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#Spotted: The one-armed bad guy from The Fugitive as the two-armed bad guy in 'Someone To Watch Over Me'. http://t.co/01oni2sm
7th Dec 2011
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#Spotted: Chimp favourite 'The Brooklyn Inn' making an appearance in this week's 'Bored To Death'. http://t.co/Gko9hmFy
6th Dec 2011
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#Spotted: Jesus, Michael Fassbender is in this turd too. Must have had a good casting director. \#JonahHex. http://t.co/MNzRPEnp
4th Dec 2011
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#Spotted: Daniels is in amongst it in 'Jonah Hex' too - as a Lucias Fox type. http://t.co/eUoAVant
4th Dec 2011
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#Spotted: Locke from Lost as Billy The Kid's lawyer in 'Young Guns'. http://t.co/Ng1tTzBq
14th Nov 2011
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35mm movie camera from the Lomo team and their ongoing "what is digital?" theme
5th Nov 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet
#Spotted: Son of Anarchy @MrCHunnam as a football hooligan in 'Green Street'. http://t.co/vGVNbOOf
21st Oct 2011
Read on Twitter#Spotted: Herbert Quentin Viola from Moonlighting, as an angry laptop user in 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'. http://t.co/IXK9DJ2m
13th Oct 2011
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Terrence Malick breaks cover
The picture above left has served as one of the only publicly available images of reclusive director Terrence Malick for a couple of decades - but last week he popped along to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, with Christian Bale and a camera crew.
Bale must have gotten a hall pass from the still-shooting Batman sequel, as he was swanning around around the festival playing some sort of rockstar type - check out the fascinating video here. It had been announced that Bale was cast in a Malick film, set to shoot in 2012, so this shoot may have only been a test - or just grabbing the opportunity to film at a large event like this - but a possible project could be something based around the life of Jerry Lee Lewis that Malick has been working on, which would tie in with the casting of the much-younger-than-Bale Haley Bennett as the other lead. More pics and info here, here and here.
Probably the most surprising thing about all of this is that Malick still looks exactly like that archive photo, right down to the hat.
20th Sep 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet
Skate or die: HD
Skateboarding has always been a fertile culture for creative types. My first films were inspired and based around the sport and the art/photo/film output of skateboarders never ceases to amaze me.
Things have come a long way since the VHS-C cameras of the 80's however. Check out Nike SB's (Nike? Skateboarding? Bah!) Debacle film above and check out a slow-mo skate clip shot on the new Scarlet 3K Red Camera below.
20th Jun 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet
Shanghai Express
Total class from 1932. The camera loves Marlene Dietrich & Anna May Wong in this trainbound romance.
Halliwell says: Superbly pictorial melodrama which set the pattern for innumerable train movies to come, though none matched its deft quality and few sketched in their own characters so neatly. Plot and dialogue are silent style, but refreshingly so.***
#Screened
#Film
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19th Jun 2011
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3D Pad
A pretty could-be-cool demo for 3D on the iPad, which uses the camera to deduce where the viewer is and adjust accordingly. Not good for that social, shared viewing experience...
24th May 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet
iPhone Camera Upgrade
turn your iPhone into a slightly more complicated camera with this TurtleJacket add-on
"Turtle Jacket turns your iPhone into a unique multi-purpose digital camera. There are 2 tripod mounts, 2 strap holes and a 37mm thread (female) for conversion lenses."
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#Tech
26th Feb 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet
14 Actors Acting
Nice photo + video piece over at The New York Times, with 14 Hollywood A-listers playing 14 classic film archetypes. James Franco comes out well as usual, but so do Michael Douglas, Tilda Swinton and others.
Shot by photographer Solve Sundsbo, on the forthcoming Red Epic digital cinema camera.
10th Dec 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
1080p is the VHS of the future
How's that 47", 1080p, Full HD-ready TV working out for you? Nice try, but it's already out-of-date. What you really want is a Super Hi-Vision plasma screen, capable of a resolution of 7680x4320 - 16 x better than 1080p.
OK there is a projector, but while the TV sets don't exist yet (you can use 4 x 4K sets together) the camera does - and the BBC and Japan's NHK just did a test broadcast of a studio session from The Charlatans. Not quite sure how that content decision came about.
The quality is so clear that a special lens had to be built to cope, and much like 3DTV, the format has dictated a shooting style of its own - with a single camera wide-shot being so big and clear that the viewer would be distracted by too much editing and can just cast their eyes around the screen instead.
