Acting Lessons

filmprojections: Alfred Hitchcock and his kids

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:12:02 -0600

filmprojections:

Alfred Hitchcock and his kids

Never sleep.

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:11:04 -0600

Never sleep.

while(1);{"errors": "I call shenanigans", "success": false}

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:10:52 -0600

a not unknown but unexplained error I got on 2/28/09 while surfing YouTube

Norm MacDonald’s brilliance on full display in this...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:04:11 -0600

Norm MacDonald’s brilliance on full display in this meta-roast of Bob Saget.

Japan, 1885. Photographer, Adolfo Farsari. Color, breathed into...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:02:00 -0600

Japan, 1885. Photographer, Adolfo Farsari.

Color, breathed into our nostrils.

Palestinian Protestors don Na'vi Garb

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:54 -0600

VICE PHOTOS BY MIRANDA JULY & ROE ETHRIDGE

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:59:58 -0600

You blew it.

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:26:56 -0600

James Cameron was gearing up to make his next movie about Hiroshima. In fact he was pretty pumped about this, mainly because his history buff buddy Charles Pellegrino wrote the non-fiction book it was going to be based on. Pellegrino and Cameron go way back, as Pellegrino was a Titanic nut himself and the two wrote a book together shortly after the film was released. Hell, the guy was even a PAID SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR on the production of Avatar.

Why is any of this news?

Well it seems that Pellegrino’s The Last Train From Hiroshima was just recalled mid-print because two of it’s characters might have been completely made up.

Oh, and he says he has a doctorate but the school he got it from has never heard of him.

Maybe the guy is just a gullible doofus. Maybe he’s a bit too eager to get that great non-fiction story to work just right. Maybe he’s an awful lying son of a bitch. I don’t really care what this makes Pellegrino. I care what this makes Cameron.

A man that’s friends with a fraud? A man whose historical-minded buddy is full of shit—shit that Cameron couldn’t get enough of? A gullible doofus? I mean, after all, he paid this guy for his professional opinion.

Well, THE GOOD NEWS IS that James Cameron might have just got a nice little stomach punch to his pride.

THE BAD NEWS is that he’ll probably just end up making Avatar 2 right away.

But even so, I think it’s still worth it to make the guy squirm.

(What the fuck, I love this guy’s movies. WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME THINK THIS WAY CAMERON?!)

That is wonderful.

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:58:47 -0600

That is wonderful.

Incongruity

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:08:00 -0600

Thanks to some heavy Hulu advertising, I’ve been thinking a lot about Haiti lately.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the song playing in the background of this Mercy Corps “Help For Haiti” commercial.

I encourage you to listen. I really don’t care whether or not you watch.

Thanks to the new era of desperate, blunt-force-advertising* that web television has spurred, I’ve watched this video maybe a dozen times over the last week. Maybe even more.

Usually it will run during each of the three post-titles commercial breaks of the standard sitcoms I follow on Hulu, so it wasn’t long before the song took hold in the back of my brain.

There was a lingering, painfully elusive familiarity to it. It sounds vaguely Clint Mansell-ish (think every Darren Aronofsky film), but more so like one of his imitators. I kept coming back to soundtracks. That seemed to ring true.

I began to search for it. Flipping through mp3s and YouTube videos. Before I went too far I decided to try the obvious path, and as Google directly “What is the song in the Mercy Corps Haiti commercial?”

Not all that surprisingly, I immediately found my question had been investigated for some time now.

And an answer had been found.

A forum poster had received his forum answer: the song was the instrumental interior of Together, by The Kin.

And yes, there it was. The exact sound I was looking for. Found in a song I know I’d never heard, or even wanted to finish.

But there was no satisfaction there.

I was not looking for the same sound. I was looking for this idea. This memory hiding under my scalp.

I pressed on. Searched hard. More songs, more wrong directions and dead leads. I left my computer screen. I closed my eyes. I held my hands in odd poses and I wove through webs and threads in my brain—there was more to the memory. An incongruity with Haiti—what maybe made it resonate so well at the start. British accents. I could hear no words, no context, I saw nothing and no one, but I heard British accents. Inconsolable. Lonely. A man’s sad face laid sideways, he wears a gray sweater.

Love Actually.

Could it be? Oh it be. Listen to Craig Armstrong’s The Portuguese Love Theme at 1:57 in.

Rapturous victory. That’s what that is.

And how about that for incongruity**. What a strange mismatching of sentiments and memories. Especially of late I’ve been more emotional in my movie watching, and even movie remembering, so the effect of this song, and the action cues and images that are tied to it are quite vivid and impactful, and have absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy in Haiti or the media’s violins-and-sad-kittens response.

Had the song in my brain been as obvious a choice for the commercial as The Kin’s (with lyrics as painfully appropriate as “This is the day we came to say all of the pain has come and gone away / This is the one way dove, today we come together), I might never have felt that need. That insufferable anguish of distrust and déjà vu.

But I did. And I have. And I’ve finished it. And it feels oh so good.

That’s accomplishment. That’s pride. And that pride stays with me now, even after I’ve found that all my work and weaving was not needed.

