Today marks the centenary of film critic Pauline Kael’s birth. Beside recreating film criticism in her New Yorker column and giving shape to our conversations of cinema — particularly that of America in the 70s (if not launching the careers of more than a few directors), Kael was a product of my hometown. “She had discovered…
The Movie Title Stills Collection, “a collection containing hundreds of main titles from feature films,” curated by designer Christian Annyas is an awesome compendium of what happens when font meets film. Dating from the 1920s to the present, The Movie Title Stills Collection is a masterfully deployed timesuck that shows that a film’s titles and…
[audio:http://fmrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/The_Late_Projectionist.mp3|titles=The_Late_Projectionist] Static People takes you to a mournful matinee with its latest track, “The Late Projectionist.” Give it a spin here or download it, compliments of the band. You may also enjoy the novel of the same name by Static People’s bassist, now available digitally… Get the Kindle version of The Late Projectionist. Here’s the…
If you are a filmmaker and you’re attending the Sonoma International Film Festival, you are in mortal danger. The extent to which one might enjoy oneself can reach a level of lethality unparalleled on the festival circuit. Oh, and congratulations. Filmmakers of a certain disposition are advised to write a last will and testament prior…
Been reading producer David L. Wolper’s autobiography, Producer, wherein the author details how his production company essentially invented the ?dramatic re-enactment? in their television documentaries of the 1950s. It’s interesting to consider that such scenes, now ubiquitous on cable and beyond, were once considered verboten by networks and journalists alike. I ‘ve appeared in similar…
[audio:http://lumaville.com/podcast/DH-Pod-DogsLife.mp3] If you feel like a little tramp, consider Charlie Chaplin’s A Dog’s Life, screening as part of a silent triptych of moving pictures presented by the Sonoma Film Institute. As the top dog of the silent era, Chaplin’s depiction of a dog-day afternoon spent with a rescued mutt was the first of his films…
