NOTES

KATE MOSS IN VOGUE BRAZIL

2012-01-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

ICON

2012-01-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

Stills from Black Martini.

CAVALLI

2011-12-20T11:24:00.000-08:00

“The industrial direction is sometimes too much. We should think more about fantasy.”

AMERICA REBORN

2011-12-16T14:26:00.000-08:00

Belvedere
Shot by Terry Richardson, featuring Young Jeezy

LUXURY

2011-12-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

“I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.”
Coco Chanel

SHAME

2011-12-03T20:53:00.000-08:00

by Steve McQueen
Starring Michael Fassbender

SOME KIND OF MAJESTY

2011-11-15T14:46:00.000-08:00

Some kind of nature,
Some kind of soul.
Sound kind of mixture,
Some kind of gold.
Some kind of majesty
Some chemical load.

BOWFINGER'S BIG THING

2011-11-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

Dave: But movies cost millions of dollars to make.
Robert K. Bowfinger: That's after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash, every movie cost $2,184.

MARY KAY SPOT (Coming soon)

2011-11-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

JANNIS TSIPOULANIS

2011-11-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

"There must be a certain look of availability in the women I photograph. I think the woman who gives the appearance of being available is sexually much more exciting than a woman who's completely distant. This sense of availability I find erotic.”
― Helmut Newton, White Women

ART LINSON

2011-10-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

"Power is an elusive term, but in Hollywood it's everything, I don't care what they say, you either have it, want it, or you're afraid of losing it."

GLASS CEILING

2011-10-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

BY JILL GREENBERG

THE ETERNAL EXECUTIVE

2011-09-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

”You’re very unhappy for a long period of time. And you don’t experience joy. At the end you experience relief, if you’re lucky.” -John Calley, accepting the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences near the end of his life.

THE MACHINE

2011-08-31T15:19:00.000-07:00

"The thing what you learn in directing is that no matter how complex the shooting, you have to remain sensitive to the people around you or the machine will ultimately take over. If you don't keep in mind the essential humanity of it all, technique will dominate." - Irvin Kerschner

SHOWBUSINESS TODAY

2011-08-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

"This business is scrounging around for what to do. The medium is busy displaying the fat lady at 375 pounds (who) in two months is gonna be 240. Who gives a shit? The industry has destroyed themselves. It's no longer relevant because it now puts all of its product on a stupid phone. You're going to put 'Lawrence of Arabia' on that goddamned stupid sonofabitch?"
-Jerry Lewis

OIL!

2011-06-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

“If [our] effort to develop shale oil is successful, as I believe it will be, then the news we’ll report in the coming decades will reflect a more prosperous, more democratic and more secure world.”
-Rupert Murdoch, on discovering oil in Israel

WELLES ON ANTONIONI

2011-06-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

"I don't like to dwell on things. It's one of the reasons I'm so bored with Antonioni - the belief that, because a shot is good, it's going to get better if you keep looking at it. He gives you a full shot of somebody walking down a road. And you think, 'Well, he's not going to carry that woman all the way up that road.' But he does. And then she leaves and you go on looking at the road after she's gone!"

ARAB SPRING

2011-06-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

"The fact is- our interests are our values."
-John McCain, on Libya

GASPAR NOE

2011-06-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

"If you write a script or write novels then OK- you're an auteur, but when you're directing movies you feel more like a politician or the captain of a football team. At the end of the day you need ten or eleven good people behind you if you're gonna win the game."

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL FILM

2011-06-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

"Apathy and Cynicism are not the parents of great art, great movies or great entrepreneurs. The day our passion and enthusiasm subsides will be the day of our undoing. We need to stay plugged in and turned on. I have realized the need to be involved with great movies is one part of it, but the even greater need is to be surrounded by inspiring entrepreneurs."
Graham Taylor

THE ANGLE

2011-06-15T17:20:00.001-07:00

There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one.
-Lubitsch

TOOLS

2011-06-09T06:46:00.001-07:00

"It is a poor artist who blames the tools"
-Ancient Proverb

CULTURE + DIVISION

2011-06-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

"...if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all" -kubrick

AMERICAN COMEDY

2011-05-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

"The American comedies of the 1950s are some of the most impeccably-constructed films ever made; the American comedies of the late 1990s through the mid-to-late 2000s are some of the ugliest, sloppiest and most bloated. It used to be that if you wanted to learn about pacing and construction in cinema, you looked at American screen comedy. Nowadays, it's where you look if you want to learn about lopsidedness and missed opportunities."
-"In the Margin: All Solos", Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

DIRECTOR PRODUCER

2011-05-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Since I've produced some 40 of my own films, I know the value of money. For Bad Lieutenant, I demanded access to the budget on a daily basis. And each night after shooting I checked our cash flow, where we overspent, where we were precarious, where we had some cushion. In 60 films, I've never delivered one picture over budget. Five came in under budget and Bad Lieutenant was $2.6 million under. I do not shoot all sorts of angles and reversals and coverage. I shoot only what I need for the screen. - herzog

BALENCIAGA

2011-05-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

"Cristobal Balenciaga is the couturier of couturiers. He is the master of us all."
-Christian Dior

THE LAST TYCOON

2011-04-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

“There is no shortage of talent in Hollywood. There is only a shortage of talent that can recognize talent.” — Jerry Wald

BRATZ VS MATTEL

2011-04-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

"It's the principle. I'm going to show that big, multi-national corporations can't bully or streamroll self-made entrepreneurs and get away with it."
-Isaac Larian, MGA Entertainment

OTTO PREMINGER

2011-04-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

"There were giants in the industry. Now it is an era of midgets and conglomerates."

AMADOU & MARIAM

2011-03-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

"Inside of us is the source our happiness. When it’s chaotic and noisy, then the world can be troublesome. That’s why we meditate. …That’s what we’re working on."
Russel Simmons, at the Ideal Academy

2011-03-10T21:07:00.000-08:00

"“We wish Muslims to be free and happy in Canada but we insist they are reasonable. Driving in a burka is not reasonable to us. It is dangerous. Asking for a thumbprint instead of a photograph on a driver's license or passport is not considered reasonable here."
-Congressional hearing on the radicalization of Muslim Americans

JOHN HUSTON

2011-02-21T22:53:00.001-08:00

Everything must serve the idea- I must say this again and again. The means used to convey the idea should be the simplest and most direct and clear. I don't believe in overdressing anything. Just what is required. No extra words, no extra images, no extra music. But it seems to me that this is a universal principal of art. To say as much as possible with a minimum of means. And to be always clear about what you are trying to say. That means, of course, that you must know what you are trying to say. So I guess my first principle is to understand myself, and then to find the simplest way to make others understand it, too.

EGYPT

2011-02-10T23:21:00.000-08:00

"We can fulfill the people's demands in a civilized way. We will not receive instruction from anyone. No one makes this decision for us."

"You have gained your liberty. You have gained your right to catch up with the rest of the world. Make the best of it."
-Hosni Mubarak, departing words

BLACK MARTINI

2011-01-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

"Kids today don't appreciate quality pictures. I wanna give 'em Ben-Hur! Cecil DeMille! All they wanna see these days is Monroe's tits and that faggot James Dean" -Hollywood Producer Michael H. Zweig

SOMEWHERE

2010-12-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

"Cinema is part truth and part spectacle. You can't forget the spectacle." - James Gray

AMADEUS

2010-12-27T10:35:00.000-08:00

"I am a crude man, but I assure you; my music is not."

2010-11-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

Afterschool plays like a film student’s demo reel of the various ways to signify “alienation”—shallow depth of field, over-lit sterile interiors, ambient sounds of fluorescent light hums, expressionless actors, methodical tracking shots frequently overrunning or catching up to their human subjects....you’d think Afterschool’s 24-year-old first-time feature director Antonio Campos had just discovered them for himself by the way he embarrassingly assaults the viewers with them in order to fashion his astonishingly shallow portrait of teenage disaffection.
-Reverse Shot

2010-11-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

This movie is the most delicate movie. I can’t imagine having a more delicate movie. It just did not work until everything worked. It was just pieces until everything was perfect, every single thing. You got the pace right, you got the music right, the sound effects. It just wouldn’t work. I literally thought we were in trouble. It went from like no movie to heaven in like ‘boom’ like that, because it was just so delicate. It wouldn’t let me do anything to it that it didn’t want.
-m night shyamalan on the village

2010-11-29T21:21:00.000-08:00

It’s not important to me if the film is predictable or unpredictable. In fact, I almost prefer the film to be inevitable. That the unfolding of events in the film proves itself to be something that you could have predicted could happen. I think that this view of cinema enables you to get out of the way of “surprise”. If you look at Macbeth, for example, the witches basically tell you what will happen. The pleasure becomes not WHAT will happen, but WHY it happens. “What” will happen creates art that has a limited shelf life. Once you know the answer, it becomes irrelevant. If the question is why, it never ceases to be interesting. That for me, is a higher calling for any creative work.
-James Gray

2010-11-29T21:18:00.000-08:00

‘I want to do a movie with no trailers; all the actors do their own makeup; we shoot it in the streets, without blocking off streets. I don’t want it to be a big production. I don’t want actors wandering away and sitting in their trailers for thirty minutes. I want everyone to stay on set. I want it to be like a student film, in terms of how many people would be on set.
Wes Anderson on Darjeeling

2010-11-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

I felt that if I were to understand the motives behind my choices intellectually as opposed to on a purely instinctual or corporeal level, the ideas would somehow lose their power.
-kitao sakurai

2010-11-29T21:13:00.000-08:00

"It will never say on the marquee if(the film) came in on time or on schedule." – friedkin

2010-11-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

Films deal with emotion and reflect the fragmentation of experience. It is thus misleading to try to sum up the meaning of a film verbally. – kubrick

2010-11-11T16:24:00.000-08:00

“I am not a hater” -George Bush

A SINGLE MAN

2010-11-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

fashion is very fleeting. film lasts forever.
tom ford

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

2010-10-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

Red Desert

2010-10-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

Camera: Carlo DiPalma

2010-10-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

2010-09-01T11:32:00.003-07:00

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself only, what am I?"
-Hillel

2010-09-01T11:32:00.001-07:00

"We are not engaged in a war with Islam - and were we to be engaged in a war with Islam, we could not win,"
Andrew Bacevich

BLOOMBERG

2010-08-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

"There is nowhere in the five boroughs that is off limits to any religion."

HERR DIRECTOR

2010-08-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

"There will always be some sort of an obstacle, and the worst of all obstacles is the spirit of bureaucracy. You have to find your way to battle bureaucracy. You have to outsmart it, to outgut it, to outnumber it, to outfilm them -- that's what you have to do."

CARLO PONTI AND SOFIA

2010-08-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

Any man who thinks he can read the mind of a woman is a man who knows nothing. - Bob Evans

WOKE UP THIS MORNING

2010-08-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

"I said to myself, This show is about a guy who's turning 40. He's inherited a business from his dad. He's trying to bring it into the modern age. He's got all the responsibilities that go along with that. He's got an overbearing mom that he's still trying to get out from under. Although he loves his wife, he's had an affair. He's got two teenage kids, and he's dealing with the realities of what that is. He's anxious; he's depressed; he starts to see a therapist because he's searching for the meaning of his own life. I thought: The only difference between him and everybody I know is he's the Don of New Jersey."

LUCHINO VISTONI'S "LA TERRA TREMA"

2010-07-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

"Unlike Bresson he never rejected cinema as it was; unlike Godard he never used his films to question established techniques. Rather, Visconti pushed the cinematic creative envelope simply because the limits of film narrative were not big enough to contain the scope and complexity of his vision."

"OSSOS" BY PEDRO COSTA

2010-07-29T21:55:00.001-07:00

HATE

2010-07-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

BERTOLUCCI'S "1900"

2010-07-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

ROBERT DENIRO, GERARD DEPARDIEU

I BOW TO ALL AND DESPISE NONE

2010-06-26T20:02:00.000-07:00

DIRETTORE I PRODUTTORE

2010-06-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

AS WE ARE

2010-06-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

A THING OF MYSTERY

2010-06-17T12:41:00.001-07:00

I have always been convinced that cinema is a thing of mystery, and that you can’t express or explain this mystery through storytelling and narrative alone. I am also convinced that the world of women is dense with this same mysterious quality that the cinema has. My dream was to have these two worlds “make love”—that I think is the greatest goal for a director.
-Luca Guadagnino

FEAR AND LOATHING

2010-06-15T14:02:00.001-07:00

"Mr. Stearns asked you to resign. In the Asian culture we do things differently. During the Samurai days we just give you a knife and ask you to commit hara-kiri,"
-Rep. Joseph Cao, R-Louisiana to Lamar McKay, Chairman of BP America

(above)Lukas Haas and Benicio Del Toro at the Mirage Hotel's 20th Anniversary
Las Vegas, Nevada

LOGIC IN THE FACE OF HYSTERIA

2010-06-14T16:19:00.001-07:00

"Israel has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in."

