Jason interviewed David Bernal, aka Elsewhere, the popping dancer who recreated Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in The Rain dance scene for a recent British VW GTi commercial: “…they had us watch the original Singing in the Rain scene so many times that I started unconsciously moving a bit like Gene Kelly. The director at one point even told me that I was moving too much like Gene and I needed to move more like me.”
Golf GTi Commercial and Elsewhere [kottke.org]
previously: Definition of “to be Jar-Jarred”
VW commercial shot on the same soundstage as Oliver!
Musical, Re-animated, with Xanadu references
Advertisers and Links Of Note
First, I’d like to welcome and give a passionate cry to new greg.org advertiser Kinsey, an American Experience documentary airing Monday, February 14th on PBS. Psst, even though Kinsey’s work is half a century old, don’t tell the Secretary of Education.
Meanwhile, Daddy Types may sound like something Kinsey would’ve been into, but it’s actually a site for new dads. Check that one out, too.
All The Vermeers In New York (Plus The One In Boston)
I can’t quite say why, but I had a pretty intense Jon Jost phase when I first moved to New York. I saw his All The Vermeers In New York several times, lured in by the title, but kept there by the film’s demanding and precise construction, and its underlying art-vs-money themes. [That said, I don’t remember it too well; better add it to the rental queue.]
Anyway, I’m sure–pretty sure. kind of sure. hoping–that when the Whitney Museum put then-Vivendi/Universal chairman Jean-Marie Messier on its board in the late 1990’s, it was NOT it in the hope of adding one more Vermeer to New York City’s collection.
FBI looking at Messier as part of its investigation of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, which netted someone a Vermeer and some Rembrandts [bostonherald.com]
All The Vermeers In New York[imdb.com, amazon]
FYI, New York’s Vermeers are at the Met [5] and the Frick [3]
I Dare You
Oh My Heck! Brother Greg Whiteley’s New York Doll
I admit, a lot of Sundance went by me in a blur. No one I knew I knew was showing anything this year, and I knew non-film work would conspire to keep me out of Park City, so maybe I’m the only person who DIDN’T know about New York Doll. Well, in the last week, I’ve heard about it from three different people, each of whom called it one of the top films at the festival.
Greg Whiteley started shooting a documentary about his friend from church, Arthur Kane, when Morissey called [?!] and asked if his old band, the New York Dolls, would reunite and play for the first time in 30 years at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London.
Turns out Brother Kane, who may be more familiar to rock fans as Killer Kane, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the late 80’s, and when Morissey called, he was working in the genealogy library near the LA temple on Santa Monica. Imagining Kane fitting in in the Mormon Church, Blondie drummer Clem Burke said, “It would be like Donny Osmond becoming a New York Doll.”
It also turns out–and this is less of a surprise to music fans–that the New York Dolls were possibly the single greatest influence on glam-rock and punk in the early seventies, and were a key inspiration for everyone from Morissey to Blondie to the Ramones to the Sex Pistols. I’m not giving anything of the film away to point out that the Meltdown reunion–for which Kane dressed, not in feathery glam drag, but in a ruffled shirt inspired by the 19th c. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and which featured the three band members who hadn’t died of punk-lifestyle-related causes–was a star-filled, exuberant success. Additional tour dates were hastily set, then just days later, Kane died two hours after being diagnosed with leukemia.
The film includes interviews with the musicians who were inspired by the dolls as well as Kane’s bishop, who talked about the joy Kane was deriving from the upcoming reunion. Whiteley showed some of his rough footage at Kane’s funeral, then edited like crazy to get the film ready for the Sundance screenings last month.
As of right now, the film’s distribution is not decided.
Official Sundance info for New York Doll [sundance.org]
IndieWIRE email interview with director Greg Whiteley [indiewire.com]
Film details Mormon’s final wish: to reunite punk band [reno journal]
New York Dolls play SENSATIONAL comeback show at Meltdown [nme.com]
Arthur Kane, Punk Rock Bassist for New York Dolls, dies at 55 [NYT, via mills.edu]
Strange Commercials or Sponsored Shorts?
No, these are just strange commercials, discussed on Design Observer by Momus.
