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20/20 Filmsight - July 2008

Bougainville digital storytelling Pacific Black Box

Bougainville is one of the largest Solomon islands, and is part of Papua-New Guinea. There's a strong secessionist movement on the island, as the locals try to free themselves from their big-island government.

There's a reason to be interested, though... Bougainville is home to Rio Tinto's copper mine, a fabulously rich vein of metallic copper that is just waiting to be picked.

Pacific Black Box is an Australian non-profit that aims to organize community development projects in places like Bougainville, where instability makes it unreasonably difficult for the native inhabitants to sustain themselves.



The above short is one of Pacific Black Box's projects: enabling the youth of Bougainville to express themselves through 'digital storytelling' - at the minimum, raising awareness of the conditions on the island.

Till now, have you heard of Bougainville? If you've watched the clip, it's already worth its price in bandwidth.

From the press release:

"In April of this year, Amanda King and Fabio Cavadini, joint Heads of Documentary at Sydney Film School travelled to Bougainville to take part in the Pacific Black Box (PBB) project. Coordinated by Taloi Havini and Georgia McRae, who established PBB Inc in early 2008, this is an incredible environmental advocacy project aimed to equip the local youth from the Carteret Islands with the skills and resources needed to raise awareness of the fate of their island paradise homes through digital storytelling."

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George Lucas trapped in carbonite

July 30th 2008 23:10
George Lucas in carbonite
Han Solo was encased in carbonite by Darth Vader, then given to the bounty hunter Boba Fett to sell to Jabba the Hutt.

If you've never seen the Star Wars series, that sounded like utter nonsense, didn't it?

Well, if you're one of the scattered few that hasn't seen "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi", then this short clip summarizes what we're talking about:



See? Frozen in carbonite!

Some Japanese Star Wars fans decided to make their own replica prop and created George Lucas trapped in carbonite, complete with paunchy belly. The pictures were taken by Bonniegrrl and posted to Flickr.

Man, I wish that was really George Lucas trapped in carbonite. I'd buy it right away, like a human version of Jabba the Hutt, and hang it in my gambling den as my favourite ornament. That'd be a fitting punishment for Episodes 1-3.

I'd be careful, too. You know Steven Spielberg would try to break into my palace and release Lucas, removing his mask to say 'someone who loves you'.

Now all we need is a replica of Lucas in being dragged into the belly of the almighty Sarlacc. Mwa ha ha!

I suppose we can grant Lucas some leeway though... he hasn't resorted to making a Star Wars/Rush Hour mashup. Or has he?




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Vertigo

July 29th 2008 23:51
James Stewart and Kim Novak in Hitchcock's Vertigo

The name of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece refers to a disorder that causes dizziness and nausea, a feeling that Hitchcock wanted to impress on his audience while watching the film. He devised a technique, now called the 'Vertigo shot' that gives the viewer a sense of imbalance, as if the world was pulling back from you, achieved by a simultaneous dolly out/zoom in, which we see in the first scene from the movie:

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Jeff Bridges in Tron 2

July 28th 2008 22:48
tron lightcycles
"Tron" was the movie that launched us into computer graphics in cinema... Jeff Bridges played the part of a dude trapped in a computer, where they played with lightcycles and frisbees, apparently. I haven't seen it since the 80s,but it left a strong mark on me, one of those movies that made you wonder, what would it be like to live in my computer?

Certainly, "Tron" looked more fun than the games I could actually play on my computer, which included Pac-man and Q-bert


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Siskel and Ebert with thumbs

Roger Ebert has finally shut the book on the "Ebert and Roeper" show, the syndicated movie review show that started out as the "Siskel & Ebert" show, as I knew it, but went by the longer title, "Siskel & Ebert At the Movies".

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Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

This is the latest internet meme from Something Awful; users post scenes from movies with inappropriate soundtracks, ruining the scene, but making it awfully funny to watch.

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Jan Svankmajer's Faust

July 22nd 2008 23:43
Jan Svankmajer Faust
The legend of Dr. Faust apparently manifests in the 1500 in Germany, where the story tells of a bargain between a shady alchemist, Dr. Faust, and the Devil; ultimate power and knowledge in exchange for the doctor's soul - a deal known to us as a 'Faustian' bargain.

Sadly, I have not read Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" nor Goethe's "Faust", the two books which inspired Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer to adapt the old story to a haunting film called "Faust". As a result, I feel wholly inadequate to judge this surreal tale of temptation and vice, packed with symbolism and haunting imagery


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Kevin Smith on The Dark Knight
As I'm posting this, Kevin Smith is the guest star of the /Film podcast, talking about the film industry and, most excitedly, reviewing "The Dark Knight", a movie that blew the doors open at the box office. Read Bryn's enthusiastic review here.


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A Woman Under the Influence

July 21st 2008 23:56
Gena Rowlands A Woman Under the Influence
A guest series on JDMFilmReviews by Shaun Katz focused on John Cassavetes, the maverick of independent American cinema, brought my attention to these low surface films, movies that flew under the radar.

