I had another wonderfully entertaining year of movie watching in 2018. My absolute favorite first-time watches were A Brighter Summer Day, The Double Life of Veronique, and Andrei Rublev. My least favorite was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I posted brief, initial reactions to most of these movies on my Twitter account, if you'd like to look back and read more.
—January
The Rules of the Game (1939)
The Witch (2015)
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Ikiru (1952)
Silence (2016)
Vertigo (1958) - rewatch
—Feb
The Red Shoes (1948)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982) - rewatch
A Ghost Story (2017)
The Innocents (1961)
Tampopo (1985)
—March
Get Out (2017)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Coco (2017)
The Silence (1963)
Woman in the Dunes (1964)
—April
Certified Copy (2010)
The Florida Project (2017)
Mother! (2017)
Andrei Rublev (1966)
Dunkirk (2017)
—May
Yi Yi (2000)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
It (2017)
Dead Man (1995)
Stranger Things season 2 (2017)
—June
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Under the Skin (2013)
—July
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
The Double Life of Veronique (1991) - 3 times
Phantom Thread (2017)
The Shape of Water (2017)
Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters (1985)
—August
Good Time (2017)
—September
A Brighter Summer Day (1991) - twice
Persona (1966) - rewatch
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
—October
Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Throne of Blood (1957)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
The Thing (1982)
—November
Hausu (1977)
The Sandlot (1993) - rewatch
Late Spring (1949)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - rewatch
Andrei Rublev (1966) - rewatch
Lady Bird (2017)
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) - rewatch
Ratatouille (2007)
Badlands (1973)
—December
Close-up (1990)
A Quiet Place (2018)
Roma (2018)
First Reformed (2018)
Monsters Inc (2001)
Maybe it's my lack of interest in sports that allowed room for an increased interest in movies. I've always been drawn to them--watching them and learning how they are made--but when Veronica was born I all but gave them up for more than five years. Life took over and there was little opportunity to find 90-150 minutes during which I was alert enough to get absorbed into some fictional world.
Jump ahead to the summer of 2016. I found a good deal on a Blu-ray set of Stanley Kubrick's later films. I had watched most of his better known movies during college, and the fact that he had more out there that I hadn't yet seen nagged at me. By this time I had become a morning person and my employment status dropped to part-time. This opportunity allowed me to fit in a movie or two a week before the rest of the house was awake. Sometimes I'd have to break a movie into 2 or 3 sittings or give up a little extra sleep, which is not ideal but better than not watching movies at all.
While looking for some of Kubrick's earlier works, I discovered The Criterion Collection. This is a physical media label that is dedicated to releasing important films (classic and contemporary, foreign and domestic) in the best possible quality. The image/sound, and even the packaging, of these movies is beautiful. I fell in love. I got sidetracked from the Kubrick project because watching and researching one old film led to me wanting to see five more.
Most of what I watched in 2017 was on Criterion but not everything. My list includes rewatches, movies I watched with the kids, and a TV show that consumed my summer (Twin Peaks: The Return). I attempted to do some kind of ranking, but it was impossible with so many films I loved. These are in the order in which I watched them.
I ended up with the house to myself this weekend. This is only the second such occurrence since Veronica was born, and with a new baby arriving in September, it is probably going to be last time for an even longer stretch.
As much as I love time with my wife and daughter, I've been really looking forward to this weekend. I have a few projects lined up like restoring an old school desk that has just been too difficult to tackle with a three year old around. She sure likes to help, especially when paint is involved!
Other fun plans:
- Watch the sci-fi thriller Prometheus
- Work on my "Grind" video mood piece
- Get some exercise
- Have a drink
The bummer is I had a work install happening on Friday night and Saturday morning (just finishing up now!), so some of my best hours went toward that. I'm also sick with a pretty bad cold that is slowing me down. And of course, there are a bunch of chores to do around here and errands to run. Enough blogging about it -- time to make use of this time!
We recently took two trips, and I've been wanting to write about each individually, even though at this point they are both starting to feel like old news. In fact, I've got a back log of about five blog entries and counting that I'd still like to write, so bear with me if I end up a month or two behind real time.
If our second trip this season took me out of my comfort zone, then the first trip was squarely in it. We traveled to an area of our country that has appealed to me for a long time: the Pacific Northwest. My interest in this region has sort of manifested itself over the years in the form of Twin Peaks, but it didn't start there. It began during a trip to Washington I took with my parents while I was in junior high. The place was inspiring to me then; it's inspiring now; and when I discovered Twin Peaks sometime in between, the mystery and the mood that inspired me were directly tied to the location.
R was attending a conference in Seattle at the end of May, so we decided to extend her stay and fly me up for Memorial Day weekend. We spent our first full day exploring the city (Space Needle, Pike Place Market, underground tour) and the two days after that in and around Snoqualmie, a small town where "a yellow light still means slow down, not speed up". This is where they filmed much of the pilot episode of Twin Peaks and quite a few exteriors that were used throughout the series. Keep in mind the show was made over 20 years ago, so things have changed a bit. It's also a little deceiving when you recognize the outside of a building and then you walk in and realize an entirely different set was used for the interior scenes.
