Notes:
2000 Onwards: Film Moves Full Circle – and the Future of Movies.
- Swiss Miss (1938) dir. John G. Blystone and Hal Roach
- Putting a piano in the Swiss Alps, shot on a set with a painted background
- We know something will go wrong, it always does
- Putting a piano in the Swiss Alps, shot on a set with a painted background
- Blonde Venus (1932) dir. Josef von Sternberg
- Hollywood at its most playful, absurd, new
- Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Louis Lumière
- Movies started with this documentary
- Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) dir. Michael Moore
- First time in the story of film that non fiction cinema held it’s own on the big screen
- One of the biggest box office hits in the history of documentary
- All they had to do was show the footage, add a commentary, and time stamps
- The Bourne Supremacy (2004) dir. Paul Greengrass
- Film above made the same amount of money as this one
- Filmed more like a documentary, the director came from documentary’s
- Être et avoir (2002) dir. Nicolas Philibert
- Zidane – A Portrait in the 21st Century (2006) dir. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno
- Documentary
- Used extra long lenses to film a football match
- Follows one player, not the overall match, we see his thoughts as subtitles, although he never speaks
- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) dir. Andrew Dominik
- Shallow focus, no attempt to computerize the images
- Way Down East (1920) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. D. W. Griffith
- Film above has the delicate photo-realism of this film
- Climates (2006) dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
- Shot digitally
- A hotel room, a wife in close up, the drip of water on the soundtrack
- We cut to her older husband, his face half obscured
- Lots of mysterious focus shots
- Sad film about marriage
- The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) dir. Cristi Puiu
- New Romanian cinema
- Passionately showed that we are all in this scary new century together
- The Headless Woman (2008) dir. Lucrecia Martel
- Argentinian film
- Static camera with one shot shows woman in her car, reaching for her ringing phone, accidentally hitting something, pulling over, trying to calm herself down, then driving off
- The camera stays in the car as she stops again, gets out, leaves the shot
- We see her keep secrets from her family and from herself throughout the film
- Hauntingly unglossy movie
- Battle in Heaven (2005) dir. Carlos Reygadas
- Close up of a dark hand holding a light-skinned one
- When they are shown having sex, the camera travels up and we see a single uninterrupted over 3 minute long crane shot showing people repairing a satellite dish, and other homes
- Oasis (2002) dir. Lee Chang-Dong
- A man who is just out of prison is dominating the conversation at the dinner table
- He has brought with him a young woman with cerebral palsy, it is uncomfortable
- A man who is just out of prison is dominating the conversation at the dinner table
- Memories of Murder (2003) dir. Bong Joon-ho
- A cereal killer has killed 10 Korean women, which is a true story
- A cop is looking for the killer, he seems haunted by the memory of the murder
- A girl then approaches him, and reveals that she may have seen the murderer
- A conversation, simply shot
- All through the film, the detective has been looking for this kind of breakthrough, and now that he finally gets it, it’s just ordinary, it doesn’t give him anything
- Oldboy (2003) dir. Park Chan-wook
- Film based off Japanese manga cartoon book
- The camera keeps its distance on a dolly during the fight
- Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Georges Méliès(Although Mark Cousins and the title on the screen indicate that the scene being shown is from La lune à un mètre, the scene is actually from Le Voyage dans la lune.
- One of the first science fiction films
- Mulholland Dr. (2001) dir. David Lynch
- A girl falls asleep and dives down into her own consciousness
- Then the girl grows up, falls in love with another girl, and gets so jealous she hires a hit-man to kill her
- Another man is there, and it is as if he is seeing her commit the crime, the thought-crime
- So innovative because it was the wizard of oz plunging into a black rabbit hole
- Requiem for a Dream (2000) dir. Darren Aronofsky
- Looked at people on drugs
- Movie about how drugs distort the world
- Songs from the Second Floor (2000) dir. Roy Andersson
- Man has burned down his business and is on the train, the walls a bad green, but suddenly heightened, like a musical fantasy
- In the ending, symbols of religion are being dumped into a wasteland beyond the city
- Uncut shot lasts for minutes, and then people stand up from the field, like the day of judgement, they have been there all along
- Way Out West (1937) dir. James W. Horne
- Previous director fan of this
- Indiscreet (1958) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Stanley Donen
- Rules of Attraction (2002) dir. Roger Avary
- We feel in the middle of this flirtatious conversation
- Avatar (2009) dir. James Cameron
- CGI really helped make this movie
- In real life, the man is a marine and cannot walk, but he runs in his avatar body
- The faces were filmed for realistic facial expressions
- Managed to insert the mystery of human thinking and emotion into a digital animation
- Motion Capture Mirrors Emotion (2009) dir. Jorge Ribas
- Tropical Malady (2004) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
- Backdrop so still it looks almost painted
- The film then seems to break down, it goes to black, restarts, we see a man in the dark, looking up at a tree lit by fireflies
- We learn that his friend is now a tiger, and he must hunt him
- The film seems to have been reincarnated, from a naturalistic tale of friendship, to a tale of hunting and hunted
- Mother and Son (1997) dir. Alexander Sokurov
- Russian cottage in the countryside, mother is dying, her son tends to her, she is happy dying in his arms
- Many critics feel this is one of the best films of its time
- Russian Ark (2002) dir. Alexander Sokurov
- A ball from older times, they flow down the steps like a river, but we feel when they leave their heads will be cut off by young men waiting, they are going to slaughter and it is unavoidable
- There was nothing noble about the slaughter, just violent, disgusting
- Director saw the film as the last breath of this society
- Because of that, filmed it all in one take, there is but one cut in the entire movie
- A ball from older times, they flow down the steps like a river, but we feel when they leave their heads will be cut off by young men waiting, they are going to slaughter and it is unavoidable
- In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2003) dir. Knut Elstermann
- Documentary footage from when the film above was finished
Epilogue the Year 2046
- Inception (2010) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Christopher Nolan
- Maybe it’s a metaphor for what cinema could become
- A dream within a dream within a dream
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) dir. Michel Gondry
- Former lovers a re running though grand central station
- People start to disappear because people are being brainwashed
- It turns into a nightmare, filmed like a crime show
- Former lovers a re running though grand central station