We Made This

Arcade Fire + Sergio Leone

It's a bit old, but we're loving this edit of Once Upon a Time in the West, used as an unofficial promo for Arcade Fire's My Body Is A Cage (from their fantastic Neon Bible album), by Chicago based designer J Tyler Helms.

And it give us a chance to link to this little promo piece the band have put together for their upcoming 12" double-A side, The Suburbs/Month of May:

(Sorry, doesn't seem to be any way to make that fit into our grid. Grr.)

Trust

"Because. I had a bad day at work. I had to subvert my principles and kow-tow to an idiot. Television makes these daily sacrifices possible. Deadens the inner core of my being."

We've been waiting for this for, oh, a decade or so.

Artificial Eye have finally released Trust on DVD, and if you've not seen it, then you should make sure you check it out. It's one of the best examples of the early 90s wave of American independent movies, featuring a cracking script, brilliant performances, and great photography.

The film was directed by Hal Hartley in 1990, with cinematography by Michael Spiller (who more recently has been directing TV shows like Scrubs and Ugly Betty), and stars Martin Donovan and Adrienne Shelley.

Coinciding with this is the publication of True Fiction Pictures & Possible Filmsin which Hartley discusses the rise and fall of the American indie scene.

Great stuff.

Daniel Haskett

A while back we posted about the film Let the Right One In, and how we didn't think the posters did the movie justice.

Illustrator Daniel Haskett got in touch to show us the poster he's created inspired by the movie. Tasty eh?

Be good if more movie posters took a bit of a risk wouldn't it?

Perhaps arthouse cinemas could start commissioning their own posters, as a showcase of new talent? Or do any of them already do this?

Herb and Dorothy

We've just been sent this trailer for the award-winning new documentary Herb and Dorothy, which premieres in New York on June 5, and it looks just great.

The film is all about Herbert and Dorothy Vogel. Herb was a postal clerk, and Dorothy was a librarian, and despite their modest incomes, they built up an incredibly important contemporary art collection, living off Dorothy's salary and using Herb's to collect art. The only criteria was that the work should be affordable, and small enough to fit into their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment.

Over thirty years they collected more than 2,000 pieces, including works by Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, and a host of others. In 1992 they gifted their whole collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; despite the fact that thanks to their fine eyes, the collection was worth millions of dollars. How cool is that?

They still live in the same apartment, with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They're still collecting.

Here's hoping the film makes the jump across to the UK some time soon.

Let the right one in

Crikey. Chilling much?

We finally managed to check out Let the Right One In this weekend, and it's a corker of a movie.

Directed by Tomas Alfredson, it's an adaptation of the book of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist (who also wrote the screenplay for the film); and tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who falls in love with a vampire.

It's a disturbing blend of horror, euro art-house, romance and family drama; and felt utterly unique. There are a couple of dud moments where the limited budget shows through (CGI cats, we're looking at you right now), but apart from that it's quite brilliant. The cinematography, by Hoyte van Hoytema, is particularly tasty; and the two leads are perfectly cast.

It's being marketed as a standard horror flick, with a genre poster that looks like half a dozen japanese horror remakes. 

It's far better than that - go check it out. Here's the trailer to whet your appetite.

UPDATE

After Michael pointed out in the comments section that the European posters were better, we tracked down an incredibly comprehensive selection of the movie's international posters over at MoviePosterDB.com. Really interesting to see how the source imagery is adapted for the different markets - clockwise from top left they're: Spain, UK, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. Still, be nice to see an old-school Polish illustrated version...

Big in Japan

We're loving this home movie sent to us by Eric Testroete from Vancouver, who works as a 3D artist on video games.

The film documents his trip to Japan last October, and features most of the 3340 photographs (that's a whopping 46 gigs) he took while there, on his Pentax K20D*. 

It made us think a few things:

Digital photography is ace

As a non-professional film maker, there's no way you could afford to do this on 35mm neg. With digital, the only costs are memory cards and time.

Sharing is ace

Once, you might have toiled over a project like this for months, but only been able to show it to a small audience of friends and relatives. Thanks to the web, and particularly its facility for sharing, you can reach a huge audience in no time.

Computers

They can be ace too.

Most holiday advertising is not at all ace

This made us want to pick up our passports and jump on a jet plane more than just about any advert we care to remember. It's not glossy and perfect. It just feels real.

LCD Soundsystem are very ace

Great track!

All in all, not a bad thing to find in your inbox on a Monday. Cheers Eric.

*He then used Lightroom to process all the images, Métamorphose to rename all the exported files, Sony Vegas to import the sequence and cut it up, then Virtual Dub to scale it down and compress it.

The Prisoner

 

Having got busy with the Cold War Modern show at the V&A, we got to thinking about all the fantastic movies and TV programmes that connect with the period (some of which are featured in the exhibition). There's Dr. Strangelove, Sleeper, Solaris, and 2001. All brilliant.

But the one we really think captures the spirit of the show is the TV series The Prisoner: quite simply one of the best television programmes ever made. 

So here's the opening credits for your viewing pleasure. 

Be seeing you.

Attack of the Incredible Movie Title Screens!

  
How tasty are these? 

They're from Steven Hill's rather spectacular online collection of movie title screens. He's compiled a catalogue of over five thousand different titles, and they're a brilliant record of typographic stylings through the years. Definitely worth a browse. 

via ffffound

Uncredited

A great big thank-you to everyone who has added to our list of rather fine motion graphics - Alistair has been sellotaping all the suggested films into his collection of favourites on YouTube, so do take a look. If you know of any other bits of great typographic film, just sling the links our way.

And if that whets your appetite, you might want to take a look at the decidedly brilliant Uncredited book by Gemma Solana and Antonio Boneu.

A comprehensive collection of graphic design and opening titles in movies, it features a simply staggering amount of work from the greats of title design, and even has a disc with a stack of QuickTime movies of those titles (though it would have been fantastic if it had been a DVD instead).

Lovely stuff.

Motion graphics

Mmm, Saul Bass goodness.

We're just doing a bit of research ahead of a bit of work Alistair's doing with some Central Saint Martins students over the next few weeks, and we need your help.

We're looking for the best / most interesting bits of motion graphics we can find, whether they're from television, film, music videos, online, wherever. The only important thing is that they're principally typographic. Alistair's started to put a few bits together on this You Tube page, and it would be fantastic if you could drop us any links or recommendations.

Thank you thank you.