Bejing Taxi on PBS this Saturday June 25th

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My former Parsons student, Miao Wang talks about her film and it's upcoming broadcast on PBS this weekend.  I am really impressed with her being able to get this film into so many festivals and onto PBS as it's so well done, from conception to completion.  Great work Miao! Can't wait to tune in. Here is the trailer.  I wrote about this originally on September 22 of 2010 and that is where you can see how beautiful it looks and watch the trailer.

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YouTube - Wavves | Post Acid | A Take Away Show

Il y a les musiciens tatillons, les control freak, les poètes, et il y a Wavves, une triplette à coté de la plaque, presque oublieuse de son talent à faire des tubes de l'été. On peut appeler ça un film punk.

via youtube.com

This is funny. I liked seeing this a lot as it felt nice and real to me.

Here is the translation for the above:

There are musicians fussy, the control freak, poets, and there Wavves, a triplet next to the plate, almost oblivious of his talent to make tubes of the summer. You can call it a punk film. "

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Hell and Back Again clip on Vimeo

via vimeo.com

This is a film that was recently shown at the Sheffield Doc/Fest that I was interested in. Liked hearing the filmmaker, Danfung Dennis speak about the process on the Guardian site as he talks about being a photographer and he noticed that the photographs themselves weren't making the impact that he was hoping for. So, he started shooting video with a digital SLR camera and you can see the quality of the images in this clip. He wanted to show that the story of going to war is inextricably linked to soldiers coming home. I am VERY interested to see the entire film. There is another clip that is fascinating with a soldier showing his girlfriend or wife how to load and fire a pistol too. Great looking footage and so telling that this guy had to turn to video.....

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Conan O'Brien Gives Dartmouth Commencement Speech

Conan always makes me laugh.  I love this address as he is a master at making me and so many others giggle. Funny that we see the president of the college sitting behind him, laughing along with the crowd.  He gets hoots and hollers from the crowd at points which is fun to hear. Like hearing what his life would have been like IF he went to Dartmouth himself.

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La Blogotheque: Thurston Moore

Like this video because it's a little different from their other videos.  Starts with some talking and setting the stage and the music doesn't even begin until 2:15 which is cool.  Moore's voice is really soft, but you can hear everything that you need to.  I also like the fact that the musicians are in different rooms so we get a real feel to his and Kim Gordon's apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Like that we sit with them, literally in this space and can't really see Moore's face except for some brief moments. The violin is lovely too as the plainness of the matching tones makes their collaboration stands out.  Great camera work as we can see the reflections in the mirror nicely and all their photos on the walls.  Love walking around the neighborhood and seeing people unaware of the camera too.  It seems like every block you travel in NYC today has a little Canon 5D camera crew set up on it.  

 

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On the Street: Jet Set by Bill Cunningham

He keeps a fresh eye out for new trends and always reveals an interesting side of fashion on the streets of NY or wherever he happens to be.  I love his ability to integrate the garden in Old Westbury, Long Island into this one by mentioning the rows of black irises there.  His opening photos of all the women with lacy black clothes fits so seamlessly with this digression from the tarmac in Manhattan. He uses a lovely relationship between two people, Marjorie and Timothy who met on the street to show how fashion works and in some places, doesn't. I love the photos of this group and how he always keeps his outlook fresh and funny.

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Ricky Gervais... Obviously.

via rickygervais.com

I loved reading this article about Ricky Gervais as I think he is brilliant and always makes me laugh out loud. I was on the subway the other day and was giggling on the 2 train to the Bronx...

But the fascinating thing is the he talks about his success with The Office and how, at the top of his game, he knew when it was time to quit. I also really liked reading his collaboration process with Stephen Merchant and his breaking down the reason for it's success. Mainly, that it was based on his real experiences and that he could make regular people find their own lives ridiculous and funny. I keep looking for Extras, his very funny HBO series, to come on Netflix.

It reminds me of a Studio 360 podcast I listened to recently about Steven Soderbergh and how he is talking openly about quitting filmmaking. I liked hearing his voice, as he seems very relaxed. This conversation resonated with me as he is an amazing filmmaker and I wonder what he will do with the rest of his career. At 6:23 Matt Damon talks about it too, not only about how great a director he is, but how he could be a successful artist of photographer. Matt Damon also has true admiration for Soderbergh so it's cool to hear how much he enjoys working with him.

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There Will Be Blood with gaze locations of 11 viewers on Vimeo

via vimeo.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/jun/06/there-will-be-blood-gaze

This article from the Guardian is fascinating. I loved the movie, There Will be Blood, by the Coen Brothers, but aside from that, this is amazing. Love that we have the ability to check out people's gaze when the watch films.

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The Way I Work: David Karp of Tumblr

via inc.com

I liked reading this article by my friend Liz Welch about David Karp. While he definitely says some interesting and useful things about his process, I thought this part of the interview was a little weird:

"I don't do much of the hiring anymore. Each department is in charge of hiring its own members. I like autonomous people. I want people who can take a project and figure out how to do it themselves. I don't really care about how things get done. Only that they get done."

I like hearing about young entrepreneurs, but when they say they don't care about how things get done, you wonder how they can maintain that philosophy over a number of years and with various people in authoritarian positions. I chalk it up to youth, but you have to have some pretty amazing trust to say something like that.

I like Tumblr, but will keep on posting with Posterous, at least for the moment. But, I think I may try to manage my email in a new way as he had some good ideas.

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High Line Section 2 Opening Next Week

We are thrilled to be able to attend the opening party for the newest section of the Highline next Tuesday and heard that it will be open to the general public on Wednesday June 8th!  Love this video with Organized C.H.A.O.S., the step crew from Brooklyn Technical Highschool as it gets us excited about getting out there and walking around.  We have a new staircase right on our block so can't wait to see it next week!

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