I am proud to say we spent two nights at the Salish Lodge, pictured at he top of the waterfall above, which is a key spot in the show. And, as cheesy as it sounds, having a cup of coffee and a piece of cherry pie in the Double R Diner (called Twede's Cafe in reality) was an absolute highlight of the trip for me, despite the changed decor (Tweety Birds hanging from the ceiling?). You could say being there was the realization of a dream for me.
It's hard to complain about the weather in Santa Barbara, but maybe I needed a change because I found myself welcoming the rain we experienced in Washington. It was more of a steady drizzle that bounced off you than any sort of downpour. It enlivened the greens and provided the tree tops with some haunting mists. We saw a lot of this during a hike to Rattlesnake Ledge on our last afternoon up there. R once again impressed me by handling the four mile round trip and 1200 feet elevation gain quite well at about 19 weeks into her pregnancy.
As usual, our photos go into much more detail than I could ever describe. Check them out here to see more about our weekend getaway.
When I first started discussing this project with the band, Sarah (the lead singer/songwriter) listed some images and feelings she associates with a few of the songs. Most of what she told me was open to interpretation, and I probably didn't come anywhere near close to recreating what she envisioned, but it was still helpful to get inside her head a little.
One song that she did not give me any thoughts on is "The Unmaking." I was kind of relieved because this is one of their older tunes that I had listened to a bunch, and I already had something in mind for it. For some reason this song screamed science fiction at me. Maybe the backing synths sound kind of like a UFO landing or something -- I didn't over-analyze it. I just knew that was the direction I wanted to take this particular backdrop.
Okay, now jump back ten years. I was in college, taking a summer course in Barcelona. A few classmates and I went out with some locals to a hole-in-the-wall club down some dark alley. The entrance was unmarked and the place was about as big as our kitchen. It was stuffed with people dancing to techno music and it had episodes of the original Star Trek series projected on the wall.
I liked how the old television show was being used for a purpose for other than what was originally intended. I'm sure the episodes had a story line, but of course nobody was trying to follow it. That wasn't the point. There was a pulpiness to it -- a sense that it could go on for a really long time without attracting too much attention, just adding to the club's ambience with trippy special effects and cheesy acting. I've been in other bars since then where they play film noir on plasma screens usually reserved for sports games. They are like moving, old-time photographs on the wall. I like that kind of stuff. My backdrop video project as whole was meant to be a decoration like that... and the segment for "The Unmaking" had to be sci-fi because of Barcelona.
So what better opportunity would I have to pull out the Star Trek influenced Super 8 film that my uncle made with some of his friends in the late 1970s? Growing up, my brothers and I referred to this piece of work as "Uncle Jimmy's Space Movie." My dad would set up the old screen and projector once in a while and treat us to a showing of it and a few others my uncle made. They were a huge inspiration at the time and planted a desire for filmmaking in me.
When my dad eventually bought a video camera, two things happened: (1) I started making my own movies, and (2) we transferred our collection of 8mm films to tape. Then, sometime post-college, I went through the VHS tapes and digitized some of the contents in order to further preserve them. This included the space movie as well as the "Mud Brothers" clip I showed you last year. I really didn't have any other plans for these old films at the time, but I was happy I had them handy last August.
Part of the charm of the space movie lies in its roughness -- in the loose editing, in the decay of the original film, in the jittery projection. I didn't mind all of that, but I did make a quick pass through and edit it down a bit for the backdrop. Some of the talking scenes went on too long for a crowd who wasn't meant to follow the story. The problem with this shorter cut, however, is that I ended up with three and a half minutes of a space movie for a backdrop that needed to be five minutes long. So I had to supplement it with some of my own original footage.
After my additions were made, the backdrop was no longer about the space movie. It was now about what was happening in a room where the space movie was playing. It plays on a TV screen in the shadows, and there is a mysterious figure who crosses back and forth in front of it. Eventually we follow that figure out of the room and see where he goes. It all comes together in what I think is a satisfying conclusion, tying together the inspiration and the inspired, bridging 30+ years of a genetic bond over artistic creation... I'll shut up now.
This backdrop includes a cameo from a much younger version of my dad, seen on the "video conferencing monitor" in the movie within a movie below:
It also includes a cameo by me, in a brief sequence that attempts to match the space movie shot-by-shot:
Are you starting to see why I was nervous about showing this one to the band (not to mention a crowd of 150 concert attendees)? In the end I think it worked fine as a set decoration, yet I like that there were a few extra rewards in there for anybody who might care (i.e. me).
Finally, here's a clip. Keep in mind you're only viewing about a third of it. I might try to get a full-length version online eventually, but this better suits my needs right now. Enjoy!
