socks-studio

I’m not a fan of Wes Anderson, but nobody can deny the value that staging and scenery have in his movies.

In a scene from The “Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”, the camera moves across a wooden section of a boat, from room to room, without ever trying to hide the scenography.

This movie therefore belongs to a family of works whose “theatrical staging” is itself part of the narration, aiming at concentrating on storytelling and acting, and reminding the audience of the film’s artificiality. Or, better said by L.Lambert: “questioning the relationship maintained between the subject and the representation”.

Comparative exemples include 1954 Red Garters, a musical spoof of the Western gerne, where the setting only “suggests” houses, trees and windows; 2003 Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, whose famous minimalist scenario includes only walls and separation as a blueprint on the ground and very limited use of furniture to symbolize rooms; 1994′s Louis Malle and Andre Gregory’s Vanya on 42nd street, an interpretation of Uncle Vanya, by Chechov, shot entirely within the New Amsterdam Theatre, also on 42nd Street.

Here’s : Let me tell you about my boat:

Watch here some scenes from the movies mentioned on the post:

Ho Kim is a brilliant student from Peter Cook’s atelier that we met during the students’ works exhibition on last 21st of December et ESA.

Here are some of his drawings and videos excerpts including his animation: “The Vertical City”.

In the week that will see two landmark Marker’s movies out on Blu-ray, