A visual tribute to David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) & Alfonso Cuaron's Great Expectations (1998)
Showing posts with label visual tribute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label visual tribute. Show all posts
Four Worlds in Pinocchio: a visual tribute
Images from the shop, the town, Pleasure Island, and the sea
Living the Art Life
A visual tribute to David Lynch: The Art Life
Yesterday I reviewed this documentary film - today I offer its images on their own terms.
Twin Peaks: The Return Part 14 - "We are like the dreamer."
What's the biggest news this week? That the gang finally made it to Jack Rabbit's Palace? That the FBI has now linked up with both Twin Peaks and Las Vegas? That Chad was busted by his compatriots? Nah, of course not. We saw all of those things coming, even if we couldn't figure out when (especially after Part 13 tipped its hand about screwy chronology). Far more shocking and memorable were any of the following: Monica Bellucci finally appears as...Monica Bellucci! (In David Lynch's, er, Gordon Cole's dream!!) Sarah Palmer literally killed an obnoxious bar patron by removing her face and then biting off his neck!!! Andy is the one to make contact with the other side (specifically
The Power of the Dark Side: a visual tribute to Anakin Skywalker's vision
from Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars series (2005)
Dinosaurs, Sharks, and Aliens: a visual tribute
images from Steven Spielberg's first four creature features
Absolute Terror: images from the battle in The End of Evangelion
A visual tribute to Asuka's fight with the Mass Produced Evas in The End of Evangelion
This entry concludes The End of Evangelion Week on Lost in the Movies
The Ballad of Willy Loman: a visual tribute to Death of a Salesman
I recently rewatched Death of Salesman (1985, dir. Volker Schlondorff) for the first time in several years, in prepration for a non-narrated video essay. I was struck by how visually rich this film is, despite the fact that it falls into that much maligned "filmed-play-for-television" category. The glowing colors and stylized sets are gorgeous, creating a poignant, stylized universe within which we can witness the Loman family's psychodrama. Here are 33 images from the movie...
What Does She See? (Asuka and her Angel)
A shot-by-shot breakdown of Asuka's meltdown in Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 22: "Don't Be." (Director's Cut)
Cooper and Laura: a visual tribute to the stars of Twin Peaks
(The following visual tribute contains spoilers)
•
Through the darkness of future past
The magician longs to see
One chants out between two worlds
Fire walk with me
The magician longs to see
One chants out between two worlds
Fire walk with me
• • •
The Darkness of Future Past: visual tribute to an episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion
Last week I posted an autobiographical film I made ten years ago, and next week I'll be covering both Boyhood and The Giver, each a coming-of-age film with a twist. In keeping with the theme, this week's visual tribute offers another walk down memory lane - for the characters of Neon Genesis Evangelion (a series I began covering a couple years ago, and plan to resume next year). Once again there are several layers to the long strange trip: Episode 21 features numerous flashbacks but when the show originally aired in 1996, these memories actually belonged to the future (the show's "present" takes place in a post-apocalyptic 2015, and the flashbacks begin in 1999). For me the timeline is even more interesting: had I watched the show when it aired, I would have been roughly the same age as the youngest characters but in terms of actual chronology I am the same age as the slightly older generation (who are around thirty in the 2015 scenes and went to college in the mid-00s). As is often the case, the sci-fi elements of the show provide an intense, amplified backdrop for the drama but the humiliations, heartbreaks, and losses are all too human. The trip down memory lane is not always a pleasant one. This is one of my favorite episodes and I hope you enjoy the striking pictures with or without context. Happy Labor Day...
Weird On Top: David Lynch Month on Lost in the Movies (including "My Journey into Lynchland" below)
This is my first entry in David Lynch Month. It combines a guide to the upcoming month, a memoir of my own Lynch journey, and 135 images from his films.
Each week I will pose a question to readers related to my latest post. This week's "Question in a World of Blue" is: How did you first discover the work of David Lynch? You can respond in the comments below or on your own blog (please tag this entry in your response).
This spring I've been completely immersed in the universe of David Lynch. It started in January when I read a book about Twin Peaks and my interest in the series was renewed. I started listening to Peaks soundtracks and podcasts all the time, devouring articles and essays on the subject, and re-watching the entire series. From there I broadened my scope to all of Lynch's work, initiating a marathon viewing of all his films and then returning to many of them yet again. The results have been unfolding for the past month (as Tony Dayoub and I corresponded on the film Fire Walk With Me), but will escalate in June. Every Monday I'll post a new, meaty post on David Lynch and his work.
First up will be "Gone Fishin'," a massive collection of quotes from news articles, TV reviews, and film essays on the Twin Peaks phenomenon. These are selections I gathered while doing my own research for the correspondence with Tony, and taken together these disparate sources tell a fascinating tale about one of the most innovative shows of all time, how its downfall came about, and why its deeper qualities took time to appreciate. This will post next week, Monday, June 9.