Previously: The Suntory Commercials of Akira Kurosawa
‘Lost’ Swedish Soap Commercial Director Ingmar Bergman Finally Gets Recognition
NYT Reviews the Sony HDRFX1 High Def Camera
In the NY Times today, David Pogue reviews Sony’s new prosumer (i.e., sub-$4,000) 3-chip, high definition camera, the FX1. Net net, it gets pretty high marks. It’s got a stunning, true 16:9 CCD, which can shoot HD30 or film’s 24 frames per second. One feature I’m eager to see in person is the pre-programmable settings with which you can automate changes in exposure and focus to match the changes in a shot–moving from a bright exterior to a dimly lit interior, for example.
Eeven so, it’s still saddled with one of Sony’s persistently annoying dumb-downs–no XLR sound inputs–meant only to protect the far more expensive professional market. They did this with their first 3-chip camera, the VX1000 as well, making people use add-on XLR adaptors until the PD-150 was introduced several years later.
Anyway, if you think you’re ready to shoot HD, the FX1 is for sale at Amazon. I’m probably not supposed to tell you the price, but I will say that if Amazon paid me a 10% commission–which they won’t–I’d earn $334 off of each one of you budding, shopping filmmakers.
Buy the Sony HDRFX1 High Def Camera at Amazon
Home Video Made To Watch on High Definition TV [NYT]
Waiting For Halo
Microsoft has commissioned Alex Garland (28 Days Later, um, The Beach, but we don’t talk about that) to write a script for Halo–a v1.0, if you will–which will be offered to producers along with with the game’s film rights as a “turnkey” package.
This is a brilliant, precedent-setting move for a multitude of reasons:
But seriously, folks, I hope they call it Red vs Blue.
Halo, Hollywood [variety.com, via TMN]
Ridley Scott to direct Halo movie? [11/04, ign.com: “because Halo’s like Alien, and Halo 2’s so much like Aliens“–directed by James Cameron, yo.]
more games-to-film news at filmforce [ign.com]
“Ladies, Step Away From The Bags”
Artforum’s gossip columnist Rhonda Lieberman wasn’t on the list for artfully poseurish artworld duo [Yvonne Force-Villareal and Sandra Hamburg] Mother, Inc.’s recent Fendi-sponsored CD listening party, so she traded a blowjob for entry. At least that’s how it reads.
A little context: Mother, Inc. started as backup singers for Fischerspooner. The title quote above comes from the oh-so-vigilant guards watching the sponsor’s display case.
Hot Commodities [artforum scene & herd]
Bunnies Multiplying Like Rabbits
What is it about bunnies and short films? First, the NY Times has a hi-larious, yet thoughtfully insightful interview with Jennifer Shiman, the creator of 30-Second Bunny Theatre. Then Chris Harding’s 50’s instructional film-style short for Hallmark features a hutchful of retro bunnies flogging greeting cards.
Spielbunny [NYT, oh wait, I wrote that. Not that that taints my judgment or anything…]
Classic films, re-enacted in 30 seconds by bunnies [angryalien.com]
Make Mine Shoebox corporate video [chrisharding.net]
Need To Know: Nobody Knows
Tony Scott gave Hirokazu Kore-eda and his latest film, Nobody Knows, a strong review:
Nobody Knows is not for the faint of heart, though it has no scenes of overt violence, and barely a tear is shed. It is also strangely thrilling, not only because of the quiet assurance of Mr. Kore-eda’s direction, but also because of his alert, humane sense of sympathy. He is neither an optimist nor a sentimentalist – like his previous films, Maborosi, After Life, and Distance, this one presents a fairly bleak view of the modern world – but he does keep an eye out for manifestations of decency, bravery and solidarity. These tend to be small and fleeting, and therefore all the more valuable and worth clinging to when his patient, meticulous eye uncovers them.
I found Distance–only available as a Region 2 DVD–to be so carefully hands-off as to be almost boring. And what Scott calls “impending doom,” Jonathan Marlow, reporting from Rotterdam for GreenCine, calls “relatively predictable.” And “unnecessarily long.” Maybe it’s a good thing Kore-eda’s doing a jidai-geki (period drama) next.
