The "inbred banjo boy"

YouTube link.

The actor is Billy Redden from Rabun County, Georgia who was 15-years-old at the time. Redden was "discovered" during a casting call at his school in Clayton, Georgia. Special effect makeup was used to augment Redden's already-unusual features. He didn't actually play the banjo. According to The New Yorker, "Boorman had had to deploy another boy to hide behind the swing and slip his hand through Redden’s sleeve to finger the changes."

Further details, and a video interview with the (normal-looking) adult Billy Redden at Boing Boing.

"Blade Runner" - a revised trailer

YouTube link.

A re-imagined trailer for one of my favorite movies, crafted in a "film noir" style -

As many have pointed out, Blade Runner is already very "Noir." I just wanted to take those aspects of the film and accentuate them into something hopefully interesting. The piano song is "Memories of Green" off the soundtrack. All sounds and images in the trailer are from the film or soundtrack.

Via Neatorama.

See also: The "love theme" from "Blade Runner" (Vangelis)

and The "Tears in Rain" soliloquy.

"Bunny boiler" explained

I encountered "bunny boiler" for the first time in the subtitle of a Telegraph article:

Lisa Jewell on literary bunny-boilers

Had to look it up:

The slang term "bunny boiler" has passed into popular parlance as a term for a jealous mistress, based on [Fatal Attraction's] infamous rabbit boiling scene. The phrase's first use in print was on December 6, 1990 in The Dallas Morning News, in which Glenn Close described her character in that film using the term.

YouTube link. 

...we witness Beth Gallgher’s (Anne Archer) walk to the hob, taking the time to put her bag down as the camera cuts to show a single shot of the pan boiling. Then as she continues her walk the action gradually starts to increase with the cut to her daughter running in the garden, cut back to Beth and then straight back to the daughter again creating a frenzied and disorientating effect necessary to the pay-off at the end when the lid to the pan is raised. At this moment we cut back once more to the girl screaming by the rabbit cage and then hear Beth’s scream as we are offered a glimpse of the cooked bunny.

Trailer for "The Fifth Estate"

YouTube link.

The trailer for Bill Condon’s WikiLeaks movie, “The Fifth Estate” has arrived, starring “Sherlock” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” star Benedict Cumberbatch as a singularly-focused Julian Assange.

Assange, however, has consistently criticized the project, calling it “a massive propaganda attack” on the organization and even refused to meet with Cumberbatch.

From within London’s Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange remains in hiding, he connected with Oxford University students via Internet and slammed the film, which allegedly contains scenes regarding a nuclear weapons program in Iran. ”How does this have anything to do with us?… How is it that a lie gets into a script about WikiLeaks?” he asked. He called the scenes “an attack against us [WikiLeaks]” as well as “an attack against Iran.” “It fans the flames to start a war with Iran,” he said.

"World War Z" official trailer - and people sucked from planes

YouTube link.

Today's Guardian Film Blog has an entertaining post about the cinematic epidemic of people being sucked out of airplanes.

Next week sees the release of the much-anticipated zombie-pocalypse thriller World War Z, in which Brad Pitt's flight is rudely interrupted by a) a horde of ravenous zombies, and b) a hole in the plane's fuselage, flushing passengers and their luggage out into icy air. What terrible luck! And just two weeks after that nice Will Smith was sucked from his son through a hole in the fuselage of his spacecraft in After Earth. And that terrifying sight followed hot on the heels of Iron Man 3, which featured one of Iron Man's fancier rescues, as he scooped up 13 passengers sucked through a hole in the fuselage of their jet as it made its way across the Pacific...

Experts will doubtless debate long and hard as to whether this year's crop of films about people getting sucked from planes beats the last such bumper year, 1993, in which no less than three movies – Cliffhanger, Alive, and Fearless – preyed on the public's fears of a ruptured fuselage...

Then there is the grand-daddy of all decompression scenes: the death of Auric Goldfinger in the 1964 Bond classic of that name, zipping around the cabin like a burst balloon before being sucked out the hole created in the window by his .45 caliber... Many a villain has followed in the slipstream of Oddjob's booming buttocks, including the baby alien at the end of Alien 4: Resurrection and the eponymous snakes in David Rellis's 2006 masterwork, Snakes on a Plane. 

The post notes that the physics of fuselage breaches do not support Hollywood's renditions of the events.

"Rust and Bone"

YouTube link.

I watched "Rust and Bone" last night. It's an engaging movie, not always easy to watch because the behavior or the characters themselves is not always appealing, but the acting is superb.  I remembered Marion Cotillard from her multi-award-winning portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose; Matthias Schoenaerts was new to me. 

