Zen of Film

Meet Thomas Tull. Wired recently had an interview with geek-pictures producer Thomas Tull, head of Legendary Pictures. The outfit is now home of a 45 picture deal with Warners. They can pride themselves for hits like the newer Batman series namely Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, 300, Watchmen and a few more, and with […]

Ironically enough, being modern in the realm of film these days means doing films who center themselves around the ideas of postmodernism, postmodernist films. Although most of these works haven’t done so well on the box-office, films in the post-modern tradition receive great academic acclaim and film nerd appraisal.
Just for you to be on […]

A very interesting film genre is that of gangster films. Born in the 1920, 1930, time of the Great Depression, alcohol prohibition (and alcohol smuggling) and in between two World Wars, the narratives of the time explored the realms of twilight, analyzed gangster and mobsters (as evil twins of the capitalist) and gave rise to […]

Finally I had the chance to watch Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) (imdb, wikipedia, clipland) and besides the fact that it is an entertaining upbeat perfect-fit-for-christmas film, I couldn’t help myself but noticing a number of structural influences the film obviously had on following film works.
First, there is 1989’s Christmas Vaccation (imdb), one […]

Achieving the “film-look” is still the main criteria why many filmmakers and cinematographers prefer film-based equipment, 35mm or 16mm, cameras over the sometimes cheaper digital alternatives like camcorders or digital cinematography 24p HD equipment.
The need to cut down costs on independent and low- to no-budget productions urged many filmmakers to think about alternatives, while pleasing […]

After I had the opportunity to watch The Wizard of Oz (imdb, Wikipedia) yesterday, I noticed various hints that this 1939 masterpiece inpired various works of popular culture. Here’s my list of observations:

The Tin Man’s sway - Michael Jackson’s gravity defying sway moves at the end of the “Smooth Criminal” music video.
The Scarecrow, the Cowardly […]

Among the game and film geeks, it seems to be common sense to lash out at Dr. Uwe Boll.  Although I haven’t seen much of the films everybody is hating, what I did see was The First Semester, and I think it is a really funny and to-the-point flick!
I can’t tell if venturing into the […]

Yesterday, I had the chance to finally see John Carpenter’s classic from 1976 “Assault on Precinct 13″ (imdb, wikipedia) - which, you might know that, got the dubious honor of a remake in 2005.
While watching this really worthwhile film (an exception is the cheesy and annoying soundtrack btw.) I got the feeling of “hey, I’ve […]

Right now, I’m in “rant about actors” mode, so don’t take me too serious. But let’s make a brave statement:
there isn’t such a thing as an über-actor. There are just (good) actors and bad actors. That’s it.
But let’s start at the beginning. A good story isn’t good because of the acting, it is good because […]

Cinelerra (homepage, Wikipedia) [Linux, Mac OS X] a very sophisticated non-linear editing suite.
Blender (homepage, Wikipedia) [Cross Platform] blender by design is a 3D modeling and rendering software. But the package over the years got so mature that even the internal editing functionality grew to top-notch proportions.
KDEnlive (homepage, Wikipedia) [Linux] quite mature and complete non-linear editing […]