ABCs of Death 2 - Search for the 26th Director

The competition to find the 26th horror short to be included in ABCs of Death 2 produced a few gems, proving cinema is alive and well, thank you very much. 

M is for Masticate (Robert Boocheck, 2013)

M is for Meat (Wolfgang Matzl, 2013)

M is for Middle (Soichi Umezawa, 2013)

M is for Middle was not selected to be in the final 12, and as such, it won't be included in the collective film, but that's ok, because Soichi Umezawa has the brightest future of them all. What a doozy!

Kick-heart (Masaaki Yuasa, 2013)

At the age of 48, Masaaki Yuasa creates with the unfettered imagination of a 5-year-old.

Bless him.

Hayao Miyazaki

"Airplanes are the most beautiful when they are in the air. I wanted to see a Zero flown by a Japanese aviator, not an American. My fantasy was to see it flown under high-voltage power transmission cables next to Studio Ghibli in western Tokyo. But my wife told me to stop being such an idiot, and that was that."

— Hayao Miyazaki


Interview with Hayao Miyazaki at The Asahi Shimbun

The Future Is Now #2

Sur un air de Charleston (Jean Renoir, 1927)

Shoes

David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee 2.2 (2013)

Images of shoes in film are a rare thing. Feet rarely get a close-up of their own, and since the current aspect ratios are not made to accommodate the whole of the human figure, and the feet are the farthest away from the face (the part of the human body most closely associated with personal identity, and as such, the most prevalent in narrative filmmaking), it's unlikely that they will show in the frame accidentally.

Once in a while, however, feet do get a close-up of their own. That choice is worth noting.

Johnnie To

"Most of the films are made for the industry, and to sustain my company. I can count on one hand the films I really enjoyed making:  The Mission, PTU, Exiled, Sparrow and Life Without Principle. That’s  just five! And the rest are, shall I say, business projects."

— Johnnie To


via The Hollywood Reporter

La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser (Davide Manuli, 2012)

Silvia Calderoni cuts an astonishing figure in Davide Manuli's La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser, her body constantly bouncing to a silent beat, as if her heart was a drum machine, a kinetic energy that is both awkward and awe-inspiring. A true messiah.