counter-hegemonic links

---The Lego Movie's blooper reel

---Mise en scene and the visual themes of Wes Anderson

---State of the Union

---The Art of the Close-Up

---"Her presents a future in which what Shanghai-based neo-reactionary British philosopher Nick Land calls Dark Enlightenment has won. A post-democratic world comprising an archipelago of capitalist city-states that culturally favor a highly self-controlled and therefore free elite with relatively Classical and/or Confucian aesthetic values has become the new normal. This reactionary-modernist Enlightenment is not dark in Her because it’s not counter-hegemonic in the film’s world. Its power frees it up to be an object of disinterested artistic representation, shorn of Dark Enlightenment’s present and rather ludicrous Gothic trappings, its pretense that poor H. P. Lovecraft wasn’t a wretched writer for morose children: call it the Pastel Enlightenment. Spike Jonze evidently wants to be for World War III what Virginia Woolf was for World War I: the elegiac lyricist of the settlement."  --John Pistelli

---a film shoot accident

---a TV spot

---behind the scenes of The Lego Movie and A Field in England

---Women in the works of Martin Scorsese

---Does the camera describe or devour?

---"HULK SPENDS A LOT OF TIME THINKING ABOUT THE EFFECT OF SURFACES.

THAT MAY SOUND WEIRD, BUT IT'S KIND OF PERTINENT TO MODERN LIFE. HULK'S AN AVID FAN OF THE BOOK PRESENT SHOCK, WHICH POSTULATES, WELL, A LOT THINGS, BUT ONE OF THEM IS THAT THE FASTER WE MOVE THROUGH LIFE, THE MORE DEPENDENT WE BECOME ON SURFACES FOR OUR QUICK INTERACTIONS IN GENERAL. IT'S NOT REALLY SOMETHING WE DO WITH MALICIOUS INTENTION, MIND YOU. IT'S MORE SOMETHING PEOPLE USE AS A KIND OF SHORTHAND, GIVEN THAT WE ARE HAVING MORE AND MORE INTERACTIONS THAT ARE EACH TAKING UP LESS AND LESS TIME, ALL TO A KIND OF INSIDIOUS EFFECT. STILL, THE SILVER LINING OF THIS TREND IS THAT THE MORE YOU ARE AWARE OF HOW THESE SURFACES WORK, THE MORE YOU CAN USE THEM TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. FOR PLAYING WITH SURFACES IS REALLY JUST A CHANCE TO PLAY WITH EXPECTATIONS; A CHANCE FOR YOU TO DECIDE WHAT IT IS YOU WANT TO SAY ONCE THE PERSON SITS DOWN TO ACTUALLY LOOK AT WHAT MIGHT BE BEHIND SAID SURFACE. WHICH IS ACTUALLY GREAT FOR STORYTELLING, BECAUSE WHAT IS DRAMA BUT THE VARIOUS WAYS WE PLAY WITH SOMEONE'S EXPECTATIONS? APOLOGIES FOR GETTING SELF-REFERENTIAL HERE, BUT HULK'S WHOLE FASCINATION WITH THE DYNAMIC IS SOMETHING THAT HULK SORT OF STUMBLED INTO THROUGH HULK'S ENTIRE ONLINE LIFE; ONE THAT HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT A JOURNEY OF LOVELY DISCOVERY. THIS WHOLE HULK BUSINESS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH AND GONE THROUGH ENOUGH CYCLES THAT HULK HAS GOTTEN A SUBSTANTIAL LOOK INTO THE PATTERNS THAT EMERGE WHEN IT COMES TO HOW PEOPLE PROCESS 'A THING' THAT IS TRYING EXPRESS ITSELF THROUGH SEVERAL DIFFERENT LAYERS. AS SUCH, HULK'S HONESTLY GOTTEN A REAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE WAY THAT EXPECTATIONS AND SURFACES (AND THE EVENTUAL FLIPPING OF THEM) COMPLETELY AFFECT ONE'S TONE AND MESSAGE... HINT: IT'S WAY MORE THAN YOU THINK.

THE REASON HULK BRINGS THIS UP IS BECAUSE OF PHIL LORD and CHRIS MILLER'S OEUVRE."

---Interpreting Synecdoche, New York

---Jimi Hendrix's Final Interview

---Cahiers du Cinema, Vol. 1-4

---"If 21 Jump Street was proof that Lord and Miller could make a terrific, funny movie within the confines of Hollywood’s constricting business model, their follow-up, The Lego Movie released last weekend, proves something more ambitious: that the two men can take their industry’s obsession with pre-existing properties, sequels, Chosen One narratives, and overhyped emotions and make a surprising soulful movie out of all these tacky little pieces of plastic." --Alyssa Rosenberg

---filmmaking tips from Federico Fellini

---Richard Brody considers Lost in Translation

---Stainless, Alexanderplatz

---Everything is Awesome

---"They’ve made a clever, vividly imagined, consistently funny, eye-poppingly pretty and oddly profound movie … about Legos. Miller and Lord do not grovel before their corporate overlords, and at times even appear to be conveying the subversive message that, when it comes to Legos, less may be more (or at least that a random bucket of unsorted blocks may be preferable to a brand-new boxed set)."  --Dana Stevens

---The Flaneur on Film

---"5 Essential Indie-Run Film and Filmmaking Resources"

---the interface components of Her

---“Once the bomb lands or a night raid happens, you know that phone is there,” he says. “But we don’t know who’s behind it, who’s holding it. It’s of course assumed that the phone belongs to a human being who is nefarious and considered an ‘unlawful enemy combatant.’ This is where it gets very shady.”

---trailers for The Purge: Anarchy, Teenage, The Two Faces of January, Enemy, and Under the Skin