.  The WotWots is a children’s television show from Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop, the company that did the special effects for Lord of the Rings.  This introductory episode shows the two WotWots landing at the zoo to explore the various animals there.  The WotWots are very inquisitive and energetic little beings with a great joy for adventure.  I like it.  It looks really good and the characters are the best I’ve seen in years.

Thanks to Boing Boing for posting this.

President Obama Reads ‘Where the Wild Things Are’

by Editor

He reads the entire book out loud to a group of kids at the White House Easter Egg Roll.  Watch him.  He wings it.  He improvises.  He throws himself completely into what he is doing for these kids.  He knows they can’t all see the pictures so he describes and even performs them.  I know just how difficult this performance really is.  There are few people who can pull this off.  We have a president who is actually an intelligent person and who enjoys reading and talking to people.  I think this is a very good video for Children’s Book Week.

The Hunt for Gollum: Excellent LOTR Fan Film

by Editor | 1 Comment

huntforgollumThe Hunt for Gollum is a 40-minute fan-made film that is available for free online viewing. The film was made through open collaboration of enthusiastic fans working under the leadership of director Chris Bouchard.  I’ve just finished watching it and can report that it is a wonderful success that tells its story with the perfect touch of mystery, action, and romance.  It captures the look of the Peter Jackson trilogy expertly and incorporates highly professional costuming, makeup, photography, script writing, and acting.  I think the producers of the LOTR trilogy should include this film when they release the eventual DVD of the upcoming film of The Hobbit.  Perhaps this is the best fan film ever made.  It probably is.  I have not seen all the available fan films, but it is difficult to imagine that anyone has made a better one.  Watch the film and then think about the fact that it was made for under $5,000.

The Cool School: LA Art Scene Film

by Editor

This video is from a PBS Independent Lens documentary about the Ferus Gallery that shaped much of the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1960s.  It’s short but it conveys some of the sense of LA’s wild, nervy, uncontrolled art attitude that is still in force today.  I love the zoom in on Andy Warhol who’s standing in front of one of his works and he just says, ‘Oh.’  LA still has that sense of offering the individual artist the clear opportunity to walk into a gallery, shake hands, say ‘How’s it going?’ and end up with an art showing a few weeks later.  It’s a city of entrepreneurs.  New York is a city of deeply knowledgeable and experienced people who understand that there is a system in place that’s been there forever.  That’s why people walk fast in New York.  They’re all trying to stay on schedule so the system keeps running.  In LA, everyone is throwing crowbars into the system and breaking it so that they can make their own.  The gallery scene in downtown LA is really interesting these days.  You can walk for blocks, stopping in at the galleries for a wide variety of offerings.  There are a couple of galleries that have copped an arrogant New York attitude and they are the ones I stay away from.  In general, you get a real feeling of the art being right there and totally accessible to you.  Everything is for sale.  The artists are interested in your money.  It’s very simple and healthy.  When I buy a piece of art in LA I feel like I’ve pulled a fast one on the art world somehow.  I feel complicit in something with underground tones.