Michel Gondry's Big ideas continue

Stumbled across this fantastic, crazy Japanese commercial for a clothing store directed by the one and only Michel Gondry. It features his signature giant body parts which featured in many of his music videos including Foo Fighters' Everlong and in his film The Science of Sleep (see below).

It's slightly maniacal, but also great fun and true to Gondry's hugely imaginative style. Whatever medium he chooses to work with, from feature films to short minute-long commercials, he's still able to bring to us a piece of his insanely colourful world with amazing style. See below for this wacky new Japanese commercial.

The Lomokino

Hipster cousin Ji brought my attention today to this great new camera from LOMO called 'Lomokino'. It basically uses ordinary 35mm film (slide, negative, black/white, infrared, you name it) and shoots short movies that look a little something like this:

I love the fact that it utilises analogue photography and turns it into a form of filmmaking. It's cost-effective and simple enough for the average photographer by the looks of it. Looks like a fantastic tool to experiment with. I'm definitely adding this to my wishlist for the upcoming gift-swapping season!

Have a look at more examples of films shot on the Lomokino, or have a read about the camera itself.

'God's Eye View'

Stumbled across this amazing supercut of shots from films that use what is commonly known as the God's Eye View angle. I highly recommend you take 4 minutes of your day to watch this.

Aristurtle - Jean-Michel Bernard

Inspiring.

Ignore the video. Listen to the music.

Blue Valentine: the room of desire, desperation and no return

I found this neat photograph of Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance and lead Michelle Williams on set during the production. It was this room where Dean, played by Ryan Gosling brings his wife Cindy (Michelle Williams) to rekindle their relationship, after it is clear that it's breaking apart at the very seams.

They enter a love hotel, and Dean picks the 'Future Room', a neon-lit, tight space with no windows, including your average tacky rotating bed and faux fur pillows. Nothing is true for the couple any more, and nothing can be reversed. Their relationship is in shambles, as they crawl and beg for freedom - of each other, and freedom of the present. The 'Future Room' does nothing, but take them deeper into the land of no return. Time travel does not exist, and if it did, everything would be right. What destroys us, and where do relationships go to perish? Where does it hurt?

Sonnet 29, Shakespeare (and a New Year greeting)

Hey, happy new year all.

I admit, I have been a terrible host and for that I apologise! I have been busily trying to catch up with life as it has made it through to 2011. Damn it, the sneaky new year went on to start without even telling me. I have been struggling at work, and to see the lightness in film and creativity on most days, so I must ask you to be patient with me till I find some resourceful information or ideas to spread.

I do, however, begin 'school' at AFTRS (I've just enrolled in the Grad Certificate in Screen Culture, picked it over Directing. Explain later) in just over a month's time, which should get me back into my right frame of mind. I'm very much looking forward to it!

In the meanwhile, I shall leave you with this beautiful video - featuring David Hyde Pierce (from Frasier) reading Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. Inspiring, devastating, a beautiful kind of disaster.

Stay happy, everyone.

A Spike Jonze/Arcade Fire collaboration, "The Suburbs"

Saw this a while ago. Been meaning to share it.

Here's what I found on the video (some details from Win Butler, Arcade Fire's lead):

“It’s not a video. It’s a short film; we’re still working on it. It’s like a science-fiction B-movie companion piece for the record. Basically, we played Spike some music from the album and the first images that came to his mind had the same feeling as this idea for a science fiction film I had when I was younger. My brother and I and Spike wrote it together, which was really fun– it was like total amateur hour. We shot it in Austin and a lot of kids are in the film, and it was great just hanging out with these 15-year-olds for a week and writing down all the funny things they said. It was cool to revert to being a 15-year-old for a little while."

