Acclaimed Canadian film and television director and producer Norman Jewison has died at the age of 97.
He first worked in television in Canada before moving to the US, where he transitioned into motion pictures.
His list of films made over 40 years is staggering:
1962 40 Pounds of Trouble
1963 The Thrill of It All
1964 Send Me No Flowers
1965 The Art of Love
1965 The Cincinnati Kid
1966 The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
1967 In the Heat of the Night
1968 The Thomas Crown Affairs
1969 Gaily, Gaily
1971 Fiddler on the Roof
1973 Jesus Christ Superstar
1975 Rollerball
1978 F.I.S.T.
1979 …And Justice for All
1982 Best Friends
1984 A Soldier’s Story
1985 Agnes of God
1987 Moonstruck
1989 In Country
1991 Other People’s Money
1994 Only You
1995 Bogus
1999 The Hurricane
2003 The Statement
“Now and Then” was a demo John Lennon recorded in The Dakota in the late 1970’s. The main reason it’s The Beatles’ last single is because until now it was too hard to separate John’s vocals from the piano notes. Technology to the rescue:
Want to know more? Check out this Parlogram documentary.
My take: I like this video most when it starts incorporating images from “Then” with footage from “Now” viz. 1:47, 1:55, etc. I would have liked to have seen much more of this technique used. This is truly the visualization of Now and Then — show us more!
Unfortunately, I’m not overly enamoured with the song itself; I find it middling and melancholic. I also don’t like:
The graphics and the cover image — boring!
The first few shots of the video are over-sharpened and plop us in the “uncanny valley” — not a good start.
I think they missed a great opportunity to have Paul and Ringo sing verses in their own voices. Again, why not go all in and use AI to voice clone George and have him sing a verse too?
As to “last singles” — I think they should give this treatment the last song the Beatles actually recorded together: The End. Although, after 60 years, perhaps it’s just time to move on.
He then reveals his philosophy and how living a dolly zoomed life helps him achieve it:
“One of the tools that we can use is a term that I borrowed from cinematography called a dolly zoom. And what a dolly zoom is, is where the camera is rolled back, or dollied back, at the same rate as the lens is zoomed in, and it was used in “Jaws” and “Vertigo” and many other films. And what the filmmakers use that technique for is to give altitude to a scene, and as the foreground stays the same and the background stretches. But we could also apply that term to the challenges that we face. If we dolly zoom a situation, that means that we zoom out to the widest geographical area we possibly can, ideally the entire planet, but as we zoom out to that big picture, we don’t lose focus on the worms-eye details on the ground. We don’t zoom out to the point where people become numbers on a spreadsheet or a workforce or a voting block or a consumer block. They maintain their value as valued members of our human society. There’s also a temporal aspect to this. We need to zoom out to the longest time frame possible, ideally multi-generational, but in the process, we can’t lose sight of the short term. The last part of a dolly zoom is to see things from different perspectives, and so we understand the depth of our problem, and that makes our solutions that much more lasting and that much more effective…. What I try and do is to live a constant dolly-zoomed life. I wake up every morning in my bed, but I also wake up on a planet.“
Canadian artist Michael Snow has died at age 94. Torontonians will perhaps know him best for his sculpture called Flight Stop, the 60 geese flying in the Eaton Centre.
Snow was a Canadian artist and experimental filmmaker who is considered one of the most important figures in the development of avant-garde and experimental art in Canada. He is best known for his work in the mediums of painting, sculpture, photography, and film. He was quoted in 1967 as quipping:
“My paintings are done by a filmmaker, sculpture by a musician, films by a painter, music by a filmmaker, paintings by a sculptor, sculpture by a filmmaker, films by a musician, music by a sculptor… sometimes they all work together. Also, many of my paintings have been done by a painter, sculpture by a sculptor, films by a filmmaker, music by a musician. There is a tendency towards purity in all of these media as separate endeavours.”
One of Michael Snow’s most famous films is “Wavelength.” It is considered a classic and seminal film in avant-garde cinema and is widely regarded as one of the greatest avant-garde films of all time. The film was made in 1967 and runs for 45 minutes.
The film is made up of a single, static shot that slowly zooms in. It begins with a wide shot of a New York loft space. The camera is positioned in front of a photograph of waves, which hangs on the far wall. The camera gradually zooms in on the photograph, while increasingly shorter wavelength tones are heard (in addition to a clip of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields” over the radio.) The camera continues to zoom in until the photograph fills the entire frame, and the tone is its most excruciating.
Wavelength challenges the audience’s perception of space and time, and has been described as a mind-bending, time-stretching experience. It has been widely discussed and debated by film critics and historians, and has influenced many other artists and filmmakers. It also helped establish Michael Snow as an important figure in the world of avant-garde cinema, and continues to be shown and studied to this day.
“Wavelength” was widely well-received by critics and audiences when it was first released in 1967. It was praised for its innovative approach to filmmaking, its exploration of the viewer’s perception of space and time, and its use of sound. It had a successful screenings at New York’s Film-makers Cinematheque, in European film festivals and also in a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art.
Many critics and scholars have called it a masterpiece of avant-garde cinema and a landmark work in the history of film. The film’s unique, extended long take and use of sound is seen as ground breaking, and it has been credited with anticipating many of the stylistic and thematic concerns of subsequent avant-garde and independent cinema. It also influenced many contemporary filmmakers and has been noted as a huge inspiration in the development of Structural Film.
While “Wavelength” has generally been well-received by critics and audiences, some reviewers have had more mixed or negative reactions to the film. In general, while many have found the film to be a groundbreaking and thought-provoking work, others have found it to be slow-moving, unengaging and difficult to understand. However, it should be noted that avant-garde works of art often elicit polarized reactions as they tend to challenge traditional notions of art and representation and are not easily accessible to a general audience.
My take: R.I.P. Michael Snow. Once upon a time, I had a gig as a part-time Security Officer at the National Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario. I remember studying Michael Snow’s Venetian Blind with bemusement and wondered why he didn’t use a greater depth of field.
“It’s difficult to overstate the importance of cassette tapes to music culture. We wouldn’t have mixtapes and playlists without them. What’s more, they allowed people to listen to their favorite songs and albums on the go. No ads or input from a radio DJ. That’s something that has come to define how people enjoy music ever since. And for all of their flaws, in recent years, cassette tapes have enjoyed something of a resurgence in popularity.”
My take: Oh, wow. I remember buying cassettes for my Sony Walkman and various boomboxes. I can also remember taping albums to make them portable but can’t say I ever made any mixtapes. Yikes! Just remembered my CoCo II computer used a cassette to store programs, kinda like this:
“We’ve explored the science of scare, with our experiment to categorically find the scariest films for your scary movie night. Our team studied critic’s lists and Reddit recommendations to curate 50 of the best horror films ever made, before subjecting them to our test subjects. Watching each movie in 5.1 surround sound, our panel of 50 people consumed over 120 hours of the best horror movies, each fitted with a heart rate monitor to measure which movies got their blood pumping the most to find the ultimate horror movie and crown the king of fright night.”
My take: I think using increased heart rates is a valid method to measure fear. It might be interesting to correlate those quiet passages that followed by very loud sounds with spikes in heart rates as well. Interesting that “classic horror films” aren’t that scary anymore.
Since them he’s been searching for someone to take on the preservation of his massive collection. He says:
“A lot of people don’t really understand the intensity and importance of such a collection. It would bring me the utmost joy to pass the torch to a group or individual that has the financial capacity to preserve our immense catalog of films. My only stipulation is that whomever does so gives the community access to our vast film library.”
My take: when you realize that there are only something like 6,000 titles available on Netflix at one time, this collection is 20 times larger. I do hope someone steps up to take it on. Quick math: 120,000 videos at 90 minutes each equals 10,800,000 minutes, or ~20.5 years of non-stop viewing.
“Perhaps solely due to the horror genre’s loyalty to this form of home media, independent film-makers are releasing their flicks on VHS with limited and special editions, or as perks on fundraising campaigns.”
It’s a documentary about the career of Jeff Baker who worked as a leading figure in the home entertainment business from the 1970s until 2015. His career, in many ways, mirrors the arc of home video, from Betamax to VHS to DVD, from the rise of Blockbuster to its fall, and from boxed sets to streaming.
This is a long but fascinating read about access to films, technology, video stores and unapologetic nostalgia. For instance, did you know the world’s largest video store has over 130 thousand titles but Netflix has less than four thousand? For comparison, the average Blockbuster had around 10,000 movies.
After outlining some of the issues with digitizing classic movies, Kate tours some great video stores, maps them on the world and concludes:
“As technology continues isolating us and pushing more of our daily interactions into the digital space, I have to believe there’s going to be a bounce-back moment for video stores just as there’s been for independent booksellers and record stores.”
“Manfrotto started his career in photography as a photojournalist for a couple of local newspapers in his hometown. In the late 1960s, Manfrotto began designing his own stands, booms, and telescopic rods in his garage. After partnering with mechanical engineer Gilberto Battocchio, Manfrotto launched his first tripod in 1974.”
My take: I did not know that Manfrotto was a person! Thank you, Lino, for channeling your frustration with poor equipment into wonderful, quality gear for all of us. I stand for you!
Ray Dolby, the man whose name was synonymous with noise reduction, has died.
Dolby died last Thursday in San Francisco of leukaemia. He was 80. In recent years he had also been battling Alzheimer’s disease.
I have fond memories of making backup copies of my record albums onto cassette tapes, and using the Dolby button to minimize hiss.
Dolby had many patents and became a billionaire when his company went public in 2005, forty years after its founding in 1965.
Thomas Dolby, the English new wave musician, best known for his hit ‘She Blinded Me with Science’, was not a relation but changed his last name to his nickname, one he got for his audiophile tendencies.
My take: rest in peace, Ray. In the analogue days, Dolby NR was a glimpse of better sound to come. In our digital age, tape hiss is a historical footnote, thank goodness.
