This 2008 film was written, produced and directed by Javier Chillon of Madrid, Spain.  The director of photography was Luis Fuentes.  Artistic direction by Ángel Boyano.  In the fifties, a Soviet cosmonaut chimpanzee crash-lands in West Germany.  Within weeks, a deadly virus has spread across the country and confounds all the scientific experts.  The film [...]

Oscar Sharp made this beautiful short film in London. It stars Jethro Skinner as Ben, the ‘board guy.’ The performance is endearing and full of intelligent energy. The film was shot in HD by Anthony Gurner. I love the way the people have all these colors in their clothes and then [...]

This is a clip from a documentary film, Meanwhile, a butterfly flies, about filmmaker Jonas Mekas. He shares a few thoughts about culture, country, poetry and what those things really are.

Jonas Mekas is one of our great independent filmmakers. He spent years writing a film column in the Village Voice. He founded the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. He makes lots of films with small cameras that he can carry almost anywhere he goes. That is, by the way, [...]

I love Bob Dylan’s recent album, Christmas in the Heart.  Listened to it many times on Christmas day.  This is his video for Little Drummer Boy.  The people do seem awfully pink but maybe it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me.

I spend a lot of my very limited brain capacity wondering why Hollywood directors don’t run around with small cameras making their own little movies for YouTube.  Scarlett Johansson has made an excellent short film called These Vagabond Shoes which puts on display her obvious interest in and love for true cinema.  The person [...]

Read the following remarks at your own risk.  The post begins one way and finishes in another.
The online film journal Senses of Cinema has an excellent essay by Pedro Blas Gonzalez called Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: An Existential Odyssey.  He examines 2001: A Space Odyssey from an existential viewpoint.  He focuses primarily on astronaut Dave Bowman’s [...]

Stan Brakhage was one the most important experimental filmmakers of the 20th century. He used many techniques to make his films, one of them being direct painting on the film itself. This is one of his pieces from 2000. It is very beautiful and goes through several distinct movements during its short [...]

I go over to The Huffington Post, a site that defines the words ‘mess’ and ‘indecipherable’ better than any dictionary could, looking for some news, and I come across a story entitled Secret Oil Rigs in Los Angeles Uncovered.  ‘Ho ho!’ I thought.  ‘Here’s something interesting and probably full of nasty secret pollution and damage [...]

This is an odd post and I’m not entirely sure I can pull it off. The film above is called Montparnasse. It was made in 1929 by Eugene Deslaw.  I watched the film and want to write about it cold, without looking up Mr. Deslaw on Google.  I’ll check up on him after [...]

Ingmar Bergman, the magnificent film director who most assuredly would have detested Woody Allen, lived on a Swedish island called Fårö. Diane Solway wrote an article for W Magazine about the island and she made this short film about her trip there.

Film director Jean-Luc Godard is making a film that appears to be called Le Socialisme.  I’m not entirely certain, but it sure looks to me from this trailer for the film like Mr. Godard is shooting with a small video camera.  I can even hear the wind hitting the microphone during shots on board the [...]

The Auteurs (www.theauteurs.com) is a site for art film lovers.  Their mission is to offer a huge selection of international art films by the world’s best directors for simple online viewing.  Last night I watched an Italian film from 1960 called L’Avventura, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.  The image quality was excellent and the sound was [...]

Jean-Luc Godard is one of the only film directors in the history of cinema to make films as if the camera were a pen.  For some reason, when a writer writes about their own experiences they are called a genius.  When a film director does it they are often called self-indulgent.  Godard has made some [...]

Jaron Pitts has made a movie trailer for a non-existent Green Lantern superhero movie.  Quite frankly, it’s an odd thing to do and I don’t honestly know why anyone would do it.  I certainly like the way it looks for the most part.  I’ve always liked the idea of the Green Lantern.  But a fan [...]

Here’s an article by Tim Martin in The Telegraph about how computer games are having a growing influence on literature.  As the game’s trailer shows, the upcoming computer game, Dante’s Inferno, will be a wild ride into hell.  I’m sure the game is full of levels as most games are and as Dante’s original literary [...]

Here’s the trailer for The Limits of Control, a new film by Jim Jarmusch. I’m always very impressed by Jim Jarmusch when he speaks.  Extremely intelligent and serious artist working in film.  In fact, he might be one of the only serious artists working in American film at present.  He’s kind of scary and punkish [...]

He’s a German film director named Werner Herzog and in 1980 he made a bet with another filmmaker that if that other guy actually finished his first feature film Herzog would sit down in front of cameras and eat his own shoe. The friend did finish his movie, and so Mr. Herzog sat down [...]

The Hunt for Gollum is a 40-minute fan-made film that is available for free online viewing. The film was made through open collaboration of enthusiastic fans working under the leadership of director Chris Bouchard.  I’ve just finished watching it and can report that it is a wonderful success that tells its story with the [...]

This video is from a PBS Independent Lens documentary about the Ferus Gallery that shaped much of the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1960s.  It’s short but it conveys some of the sense of LA’s wild, nervy, uncontrolled art attitude that is still in force today.  I love the zoom in on Andy [...]