This Is a Generic Presidential Campaign Ad, by Dissolve from Dissolve on Vimeo.

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
AnasAbdin
noise dept.
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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trying on a metaphor
TVSTRANGERTHINGS

Product Placement
occasionally subtle

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
YOU ARE THE REASON
almost home

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NASA

roma★
taylor price
RMH
Peter Solarz
i don't do bad sauce passes
d e v o n

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@jfrobinson
This Is a Generic Presidential Campaign Ad, by Dissolve from Dissolve on Vimeo.
recommended...
Things discourage me
Things discourage me. Is it because I am getting old or are things really crappy? (rhetorical, don’t answer).
Case in point, thinking and talking and writing about cinema. People used to do it. Intellectuals use to do it. Cinema seemed to matter as an art form. I’m reading Truffaut’s “THE FILMS IN MY LIFE” which is made up of past film reviews. (He was a critic and in the middle of the French New Wave before he was a filmmaker). An example regarding REAR WINDOW, a film we have all seen: “A lot has been said about Hitchcock’s sadism. I think the truth is more complex, and REAR WINDOW is the first film he has given himself away to such a degree. For the hero of Shadow of a Doubt, the world was a pigsty. But in Rear Window I think it is Hitchcock who is expressing himself through his character. I ought not to be accused of reading things into it, since the honest subjectivity of Rear Window breaks through each shot, and all the more so because the tone (always serious in Hitchcock's films) is geared as usual to its interest as a spectacle, that is, its commercial appeal. It's really a matter of the moral attitude of a director who looks at the world with the exaggerated severity of a sensual puritan Hitchcock has acquired such expertise at cinematographic recital that he has, in thirty years, become much more than a good storyteller. As he loves his craft passionately, never stops making movies, and has long since resolved any production problems, he must invent difficulties and create new disciplines for himself to avoid boredom and repetition. His recent films are filled with fascinating constraints that he always overcomes brilliantly n this case, the challenge was to shoot a whole film in one single place, and solely from Stewart's point of view. We see only what he sees, and from his vantage point, at the exact moment he sees it. What could have been a dry and academic gamble, an exercise in cold virtuosity, turns out to be a fascinating spectacle because of a sustained inventiveness which nails us to our seats as firmly as James Stewart is immobilized by his plaster cast. In the face of such a film, so odd and so novel, we are liable to forget somewhat the stunning virtuosity; each scene by itself is a gamble that has been won. The effort to achieve freshness and novelty affects the camera's movements, the special effect decor, color. (Re call the murderer's gold-framed eyeglasses lit in the dark only by the intermittent glow of a cigarette!) Anyone who has perfectly understood Rear Window (which is not possible in one viewing) can, if he so wishes, dislike it and refuse to be involved in a game where blackness of character is the rule. But it is so rare to find such a precise idea of the world in a film that one must bow to its success, which is unarguable To clarify Rear Window, I'd suggest this parable: The courtyard is the world, the reporter/photographer is the filmmaker, the binoculars stand for the camera and its lenses. And Hitchcock? He is the man we love to be hated by.” (1954)
Who writes about movies like this anymore?
The “Magic Flute” now at the Los Angeles Opera shows the good things that can happen when a company shakes up its production schedule.
I saw The Magic Flute at LA Opera, its silent movie references were spot-on and the animation (and interface with the singers) was accomplished and inspirational. The singing was lovely and the music was, of course Mozart. I still don't love the oddly, unemotional, illogical and frigid message of the opera itself, not to mention it's obsession with the Masonic Temple. I can't understand why it is so loved universally compared the lushly emotional Bel Canto operas. However, Beethoven thought The Magic Flute to be Mozart's best work, so what do I know. I think it is best understood in the politics of the day, just post French Revolution, people were critical of Maria Theresa (Austrian archduchess, and Holy Roman Empress of the Habsburg Dynasty) as being against the "rights of man" who herself was petrified of the people she governed murdering her as the French did her daughter.
I wanted to talk about what an amazing day yesterday was, not so much the actually events, but the blazing speed at which things happened. I think that February 13th, 2016 will be studied by future historians as a milepost in the evolution of the speed of information in the digital age. It started on a Saturday morning in Marfa, Texas (of all places -- I love that part of Texas - where GIANT was filmed). The visiting Supreme Court Judge does not come to breakfast, and eventually someone goes to his room and finds him dead (by what is said now to be a heart attack, an atopsy is being done). The information passes almost immediately to an Express-News reporter in San Antonio (my home town) and within moments it is all over the world (I saw it first on an LA Times bulletin-text to my phone, I noticed the NY Times took almost another hour to announce, but