A week later, on June 16, I will unveil "Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death," my first video essay in a year and a half, a non-narrated impressionistic tribute to themes and motifs in Lynch's work, anchored around the endings of Eraserhead and Fire Walk With Me. It builds off the observations in the previous post, as well as my conversation with Tony about the fate of Laura Palmer and how this twist impacted not just Twin Peaks but Lynch's work as a whole.
June 23 brings the first part of my comprehensive Lynch retrospective, "The Eye of the Duck," which discusses everything in the director's canon - features, shorts, TV episodes, music videos, commercials - on an individual basis. Each title will be accompanied by a screen-cap; one of the most enjoyable parts of preparing this month was gathering images from the visual wealth of Lynch's filmography.
Finally, on the last day of June I will share the second part of my retrospective, "It's a Strange World," an essay examining the abrupt shifts, subtle reversals, and gradual evolutions in the Lynchian touch, ranging from narrative strategies and thematic concerns to visual motifs and directorial vision. This is the "forest" piece, while the previous week's essay will cover each "tree." While the depth and diversity of the director cannot be summed up in a single essay, there are several very strong narrative arcs encompassing his oeuvre, and they shed light both on his work as a whole and the individual films.
For now, by way of setting the stage, I want to offer my own personal musings on David Lynch and my journey of discovery with his work. When I discuss his films at the end of the month I will be analyzing, contextualizing, and connecting them, but I won't really be relating them to myself. So I will do this below, without any major spoilers (my upcoming posts are another story, but I'll note which works I'm spoiling beforehand). If you're unfamiliar with Lynch, but curious, the rest of this post is a good place to start.
Following the memoir is a smorgasbord (careful, Audrey) of 135 Lynch screen-caps - twelve from each feature film, three from each Lynch-directed Twin Peaks episode, and a sampling from his shorts (plus one image taken from a promotional show). Lynch's work is a treasure trove of haunting, disturbing, and beautiful images, but just as amazing as his killer eye is the breadth of his ability and technique.
The more things change...: A collage/catalog of Forrest Gump
I've always been obsessed with cataloging experiences, creating variations on a theme, and juxtaposing change and consistency against one another (as well as viewing characters changing against historical backdrops, and maturing from one age to another). As such, I can't help being endlessly fascinated by Forrest Gump. It is chock-full of repetitions, variations, catalogs: sometimes droll, sometimes somber, sometimes sentimental. Below I've included nine image-compilations as examples; if you want to see larger versions of these pictures, click on the image.
#WatchlistScreenCaps
For one year, I kept track of everything viewed digitally by tweeting/blogging a screen-captured image accompanied by a caption. Here are all the movies I watched in the past year.
With #WatchlistScreenCaps now concluded, it makes sense to round up all the pages in one convenient post. During the past year, I updated my viewing diary with the latest entries appearing at the top. Meanwhile I maintained a chronologically-organized page and several category-pages (feature, documentary, animation, short, music video, miniseries, online videos, Criterion DVDs, and Grail themes). I didn't want to draw attention to these pages until the whole endeavor finished.
So now you can browse eye-catching images from 747 films, laid out from the earliest silent days to the present. While my viewing tended in certain directions, there's still enough breadth and diversity here to offer something for everyone. If you're more interested in specific categories, just skip the big page and visit the relevant subpage. I enjoyed organizing these (for the most part), and I hope you enjoy looking at them.
Finally, one of my initial ideas - which quickly fell by the wayside - was for people to guess films based on the picture I tweeted, hopefully spurring a discussion (which did occasionally emerge). It isn't too late to chime in on any of these movies. Ultimately, I hope an enticing image from something you haven't yet seen will encourage your own cinematic journeys.
Images from all 747 films I watched over twelve months - including music videos, complete series, and stand-alone YouTube clips - are included above. Large images are from features, smaller images from shorts. The journey begins with Lumiere and ends (or continues?) with Vimeo, interspersing black-and-white features with colorful cartoons, genre-based narratives with esoteric experiments, and political documentaries with family entertainment. To my eyes, this the most interesting way to review my year of viewing, but if you prefer a more specific approach...
When most people hear "movies" they immediately think fictional narrative features, shot with actors and running about 2 hours. Most of the titles here fit that bill (although there are some experimental films and animated features interspersed throughout). I included 215 films, spanning all continents and genres, from 1916 to 2013.
In 2013 I finally tackled cartoon compilation DVDs collected years ago, resulting in 268 screen-caps, spanning from 1908 to 2013. Most are from the golden age of studio cartoons (late 20s - mid 50s) but I've also included wild avant-garde twists and turns. Styles range from cel animation to stop-motion to CGI and features are interspersed with (mostly) shorts. This page features some of my favorite images.