Cstuart: This song was driving me crazy – seems so familiar! I think its a song played in the movie “Love Actually.” The song is the “Portuguese Love Theme” by Craig Armstrong. Try the youtube link below, about a minute through I think its the same segment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqhRAYnLeq8

It seems Cstuart and I have just made it to the same page, though he had been there for a while. He’d posted this on that same forum thread I referenced earlier, that I read days and days ago. This almost anonymous internet-goer had come to the same Love Actually conclusions, and had even given the same part of the song to jump to.

I wish I could know more about my like-minded/like-obsessed counterpart, but the details are understandably elusive. This is the only question he’s answered on this website. His user name is far too generic to search and find elsewhere.

The site itself seems to be no more than an answering post. In its own words: “Imagine having five Uncle Franks to answer your car questions, eight Aunt Marthas to ask about astronomy and six Grandma Gerties to advise you on your garden dilemmas. Tapping into our collective is like extending your entire network of knowledge. And Fluther lets you share your massive brainpower with others.”

Cstuart is a stranger, and with me he shares strange similarities. And his presence is only a taste of what’s truly out there. Like the cockroach that’s seen when you flick on the kitchen light, his taking the time to post this answer for others to find suggests a vast population of others, hidden behind the walls.

Like two ships we pass in the night. Discovering the same island only to leave it, and chart a different course.

*It seems that the ad execs have finally, unfortunately figured out that replaying the same commercial five times (and as loud as legally possible) is more effective than creating some lovely, elaborate character arc that covers the same time frame. You can already see this trend taking hold in the Super Bowl commercials of the last five years (instead of four different Budweiser frogs bits we get “Head-On: apply directly to the forehead” all night).

** Congruence is one of the last surviving concepts from my time as an engineer and student of high level mathematics. Though I wish it had more company, I’m proud that my seemingly misspent education has given me an unconventional means of analysis and expressing myself. Similarly, I use the word “topicality” only because of my one year career in high school debate.

Hi doggie.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:56:00 -0600

In their Wired interview, Tim Heidecker and Eric Warheim confirm they are developing two TV series with Actor/Director/Producer Tommy Wiseau, though they mention no details.

If that wasn’t news enough, it seems that Tommy has already shot the pilot for his sitcom The Neighbors.

Be sure to check out the OFFICIAL WEBSITE and watch its fantastic PROMO VIDEO.

“It’s not a glossy comedy where beautiful people trade bon mots. It’s interested in...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:29:04 -0600

“It’s not a glossy comedy where beautiful people trade bon mots. It’s interested in ugliness and decrepitude and some of the most ordinary aspects of people and life and America — though seen through a surrealist’s eye.”

Dave Eggers on Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!

Fuuuuuck you.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:56:50 -0600

really. that’s pathetic.

hatred founded

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:09:38 -0600

hatred founded

Nuts.

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:42:38 -0600

Nuts.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS The Lost Art of the Film

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:03:56 -0600

February 18th, The Upper Playground Art Gallery, LA

c/o Cinematical

I can't waaaaaait

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:02:52 -0600

A tangent inspired by a distant friend's short comment on disliking the trailer for Tim Burton's new Alice In Wonderland.

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:01:50 -0600

HIS THOUGHTS.

MY REPLY:

You can just see it in the look of the trailer. I have the same feeling of disinterest to the point of anger for this one as I did for Avatar.

Visually unlikeable and indecipherable. It’s Willy Wonka all over again.

Don’t you wish Directors would just use sets and art direction? It would be nice to have them not Photoshop the whole thing.

Make the audience suspend belief just a little bit. It works in theater (not Broadway, but theater) quite well!

I’m sorry for the unasked for tangent, but I’ve been internally reeling since I read a very backhandedly complementary article on The Fall in The AV Club this morning.

The true visionaries are still using the real world in their movies, and we call THEM the pretentious hacks, while we let the Cameron’s and recent-times-Tim-Burton’s get away with this garbage and throw them Oscar nominations or—god-help-me—OSCARS!

If you haven’t, you should watch The Fall. And The Fountain. Find big televisions and bask in their CGI-less wonder.

Also, hey man. How’s it going?

I am doing this. The Tough Guy Challenge This is something that...

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:59:51 -0600

I am doing this.

The Tough Guy Challenge

This is something that I will do.

"The case ... rings of clockwork espionage."

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:18:00 -0600

The Huffington Post Reports:

Dubai police appealed for an international manhunt Tuesday after releasing names and photos of an alleged 11-member European hit squad accused of stalking and killing a Hamas commander last month…

[Dubai’s police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamims,] said the suspects arrived in Dubai at different times, checked into different hotels and tailed al-Mabhouh from the moment of his arrival in Dubai to when he entered his hotel room. Some suspects even rode in the same elevator as al-Mabhouh to verify his room number and later booked a room across the hall, Tamim said.

They paid for all expenses in cash and used different cell phone cards to avoid being traced, Tamim said.

Surveillance footage shows the female suspect apparently wearing a wig and at times a big hat and sunglasses to blend in as a tourist. Others also were disguised as vacationers, wearing baseball caps or tennis outfits and carrying rackets. Tamim also said some suspects donned fake beards.

…

Four assassins later entered his room while he was out, using an electronic device to open the door, and waited in ambush for al-Mabhouh to return.

…

The killing itself took just 10 minutes, Tamim said.