Watch more at the BBC
16th Nov 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Hot Tub Time Machine
(dir. Steve Pink)
"It must be some kind of... hot tub... time machine" Craig Robinson deadpans to the camera when he and his buddies find themselves in a ski lodge in 1986. That's about the depth of the plot in this wilfully stupid comedy. Which is what makes it work. It feels like a film where they came up with a title that they liked, and then wrote backwards around it. There's the odd bit of psychological depth - dudes aren't happy with assholes they've grown up to be, could this be a chance to fix the mistakes of the past? - but it's all buried in a pacy round of 80s gags and puke jokes. Lots of 80s ski bunny action too if you've ever wondered what life was like up on the slopes then. (Bonus fact - it was shot in Fernie, Canada, and looks a lot like certain other Chimp-friendly destinations.)
John Cusack trades off his 80s persona, taking every chance to diss the decade (all "Reagan and Aids") - although it's weird having some kid play the 80s version of him as we all know exactly what he looked like. Rob Corddry plays a similar pissed-off/manic role to the one he had in What Happens In Vegas; Clark Duke is Cusack's nephew experiencing the 80s for the first time (what? no wi-fi?); Craig Robinson is funny when checking out his Kid N Play boxcut.
More 80s cameos from Crispin Glover (aka George McFly) and Chevy Chase as the possibly mystic hot tub repair man. Nice nods throughout - Bowie skiing on MTV ads, Scritti Politti sounding great (I'm ready for the greatest hits coming out soon), and some ski patrol lunks freaking themselves out over some Red Dawn-style commie paranoia.
Could do without the homophobic panic that runs through a lot of these mindless slacker comedies though, and if you think about it too hard, the ending isn't really a total win, but hey, this isn't a Brief History Of Time, it's a Hot Tub Time Machine.
28th Apr 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
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New Polaroid!
Polaroid's dead? Long live ... Polaroid! here's the PIC 1000, in a nice wood-style box
11th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet
Digital Harinezumi
another lo-fi digital camera with built-in super 8 stylings (and no sound!) - the Digital Harinezumi
26th Nov 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Nikon Projector in Action
Check out the Helicopter Boyz making great use of that Nikon camera-with-built-in-mini-projector we talked about a while back.
And while I'm writing this Japan-centric episode of stupido, check out this awesome Marimba display from the Marimba Ponies.
23rd Oct 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
More New Tech: Apple and Sony
tuesday is a well known day for press releases, but they could have spread them out a bit. As well as the new Canon camera being announced, Apple have rolled out an all-new iMac line - with full HD or bigger screens, in a TV-friendly 16:9 format and a new 'magic mouse'. They also have an updated Macbook with a polycarbonate unibody and have updated the Mac Mini line with more power + storage - and have even debuted a server version, which could be perfect for that home media centre. Although so would the 27" iMac, which you could also use as a TV.
Meanwhile, Sony have rolled out a couple of new high-end HD video cameras.
New tech announcements also coming from Red Camera on the 30th.
20th Oct 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Canon 1D Mark IV
Canon has released another DSLR camera with HD video capabilities and up to 102,400 ISO film speed (!That's high!), this time it's from the top-of-the-range 1D line. Boring specs here. Great low-light film sample below....
20th Oct 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Chase Jarvis has his own camera app: Best Camera - http://bit.ly/nKfaC \#iTunes
22nd Sep 2009
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Ad Nauseum: David Fincher
He might be selling Nike, but we've always got time for anything by David Fincher. Shot on a RED digital camera, by Emmanuel Lubezki - the man behind the magnificent The New World amongst others.
21st Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
New iPod Time (again)
the Nano now comes with video so you can film your awesome pals being totally awesome. looks like they're going after that Flip point/shoot/youtube market
10th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
More Hitler Outrage
This time he's mad about not being able to have the latest camera tech. I think this may well be the next Rick-roll.
3rd Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Squirrel Snaps
got to love a squirrel who isn't camera shy...
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#Photography
15th Aug 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Project-o-cam
The future's been on the horizon for quite a while now, but gadgets like the new Nikon S1000PJ camera make it seem closer. No, it's not a Pearl Jam edition, but they tiny camera does contain a built in projector for throwing your recently taken photos up on a wall, like a 21st century family slideshow.
Fingers crossed and maybe they'll put one of these in the next iPhone.
5th Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Light Test
Nice collection of pre-shoot camera tests up at Light Test. Rather than leaving these tests in the bin, assistants and photographers are making something of them and giving them a life of their own.
22nd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
As he was denied entrance to The Killers' VIP bash in London, I noticed Kanye West wearing the Lumix LX3 camera. Too big for his pocket too?
9th Jul 2009
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WWDC: iPhone 3 and more
Apple's big World Wide Developer's Conference kicks off today in San Francisco, and while big boss Steve Jobs is still benched with illness, sidekick Phil Schiller is expected to make some big announcements.