Much as I favor nonfiction reading, I'm often more excited to watch a movie for informative purposes - to find out something new, explore a new corner of the world, or revisit a favorite subject. I viewed 73 documentaries on many different topics. Shorts and features intermingle freely.
In 2013 I participated in a weekly poll, nominating short films for the ballot. Unsurprisingly, there were many shorts I had to check out for the first time, particularly from the late seventies to the present - most of these titles were part of that adventure. Images from 90 short films are divided into narrative, documentary, and experimental subcategories. See here for a list of personal favorites.
Often overlooked in cinematic overviews, music videos played a major role in influencing/reflecting film styles and often did a better job than features when it came to echoing (or shaping) the zeitgeist. I went on a video binge near the end of my viewing year, following some recent lists to watch numerous classics. Here are 113 music videos, including a few proto-videos from the pre-rock era.
I don't watch much TV. However, I decided to undertake an exploration of several classic miniseries last year, as well as rewatching a few documentary favorites and checking out one extended web series (and its shorter follow-up). (I also screen-capped a few stray TV episodes for my viewing marathons, but they aren't included here.) All told, I completed 14 series.
This category, seemingly the most trivial, actually had the most purpose behind it. While brainstorming a screenplay about a web-based filmmaker I explored all the viral video memes I'd seen or (mostly) missed since the mid-00s. While much of YouTube is fleeting and fragmentary, I believe the cinema's future will grow from these seeds. After all, in 1904 no one thought novelty one-reelers would lead anywhere...
That same screenplay idea involved the Grail legend too. All spring I researched Grail sources on both page and screen (see here for most of my literary explorations), ranging from operas to kids' cartoons, psychological dramas to televised documentaries. And these are just the 13 films explicitly related to Arthurian myths: subtle Grail themes undoubtedly popped up elsewhere on my watchlist as well.
Some of the sharpest, more arresting images I captured came from Criterion DVDs, so I have lined up all 44 selections by spine number. Nothing streamed or viewed in non-DVD formats has been included although I watched several Criterion titles on Hulu too.
Finally, if these images aren't enough, you can scroll through 500 leftovers - screen-caps I took but dropped in favor of others (often they're just as worthy). You can also skim the original posts, including extra pictures at the tops and bottoms of each. Thanks for following along or catching up - I hope it was worthwhile.
What remains of #WatchlistScreenCaps: gleaning the castaways
Over the past year, I've selected, tweeted, and posted one image from every film I watched (including shorts, music videos, and YouTube clips, as long as they were self-contained). My choices were based on a number of factors: striking composition, personal connection, iconography, originality, sometimes whatever fit the particular caption I had in mind. As a result, hundreds of images were screen-capped without being chosen (aside from the headers and occasional bonus pics posted in round-ups). Many of these were just as interesting, representative, or beautiful as the screen-caps chosen - perhaps more so.
Over a year ago, when this blog was four and a half years old, I posted a massive line-up of images I'd uploaded to Blogger but never posted. There were 219 images featured; this time there are exactly 500 - more than double in less than a quarter of the time. That should indicate what a harvest my quest for screen-caps yielded, so that even the gleanings are rich.
The half-thousand images below are divided into two sections: films and music videos, and within that they are ordered alphabetically by film or song title, which makes for some interesting juxtapositions. Every title is linked to the relevant #WatchlistScreenCaps round-up so that you can see what image I did pick. I even included some TV series I screen-capped even though I usually didn't feature those in my round-ups (unless completed).
Finally, and as always, I hope images from films you haven't seen yet - or better yet, haven't even heard of - will encourage
you to seek them out. Most, if not all, are worth the effort. And of course if you have any comments on these films, or questions about them, please leave a comment and we can discuss further. OK, that's it for the words, now for the images...
The Eyes Have It
A visual tribute to my favorite scene in Au Hasard, Balthazar (1966, dir. Robert Bresson), in 8 shots
Odyssey of Images: a complete guide to The Story of Film
This is a visual directory to every film featured in Mark Cousins' 2011 documentary miniseries The Story of Film. I have screen-capped a frame featuring the title of each clip used, so let this serve as a resource both for those who've seen the doc (and want to revisit some of the titles), and those who haven't yet, and need some inspiration.
If you like this sort of thing, I've done it twice before, for Allan Fish's decades countdown and for my own video clip series. You also check out my previous posts on Cousins' opus (and the book it's based on). Beneath the proceeding pictures I've also included links to my own pieces on the films featured by Cousins. Incidentally, if you are a fan you can follow him on Twitter.
Perceval and Parsifal: a visual tribute
3 images from Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Parsifal (1981), 9 images from Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)