The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, “Morris Lessmore” is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story.
It’s also been nominated for an Oscar.
CrossRoad – Le Film
A bluesman, blinded by ambition and at the peak of his career, meets the Devil to whom he had sold his soul thirty years before, in exchange for great success… Not what you’re thinking.
Moonrise Kingdom Trailer
I love Wes Anderson films. Rushmore is one of my official favourite movies. I like that he uses Futura a lot, and I like that he reinvented Bill Murray’s career. There’s a wonderful, adult fairytale quality to all his films, and if I ever tried to write a mainstream novel, I’d probably have a Wes Anderson movie running through my mind at the time. I really can’t wait for this one.
The Hobbit Trailer
Two trailers in two posts, but I couldn’t not share this one. Looks brilliant – with precisely the same aesthetics as The Lord of the Rings films, and with that lovely shade of darkness in the background. Seems to also concentrate on giving lots of hints about the evil brewing, linking the films together.
The Dark Knight Rises
Looks pretty good, no? Sure it says little about the plot, but who cares – I’m a huge Batman fan (though admittedly a late-comer to the comics, but better late than never). It’s interesting that Nolan seems to be using the Occupy Movement as a potential riff, which is impressive since it’s only really had traction in the last couple of months: what a turnaround in getting that into the script.
… you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.
Doubly interesting given some of the political responses to the inherent fascism of the previous Batman film – perhaps this is Nolan’s response to this?
Also: Bane.
Antarctica: Tales of Ice
Beautiful footage from Antarctica. Worth seeing (you know, while the ice is still at these levels). Contains penguins.
Afghanistan – touch down in flight
A beautiful film.
As each of us has his own impression of Afghanistan that is predominantly marked with pictures of foreign forces, explosions and terror, we were privileged to have access to capture daily life and portrait some people of Afghanistan.
National Geographic: Augmented Reality
Someone, somewhere, could really make a cool science fiction version of this.
Happy Halloween
Classic films aside, if you’re in the mood today for dissecting the nature of horror in fiction and film, you could do worse than look at this massive article in The Psychologist journal:
Psychology can help explain why horror takes the persistent form that it does, but that still leaves the question of why we should want to scare ourselves through fiction in the first place. One suggestion is that, like play, it allows us to rehearse possible threatening scenarios from a position of relative safety. ‘Movie monsters provide us with the opportunity to see and learn strategies of coping with real-life monsters should we run into them, despite all probabilities to the contrary,’ says Fischoff. ‘A sort of covert rehearsal for… who knows what.’ Despite its fantastical elements, Clasen explains that successful horror fiction is usually realistic in its portrayals of human psychology and relationships. ‘That’s where horror matters,’ Clasen says; ‘that’s where horror can teach us something truly valuable.’
Read the rest of ‘The Lure of Horror’. It’s fascinating stuff for any writers out there, horror or otherwise.
I’ve never been a huge fan of writing horror fiction, to be honest, though there is an immense amount of pleasure to be found in creating the odd creepy segment. For the most part, my fascinations have been to make weird, perhaps horrific or otherwise unsettling things, seem quotidian, which is maybe why I enjoyed films such as Ghostbusters.