Game of Thrones most illegally downloaded show of 2012

According to BBC Entertainment's article the amount of people downloading a single episode of the series was higher than it's US audience. The top ten list is as follows:


Most pirated TV shows of 2012
1. Game of Thrones
2. Dexter
3. The Big Bang Theory
4. How I Met Your Mother
5. Breaking Bad
6. The Walking Dead
7. Homeland
8. House
9. Fringe
10. Revolution

Source: Torrentfreak

Review: The Hobbit (Spoilers)

The Lord of the Rings trilogy were the defining films of my childhood. It was the first time that I was aware that movies were actually made rather than just being there. It also later introduced me (via the extensive DVD extras) to the nuances of film making and probably sent me down the path I'm on today.

So you can imagine my reaction to the news that they were going to film The Hobbit. On Sunday I finally got my chance to go and see it! Warning: There be spoilers ahead.

Poster from here

Box Set Binge: Community Series 1 and 2

Sometimes you come across something and you feel like it was just made for you. It's that eureka moment when the title sequence rolls and something clicks. This is how I feel about Community.

Picture from here

I recently finished the second series and the third is not yet available in the UK. Basically it follows an 'eclectic' study group in a community college. The show is super meta and self referential with a healthy disregard for the fourth wall. Usually this can come off smug but it works here. The plots are ludicrous and it manages to play tropes straight, off centre or both complete with rapid fire snarks and a dollop of the warm fuzzies from time to time.

There is also a tumblr that splices Community quotes with screen caps of Downton Abbey. Ace.

Movie Making Madames Part Five: Ida Lupino and Dorothy Arzner

The prevalence of women as content makers in the film industry, particularly in Hollywood, dropped dramatically after the advent of sound and the realisation that movies were big business. While women thrived in the avant-garde, at this point in Hollywood there were only two active female directors after the “talkies”, Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino. Arzer worked from the introduction of sound in the 1920s to the early 1940s while Lupino was only only female film director of the 1950s.

LA born Dorothy Arzner originally wanted to be a doctor but after visiting a movie studio shortly after the end of WWI she set her heart on becoming a director. She would go on to become one of the most formidable and respected women to work behind the camera.

Dorothy worked her way up from the bottom before being promoted to a role as a film editor, a highly specialised and intricate job in the days of celluloid. The movies she worked on were huge successes and Dorothy used her new found clout to land a directing job. But it couldn’t be any old flick, Dorothy (or Ms. Arzner as she would insist on being called on set) wouldn’t direct anything less than an A-picture. Back in those days films were often run in double bills with newsreels and shorts so you could spend a whole afternoon at a cinema. The two films were the A-picture, (higher budget and more prestigious) and the B-picture (a cheaper, quicker flick). The B-Movie just wasn’t an option for Arzner and her first film Fashions for Women in 1927, was a commercial success.

Alongside this Arzner was also an innovator. While directing Clara Bow’s first sound film, Arner told a sound operator to attach the microphone for the shoot to a fishing pole so she could follow the actress round the set who now had freedom of movement. This handy piece of equipment, the mike boom, is a staple of any filmmaker’s kit today.

Most of her films centred around strong women and Arzner flourished before the introduction of the Hay’s code, industry imposed measured to curb “risqué” content in Hollywood films. Arzner worked with some of the greatest actresses of her time and was well known for having affairs with many of them.  Her work led Arzner to be the first woman to be inducted into the Director’s Guild of America and it earned her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She retired from directing in the mid forties but spent the rest of her life passing on her skills as a writer and director by teaching at the UCLA film school.

Ida Lupino was a British born actress from a show business family.  While she was respected as an actress she was referred to as “the poor man’s Bette Davis” for accepting many parts that Davis turned down. She was still well known for defying the studios and raising hell and during suspension for refusing a role, Lupino became interested in the process behind the camera.  Her enthusiasm grew and Lupino and her husband started their own production company where Lupino wrote and produced some of her films. In 1949 Lupino directed her first film to great acclaim though she didn’t take credit having only slipped into the role when her predecessor suffered a heart attack.

Lupino’s films as a director were similar to her films as an actress: highly moralistic, low budget and concerned with the truth however unpleasant. Often her films looked at “women’s issues” offering a unique perspective that no one else in Hollywood could give at the time but she also became the first woman to direct film noir with The Hitch-hiker in 1953:

Interestingly the film features and all male cast and though the studio was keen to play up the success of the lone female director, it was at Lupino’s insistence that they also stress her femininity so she wouldn’t seem threatening to the men she worked with.  In later life she made the transition to the new medium of television and directed 50 separate episodes of various programmes. For her efforts her adopted country awarded her two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for services to film and the other to services to television.