Although it is set in Austin and seemingly reflects the suburban life for American youth, I think the themes are universal. The video reminds me of when I used to ride bicycles around my suburb with neighbours who lived nearby and not so nearby. We would race each other to the vandalised park, play rubberband wars, chase each other up to the shops where we would buy shandy beer (it was all so exhilarating). We'd pick up a couple of cap guns and have fights in our front lawns. This video brings me back to these feelings of being alive and free - my suburb was my turf, and nothing could stop me.

Less Time, More Films

It's amazing how quickly time is lost when you work full-time. As you can imagine, I have been very occupied with work. When I'm not at work, I'm resting, dealing with the trivial matters that encompass my life, or thinking of different ways to overcome my lactose intolerance. The Japanese Film Festival in Sydney began last Monday, which I've been attending almost everyday throughout the week. I've been losing sleep, eating badly (dinner has consisted of buttered toast for the past two nights now) and basically not giving myself the tender, love and care that I seem to need.

(photo from JFF Facebook page)

I have, however, been seeing a lot more films than the past two months put together! I took advantage of the perks that came with having a boyfriend who worked for a film festival by sitting with him while he watched the screeners. I saw almost half the films on at the currently running Japanese Film Festival, including A Lone Scalpel (closing night film), Flavor of Happiness, Confessions and Solanin (by far my favourite). We managed to see Josh Fox's documentary Gasland, Michael Rowe's Leap Year (also known as Año Bisiesto), a Christmas tale gone wrong in Rare Exports, Australian genre film The Loved Ones, and a couple of others. It has been quite a busy November.

Next week, Kieran and I head to the Gold Coast for the 4th annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards. I'm really looking forward to this event - it's the first major 'black tie' film-event I have been asked to attend - well, Kieran was invited, and I got to be his lucky 'plus one'. Nevertheless, it will be great to be amongst all sorts of important folk in the Asian film industry. I can't wait.

December will bring all kinds of crazy with Christmas and New Year's around the corner already. Time to empty my wallets, repent my sins and consider my 2011. Can't say I'm not excited!

I'll end this post with one of my favourite trailers - a sweded trailer of Be Kind Rewind. It's sweded with all the charm and greatness of Michel Gondry.

Cooking Dreams

"Tonight, I'll show you how dreams are prepared. People think it's a very simple and easy process but it's a bit more complicated than that. As you can see, a very delicate combination of complex ingredients is the key. First, we put in some random thoughts. And then, we add a little bit of reminiscences of the day, mixed with some memories from the past. That's for two people. Love, friendships, relationships and all those 'ships', together with songs you heard during the day, things you saw, and also, uh... personal... Okay, I think it's one"

Final Scene from Wong Kar-wai's HAPPY TOGETHER

A fragment, by a Poet

"She was an entertaining creature, one I had not encountered for divers months, and I was simply compelled by the beguiling hunt. And as she intimidated me, I kept my distance, standing as she sat and as we spoke, of our past romances; I joked, about threats to jeopardise her integrity. I was not one to adore such a thing, but between the incongruity of who I had thought she was, and the smoke she had pulled from her purse, now held between her fingers:

She was fascinating.

I saw only the contours of her face, outlines of the shadows cast at soft angles by the moonlight. I was blessed from time to time, only by the long drag of the cigarette she was smoking: I saw her face illumed. The smoke escaping her lips, like an organism in somnambulant dance, sipped up into the ether of the dark hours above us; of the early morning.

I retired alone.

Now in daylight, I find myself chasing up what had gone, and what had died with the night. Mourning the life of a thrill that had lasted only the span between moonrise and moonset."

"The goodbye scene of the would-be lovers is over-the-top romantic. Nevertheless, or maybe because of that, it, too works. In the slightest of slow-motion, Mo-wan lets go of Li-zhen's hand (her wedding ring, ironically, in full view), and the camera stays on her face in extreme close-up as he remains far away in the background, out of focus. Then we discover, once again, that they are only rehearsing a separation that has not yet taken place and that, in fact, we never see. They playact through their emotional crisis, as if trying to manage it theatrically, and thus never reach their innermost selves, if such a place can be said to exist. They live within quotation markers and pre-written lines of dialogue. They put on an act because reality itself is too hard to bear. She sobs, and the strings reach a crescendo."