A new iPhone seems almost certain, with improvements likely to be made to the camera, a possible magnetometer to add digital compass capabilities. The biggest changes will likely be coming through the new 3.0 software - which should also be available to existing handset owners.
Changes to the way apps can work on the phone should lead to some good developments - so there's bound to be some additional announcements from third-party manufacturers. Personally, I'm hoping for an iPhone version of Spotify - to match the recently announced Android version. A rumoured Apple netbook seems a little less likely for tomorrow, but they'd better get a move on with that as again, Google's already on the case - expanding their Android platform into Acer's new line.
There will also likely be a demo and possible release date for latest edition of OSX, 10.6 'Snow Leopard'. Grr.
8th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
6,000,000 FPS
If only Douglas Gordon and Mogwai had waited a little longer, they could have filmed Zidane at 6,000,000 frames per second for some proper slow motion, thanks to this new camera tech.
30th Apr 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: 1990s and Camera Obscura
Rough Trade band the 1990's have a new single and video - 59 - while 4AD's new signings Camera Obscura are back with a new mobile-phone-commercial-friendly single - French Navy, out April 13th.
25th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Fly By Night
Outstanding video up from Flickr user Ettubrute (AKA James Leng), documenting a flight across the continental US. The clip was constructed using a stills camera set to take a frame approximately every 45 seconds, as the glow of towns and cities slowly pass under the plane.
Check out his Flickr page for more time-lapse and some great photos.
10th Feb 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Half Exposed
Attention camera geeks. Check out this dissected Nikon D3 camera.
9th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: Eugene McGuinness
Nice stop-motion promo up for Eugene McGuiness's track Fonz. Glad someone is still using the art to good effect. With a digital camera you can make an HD stop-motion promo for next to nothing.
28th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Super Surf
We've mentioned Pulitzer-winning photographer Vincent LaForet before on Chimpomatic, for his video short to promote the High Definition video capabilities of the new Canon 5D Mark II stills camera (get it here). That promo got him a ton of interest, and the owners of Smug Mug have generously funded his next project, which will be a surf movie with Jamie O'Brien, shooting out at the world famous pipeline wave.
There's an area-man approved element to the project too - as they will be shooting the film on a handful of the 5D cameras, as well as an adapted Red One.
22nd Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Unforgiven
(dir. Clint Eastwood)
Malpaso
THEN: Seen as something of a resurgence for the serious western, Unforgiven tells the tale of two retired gunslingers (Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman), who are approached by a short-sighted young hopeful, after a local whorehouse puts up a bounty for two brutal cowboys. Meanwhile, hard-nosed sheriff Gene Hackman rules the town with an iron first - and runs any bounty hunters out of town.
David Webb Peoples' excellent script re-wrote the heroism, bravery and gentlemanly behaviors of the old west into a bloody, misfiring, mauling - and cast Eastwood perfectly as a bastion of days gone by. The film was something of a return to form for Eastwood, as both and actor and a director - and the Academy duly noted him for both. He moved up a notch in directing terms after this and hasn't really looked back.
NOW: Still unbelievably powerful, if anything, Unforgiven has improved with age, sitting comfortably with the films that it was made in honour of, at the western's throne. Eastwood handles the action and the direction like a master carpenter - showing a magnificent storytelling skill inherited from the likes of Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. There's no flashy camera work, just a restrained observation that never interferes with the story and serves it perfectly.
Eastwood's central performance as William Munny is so reserved and withdrawn, it's surprising you can feel anything for him at all. Few actors can remain silent in a scene while everyone talks around them - and still steal the show, but Eastwood does it, drawing heavily on much of his prior screen history to silently fill out Munny's back story. Morgan Freeman comes a close second of course and the pair of them have a great chemistry, which would be repeated masterfully in Million Dollar Baby. Brutal, engaging, vengeful and brilliant.
5th Dec 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 5 star reviewsData Protection
By sheer coincidence, and a determination to distract myself from some tedious essential tasks today, I stumbled accross hard evidence of two products that I have had long designed in my daydreaming mind. First up, the pocket video projector.
At art school I mated a portable tv with an overhead projector, before evolving the idea with a magnifying glass and a video iPod a couple if years back. Both ideas were solid, but the brightness of the source let things down. Now Texas instruments have developed the concept more thoroughly, bringing out a pocket sized projector, which can throw a 60 inch screen onto a nearby white surface. Perfect for when you find yourself flying air India, or you need to show Ari Gold your reel while he's stuck in line with the valet. The 480 pixel resolution is nothing to write home about, but it's better than some of the studio previews we're screening at the ranch this Thursday.