Next week sees the final part of the series with the modern female filmmakers rising to prominence.

Cross posted from Yellow Bunting. Sorry its a bit late. It actually went out before the Perks podcast.

YB: Perks of being a Wallflower Podcast

Listen to three charming ladies chat about the recently released adaptation of Perks of Being a Wallflower over at Yellow Bunting.

Why indie film is so damn good

I heard about The Underwater Realm on Twitter and FSR and was gobsmacked by the luscious trailer (found here with lots of behind the scenes goodies!). It looks like an ambitious Hollywood blockbuster (not unlike the upcoming Cloud Atlas) but in reality it was shot with a budget that wouldn't cover the tea and coffee on your average mainstream movie.

And you can't tell. Visually it is gorgeous and best of all it will be free to view on You Tube on Christmas Day! I can't wait.

What I watched while I was away

Due to inconsistant posting and lack of internet for a while this is the first Monthly Round Up in a long, long time so instead I'm going to summarise all the stuff you missed me ranting and raving about while offline :)

Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2011)

Image from here

A powerful film, fully deserving of every accolade it got but one I will never watch again if I can help it. Deeply disturbing, the shocking imagery and moving lead performances will stay with you long after you've finished watching.

The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010)

Image from here

Another film with shocking and gruesome imagery, Casey Affleck plays the main character and manages to be both enigmatic and utterly repulsive. Its a slow burner with an inevitable conclusion but what makes the film so gripping is the fab way that Winterbottom plays with tension.

Dune (David Lynch, 1984)

Image from here

I literally have no idea what is happening in this movie...

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)

Image from here

Ditto

Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012)

Image from here

Might just be one of the best cinema releases of this year. A new, stylish look at time travel in a gritty setting. Loved everything about it once Joseph Gordon-Levitt's make up stopped being a distraction...

What I'm waiting for...

THE HOBBIT. DUH! ISN'T EVERYONE?

Movie Making Madames Part Four

Sometimes it can seem like all the films being churned out are either remakes or sequels. Hollywood can seem formulaic and narratively simplistic. Ever since movies began there have always been people who have wanted to try something different and so the independent film industry was born. It lacked the money and influence of mainstream film industries but it made up for that with maverick ideas and inventive ways of bringing them to life.

Picture from here 

Germaine Dulac did a bit of everything. She started her career as a feminist journalist before pursuing her passion for still photography that propelled her on to working as a film director, writer, producer and theorist as well as becoming the president of Fédération des ciné-clubs, a group dedicated to promoting up and coming filmmakers and teaching photography and film, putting many of her contemporary counterparts to shame.
Dabbling in both Impressionism and Surrealism, Dulac’s big successes in cinema such as The Seashell and the Clergyman and The Smiling Madam Beudet came before the advent of sound cinema and before Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’sUn Chien Andalou, arguably the most famous Surrealist film ever (If you’ve never heard of it is the film where Buñuel slices a woman’s eye open, it turns into the moon and he and Dali are monks… watch it).

After the introduction of sound Dulac’s career faltered and she spent the rest of her life making newsreels for Pathe and Gaumont. When she died it took three weeks and numerous re-writes before her obituary to be published, she was so controversial.

In the US, Maya Deren is the Grandmother of Indie film and the experimental director Stan Brakhage called her “the mother of us all”, “Us” being everyone who felt like giving the finger at narrative and stylistic conventions.

Image from here

I first encountered Maya Deren during my second year of university when our class was shown arguably two of her most famous short films, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), which I later based my first solo project on and At Land (1944). Art films and experimental films usually get a bad rap outside of hard core film theorist circles because it can look like jumbled mess and overly pretentious. Deren thought of her films as visual poems, capturing fleeting emotions and states of being rather than events or characters. The films rely on striking images and haunting concepts to draw in the audience. Deren acted in her films but never credited herself, preferring to keep her characters as anonymous figures and her film crews were similarly simplistic. Deren worked on Meshes with only her second husband Alexander Hammid and a 16mm camera bought using inheritance money. Deren once claimed that “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick” and she was a fierce critic of the way she felt Hollywood was stifling creativity and diversity within American Cinema.