they did it with a full obit.) I myself posted it around 12:58PM California time on Facebook and not many in my network had heard. I texted my sons -- one in Texas and the other on his way there to attend a wedding. With in a few minutes more, Cruz was announcing (via Twitter) that Obama should not be allowed the right to name a new judge, and conspiracy theories were popping up on Twitter, accusing Obama of having the judge murdered. Meanwhile, the Judge's body was waiting to be driven to El Paso under cover of darkness. There was a Republican debate that night, and the candidates were doubtless scrambling all afternoon to craft their Post-Scalia talking-points and zingers. Later in the afternoon, more official major-media obituaries were published online (and unofficial obituaries hating and praising him). Digital voices poured out from the Right that the "people" should have a voice in appointing the next SCOTUS judge (after an assumed GOP victory in November). The Left responded with outrage and Obama felt forced to make a statement that very afternoon from a summit he was hosting in Palm Springs that he fully planned to do his Constitutional duty and appoint a Judge. Meanwhile, the internet chatter and rage/insults/hand-wringing reached a fever-pich, and then came the debate, which by all accounts set a new standard for chaos and animosity. (I can't watch debates, GOP or the DEMS - but I followed a bit online). The crowd booed a moderator who tried to correct Sen. Cruz on his version of historical precedents regarding Lame Duck presidents appointing SCOTUS judges. Headlines claimed “Debate Audience Boos Facts.” Amazing. And all of this almost exactly 12 years after Facebook was founded in a dorm room, and less than 12 hours after the body was found. Do you think this deluge of lightning-fast distribution of news, rumor, hatred and argument is good or bad for humanity? Where do we go from here?
Every word (& sound) in WIZARD OF OZ re-edited in alphabetical order. Addictive and wonderful!
I just saw the recently restored Mary Pickford film “Tess of the Storm Country” at Cinefamily. Made in 1914, the film is very static, without camera movement and composed of long takes, blocked theater-style. The actors basically stand in a line. It was a huge hit in it’s day, directed by the helmer of "The Great Train Robbery" Edwin S. Porter.
There are several odd things abut the production to modern eyes, first they shot it is Santa Monica, with its dry, arid hills and Spanish architecture, and yet, it is supposed to be upstate New York on a lake. That “lake” looks just like the Pacific Ocean. Second, there is not a single close-up in the film, from the director that supposedly “invented” the close up in the “Great Train Robbery.”
Roughly based on Hardy’s “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” - the bleakest novel this side of Dostoyevsky, it’s amazing how the plot is manipulated so Pickford is allowed to stay virginal (although fending off would-be rapists and assumed to be a fallen woman by everyone) and have a wonderful happy ending. That’s Hollywood, 1914!
This was the role that made Pickford a star, and despite everything, she really shines. I was even teary at the end. Pickford called it her favorite role and re-made the film in the 1920′s. Tess is desperately poor in the film, she steals milk to feed the baby... and it made me think, when was the last time a hit film had a desperately poor protagonist? It was common up until WWII. Chaplin based his career on it. “Midnight Cowboy”? Rocky was poor (at first), “Marty?” But Marty was not desperately poor like Tess. Whatever, the desperately poor are not really thought of as people in Modern America.
Anyway, worth seeing -- check out the Mary Pickford Foundation: http://marypickford.org
Cinefamily listing: "The earliest surviving Mary Pickford feature, Tess of the Storm Country (1914) catapulted Pickford from popular performer to motion picture megastar virtually overnight. This was the film that packed theaters to record–breaking highs, inspired exhibitors to crown Pickford “America’s Sweetheart,” and spurred studio head Adolph Zukor to raise her salary, making her the world’s highest paid actress. In the film, Pickford stars as Tessibel Skinner, a poor but feisty squatter on the blustery shores of New York’s Cayuga Lake who rises to heroism when her father (David Hartford) is falsely imprisoned for murder. When Tess agrees to care for the illegitimate baby of a wealthy friend (Olive Golden), she risks losing the love of Frederick (Harold Lockwood) and is condemned by his father, the unforgiving minister Elias Graves (W.R. Walters). Directed by film pioneer Edwin S. Porter and based on a novel by Grace Miller White, Tess of the Storm Country was Mary Pickford’s favorite role."
My Copy of “No One Cares”
Start with this track and fall into it
Feeling spectacularly HUMAN (musings on Sinatra’s 100th)
You probably know today Sinatra would have been 100 today, and if you think of him at all it is probably from his Rat Pack days.
If that’s it — you are missing something magical. Today, I have been listening to the amazing recordings from his apex, in my opinion truly the pinnacle of popular music recording craft, in a time where the very best musicians gathered in a room together, listened to one and other, felt together and performed great arrangements of great songs in luxurious analog technology.