Next up, as previously noted, digital photography is finally entering the mainstream of film production in a major way. I've often wondered what was holding video back from the high-end goodness enjoyed by the digital SLR world for quite some time. Red have taken that idea to a certain point, but now Canon have stepped in with a new digital SLR that can shoot full 1080 digital video (barrage of tech data here).
As it's a regular Canon body you have a huge choice if easily available lenses, which keeps the cost low and the f stop even lower. Check out Pulitzer winning photographer Vincent Laforet's dummy shoot for some sample footage. The clip was shot using the cameras low-light capabilities (+ helicopter + Moby soundtrack), and doesn't feature any post-production to enhance the colours and whatnot. Canon has some clips of their own here, some stills here and even a making-of video.
Michael Mann's not going to be able to sleep.
The concept's certainly building steam (witness this bulked-up camera kit) and Red themselves haven't been snoozing in this marketplace however - and a specs announcement Is due tomorrow on their new 'Scarlet' product, which is said to have radically moved on since initial word got out. Low light, plus low price and slow- mo goodness. Yum.
As a cryogenically suspended filmmaker, both of these technolgical advancements light my fire... and I'm happy to withdraw any claims on the technology.
12th Nov 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Quantum Of Solace
(dir. Marc Foster)
MGM
Daniel Craig puts in another granite-hard turn as the noughties 007 in this Casino Royale sequel.
As in his first mission, he's a good combination of all the best Bonds - the punch-first toughness of Connery, the occasional quip from Moore and the physical presence of Brosnan. The scenes with Judi Dench's M bristle, new Bond girl Olga Kurylenko does a good job of breaking through Bond's post-Vesper grief and French actor Mathieu Amalric makes a decent mwah-ha-ha villain for Bond to chase around the world.
But - and it's a big but - it's a film that's totally let down by the action direction. From the opening sequence, to the fights, speedboats chases etc it's a mess - you can't see what's happening, and so it's impossible to be impressed or to care, or even get that excited. There's nothing to match the visceral thrill of CR's parkour chase here - although you get the feeling that any of the action scenes could have measured up if they'd just let one camera linger on what was happening for longer than a second. There's one fight which pretty much cuts to another angle after every punch - a bewildering, disorientating tactic, which leaves you with the impression of some hard-ass kicking going on, but no real sense of the flow of anything.
The so-so theme from Jack White and Alicia Keys just about sums it all up really: it's close, but really misses the essence of what made Craig's first go such a treat. Would like to see him have another go, because this would be a lame way to leave it.
9th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
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Arctic Monkeys
At The Apollo
Domino / Warp Films
With a couple of hit albums under their belts and the band already distracted by side projects, the obligatory live video seems to be one way of maintaining the Arctic Monkeys status - documenting their monster Worst Nightmare tour, which culminated with this show at the Manchester Apollo in December 2007.
Left-field production company Warp Film may be behind the production, but filming wise it's a pretty straightforward affair, with a couple of camera on tracks, a few roaming grainy numbers and pretty much just the stage lighting. A decent effort has gone into the post-production, with a Burt Bacharach/Thomas Crown style intro and outro, and the occasional burst of split screen.
It's a fairly faultless performance from the Monkeys, featuring a pretty conventional set-list waith all the highlights in all the expected places (Teddy Picker, When The Sun Goes Down, 505). There's little banter from the band, pretty much whittling the whole production down to little more than a slightly cooler that normal edition of a T4 concert special. For fans of the band this may be essential viewing, but for any body else it servers as little more than a decent document of what this band were up to, at this particular point in time.
5th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
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Skate or die: The Crossover
As CSF is winding up his mammoth tour of California I thought I'd keep his weekly skate section alive with these two selections. Instead of one skater getting all the glory I found two films with a common theme, and that is, they have both been made or presented by an artist of some description who has links to the skate scene. First up is The Foreigners, directed and edited by No Age's Randy Randall. It follows the Altamont skate team on their tour of Paris and is all set to the music of No Age including the atmospheric sounds of Keechie and the awesome Nouns opener Miner. As far as the skating is concerned it's a pretty standard film but Randall manages to evoke a nice sense of nostalgia with the flickering, bleached out footage and there's a healthy display of long hair and beards.
The next film is by Ari Marcopoulos but is presented by the New York fashion designer Adam Kimmel. It's called Claremont and it features some of the most hair-raising downhill, old-school speed skating i've seen for a long time. Again 'beards on boards' seems to be the order of the day as both skaters do the whole run in Kimmel's AW08 collection. Swapping the camera over between each other on the way down and having little concern for oncoming traffic this is an awesome movie.
24th Oct 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet