The editing and overdramatic production music makes this look like a made for television commercial, but the captured lightning strikes are worth seeing scrawl to the earth:
Photographer Dustin Farrell spent over a month traveling some 20,000 miles for the sole purpose of filming thunderstorms around the United States. Using a pricey Phantom Flex4K high-speed camera he filmed lightning strikes at 1,000 frames per second, resulting in impressive footage that shows the remarkable complexity of electricity in the atmosphere.
Now this next compilation video, in my opinion, is a thousand-point-twenty-one jigawatts times more exciting: ⚡
Artist Akinori Goto came up with a truly wonderful take on the zoetrope — He uses 3D printing to turn 2D frames into a donut-shaped object. It looks like an abstract sculpture, but it reveals its animation when hit with a narrow beam of light:
But first; Keanu did something nice — ‘YOU’RE BREATHTAKING!’ Keanu Reeves surprised fan by signing yard sign:
Travelling to the set of his new Bill & Ted sequel, Face The Music, in Louisiana earlier this week, Keanu Reeves spotted a yard sign a local family had put on their lawn which honoured the actor with the words “You’re breathtaking.” The message is a reference to a viral moment from June, in which Reeves said the words to the crowd at the E3 video game conference — echoing a fan’s reaction to him.
Bill & Ted writer Ed Solomon wrote on Twitter that the 54-year-old had jumped out of their car after seeing the sign, and penned a sweet message to those responsible.
So yesterday this sign was out on a lawn on the way to set. Keanu jumped out of the car and did this. pic.twitter.com/OI1bQJ1nfy
Wow! Yesterday was a dream come true! We knew @KeanuReevess_ was filming up the street so my son said we need to make a sign that says "you're breathtaking" so we did! A few cars stopped but then a car stopped and there he was!! He actually stopped! Oh my heavens! @ed_solomonpic.twitter.com/TBGvAC8kEO
And something else Keanu related from one of my fave YouTube channels; deepfake Keanu stops a robbery with the power of kindness:
Bonus episode from the Corridor crew reacting to bad & great CGI (a great series):
“[…] if you’ve distracted the audience, you pull them out of this emotional suspension of disbelief, and you’ve reminded them that you are watching something that is fake.” ~ Niko Pueringer, VFX artist
And finally, because why not…
“I made this Keanu GIF player using an Adafruit PyGamer and SD card. It autoplays each GIF for 10 seconds before moving on to the next one. You can also use the L/R thumbstick controls to advance or go back. Add more Keanu GIFs by copying them to the SD card.” ~ John Park
It has been a long time since I have been excited for anything STAR TREK related. The new series is set for a 2020 release, and looks to be an amazing continuation of the franchise, with Sir Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Brent Spiner’s Data is back, presumably, as well as Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine.
Quite pleased.
Last thing ST I truly enjoyed was not the new films, or the new TV series Discovery, but a four-issue comic miniseries published in 2012 — Star Trek the Next Generation: Hive. I am definitely picking up some similarities in story elements:
In the distant future the entire galaxy has been completely assimilated by Borg and it’s king _ Locutus! The only hope for the future lies in the past, in the hands of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise as Picard faces off against the Borg collective in one final, terrifying, and definitive encounter!
Before that, IDK, maybe it was playing multiplayer Star Trek: Voyager — Elite Force
And how can I forget this sweet entry starring the lovely Alice Krige:
It is that time of year again when the NZInternational Film Festival rolls into town, and I have decisions to make!!
Poster artwork: illustration by Ken Samonte, design by Ocean Design.
My sister Matisse and I caught the NZIFF opening night screening of La Belle Époque and it was hilarious and heartfelt. Prior to its screening, New Zealand Film Festival Trust (NZFFT) member Dr Andrew Langridge took to the podium and welcomed everyone to the event, in a long speech about the film festival’s success, the 40 year tenure of festival curator/director Bill Gosden, as well thanking ALL the sponsors (it was a very long speech).
Here are a few entries in the 51st programme (18 July to 4 August 2019) that I am interested to see:
Part film noir, part dreamscape, this oneiric love mystery – acclaimed for its hour-long 3D sequence shot in a mesmerising unbroken take – intoxicatingly captures romantic obsession in southern China.
A 21st century riff on second chances at first love, La Belle Époque takes a giant conceit – an agency can grant you the chance to play the lead role in any point in history, with full cast and costume on an authentic set – and focuses on a sad, aging cartoonist (Daniel Auteuil, in a late career peak) who’s feuding with his VR-obsessed wife (Fanny Ardant, equally terrific). Instead of drinking with Hemingway or fighting Nazis, he chooses to return to the happiest day of his life: 40 years prior, when a beautiful woman walked into a cafe…
With an enchanting attention to oceanic detail and the mysteries of the deep blue sea, this blissfully moody anime follows the journey of a teenage girl spirited away on a fantastic aquatic adventure.
Celebrate Alfred Hitchcock’s 120th birthday with “the first true Hitchcock movie,” an atmospheric thriller set in the London fog. Accompanied by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra performing Neil Brand’s brilliant new score, conducted by Peter Scholes.
A fully rounded, elegantly observed documentary on the world of taxidermy, its dedicated practitioners and their empathy for the animals whose lives and beauty they lovingly preserve.
Four teenage orphans form a kick-ass band to express their emotions and end up taking the world by storm in this visually dazzling triumph from first time director Nagahisa Makoto.
Welcome back to the jungle with Brando, Duvall, Fishburne and Hopper for Francis Ford Coppola’s final – and finest – version of the ultimate Vietnam War epic.
Boasting batshit surreal imagery, fist-pumping action sequences and a wall-to-wall shrine of art and cinema references, Ruben Brandt, Collector is a new milestone for animated invention.
The Wild Goose Lake (2019) Nan fang che zhan de ju hui / Directed by Diao Yinan
Gangland subterfuge tumbles into a dazzling nocturnal manhunt in Chinese director Diao Yinan’s film noir par excellence – a modern genre classic in the making.
Regarding the 2019 poster artwork; the posters (in the poster?) featured on the wall are from past NZIFFs. The one with the elephant is from 1994, a programme which I happened to have held onto like a proud hoarder/stolen from my dad’s belongings when I was little. Incredibly different time for cinema compared to today’s offerings.
JasonShulman photographs the entire duration of a movie with ultra-long exposures, creating a single image, these impressionistic blurs with faint distinguishing features:
“You could take all these frames and shuffle them like a deck of cards,
and no matter the shuffle, you would end up with the same image I have arrived at.”
Dumbo (1941)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
In an interview with Another Magazine, Shulman elaborated; “I set up my camera […] pointed it at a movie, expecting that, if you expose the negative for an hour and a half with a film in front of it, you’d get a bit like what you get when you mix balls of Play-Doh together— just a brown monotone hue. So I was very surprised when in fact these kinds of rather interesting translations of films started occurring.”
“You can learn something about the director’s style from this kind of kooky translation: you can learn that Hitchcock deals with people, for example, Kubrick deals with composition, Bergman deals with … I mean lots of Bergman films are kind of moody and psychological, much more so than other films.”
“So it’s odd that in one exposure all of these things, although very subjective, kind of come through.”
“There are roughly 130,000 frames in a 90-minute film and every frame of each film is recorded in these photographs,” Shulman says.
Some films didn’t work so well, however. “I shot Avatar, for example – I shot all James Cameron’s films – and what I got most is literally just a kind of Pantone swatch at the end, a kind of plain, flat blue, because he cuts very quickly, the camera’s always moving. So it all depends on the director’s style.”
Shulman’s other work extends beyond photography, encompassing installation, sculpture and video.
Dr Strangelove (1964)
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Under The Skin (2013)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Le voyage dans la lune (1902)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Alien (1979)
Stalker (1979)
“Each of these photographs is the genetic code of a film — its visual DNA”
Inspired by the evocative, haunting atmospheres of the track and the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieślowski:
Directed by Gianluca Minucci / Talent Kseniia Dubovitz Dubovitskaia / Produced by Liana Rae Perez, Catherine Dewar / Prod. Company Mad Dogs Film / DoP Jeremy Kerr / Editor Ian Degrassi / Colorist Mariateresa Ventrella / Costume Designer Lenka Padysakova / Prod. Designer Mike Maggiano […]
I am glad the makers gave credit to their inspirations, as I can definitely see Andrei Tarkovsky’s influence. There is something rich and incomparable about the way in which Tarkovsky framed and captured environments, imbuing them with metaphysical properties that seem to defy time and reason.
Directed by Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo’s Shinichiro Watanabe:
Flying Lotus and Shinichiro Watanabe’s creative kinship was cultivated while working on BLADE RUNNER: BLACK OUT 2020, the mutual respect led to them collaborating on this music video. And one more track because it features the so fresh and so clean, André 3000
🎭 