Tag Archives: c0up

Uncategorized

New man-director crush: Darren Aronofsky

I had a Darren Aronofsky marathon today, which resulted in a few things.

Requiem for a Dream is now my favourite movie. Ever. Perfect in every single way, and shot like I’ve never seen anything shot before.

Then I watched Pi, and I’ve now had the scene below on repeat for a while. In three minutes, it tackles some *big* issues in such an elegant, simple manner, and explains obsession so well.

I ended the marathon with The Fountain, and relatively speaking, it was a disappointment. I think I got used to his style, and liked it so much that I just wanted more of the same, but his leap into into time jumping, sci-fi romance was very different – not that I didn’t still enjoy the heck out of it.

Also, screw you and your copyright blergh YouTube, not allowing me to embed the video above. I had to instead d/l it as an mp4, and then email it to Posterous, which in a matter of minutes transcoded it into Flash and threw it in its player; Posterous++

Standard
Uncategorized

This should have probably been the first post

So, the plan is to start blogging again, but I just needed to start somewhere new, and Posterous is clean and simple, but still gives me a decent amount of control to tweak the css if need be.

I had around 10 posts sitting as drafts in my old blog last year, and for whatever reason, they never felt finished. Then Twitter came along, and I was so darn thankful for that 140 character limit, because it gave me the freedom to write a line or two and feel that sense of completeness that took hours to achieve in a blog post.

But even though I’m constantly spamming Twitter these days, there are times when one or two tweets don’t get a point across, and other times where it feels like a topic deserves the blog medium vs. the Twitter one, in which case I’ll revert to this shiny, new toy.

Having said that, it could just start gathering dust, but hey, I tried.

Standard
Uncategorized

2009: The year in movies

I only had one real goal this year; to watch a 100 movies at the cinemas. Sadly [sadder than the fact that that was my one real goal of the year [and year before too]], I’m stuck on 99, and I don’t know if I’m going to squeeze in a screening of The Lovely Bones tomorrow.

w00t! Scratch all that. I found a ticket stub for a Japanese Film Festival movie I missed that wasn’t in the IMDB database / my IMDB list [and people shake their head when I mention that I collect all my movie ticket stubs – this has saved me from another year of pain and guilt!]

Anyway, here’s the list, ranked, without explanation, as always [the list was completed 2 hours after I wrote this…I really need to do it as a dynamic, weekly list next year].

  1. Okuribito [Departures]
  2. Up
  3. Avatar
  4. Revolutionary Road
  5. Der Baader Meinhof Komplex [The Baader Meinhof Complex]
  6. Beautiful Kate
  7. Star Trek
  8. I Love You, Man
  9. The Girlfriend Experience
  10. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

  11. The Cove
  12. District 9
  13. Balibo
  14. Whatever Works
  15. This Is It
  16. Samson and Delilah
  17. Changeling
  18. Inglourious Basterds
  19. Doubt
  20. The Informant!
  21. A Serious Man
  22. Låt Den Rätte Komma In [Let The Right One In]
  23. Los abrazos rotos [Broken Embraces]
  24. The Wrestler
  25. Sunshine Cleaning
  26. Gran Torino
  27. The Reader
  28. Disgrace
  29. Moon
  30. It Might Get Loud
  31. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
  32. Seppun [The Kiss]
  33. Che: Part One
  34. Che: Part Two
  35. (500) Days of Summer
  36. Julie & Julia
  37. Genova
  38. Drag Me to Hell
  39. Funny People
  40. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  41. Brüno
  42. An Education
  43. Whip It
  44. Mary and Max
  45. The September Issue
  46. Hansamu sûtsu [The Handsome Suit]
  47. Coraline
  48. State of Play
  49. Yes Man
  50. Anvil! The Story of Anvil

  51. Watchmen
  52. Amreeka
  53. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
  54. Adam
  55. Fast & Furious
  56. Paper Heart
  57. Mao’s Last Dancer
  58. Rachel Getting Married
  59. The Boys Are Back
  60. Sherlock Holmes
  61. The Invention of Lying
  62. Is Anybody There?
  63. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
  64. Milk
  65. Ghost Town
  66. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
  67. The Soloist
  68. Synecdoche, New York
  69. Gomorra [Gomorrah]
  70. Chi Bi [Red Cliff]
  71. Role Models
  72. 9

  73. Duplicity
  74. Terminator Salvation
  75. Gravity’s Clowns
  76. Seven Pounds
  77. Gururi No Koto [All Around Us]
  78. A Christmas Carol
  79. Monsters vs Aliens
  80. Flammen & Citronen [Flame + Citron]
  81. Angels & Demons
  82. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  83. Bronson
  84. Year One
  85. Blindness
  86. Surrogates
  87. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
  88. Valkyrie
  89. Transporter 3
  90. The International
  91. Séraphine
  92. Zombieland
  93. Gake no ue no Ponyo [Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea]
  94. Public Enemies
  95. Where the Wild Things Are
  96. The Hangover
  97. Capitalism: A Love Story

  98. Push
  99. Kei hei hup [Metallic Attraction: Kungfu Cyborg]
  100. 2012 [I seriously stand by my tweet on this. Just, please stop, Mr. Emmerich]

Ok, a line of analysis… #1 – #50 are all pretty darn good and worthy of a second viewing. #73 onwards is where I go from like to dislike, and #98, #99 and #100; I do not wish the type of punishment I endured during them upon anyone.

Standard
Uncategorized

All things Avatar

A collection of all things Avatar that I’ve come across / found interesting. Feel free to throw anything else in the comments…

James Cameron’s Avatar Movie Performance Capture Featurette

A video showing how the “performance capture” was done for Avatar.

@massawyrm’s Avatar movie review

This review pretty much sums up my thoughts verbatim

Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg

Free Love Forum takes you behind the scenes of the revolutionary new bootleg of the revolutionary new movie. Hilarious stuff!

Please mount my hot blue alien

Analysing why James Cameron really made Avatar – alien porn!

“When we would draw Neytiri and she had fins on her back and gills and all kinds of weird protuberances and so on in odd places, the question was, well, would you want to do her? No? OK, let’s back off from that.” – James Cameron

The Data-Crunching Power Behind Avatar 

A look at some of the high-density server and networking gear inside the Weta Digital data center used to render the animation for Avatar.

“A final copy of Avatar equated to 17.28 gigabytes per minute of storage.”

UPDATE:

James Cameron’s Avatar screenplay

Fox recently released all 152 pages of James Cameron’s Avatar screenplay online as a PDF

Standard