DENIM

2010-06-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

Price competitively and sell big.
Steve Jobs

BP

2010-06-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

"We have descended to government as theater."
-Fareed Zakaria

KARADZIC

2010-06-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

The biggest danger, in my opinion, is television because to a certain degree it ruins our vision and makes us very sad and lonesome. Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossed hand-grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination and what we end up with are worn out images because of the inability of too many people to seek out fresh ones.
Herzog

ASSHOLE

2010-05-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

Because Godard meant something years ago, because he had a towering presence and a considerable influence, we continue to see his films, for smaller and smaller rewards. I believe he has contempt for the mass of moviegoers. Truffaut once described the beautiful sight of walking to the front of a cinema and seeing all those eyes uplifted to the screen, sharing the director's dream. What are Godard's dreams? We cannot know, because he chooses not to share them.

-- Ebert on Godard

HOLLYWOOD HYBRIDISM

2010-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

I think that there’s so much “Hollywood hybridism.” If you go in with a script, you have to say, “This movie is like Terminator meets this movie meets this movie.” You have to compare it to something that has already made money, that has already been validated, and I don’t think that that’s the healthiest attitude in creative art forms. That talk inevitably becomes very generalized and edges out anything that could be a new voice or color. My generation is so referential, and I think that this constant comparative rhetoric really inhibits our generation from finding its own iconography. What I’m interested in, creatively, is something that doesn’t yet exist.
-Alden Ehrenreich, of Tetro

BLASPHEMY

2010-05-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

"I went through a psychic break myself, where I felt like formalism was a dead end. You could polish stuff into oblivion and strangle the life out of a movie. I realized Dogme's a gimmick, but I don't doubt the core of its sincerity."

-Soderbergh, on formalism in cinema

ART TRAFFIK

2010-05-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

There are even many of our most popular artists who do not in the least conceal the fact, that they have no other ambition than to satisfy this shallow audience. They are wise in their generation; for when the prince leaves a heavy dinner, the banker a fatiguing financial operation, the working man a weary day of toil, and go to the theatre: they ask for rest, distraction, and amusement, and are in no mood for renewed effort and fresh expenditure of force. This argument is so convincing, that we can only reply by saying: it would be more decorous to employ for this purpose any other thing in the wide world, but not the body and soul of Art.
-Wagner

CATCH A FIRE

2010-05-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

"My children, when they speak of their father, they will say he was a man who stood up for what was right. A man who said, 'I must do something now'. What will your children say about you?"

screenplay by Shawn Slovo

(IN)DISCRIMINATE INTOLERANCE

2010-05-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

“I'm very glad Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world, and I know Muslims living in America and Europe want their way of life to be assimilated more. But, the Western world needs to make it clear some things about our culture are not negotiable. And can’t change. And one of them is freedom of speech. Separation of church and state is another, not negotiable. Women are allowed to work here and you can’t beat them, not negotiable. This is how we roll, and this is why our system is better, and if you don’t get that and you still want to kill someone over a stupid cartoon, please make it Garfield.”
-Bill Maher, 4/30/10

DESPERATE TIMES

2010-04-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

"A film like this makes me wonder if we are coming to the end of the facile, snarky indie films. We live in desperate times. We are ready to respond to films that ask that question. 'How do you live in this world?' "
-Roger Ebert, on Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo

EDGE

2010-04-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Martin Ritt at his finest.

DONT CALL IT A COMEBACK

2010-04-15T11:51:00.003-07:00

Tiger,
I am more prone to be inquisitive
to promote discussion.
I want to find out what your thinking was.
I wanna find out what your feelings are...
and...
did you learn anything?

PLAYBOY

2010-04-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

"I had a lot of girlfriends, but it's not the same as cheating. I don't cheat. I am very open about what I do . . . I think that when you are in a relationship, you should be honest. The real immorality of infidelity is the lying."

-Hugh Hefner

UN PROPHETE

2010-04-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

"The film aims at creating icons, images, for people who don't have images in movies...Like the Arabs in France"
-Jacques Audiard

THEATRE OF CRUELTY

2010-04-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

"Henry Kissinger" by Leon Golub

ALWAYS UNTIL VICTORY

2010-04-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

"Viva Zapata"
starring Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata
directed by Elia Kazan

AY, CANDELA!

2010-04-09T17:29:00.000-07:00

"I had suffered a lot through music. I felt... I don't know how to say it... disappointed by my life in music. But he went on until I agreed to record a number with him. I told him I could not go anywhere without getting ready. He said, "No, no, they are doing the recording now!" So, I left the shoes I was shining, and went with him to Egrem Studios."