Abandoned Children Stow Away At Home [nyt]
GreenCine at IFFR [daily.greencine.com]
Also: Filmbrain’s take on the film, an IndieWIRE’s interview with Kore-eda, and an IFP article and the film’s production notes.
Previously: Kore-eda on greg.org [I mean, greg.org on Kore-eda]
Every Building On The Sunset Strip–And Then Some
When I saw Amazon’s A9 Local yellow pages feature, the first thing I thought of was Ed Ruscha’s 1966 artist book, Every Building on The Sunset Strip. It was the first Ruscha book I bought, and it makes me laugh to remember how I thought I paid too much for it way back when (it’s easily 10 times as expensive now).
Anyway, using Mikel Maron’s A9 whole-street-grabbing script, I tried all through that weekend to re-create Ruscha’s Sunset Strip. The result was a lot of technical annoyance.
First, starting from a given address, Maron’s script grabs an entire street–a damn big proposition in the case of Sunset Blvd. (Technically, The Strip itself is only a fragment, the section from Doheny to Crescent Heights, from Gil’s Liquors to the Virgin Megastore.)
Trying to save the giant series created some odd results: one seemingly random image would intersperse itself all the way along. After trying to edit this one out, the resulting series were suddenly non-continuous. Something odd was happening when I saved the series and then reconstituted it.
I hadn’t yet cropped the image series at the appropriate intersections, so I didn’t get to try knitting them together into two long panoramas. Actually, I found the A9 images’ redundancy kind of nice; the periodic picture-taking indirectly revealed the (non)movement of the traffic along the Strip.
Anyway, then I saw Jason pointing to Eric Etheridge’s discussion of Every Building, and I think, better to throw this out to the lazyweb and see if someone can tell me how to figure this out, or just do it and make their own selves net-famous.
Czech Republic, $@#! Yeah!
North Korea’s ambassador in Prague has demanded that Team America World Police be banned from the Czech Republic; it depicts Kim Jong Il consorting with Alec Baldwin, which, he says, would totally NEVER happen.
Replies Foreign Ministry spokesman Vit Kolar, “We told them it’s an unrealistic wish. Obviously, it’s absurd to demand that in a democratic country. And anyway, Alec Baldwin is still better than Vin Diesel.”
N. Korea Wants Czech Ban of Team America [guardian]
Flavin-esque
No one rips off quicker than window dressers. They take next week’s ideas from last week’s paper, or they stop by the magazine stand on the way to Home Depot.
One Monday morning, I passed by Bergdorf’s on my way to work just as they were unveiling the new windows. I stopped dead in my tracks as, unbelievably, two artist friends’ works were ripped off at once: the backdrops were Stephen Hendee’s crystalline architectural forms made of foamcore and black tape, and the designers’ names were printed in the perspectival receding typeface of Ricci Albenda’s paintings. By no coincidence, both artists had been featured in a cover story in art/text magazine that had hit the stands just days before. I called both artists and their dealers that morning, and the whole shebang was gone by the next day.
So I’m a little less shocked, shocked, than Todd is to find out Saks Fifth Avenue windows are decorated with “Dan Flavin” fluorescent lights. I’m also sure that Flavin’d be rolling over in his grave, if only the last work he completed before he died wasn’t a Christmas light installation in the windows of the then-new Calvin Klein boutique on Madison.
Flavin on Fifth Avenue [fromthefloor]
Weird. Why have I written almost the exact phrase three times now? [google: “dan flavin” “calvin klein”]
Rags To Riches To Jail
Finally, the business model for the ostensibly-aspiring-to-a- Subway-sized-franchise-empire rice pudding boutique on Spring St, Rice To Riches, is explained in a way even an MBA like me can understand: it was founded with proceeds from a $21 million sports gambling operation and used to launder the ring’s money.
[update: Amy at newyorkology spotted Rice to Riches as a location in Hitch, which may have been the shoot Lockhart Steele saw last May.]
Rice To Riches (and back to rice, I’m betting) [NYPost via TMN]
Lockhart Steele, the longtime Eliot Ness of Rice To Riches [google]