- Peter Brunette on "In The Mood For Love", Wong Kar-Wai

A quote on Wong Kar-Wai's "In The Mood For Love"

"Coming to its emotional climax at the Angkor War temple in Cambodia in 1966, the film plays out through a series of missed opportunities and bad decisions, as one of the most powerful renditions of mutually unrequited love in cinema history."

- Peter Brunette, Wong Kar-Wai

Modeselektor - Em Ocean

Today's 'random click' has turned into a surprising find. I rarely listen to Modeselektor due to how heavy some (if not most) of their stuff can be (listen to Black Block), but this neat two minute track is something else.

Iguazu Waterfall from 'Happy Together'

The Iguazu Waterfall scene from Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together.

This waterfall, so precisely placed in the film as what I feel is a symbol of the two leading characters' relationship - mesmerising, of great depths, to lose one's self. This shot follows a moment in the film where the two characters, Ho Po-Wing and Lai Yiu-Fai take a road trip in search for the Iguazu waterfall. Their trip comes to a halt, and we see one of them walk away from the car. "Where are you going?" says Ho, as he remains with the car, a map spread out before him. The characters stand next to a busy highway, abandoning their car and map. Cars and trucks go by in haste as their relationship grows further and further apart.

What a great, great film.

This Is Not Poetry Premiere - The Team

Some of the cast and crew at my thesis film's premiere - This Is Not Poetry

Saw my film on the big screen for the very first time.
Oh, and I graduated on the same night too.

All is well, all is well.

(Photo credit to Genesis M)

Sofia Coppola's SOMEWHERE Trailer

This is the latest and first trailer for Sofia Coppola's latest film titled Somewhere. It's about an A-list Hollywood actor who begins to re-examine his life when his 11-year-old daughter visits him.

As I have been sitting infront of my computer all day, TweetDeck was going off the hooks in regards to the new trailer. People were claiming that it was very reminiscent of Lost In Translation and that the film was 'nothing new' for Coppola, who previously directed Marie Antoinette as well as Lost In Translation. That argument is invalid to me. To me, a filmmaker makes films that reflect who they are, and their experiences, emotions and stories. I saw this trailer and thought this looked great - sure it is reminiscent of Lost In Translation, but hey - who didn't love Lost In Translation?

I think what makes a filmmaker great is when they write from the heart, and from their own stories and experiences. It's true, and honest, and I feel that's what makes a great film. Her new film Somewhere looks great, and promising. Subject matter aside, I love her work and if it is as close to Lost In Translation, I will probably love it just as much.

So stop hatin'.

(I know I promised an entry about the thesis film production, but I've been sitting infront of this computer for the last 6 hours syncing the sound to picture of the edit, so I must go before my corneas burn into themselves. Later)

Trailer for Christopher Nolan's "Inception"

I am so damn looking forward to this.

Le Haricot Bleu

"The blue bean is a wonder of nature.
The depth and intensity of its colour makes this poisonous mushroom all the more deadly since it is attractive.
Having friends is a wonder in life.
What more natural than to share the small joys with those we love.
True friends are after their devotion; it is through them that I knew that the blue bean was delicious and edible!"

Jon Brion: Some Kind of a Musical Genius

Jon Brion is currently the best music discovery I've had in a long time, if not ever.

His music makes me feel both happy and melancholic at the same time, and it isn't one riddled with turbulence much like the rest of my busy life right now. Much like "Theme" from Eternal Sunshine in my last film "Night", I feel like he has written the songs to my life. I'm becoming really inspired by his music, from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind right through to Synecdoche, New York's score - I think he is a genius.

If I find a composer who is influenced by Brion, I think my thesis film will be complete.