SCORSESE! (Everyone take a shot!)
![theatlantic:
From Méliès to Montparnasse, a Cultural Cheat Sheet for ‘Hugo’
Martin Scorsese’s delightful children’s film Hugo is currently nominated for eleven Oscars, the most of any film of 2011. And in a year of movies like The Artist and Midnight in Paris that pay homage to early 20th century film and cultural history, Hugo might be the most complex cinematic homage of them all.
Scorsese uses the stunning 3D cinematography ofHugo much like a palimpsest, layering multiple levels of historical, cinematic, and intellectual history in each scene. Hugo references everyone from Jules Verne, Django Reinhardt, and the robot C-3PO to classic silent movies like Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last. Scorsese has even said that he considers the 3D in Hugo as a cinematic form of Cubism.
Read more. [Image: Paramount]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lztaioi9ZI1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
From Méliès to Montparnasse, a Cultural Cheat Sheet for ‘Hugo’
Martin Scorsese’s delightful children’s film Hugo is currently nominated for eleven Oscars, the most of any film of 2011. And in a year of movies like The Artist and Midnight in Paris that pay homage to early 20th century film and cultural history, Hugo might be the most complex cinematic homage of them all.
Scorsese uses the stunning 3D cinematography ofHugo much like a palimpsest, layering multiple levels of historical, cinematic, and intellectual history in each scene. Hugo references everyone from Jules Verne, Django Reinhardt, and the robot C-3PO to classic silent movies like Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last. Scorsese has even said that he considers the 3D in Hugo as a cinematic form of Cubism.
Read more. [Image: Paramount]
Amy Heckerling, director of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless in These Amazing Shadows (via kimbrulee
)
My Shakespeare professor, who was one of three teachers who influenced Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poets Society. He said Keating jumping off the desk was taken directly from his own lecture, and that he worked with Williams one on one for certain mannerisms.
I always know a professor is great when I feel guilty walking into their class unprepared for the day’s topic.
(via whydoihaveablog)
”I don’t know if you know the story, but when Nicolas and I first met, it didn’t go very well. We weren’t going to make the movie together. He didn’t talk to me, and I couldn’t get through to him. In retrospect, he said he was high on cough medicine, so that’s that. When we got in the car, I had to give him a ride home. It was an awkward drive, so I turned on the radio and REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” came on the radio, and Nicolas started crying. Then he started singing, and he said, “This is it. This is a movie about a guy who drives around listening to pop music because it’s the only way he can feel.” I had the same dream for the movie, and I thought, “This is odd that this guy’s from Copenhagen and I’m from Canada, and we’re wildly different people, yet we’re sharing the same dream for a film where that’s not in the script. So how are we both having the same thought?” If REO Speedwagon hadn’t come on the radio, we never would have made this movie. It meant something to me, and it meant something to him when most people would just think, “Yeah, you guys are a couple of nutjobs. It’s just a song that came on the radio.” But to us it meant something. We spent the movie trying to discover what that was. The two of us comparing and contrasting our dreams created the film. ” - Ryan Gosling.
Did Akira Kurosawa’s IKIRU Directly Inspire BREAKING BAD?
…uh, apparently. funny you should ask.
Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, was recently a guest on NPR’s Fresh Air, and during the show — unprompted — he launched into this lightly reverential aside about how Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece IKIRU informed Gilligan’s sensational AMC show. it’s fascinating to hear him unpack the parallels between Watanabe-san and Walter White, to see how one idea was contorted and disfigured into something so sinister, but due caution to those unfamiliar with the ending of IKIRU:
“There’s a wonderful Kurosawa movie from the 50s in which a man, a mid-level, very much a Walter White-type, or rather, Walter White, I suppose, inspired by this man. This man is very much a mid-level corporate guy who finds out he’s dying of cancer. And in the last months of his life what he chooses to do is a very good thing, it’s to build is playground, a small playground in Tokyo for the children in his neighborhood.
And this haunting ending of this movie is this man swinging on a swing set in this playground that he’s managed to build after a surprisingly hard go of it. And the snow is coming down and he singing a Japanese children’s song, and it’s just haunting and beautiful. And, of course, Breaking Bad is anything but that. It’s the flip side of that. It’s a man doing terrible things once he is freed by this knowledge that he does not have long for this world.
But I think what the two stories to share in a sense is the idea that if we found out the exact expiration date on our lives if we found out when we were going to be checking out, would that free us up to do bold and courageous things, either good or bad things, hopefully good things, then I think there’s a lot of that involved in Breaking Bad.”
PIXAR
May 17, 2011
To Whom it May Inspire,
I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, “in the zone” seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time.
The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems.
In a word: PERSIST.
PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision. Remember what Peter Jackson said, “Pain is temporary. Film is forever.” And he of all people should know.
So next time you hit writer’s block, or your computer crashes and you lose an entire night’s work because you didn’t hit save (always hit save), just remember: you’re never far from that next burst of divine creativity. Work through that 97% of murky abyssmal mediocrity to get to that 3% which everyone will remember you for!
I guarantee you, the art will be well worth the work!
Your friend and mine,
Austin Madison
“ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!”(via Letters of Note)
J.J. Abrams traces his love for the unseen mystery - a passion thats evident in his films and TV shows, including Cloverfield, Lost and Alias — back to its magical beginnings.
↑ Legendary.
(via J.J. Abrams: Seven films that shaped ‘Super 8′)
Brought to my attention by Ariel.
