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Archive for May, 2013

Talking Stories: Portraits with Sarah Polley

Posted in Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Women Mediamakers, tagged , , , , , , on May 31, 2013| 3 Comments »

Director Sarah Polley Preparing a Shot

Director Sarah Polley Preparing a Shot

A movie from this spring that offers abundant possibilities for learning is Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell (PG-13), and in this video from the New York Times, she and her family discuss its genesis and driving questions.  This film is an excellent companion to the portraits paired with the themes of Chapter 5 and 6 of Moving Images, particularly This Unfamiliar Place and Looking Back.  Sarah Polley has directed a number of other movies, including the award winning Away from Her, and she is a well known actress who has been featured in many films including one of my personal favorites, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (directed by Terry Gilliam).    

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Google Doodle for Saul Bass, Visual Innovator

Posted in Animation, tagged , , , on May 8, 2013| 1 Comment »

Saul Bass titles for Delmer Daves's "Cowboy"

Saul Bass titles for Delmer Daves’s “Cowboy”

Today’s Google Doodle is a clever visual pièce-de-résistance quite worthy of its subject, Saul Bass.  A year ago, I wrote a blog post about this brilliant American creator in Saul Bass, Visual Innovator.  As well as checking out my post you should also see this piece by the Doodle’s creator, Matthew Cruickshank, or this Washington Post blog that features many video links.  Have fun watching this little movie and guessing the big movies it celebrates!

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The Iron Screen

Posted in Media Literacy, tagged , , , , , , on May 5, 2013| 3 Comments »

Iron MandarinAs the school year winds down, it can be fun to open up discussion a bit to “big picture” topics.  And one doesn’t get much bigger than the summer blockbusters that have been booming across our screens and into our ears in recent years, or that implode (at least at the box office, when compared to the truckloads of money that were spent on them); whatever the case, we tend to love debating what’s hot, what’s not, and what there is to discover.  Right now, of course, the biggie is Iron Man 3, which opened to a relatively predictable huge first weekend.  I highly recommend this superbly written New York Times review by Manohla Dargis for what could be a lively discussion about the state of the movies — and the state of the nation — because it reads at least as much as an editorial or an impassioned “state of the cinematic arts” mission statement as anything else.  She skillfully integrates Steven Soderbergh’s inspiring talk at the San Francisco Film Festival from a week ago into the review and provides many provocative angles for students and teachers to consider about this movie.  In the meantime, J.J. Abrams‘s Star Trek Into Darkness is right around the corner…

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