This is what I saw looking west from Marin County (San Francisco Bay Area). Nice!
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Celebrating October 22, 2012. (no other explanation)
Tarantula (movie trailer from 1955)
A scientist is working for the good of mankind, trying to grow animals to jumbo size, so, you know, they can feed more people. Makes no sense, but he experiments with a tarantula (why? nobody is going to want to eat a jumbo spider), and it escapes from his lab much to the consternation of the local town folk. They try to blow it up with dynamite, but it’s not enough. They bring in fighter jets & Clint Eastwood and eventually fry the poor thing with napalm. The movie poster is pretty racy:
California Highway 120: Tioga Pass into Lee Vining
With a camera mounted on the roof of my car (shooting 1 image per second), I drive from Tioga Pass (eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park, elevation 9,943′) to near the junction of Highway 395 (about 1/4 mile from the town of Lee Vining, elevation 6,781′). The distance covered is about 10 miles, which lasts 40 seconds in this video clip. This clip and others are included in my Stock Footage collection, and can be downloaded for ABSOLUTELY FREE !!
Samsara
Samsara* is the new movie from Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson. To use their own terms, this film can be viewed as a meditation on (you fill in the blank). Haunting, beautiful, poetic, surreal, epic (you fill in the superlatives). It will definitely provoke a reaction. See it on the big screen if you can.
* The term “Samsara” is associated with eastern religion, most notably Hinduism and Buddhism. It refers to the cycle of life: birth, suffering, death, rebirth.
Argerich plays Lizst
From 1966: the great Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich plays Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 by Franz Liszt (Hungarian 1811-1886). It is sometimes argued that Liszt was the greatest pianist to ever live. He was most certainly a great and charismatic showman and his piano music, no doubt, reflects his attributes as a virtuoso.
Liszt in 1886, about 2 months before his death
Crazy Clown Time by David Lynch
This is a music video directed by David Lynch (!) featuring a song from an album of new music from David Lynch (!), sung by David Lynch (!). It features fleeting glimpses of Lynch, but I can’t take my eyes off the other participants including Paulie in a red shirt and Susie who ripped her shirt off completely.
Somebody colorized King Kong!
Purists will condemn the colorization of old black & white movies, but for some strange reason, I never had an issue with it, as long as they’re not messing with the original negative (which is not the case with colorization). The cropping of movie formats to fit within the squarish TV frame bugged me way more, but that’s another issue. I’ve seen King Kong more times than I care to admit, and for my money it remains one of the greatest films ever made. One of my great film memories is watching a reel (the very scene depicted in the YouTube clip) struck from the original negative in the Academy Theatre in L.A. with a cranked up sound system. Awe inspiring. The film is filled with incredible details in both the picture and sound. For instance, we get to hear Fay Wray scream a lot, but next time you see the film pay attention to the screams of the unlucky Venture crewmen who suffer horrible deaths while pursuing Kong on Skull Island!
2012 Berkeley Kite Festival
I check out the 2012 Berkeley Kite Festival at Cesar Chavez Park (near Berkeley Marina). This scene (and many others) are included in The San Francisco Variations, a growing collection of time-lapse scenes filmed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Raid (trailer): awesome music
(This may be a passing fancy.) The Raid is a well made action movie made on a low budget in Jakarta, Indonesia. It features an Indonesian cast and was directed by Gareth Evans, an Englishman. I am not going to say that The Raid is a great film, but if you are a fan of martial arts films it is well worth a look. Why did I see this film? Well, this trailer just blew me away. It is a kinetic explosion of energy, 2 minutes of unrelenting fight scenes set to an awesome piece of music by Mike Shinoda, who did the soundtrack for the film. Shinoda is a member of the rock group Linkin Park. BETTER SKIP THIS IF YOU ARE TURNED OFF BY BALLETIC CINEMATIC VIOLENCE!
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