P.S. A big thank you to my uncle Jim for allowing me to use his work-of-art!
How's this for a fun old film? It was recorded by my dad way back in the day, and I think it's a brilliant little piece of storytelling. The idea of capturing real moments like this (and attempting to manufacture them once in a while as well) is one of the reasons I wanted to get into video production. You are looking at some of my inspiration.
I always thought this clip would make a good character developing flashback in a larger work, possibly to demonstrate the start of a character's corruption or something. I'm not saying that's what happened to me in real life, but in some ways this does respresent my relationship with my older brother and our separate personalities. I think this piece speaks for itself.
I added the Smashing Pumpkins soundtrack and the feathered edge to increase the dreaminess of it. That's what it feels like to me when I watch it: a dream or a faded memory. I'm so glad I have this one preserved.
I've been thinking a lot about our trip to New Zealand lately, probably because this month marks our first anniversary of being there (here's the post from then). Among other things, it was an adventure that inspired us to do more exploring of the outdoors. As a result, we camped more in 2008 than any other year in our lives (if you exclude R's summer as a camp counselor), and we are planning to get out even more in 2009. Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and Big Sur are on the list... and that is just this spring. The goal is to try more overnight hikes as well. We're gearing up so that we can carry everything we need for a couple of days on our backs, leaving the car and associated crowded campgrounds behind. California is a good place to attempt it.
Speaking of CA, the trip to NZ was what first seeded the idea of living here in our heads. I remember talking to my dad afterwards and telling him how we were "California dreamin'." This was even before transfering here for R's job was a known possibility. A number of the people in our travel group were from CA and spoke highly of the place. One of them, from Pasadena, was in charge of hiring some engineers for his company. R checked into it at the time. That opportunity didn't work out, but when we she was up for re-assignment in the spring and luck placed Santa Barbara on the list of potential locations, we pushed for it. It meant leaving some great friends, giving up my membership in the Delaware Independent Filmmakers club, and having to spend a lot more money to buy a smaller house... but I, for one, have not regret the decision, as you I'm sure you can tell. In fact you're probably tired of reading how much I love it here.
The photos above were not included in our original gallery from the NZ trip. They were taken by other people in our group and were sent to us after our own photos were organized. So I'm posting a few of them now for an alternate perspective of an amazing country. If you ever have the chance to see the place for yourself, I highly recommend going for it.
That is easily one of my favorite photos of all time. It was taken by my dad during the second weekend of deer hunting in 2003. I don't know what is going on in the foreground between the scared-looking Gopher fan and the man with the stick, but I love how it has nothing to do with my bizarre duet with a Special-Export-drinking buddy in the background. One thing is for certain: a scene like this could only materialize at a hunting shack in northern Minnesota. Craziness tends to ensue when when you fill a tiny cabin in the middle of the cold woods with a bunch of coarse guys and an endless supply of beer. For a surprisingly accurate look at what the experience is like, check out this little tune by Da Yoopers.
The notorious "Second Weekend" is an annual event in November, but I haven't attended since the year that photo was taken. It seems some distance has come between me and the shack. But I'd like to return one day, as I find it oddly inspiring. Heck, Bread Man was born there! He was based my uncle. I woke up early one morning to find him asking "who wants some bread?" He must have been talking to me because I think everybody else had finally gone to sleep.
How about we talk about something other than my video projects today?
The "Wrong Number Project" is almost complete. Dang it--there I go again. I'm having trouble with this.
What else is there to write about? I can't offer any unique perspectives on politics. If you want to read about that stuff, check out CNN.com. Sports are out of my knowledge base too. I could probably give you some more movie reviews (we recently watched Volver, The Illusionist, A Scanner Darkly, and Sweet Land), but I don't want you to think I'm too obsessed with movies (although I am).
Is it narcissistic to write about one's self on one's blog all the time? Probably. But if this is meant to replace my written journal, then I shouldn't feel guilty about it. It serves a purpose. Part of the reason I write in here is so that I have a record of events in my life and also to chart the progress of my video projects. When I decide to look back on my past, that's the stuff that will be interesting to me. I may have one or two regular readers out there, but I am my own audience more so than anybody else.
January is a month with a history of inspiring creativity in me. I like having the cold as an excuse to stay in and dream up what I will work on next. This year, between editing three projects at once, writing a screenplay, updating a blog, and the always-fun surfing of the web, it's possible I have too many things to do on my computer. I don't want to neglect social events or cut into my time with R, so I am trying to keep it all in moderation. I do enjoy other things too. Maybe I'll try to explore some of those other interests in replace of some of my computer time. That might keep me from getting burned out and also give me something else to write about.
Yeah, maybe I'll hook up the ol' Super Nintendo again : )
One last thing for the night--check out these splendid trailers for the new Lynch film. My anticipation is building for a second viewing.
