Listen : John Cage – in love with sound / silence -01
Transcript of the interview with John Cage in the film “Ecoute” (Listen) by Miroslav Sebestik:
[part 1]
When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking, and talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic, here on 6th avenue for instance, I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound. What it does is it gets louder and quieter, and it gets higher and lower, and it gets longer and shorter. It does all those things.
I am completely satisfied with that. I don’t need sound to talk to me. We don’t see much difference between time and space. We don’t know where one begins and the other stops. So that most of the arts we think of as being in time, and most of the arts we think of being in space. More…
Over the last ten years Steve Fugate has walked over 21,000 miles of the United States, and he has done it all with a sign over his head that reads “Love Life.”
This is the story of why Steve has walked for so long, and the impact he has on the people he meets.
The Love Life Film site has a short video of this work in progress. More info on Steve is at his site, Trail Therapy.
Damn fine drawings  by Nina Paley (“America’s Best-Loved Unknown Cartoonist”) in her animated movie “Sita Sings the Blues:”
Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”
YouTube’s Screening Room featured this 40-min video portrait of street performer, Thoth. This Oscar winning film has an elegant story structure, steadily revealing more elements of the man, his music, and his “prayformances” (go to YT and click HQ for their high-quality vers), “Thoth” by director Sarah Kernochan:
UPDATE: Another of Aubrey’s film’s “See You Then” made the Nikon Top 10:
Original post (video links now 404s):
The Nikon Festival asks folk to video document “Your Day, in 140 seconds or less”. Fellow MT-an and fine photographer Audrey Hall has this entry:
“Hi Lonesome”
Audrey’s film features my friend, rancher John Hoiland, star of this NPR piece, “John & Nippy” (5:08):
This Ben E. King song is performed “by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it travelled the globe.” Then it’s mixed into a moving whole, as part of the project and documentary film “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music” (producer Mark Johnson on Bill Moyer’s Journal).
Playing For Change: Song Around the World “Stand By Me”
The Fly Boys have a new excerpt from their fish-porn film, landing steelhead in BC:
Raising The Ghost (5 Min Cut)
By way of bio: my kid, Jess, be a Fly Boy. And I narrated, tho I’ve no clue what a drake dry fly does. But if you like great river footage and lunker back-country trout, this one’ll catch you hook (light wire up-turned loop eye), line (floating double taper), and sinker (tungsten alloy).
Trailer for new fish film w/ (my kid) Jess Atkins and some great music— “A new fly fishing documentary, ‘Raising the Ghost,” chronicles 7 epic days of fly fishing in a remote region of British Columbia’s Skeena River system. The Fly Boys team attempts to catch Steelhead eating dead-drift dry flies.”
The Mountain Music Project went lookng for connections between the music of Appalachia and the Himalayas. They found ’em. The film will be finished by end of 2008 (produced by HV’s Jack Chance). The trailer is out now and gorgeous, “A Higher Lonesome Sound:”
Had to check out Hulu.com after reading about it. It’s kind of like YouTube Pro. Given that they’re doing limited commercials and putting things on there that people actually want to watch without being hunched over the screen, the TV industry might avoid the RIAA’s fate. The video quality is pretty good. At full-screen, I could sit back six feet and it looked fine. Want to watch Saturday Night Live clips or full-length The Simpsons or whole movies like “The Big Lebowski” or “The Usual Suspects.” Hulu is “joint venture owned by NBC Universal and News Corp [Fox]:”
Hulu offers U.S. consumers a vast selection of premium video content, on demand, free and ad-supported: full episodes of TV shows, both current and classic, full-length movies, thousands of clips, and much more.
John and Abagail Adams played by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Nuff said, no? Parts 1 & 2 of the HBO 7-week mini-series “John Adams” rocked, rolled, tarred, feathered, cannon fired, and created a nation. “He United the States of America.” Based on the David McCullough 900-pager, “John Adams (HBO) full-length trailer”:
I was a private detective for years after I started as a filmmaker. I like to think, of course I could be completely wrong, that there’s this detective element in everything I do. My movies start from interviews. Everything that I’ve really done. —EM
Wait for the afterthought. Be patient. Don’t say, “Cut.†Just let them do it. The unplanned, the unexpected, the afterthought. —WH
“Basketball is a wonderful thing for a community because it is a warm place where everyone can go and it isn’t a church or a bar.†– Phil Jackson
Apathy was thick as I approached the theater for a screening of Class C. Five minutes in, I was completely converted. Class C, a documentary film produced by Bozemanite Mark Zetler, follows 5 Montana Class C girls basketball teams as they make their way to the State tournament. Instantly engaging and entertaining, it’s a beautifully crafted story about Montana and basketball; an interview with coaching legend and Montana native Phil Jackson is deftly intertwined. Go out of your way to see it!
Free screening at the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings on February 23rd at 8pm.
Airs on MontanaPBS:
Wednesday February 27th at 8pm
Monday March 3rd at 7pm More on Class C
The Hollyweird writer’s strike pits the wits of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) against the pens the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Well, online at least, the WGA pens have the AMPTP pinned. AMPTP.org never got around to registering AMPTP.com, but WGA did. Sez Deadline Hollywood Daily of this “satirisite”:
It looks almost identical, too, down to those Did You Know? factlets. (Example: Six out of 10 non-Judd Apatow movies never recoup their original investment… “Writer” comes from the Latin ritem meaning “unhygienic and doughy.”) This is what clearly happens when writers have way too much free time on their hands.
We are heartbroken to report that despite our best efforts, including sending them a muffin basket, making them a mix CD, and standing outside their window with a boombox blasting Peter Gabriel songs, our talks with the WGA have broken down.
While we’re not going to point fingers or assign blame, we do feel justified in saying that they are entirely at fault.
Why does the WGA hate freedom and democracy so much?
Animating water in watercolor, the beautiful short film “L’Eau Life” is at The Animated Life – Opinion – New York Times Blog. It’s by painter Jeff Scher: “I wanted to get the feel of water and the emotion of being in it, while capturing the water action moments that are the most fun to draw: jumping, swimming, falling in and climbing out.”
From Wholphin DVD mag comes a short (4:11) directed by Miguel Arteta, writ by Miranda July. John C Reilly asks several folk (including July) “Are You The Favorite Person Of Anybody?:”
The Christian Bale techno rant remix by RevoLucian (Paine):
From the March/April 2008 Issue of The Believer, a conversation between two great filmakers: “
The Hollyweird writer’s strike pits the wits of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) against the pens the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Well, online at least, the WGA pens have the AMPTP pinned. 