Tragically, Deren died in 1961 from malnutrition, possibly due to her drug use. A posthumous documentary was released in 1985 from footage Deren shot between 1947 and 1951 when she made multiple trips to Haiti. Divine Horsemen: the Living God’s of Haiti (1985) led to some criticizing Deren for leaving the avant-garde but Deren herself felt she needed to progress as an artist and Vodun traditions and rituals were fascinating to her. Her book of the same name is considered an important text on the subject. Sadly, Deren never completed the project and the last film released before she died, The Very Eye of Night (1958) gives us a glimpse at how her work could have unfolded.

Cross posted to Yellow Bunting

Life (especially work) has been a bit manic of late hence why there has been so little posting. My apologies for that and I can only say that things should become more regular after the christmas period!

Things to read and look at

• Now that the original script for Prometheus has been leaked, Film School rejects compiles a list of the worst parts of the film that actually make sense in original script here.

Picture from here

• Amethyst Marie of Thalia's Musings on my web series of the moment The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, specifically issues of representation in the series.

• Daisy has penned an article rating the Bond themes over at Yellow Bunting!

Are 'geek' and 'nerd' now positive terms? - BBC News

This is the question that Kathryn Westcott is pondering over at the BBC news website.

This question has come up a few times in various places and rather than give a concrete answer it mostly just leads to flame wars and posturing. Many a social group seeks to define itself but who they exclude rather than include and there is the eternal example of something being abandoned by one group when it becomes too 'mainstream'.

Picture from here

This is as relevant in the world of film as it is in other areas of the media, especially with the rise in comic book adaptations and the like. Everyone wants to retain 'ownership' of the works they love and there is a pervading idea that mass consumption somehow ruins it. This is of course nothing new but film and television are mass media with clear emphasis on the "mass". It reaches wider audiences than other mediums and now with the digital age we have access to far more content than we would previous and that in turn shapes that direction culture takes. It's a continuous loop.

For my part, as the girl who was voted second geekiest in the year in my sixth form year book, I not sure my knowledge of the things I'm passionate about is extensive enough to gain me geek status and in any case owning to the fluidity of the language in this case, its meaning is adaptable depending on the speaker.

Movie Making Madames Part Three

This is a few weeks late but since Part four is going up soon I wanted to link back to part three of my Movie Making Madames series over at YB.

Part Three focuses on Lotte Reniger, an animation pioneer from the silent era and her gorgeous shadow puppets. Check it out and leave a comment!

Enjoy

An apology and an update

So you have noticed that nothing has been posted here for a while. My internet was cut off and won't be restored until 12th November so now I have to rely of using my phone which is slow as hell hence why there have been no posts for the past few weeks. I am still contributing to Yellow Bunting so go and check out my series on women filmmakers and there only 12 days until I get a proper internet connection back!

Personal Hero: Alice Guy

Cross posted to Yellow Bunting

In the early years, when filmmaking was still new and being developed as an art form, there were more women working in the industry than there has ever been since. In fact less than 10% of film directors working today are women and that drops to 6% for Hollywood directors.

There has only been one woman in the history of cinema to own and manage a film studio and this was between 1910 and 1914. That woman was the Grandmother of narrative film, Alice Guy.

Born in France, Guy worked as a secretary for Léon Gaumont, a renowned photographer. Gaumont had made his own movie camera after a visit from Louis Lumière, one half of the Lumière brothers. Up until this point film had just been used as a device to document but Guy saw potential for something greater. She was allowed to experiment with camera as long as she didn’t neglect her work. What resulted was one of the earliest (if not the earliest, though it is hard to date these early films) examples of narrative cinema, a 50 second film titled La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy):

This was the first step in a career that saw Guy write, direct or produce over 700 films in 25 years, even when she was pregnant with her children she was still making 2-3 films a week. When titled La Fée aux Choux premiered Gaumont relieved Guy of her secretarial duties and put her in charge of his filmmaking division. She later established her own studio in New Jersey with her husband, Solax Studio, which at the time was one of the most powerful studios in the world.

However, history was not kind to Guy’s memory. The studio went bankrupt after her divorce and the rise of Hollywood as a more cost effective place to make films. The studio was auctioned off and Guy returned to France in 1922 but she never made another film despite the fact that she was beginning to venture into another fledgling medium – sound.  Gaumont made no mention of Guy’s role in developing his studio or even the medium itself when he wrote an account of his company in the 1930s despite Guy’s protestations. She was effectively edited out of the history of a movement she helped to kick-start. It even took until the 1950s for own country to honor her for her services to filmmaking with the Legion of Honor, France’s highest, non-military award.