When you hear Sinatra and his collaborations with Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins and others, you feel spectacularly HUMAN, as if the intensity of human joy and loss and a million other emotions have been distilled into some kind of concentrated human essence and poured directly into your brain. It takes an investment in REAL listening to unwrap the unspeakable perfections of these recordings. With each listening you get more and more. That was the genius of the LP record, an art form Sinatra perfected. You put on the record, held the album jacket in you hand, and listened (that’s all you did), maybe with a friend. When it was over you played it again. Each listening put wear on your record and needle, so you never wasted it. I love digital media technology, don’t get me wrong - it is the world I work in, but I love records as well.
The word that strikes me over again and again about these recordings is “immaculate”. That’s what the best of these recordings are, from the musicians, arrangements, recording techniques, and Sinatra’s amazingly intricate vocal artistry that was captured forever, many of them at Capitol Records, just up Vine Street from where I am writing this today.
I’m also a big fan of Crosby, who was Haydn to Sinatra’s Mozart, but the two are very different in almost every way possible. Crosby was such a huge natural talent, and his ease with it was his appeal. He would open his mouth and this incredible sound would gush out, supported by his genius for rhythm and timing. Sinatra didn’t have those kind of gifts, and simply worked harder. You feel him drilling down deep and deeper into the lyric and melody like no one else except maybe Ella could do, and you can hear him wringing out every molecule of his talent into the craft of these recordings.
Craft. If you are a thinking person, you can’t help but feel the loss of it in our culture. Take a moment today and listen to some of the tracks listed below carefully, and dive into perfection for a moment.
Sinatra was who he became because he learned his craft in the best popular music orchestras of the era, with Harry James and to my ear the best player-leader of them all, the immortal Tommy Dorsey. Both leaders were horn players, and TD’s trombone was hugely influential on Sinatra, he played the trombone like a human voice, it is where the “immaculate” seed was planted in Sinatra’s craft. When you are part of a band like that, with that level of musicianship and you perform night after night and night, musicianship gets polished to a fine sheen. Today’s American Idol-bred vocalists get none of that, it’s about being “The Voice” and winning a contest, they never even see the face of the musicians that play with them, most of whom are computers anyway.
I remember when I was in my teens and 20′s, I thought Sinatra was a bad singer. I didn’t understand why he was “bending” notes and playing with his intonation. I thought he saw searching for the pitch. It turns out he was using his instrument in an incredibly sophisticated way, serving the emotion of the song and lyric. As a grown up, I appreciate the risk and complex craft in these recordings. He must have known that it didn’t matter to the average buyers of his records in the late 1950′s. Maybe he was doing it for Tommy Dorsey.
So we have lost the ability to HEAR music I think, in today’s culture. Learn again today.
Start with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFjiDUd7QmA
“Here’s That Rainy Day” Written by Van Heusen and Burke, Arr. Gordon Jenkins. Recorded March 25th, 1959. Capitol Records. From the Album “No One Cares” (one of my old-time favorites)
Saw the restored 4k version of Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers" last night with my sons at Cinefamily in LA. You can see how much Coppola and Scorsese were influenced by this film. Giant chunks of it were recycled into The Godfather and Raging Bull as well and many other Scorsese films. I found the cinematography and staging a complete inspiration, but more than anything, French actress Annie Girardot steals the movie. Rarely do you see an actor jump off the screen like that -- she is absolutely electric in this movie, you can’t take your eyes off her. Every director and actor should study the film and especially her performance. The NY Times in 1960 wrote: “The French actress Annie Girardot is likewise striking as the piteous prostitute, torn between a feral animalism and a longing for tender, honest love. She, too, is an interesting symbol of the brutalizing forces of urban life, and what happens to her at the finish is a meaningful irony.”
See director JFRobinson's profile on @radarmusicvideos
My profile on music video commissioning site Radar... The average budget for a music video on the site is about USD $6k.
I got to see “Dheepan” - Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Palm d’Or winner at AFI Fest at the Egyptian yesterday. Very well done, amazing performances. The lead actor in was actually a child soldier in Sri Lanka. http://variety.com/2015/film/festivals/dheepan-film-review-cannes-1201502383/
Without Janis Joplin, there mightn't have been an Amy Winehouse. The two most prominent female members of the so-called "27 Club" may have worked in different musical registers (while both appropri...
Janis Joplin is one of the most revered and iconic rock & roll singers of all time, a tragic and misunderstood figure who thrilled millions of listeners ...
I saw this film at the WGA last night and I have to recommend it if you are at all interested in that amazing time called the 1960′s -- and especially if you are fascinated by what makes an artist hunger for authentic expression. It’s a complicated story about a short, vivid life and a film really worth seeing. I’m not sure when it opens theatrically but it will also be on PBS, maybe in an edited form.
What is "Story-Selling?" My new website for Commercial/Corporate work -