Authors — Vadim Rizov
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They Shouldn’t Have Killed his Dog: John Wick
John Wick‘s primary premise is lots of well-crafted action delivered by veteran stuntpeople-turned-directors finally given free rein to make sure their work is optimally served. Co-directors David Leith and Chad Stahelski deliver on this front: it doesn’t take much time before retired hitman Wick (Keanu Reeves) is sufficiently angered to leave his New Jersey pad, head into NYC (more inferred than seen) and unleash mayhem in a hotel, club and church. No one is going to confuse 50-year-old Keanu Reeves for prime Jet Li, but he’s more than credible in walking through each point of contact and delivering body blows. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 30, 2014 -
Watch: Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th on The Arsenio Hall Show
“The term ‘deranged sociopath’ gets thrown around a lot by the media these days,” Arsenio Hall said in 1989 when introducing Jason Voorhees on his show, “but it really applies to my next guest.” This was the year of Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan, and a peak-of-his-popularity Jason came out to a nice round of applause. Then he sat down and sat behind his expressionless mask barely moving while Arsenio fired off a barrage of questions to the silent hulk. “I see all your movies man, and you know what I’ve noticed?” No response. “You’re angry.” It’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 29, 2014 -
Watch: How Fuji Makes XF Series Lenses
“Lenses are extremely delicate and have to be handled carefully, just like they are alive,” a Fuji factory worker says in this video from the company that will walk you through the entire process of making XF series lenses. All the steps are briefly touched upon, from mold pressing to coating, lens barrel processing, surface finishing, assembling, measuring, engraving, and finally packaging and shipping. Process and gear junkies, this one’s for you.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 29, 2014 -
Teen Horniness is Not a Crime: White Bird in a Blizzard
The nice thing about Gregg Araki’s movies is that he genuinely believes that teen horniness is not a crime: not for him Larry Clark’s pseudo-alarmed prurience or a Lifetime movie’s worth of dire consequences trailing teen sexuality. White Bird in a Blizzard‘s narrator/not-quite-heroine Kat Connors (Shaleine Woodley) is in the midst of an inexplicably celibate stretch in a hormonally-drenched first sexual relationship with neighbor Phil (Shiloh Fernandez) when her mother Eve (Eva Green) mysteriously disappears. Kat’s sexuality contributes neither to unearned guilt or poor decisions, and her relationship with the older investigating detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane) is never a source […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 28, 2014 -
Watch: Antony and the Johnsons Perform in the Concert Documentary Turning
Charles Atlas’ documentary Turning captures Antony and the Johnsons on tour in Europe in 2006, when the band was only part of the visual equation. Opposite Antony, 13 different women took the stage, revolving and acting out counterpoint emotions with their bodies. In this clip we have performance artist Johanna Constantine, an old friend of Antony’s since his first year at university. Turning hits DVD, CD and digital release on November 11 from Secretly Canadian.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 28, 2014 -
Watch: Creating a Bullet Time Effect with 35mm
There are a lot of videos that offer how-tos and hacks for creating a relatively affordable bullet time effect by marshaling a little technological ingenuity. This one from last year is probably more elaborate an effort than most people will care to make: in a bit over five minutes, you can watch the condensed six month process, which comes with a recipe-like ingredient list up front: 40 tin cans, 10.8 kilograms of sawdust, using 60 meters of 35mm film and so on.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 23, 2014 -
Watch: 50ish VHS Production Company Logos Piled up on Each Other
Has it been too long since you saw the Trimark pyramid logo? Would you like to revisit an ill-spent vidiot past but you’re in a hurry? This efficiently quasi-nightmarish video exploits the inherent strangeness of logos derived from primitive computer graphics and rudimentary synth tones, layering about 50 such specimens on top of each other. The dual visual and sonic pile-up is hypnotic in a vaguely unnerving way.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 22, 2014 -
Watch: How to Build a Beach on a Soundstage (for A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence)
How precisely does one go about building an entire beach on a soundstage? That’s one of the many challenges posed by master Swedish director Roy Andersson’s regular working method, which involves constructing meticulous sets to stage his mordant tableaux and droll takes on despair and death. This brief video shows his crew building a beach from the ground up — not a photo-realistic set, but pretty close, complete with meticulous arrangement of sand and one friendly dog roaming around. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence will be released here next year by Magnolia Pictures.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 21, 2014 -
Goodbye to 3-D Rules
To a degree, the content of Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language will be familiar to viewers who have kept up with the director’s latter-day work: aphorisms and quotations by the score, obdurately unidentified characters whose relationship to each other is unclear, snatches of disparate music cued and cut off with disorienting abruptness. It’s not for everyone, but Godard’s first three-dimensional film is so visually astonishing that a lack of comprehension isn’t a barrier. Outdoors, sea and land stretch out into a receding horizon deeper than anything you’ve seen. Inside, there are more knockout distortions transforming even the most banal objects: […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 20, 2014 -
Great Expectations: Alex Ross Perry on Listen Up Philip
Alex Ross Perry’s first feature Impolex was an oblique gloss on Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, while his higher-profile follow-up, The Color Wheel, stole the font of Philip Roth’s ’70s hardcovers for its credits, as well as that writer’s abrasive fearlessness and sexual disreputability. Literature hangs heavy over Listen Up Philip as well, not least in its subject: a young, New York novelist on the precipice of success being mentored by a Roth-like literary titan. That writer’s spirit is still present, but the major structural reference is William Gaddis’ behemoth debut The Recognitions, whose main through line is a pure-spirited and […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 20, 2014