This is not your typical Hollywood movie (it's French-Belgian), and though categorized as a romantic drama, it's not the stereotypical chick-flick.  It is brutally frank about some of the less-pleasant aspects of life.  The scene in which Marion Cotillard's character briefly reunites with the orcas is magical, and her overall performance is superb, even when (especially when) she sits quietly, reacting to events around her.

Those who have seen it are invited to add their own mini-reviews in the Comments.

The Battle Song of St. Trinians - updated

YouTube link. 

After watching one of the original St. Trinians movies I could NOT get the theme song out of my head, and thought perhaps if I post it here and someone else will listen to it, it might jump into your head and out of mine.

Maidens of St Trinian's, gird your armour on.

Grab the nearest weapon; never mind which one.

The battle's to the strongest; might is always right.

Trample on the weakest; glory in their plight.

St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Our battle cry.

St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Will never die.

Stride towards your fortune boldly on your way,

Never once forgetting there's one born every day.

Let our motto be broadcast: "get your blow in first!"

She who draws the sword last always comes off worst.

Reposted from 2010 to commemorate the recent death of Ronald Searle, who created the iconic illustrations of St. Trinian's.

The first two or three films from the 1950s and 60s, starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, and George Cole, were memorable components of my childhood cinema education (the later remakes were eminently forgettable). Cartoon via Fictions.  Ronald Searle tribute blog here.

Addendum:  Reblogged from 2012 because of a report in The Telegraph that the school which served as the inspiration for St. Trinian's will now be admitting... boys.

From 2014, they will be allowed at Perse Girls' junior school, part of the Stephen Perse Foundation - a group of independent schools in Cambridge...

The new system will see girls and boys aged 10 to 16 taught alongside each other in creative subjects and sports but separately in other lessons. They will however, also share facilities such as libraries and eating areas.

Tricia Kelleher, principal of the foundation, said this would allow the school to "remain true to its single sex roots" while at the same time, embracing the "best of all worlds".

She said the move was in response to requests from parents and would go some of the way to redressing the deficit of places for boys in Cambridge schools, adding it was not fair that girls "should have all the fun"...

Mr Searle, a sketch artist for the Cambridge Daily News, now the Cambridge News, said that as a teenager attending Boys' Central School in Cambridge, he would see the girls on the way home from school. 

In a letter to the school he said Perse Girls was a "positive source of inspiration" and added: "But I hope the school won't hold that against me, so many years after the crime." 

I don't dare play the video this morning, or else I'll have an earworm all day.

A supercut of "back-to-the-camera" shots from movies

YouTube link.

I am endlessly fascinated by supercuts from movies. What resources do people have to create these things?  If someone wanted to collect sneezes from movies, is there a source that tells them which 74 movies have characters sneezing?

Anyway, for this one, a list of the movie sources for the almost 100 scenes is in the "About" section at the YouTube link.  I recognized about half of them, but there were a few that were so beautiful or impressive that it makes we want to see the movie.

Enjoy (fullscreen recommended).

Via Neatorama.

Trailer for "The Intouchables"

YouTube link.

Seems like a good movie - any comments? 

p.s. - I presume "intouchable" is untranslated French? but then why combine it with "the" rather than "le"?

Test yourself for schadenfreude

 

YouTube link.

This is the trailer for The Queen of Versailles, which I watched last night.  The featured couple, David and Jackie Siegel, were billionaires whose empire collapsed.  A film crew was in the proceess of documenting their life in 2008, when the financial crisis struck.  Siegel's fortune had been built on real estate.  Time share real estate.  Sold to people with limited financial resources.  In Florida and Las Vegas.

The film traces their dizzying fall from building the largest private home in the world...

"The house includes ten kitchens, 13 bedrooms, 23 bathrooms, and a 20-car garage with additional space for limos, a two-lane bowling alley, an indoor rollerskating rink, a video arcade, a fitness center with spa, two tennis courts, and a baseball diamond"

... to reprimanding the children about the expense of leaving the lights on.

It's an impressive movie.  Not enjoyable, exactly, but memorable.

("Schadenfreude" is defined here.)

"Sarajevo roses" and a bibliocaust

Last night I watched the 1997 film Welcome to Sarajevo.  It's a powerful film, often not easy to watch.  This somewhat cheesy promotional trailer gives a sense of the movie for those not familar with it:

YouTube link.