-Ibrahim Ferrer, on joining the Buena Vista Social Club as a 70 year-old shoe shiner.

COMPASSION

2010-04-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

"You do not command him. You know that soft is stronger than hard, water is stronger than rock, love stronger than force."
-Siddhartha by H. Hesse

MOSHIACH NOW!

2010-04-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

Im nin'alu daltei n'divim daltei marom lo nin'alu
"Even if the gates of the rich will be closed, the gates of heaven will never be closed."
-Rabbi Shalom Shabazi
featured in "Paid In Full" by Eric B. and Rakim

MUSCLE

2010-04-06T12:23:00.000-07:00

Jean Claude Van Damme, pictured with Russian PM Vladimir Putin.

THE MINSTREL SHOW

2010-04-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

"A lot of stuff that's out there today - it's coonery and buffoonery. I know it's making a lot of money, breaking records, but we could do better. That's my opinion."

-Spike Lee, on Tyler Perry

SCHMATTA BUSINESS

2010-04-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

"It's in my blood. A legacy of merchants and hustlers and business owners. But there was something, I think, in the Jewish comunity that went on post World-War II where to be a merchant was declasse. My dad went to Harvard, his two brothers went to Yale. Being a "professional" was really improtant. But for me, I love that my grandfathers had their own businesses, their own employees. My dream was to build an organization. "

-Dov Charney

PIRATE SEASON

2010-04-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

"Yo ho."

I WAS BORN TO KILL

2010-04-02T12:31:00.001-07:00

"He wants to get fat. He doesn't want his braider braiding every nook and cranny of his hair. He doesn't want to have ripples in his stomach. He doesn't want the pressure of being 'Untitled' the video."

NEIGHBORHOOD

2010-04-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

An aging shopkeeper, a retired Black cop, and a self-taught martial artist take a stand against the gangs that have terrorized their community for years. Seven Samurai meets Gran Torino.

JOY

2010-03-29T14:12:00.001-07:00

"Whatever joy there is in this world,
All comes from desiring others to be happy.

And whatever suffering there is in this world,

All comes from desiring myself to be happy."

-Shantideva

BABYLON

2010-03-27T16:34:00.001-07:00

Prime Minister-Elect, Ayad Allawi, is escorted by a security entourage after his bloc is declared the slim victor in Iraq's Parliamentary election. He maintains a secular, anti-Iran platform.

OVERLOAD

2010-03-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

"If it's love, it's ELECTRIC."

-from Style-O, The Gorillaz featuring Mos-Def & Bobby Wommack

BOGART

2010-03-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

"Always as it is today? Always a world only for politics, profiteers, waiters and pleasure-seekers, and not a breath of air for men?"
-Steppenwolf, by H. Hesse

GOD'S LONELY MAN

2010-03-24T17:03:00.000-07:00

"My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There has never been any choice for me. Loneliness has followed me all my life. The life of loneliness pursues me wherever I go. In bars, cars, coffee shops, theatres, stores, sidewalks. There is no escape. I am God's lonely man."

-Taxi Driver, Written by Paul Schrader

THE APOSTLE

2010-03-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

Directed by Robert Duvall

SIN, NOT CRIME

2010-03-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Clint Eastwood in "White Hunter, Black Heart"

PRESIDENT

2010-03-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

"Art is truth."
-John F. Kennedy

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC

2010-01-14T12:43:00.001-08:00

(CNN) - Google said it was rolling back its self-censorship this week in a move that seems to indicate that -- despite attempts to build strong government relations and retool its own stated ethics -- the search engine has finally had enough of doing business the China way.

QUAKE

2010-01-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

(CNN) Twitter was buzzing with news that several airlines are flying doctors and nurses to Haiti free of charge to help with relief efforts therein the wake of Tuesday's devastating earthquake...

"Last night's hoax on Twitter about American and JetBlue flying doctors and nurses to Haiti was just that -- a hoax. We don't know who is responsible, but it's a very low thing to do."

-Tim Smith ; Spokesman, American Airlines

FAIL

2009-12-30T10:10:00.000-08:00

NORTHWEST FLIGHT 253--

For the past year, there have growing indications that Al Qaeda is regrouping in Yemen... A video announcing the establishment of Al-Qaeda (there)...featured two Saudis previously released from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Both assumed leadership positions in the newly formed organization.