Cassavetes worked mainstream movies to fund his own projects and, after watching his most successful movie, "A Woman Under the Influence", I can understand why. Who would back this movie? Who would trust Cassavetes to bring it all together? How could you pitch this as an idea


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Update (12/08/08): They've released a new set of posters, this time with Simon Pegg and John Cho as Scotty and Sulu, respectively. See all four posters here.

Simon Pegg as Scotty in Star Trek remake

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Caligula with Malcolm McDowell

Well, that's a bit much, I guess. But Beta Girl did post a fantastic video of a remade trailer for Gore Vidal's "Caligula" that looks wonderful. It's hilarious and messy, just like you'd expect, and great for a rewatch. Check out her post here, though it is adult-only. Be warned!

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Rififi

July 17th 2008 23:06
Jules Dassin Rififi
At the fervent urging of JohnDoe from JDM Film Reviews, I finally got around to watching "Rififi", also called "Du rififi chez les hommes", which translates to 'brawling among men'. It's the glorious heist film that set the tone and look for film noir and subsequent gangster flicks, and it's a wildly innovative feature, still carrying a delicious impact after all these years.

Jules Dassin's classic "Rififi" still echoes through cinemas, especially when the glitzy Hollywood crime genre has exploded into major theatres, most notably with the "Ocean's 11" remake and sequels


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I've posted both of these videos up independently of each other - one is Hyperactive by Lasse Gjertsen, a wonderfully edited music/video. The other is the Unreal Gamer, a chubby German kid who goes ballistic playing Unreal, apparently. This kid is not cool.

After I posted the videos, though, I never had a second thought about them. Certainly, I was unable to draw any kind of link between the videos


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Plastic Man beating up bank robbers

In all my comic book days, there was no character more delightfully irritating than Plastic Man, a former thief that gains the ability to shape himself into any object he desires, like a piece of molded plastic.

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Dame Diana Rigg from The Avengers

July 14th 2008 23:37
Diana Rigg as Emma Peel from the Avengers
If you've ever watched The Avengers, the British espionage series from the 60s, you probably suffered from the same ailment that I did, where you can't take your eyes off Diana Rigg, who plays Emma Peel in the television series.

This photo was found on one of my favourite sites on the web, the strangely named If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger. A commenter on this post nails the magnetism that Riggs carried on the show


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Splitting Heirs

July 13th 2008 23:48
Splitting Heirs Catherine Zeta-Jones
The reviews are particularly punishing to "Splitting Heirs", a movie written by and starring ex-Monty Python member, Eric Idle, who was never one of the more prominent Pythons, and lends his temperate comedy to this project.

The plot is perfectly predictable for a comedy made in 1993 - a British Duke has a child with an American hippie, they lose the baby, then find him again, but there's a switch and the real baby turns out to be Eric Idle. Of course this is the plot. It could be nothing else


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Ten Canoes

July 10th 2008 23:20
Ten Canoes paddling out in canoes to collect duck eggs
In the history of Australian cinema, there have been movies about Indigenous people, but, until "Ten Canoes" directed by Rolf de Heer, there has never been a film made in the language of the Aboriginal Australians.

"Ten Canoes" starts off with an English-speaking narrator, who tells a tale of a group of men making canoes for a hunt, who then tell a tale of dark deeds and sorcery. The visuals recreate a time before there was any hint of Europeans on the horizon, and the land is wild and free, untamed and untouched


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Ten Canoes gorgeous landscape Australia
As part of the Biennale of Sydney 2008 film series, the NSW Art Gallery will be presenting a free screening of Rolf de Heer's "Ten Canoes", an Australian film made in an Indigenous language.

It starts at 7:15 and there's bound to be a large crowd tonight, so I recommend getting there early, listening to some of the terrific lectures on tonight, and soak in the atmosphere in one of Sydney's best known-unknown location


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I met the walrus hand gun flowers john lennon

I was thrilled this morning to find this incredible video on Fazed... it's an animated short that couples beautifully surreal visuals with the audio recording of a guerilla interview with John Lennon, by then-14-year-old Jerry Levitan.

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M

July 6th 2008 22:41
Fritz Lang's M killer shadow
It's an eerily simple title, but one of a film that has been etched into cinematic history as one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Fritz Lang's "M" was his first sound film, combining a terrifying leitmotif with the anguished pleas of a madman.

More than anything, "M" is a film that stands out even more today, despite being relegated to dusty film archives for over seventy years. It's sharp and vivid, raising questions on the nature of justice and who should deal out punishment


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Becoming a better film critic

July 3rd 2008 23:23
Pauline Kael
This article on Movie Zeal, written by Evan Derrick, claims to offer "10 Ways to Become a Better Movie Critic". It sounds blindingly pretentious, but, upon reading, it seems as if Derrick thought at depth about the subject, and offers an insightful, example-laden article.

Yes, he outlines several points that are essential to improving as a critic, most notably, in my opinion, the idea that film critics should "develop an appreciation for all the arts". From the article


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Cartoon Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

"Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" is Russ Meyer's most notable contribution to popular culture, a movie about three busty go-go dancers who go on a wild road rampage. It has inspired countless musicians and filmmakers, with John Waters claiming that it is "the finest movie ever made".

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