The film's focus is on the plight of the orphans, but I couldn't help noticing in the movie (briefly shown at 1:24 in the trailer) the burning of the National Library; it reminded me of the recent bibliocaust in Mali, so I looked up the Sarajevo one this morning:

On 25 August 1992, Serbian shelling during the Siege of Sarajevo caused the complete destruction of the library; among the losses were about 700 manuscripts and incunabula and a unique collection of Bosnian serial publications, some from the middle of the 19th century Bosnian cultural revival.Before the attack, the library held 1.5 million volumes and over 155,000 rare books and manuscripts.  Some citizens and librarians tried to save some books while they were under sniper fire, at least one person died.  The majority of the books could not be saved from the flames.

The image embedded at the top is a "Sarajevo rose":

A Sarajevo Rose is a concrete scar caused by a mortar shell's explosion that was later filled with red resin. Mortar rounds landing on concrete create a unique fragmentation pattern that looks almost floral in arrangement. Because Sarajevo was a site of intense urban warfare and suffered thousands of shell explosions during the Bosnian War, the marked concrete patterns are a unique feature to the city.

Discussed in a Reddit thread.

"Finding Vivian Maier" (trailer)

YouTube link.

Looks like a fascinating movie. 

"The Avengers" + "The Breakfast Club" =

YouTube link. 

Sound track from a trailer for The Breakfast Club, mashed up with clips of The Avengers.  Very professionally done.

Via Neatorama.

56 Up (trailer)

YouTube link.

Reviewed today in The Guardian:

Nick Hornby wrote a column about the series at the time, which I remember well for exactly this kind gloomy backwards projection. How dreadful, he wrote, to be involved in a show where one's youthful idealism is captured and held up against the inevitably more prosaic reality. How appalling his present life would seem – pushing a trolley around the supermarket at weekends; doing ordinary things in the ordinary manner – if juxtaposed with his seven-year-old hope and wonder at the world...

It's true, the cut-aways from the unblemished seven-year-olds to the ravaged and not so ravaged 56-year-olds is, in places, unbearably poignant, particularly in the case of Neil, the thoughtful, troubled, intermittently homeless man who tells Apted that if he didn't have the video evidence before him, he would never have believed he had been such a cheerful child. But there is something fundamentally hopeful about it, too; with each installment, the reminder that all things pass and that, for the most part, people get on with it with resilience and humour.

Above all, in a television culture so reliant on cheap, phony reality shows, there is the satisfaction of remembering what real people saying real things should look like.

I am so looking forward to seeing this movie; my previous review of this series is here.

The movies of 2012

YouTube link.

A list of the movies in the order of appearance in the mashup. So far I've seen only I think eight of them, but have several others on request from the library.

If you like this video, Matt Shapiro has also done "Cinescapes" for -
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007, and
2006

I may have blogged some of these in the past (because I've seldom met a movie mashup I didn't like) but I don't have time to check old blog posts right now; got to go watch the Vikings lose to the Packers again.

Via The Dish.

"The Naked Gun" (the "best bits")

Youtube link. 

In my opinion, some of the best sight gags in cinema.  No matter how many times you've seen the movie, it's probably impossible not to laugh at some of these excerpts.

How desensitized to violence are you?

YouTube link. 

They're just zombies, after all - not really "people." (All the deaths are from The Walking Dead).  I had to click it off.

Via The Dish.

Mostly dark, violent and scary - but with Monarchs at the end

Youtube link. 

A mashup of over 300 clips from trailers of the movies of 2012.  A list of the movies, in the order presented, is available at The Sleepy Skunk on Tumblr (you'll need to scroll down).  Via The Dish.

A supercut of "right behind me" scenes

YouTube link. 

I generally enjoy supercuts of movie scenes, but I clicked off this one midway through.  There's nothing wrong with the compliation per se, but it started to remind me of how derivative Hollywood movies can be.

Somewhat better (because of the variety of behavior) is this supercut of temper tantrums.

The prequel to The Wizard of Oz

YouTube link. 

Oz The Great and Powerful will be released in the spring of 2013.  Here's the trailer (best at fullscreen).

Disney's fantastical adventure "Oz The Great and Powerful," imagines the origins of L. Frank Baum's beloved wizard character. When Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small-time circus magician with dubious ethics, is hurled away from dusty Kansas to the vibrant Land of Oz, he thinks he's hit the jackpot—fame and fortune are his for the taking—that is until he meets three witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Glinda (Michelle Williams), who are not convinced he is the great wizard everyone's been expecting. Reluctantly drawn into the epic problems facing the Land of Oz and its inhabitants, Oscar must find out who is good and who is evil before it is too late. Putting his magical arts to use through illusion, ingenuity—and even a bit of wizardry—Oscar transforms himself not only into the great and powerful wizard but into a better man as well.

Via The Guardian.