Category Archives: Movies

Sita Sings the Blues

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Sita Sings the Blues (2009) è un film di animazione di Nina Paley che racconta l’epica del Ramayana (la storia di Sita, moglie di Rama, che segue il marito in un periglioso esilio, finendo per essere rapita dal demone Ravana), facendo un parallelo con la vicenda autobiografica di una newyorkese contemporanea in cui marito viene inviato per lungo tempo in India per lavoro e che lei decide di raggiungere. Il tutto condito da una colonna sonora formata da canzoni di Annette Hanshaw, cantante blues degli anni ’20.

Il film è stato osannato dalla critica, sebbene sia stato accusato da alcuni gruppi Hindu di essere irrispettoso nei confronti del Ramayana e della cultura indiana. Il New York Time lo ha recensito come un’opera che

evokes painting, collage, underground comic books, Mumbai musicals and ‘Yellow Submarine’ (for starters)

Sita Sings the Blues è rilasciato in Creative Commons e può essere scaricato liberamente da questa pagina dell’Internet Archive in vari formati e risoluzioni (e quindi dimensioni). Il film ha vinto una enorme quantità di premi.

Ecco, come preview, la versione da You Tube (quelle scaricabili sono meno compresse e di qualità migliore)

BLADE RUNNER revisited

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Video artist François Vautier made an experimental film in tribute to Ridley Scott’s legendary film “Blade Runner” (1982).
This film was made as a unique picture with a resolution of 60.000 x 60.000 pixels (about 3.6 gigapixels)
It was made with 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’.

The artist explain

  1. first step : the “picture” of the film
    I extracted the 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’ (final cut version,1h51mn52s19i)
    then I assembled all these images to obtain one gigantic image of colossal dimensions : a square of approximately 60,000 pixels on one side alone, 3.5 gigapixels (3500 million pixels)
  2. second step : an illusion
    I placed a virtual camera above this big picture. So what you see is like an illusion, because contrary to appearances there is only one image. It is in fact the relative movement of the virtual camera flying over this massive image which creates the animated film, like a film in front of a projector.

source : Blade Runner de Ridley Scott (the final cut)
duration : 1h51mn52s19i > 167819 frames >>
one picture / format psb : 60 000  X 60 000 : 3 540 250 000 pixels >> 3,5 gigapixels
compositing> logiciel : Combustion. Mac pro 2X 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon. nombre de layers : 1!

Note by me: 3.600.000.000 are 3.515.625 mega-pixels, so the title should be “> 3.5” not 3.6. But it’s only an academic question.

In my opinion, the interesting fact is that this is a whole film in a single image. All the 167819 frames from the film are in this mammoth image.

More Tarkowsky

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Thanks to the Film Annex, you can now watch the complete collection of Tarkovsky films online for free in original language with english subtitles.

The soundtrack of three films, Solaris, The Mirror and Stalker, has been written and recorded by the russian electronic composer Eduard Artemiev.

From Open Culture

Tarkovsky now free

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Two films by the great Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker and Andrej Rublev, are now free on line in original language on the Film Annex site.

Click here to see Stalker.

Andrej Rublev is splitted in two parts (part1, part2).

From Open Culture

Tokyo/Glow

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Written and directed by Jonathan Bensimon and produced by Jonas Bell Pasht, Tokyo/Glow follows the nighttime journey of an illuminated man from a crosswalk sign as he embarks on an adventure through the streets of Tokyo. Shot on location throughout Tokyo using thousands of individual digital stills, the short film features original music by indie rock band Kidstreet, who recently signed with Nettwerk Records and will be releasing their debut album worldwide in 2010.

To achieve the striking effect of the illuminated man, an original light suit was constructed using hundreds of feet of high-voltage LED rope lights and a translucent nylon outer shell. Michael Lambermont, executive producer at Alter Ego in Toronto, oversaw the effects-heavy post-production process, which included weeks of extensive rotoscoping and compositing in the facility’s two Flame suites, plus a final colour grade, once the effects were complete. Geoff Ashenhurst, editor at Stealing Time, was charged with bringing the thousands of digital stills to life with director Bensimon.

100 movies online

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Open Culture has compiled a list of 100 free movies online. There were 100 in 2009. Today there are more than 4,000 Includes masterwoks by Eisenstein, Huston, Hitchcock, Wilder, Kazan, Kurosawa, Lang, Leone and others. Some movies are for U.S. viewers only.

Now look at the Battleship Potemkin.

Sicko online

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Sicko è un film documentario del 2006 diretto da Michael Moore, presentato fuori concorso al 60° Festival di Cannes.

Il film si concentra sui problemi della sanità statunitense (quella che Obama sta cercando di riformare), basata su un sistema che riserva le cure migliori alle classi più abbienti, e denuncia la sostanziale inesistenza di strutture sanitarie riservate agli indigenti, teoricamente previste in quasi tutti gli stati federali.

Il documentario ha subìto le aspre critiche dell’AMA (American Medical Association), una delle associazioni di medici statunitensi, ampiamente citata da Moore, per le azioni che negli anni ’50 tentarono di collegare una eventuale estensione dei diritti sanitari ad un indirizzamento in senso socialista del paese. [Wikipedia]

Incredibilmente (ma non tanto), l’intero film è in linea su Google Video (ovviamente in edizione originale). Potete vederlo qui.

From Open Culture

The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!

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Guardatevi questo grazioso cartoon su un mostro spaziale bisognoso di affetto realizzato da Jake Armstrong come tesi per la School of Visual Arts.

Maggiori particolari e note di realizzazione sul suo blog JakeHatesYou.blogspot.com.

Trovato su Cartoon Brew TV

Film Storici su Internet Archive

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Open Culture segnala una decina di film storicamente importanti scaricabili liberamente dall’Internet Archive:

  • The Kid (1921) – Here you have Charlie Chaplin’s first feature-length film that launched his important career.
  • Nosferatu (1922) –  A memorable adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A masterpiece from the era of silent films.
  • The Phantom of the Opera (1925) – Another major classic (by Rupert Julian) from the silent film era.
  • His Girl Friday (1940) – One of the better known comedies from the 1940s directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.
  • Penny Serenade (1941) –  A touching romantic comedy starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.
  • Scarlett Street (1945) – Directed by Fritz Lang, otherwise known for Metropolis (1927) and M (1931), during his Hollywood stint.
  • DOA (1950) – A film noir classic directed by Rudolph Maté.
  • Panic in the Streets (1950) – Directed by Elia Kazan and starring Jack Palance.
  • Beat the Devil (1953) – Directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart.
  • Suddenly (1954) – A thriller featuring Frank Sinatra and James Gleason

L’Internet Archive, comunque, ha un grosso archivio di classici del cinema in lingua originale risalenti agli anni 20, 30, 40, 50 e si trova qui. I film sono disponibili a vari livelli di compressione.

Film Storici

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Parecchi film storici di produzione europea della prima metà del ‘900 sono visibili integralmente online sul sito European Film Gateway. Al momento attuale sono 40.

L’iniziativa è realizzata nell’ambito del progetto Treasures from European Film Archives curato dall’Unione Europea.

Visto il successo che ha avuto un’altra iniziativa analoga, Europeana, di cui abbiamo già parlato, non possiamo che plaudere a queste aperture culturali della UE.