Photo from here

Though she ceased making films, Guy continued to write about them and worked for International Film Service and we can only wonder at how she would have made use of the multitudes of technological advances that were introduced to the film industry after 1922.

Alice is Guy is an important figure in the early years of cinema not just because she is a woman but because the codes and conventions of cinema today have their beginnings in a whimsical experiment from a woman who realized before anyone else that a story could be told with a medium that many others thought would not see out a decade.

There are two kinds of people in this world...

From James Chapman

Pause for the sound of tumbleweed...

Oh hello there! You probably don't remember me, it's Sarah who writes this blog and was then torn away by real life and wasn't even able to write a bunch of blog posts to come back with even though she has plenty of films to write about. So for now I will leave you with an article from FSR about my filmmaker of the moment Mr. Joss Whedon.

Hiatus!

Sad news folks! Starting today I will taking a short hiatus from the blog to move house. It could take as long as a month to get the internet back but I will still be posing at Yellow Bunting. I will try and post sooner if I can find somewhere with an internet connection!

Review: Brave and The Bourne Legacy

HAPPY 50TH POST!!!

To celebrate (and for reasons to elaborate on later) there are two reviews!

OFFICIAL: Citizen Kane is only the SECOND greatest film ever made...

Poor Orson Welles, turns out he has been beaten by ol' Alfred Hitchcock, specifically Vertigo.

Movie journal Sight and Sound, published by the BFI have released its 2012 list of the greatest films. It looks surprisingly like its other lists pun
blished every ten years.

However, Citizen Kane has finally been knocked off the top spot by Vertigo.

Film School Rejects has the complete list and where to see them. Have a watch, sit back and feel cultured.

Or you could go watch what you want and revel in being a populist.

Photo from here

In all seriousness, it can seem sometimes that lists like these can be detrimental to potential audiences. On the one hand we need to revere old classics and it can only be good thing for audiences to have these made available. On the other hand the thrill of new techniques and systems of filmmaking is not only engaging for the viewer but like everything, improvement comes from growth and adaptation. 

The problem is when you come down firmly on either side of this argument instead of finding a common ground. Not one film on the list was made in the last twenty years when arguably we have seen the greatest leap forward in filmmaking practises since the introduction of sound. There is nothing wrong with this in itself, and Sight and Sound regularly features modern films within its pages, but we need to keep in mind that the classics of tomorrow will be the films of today and their value, while not immediately quantifiable, should be kept in mind.

Whether you want to see it as an issue of high or low culture or amateur and academic critics, I feel that what this shows is that there is always a need to compartmentalise the culture we consume, to deem some 'worthy' and by that act deem the rest as somehow less. I for one think there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure, merely work that appeals to different facets of pleasure.

Fortunately for us the world is awash with list of the greatest and the best and they are as diverse as the film featured in them.

A further example of why Superhero films are awesome!

Hero Story was Film School Rejects's short film of the day on 1st August:

I love it. I love the gentle cheesiness and the obvious love the genre that Kaylon Hunt (who also play Neuro) has. Mostly I love the slightly DIY feel that still manages to retain classiness.

The film has its own site here complete with tonnes of behind the scene goodies!

(Slightly Late) July Round Up

It is a little hard this month as I've fallen behind on watching and reviewing but here it goes:

Best: Of course its The Dark Knight Rises!

Worst: Frailty, the ending just didn't do anything for me

Looking forward to in August: I'm interested in seeing how the reboot of the Bourne franchise is going to go. Plus it comes out on my birthday...

No roles for women? Write your own...

Check out this interview with Rashida Jones who has just finished work on the film Celeste and Jesse Forever which she not only stars in but co-wrote! It is released in the US today but no word on a UK release.

"Not be reductive but isn't everything harder for women?  Isn't it just harder to be alive and be a woman?  We carry this tacit burden of being more empathetic -- again reductive -- of keeping the peace, getting paid less, getting less acknowledgment.  And being nurturing as well as being powerful. It's a high responsibility and I do think that I am very grateful for the feminist movement and it's really put us ahead and has empowered us in a way that is daunting for men.  They don't know how to fit in, they don't know how to deal with it and I think that to publicly still be the "big guys" makes them feel better.  That is the one thing they still have control over.  They can still feel like they are balancing it by being in charge"

Jones goes on about how she wrote the role because of a lack of engaging and dynamic female characters and I think there's a lot to be said for women filmmakers making films and writing stories about a more diverse set of female characters.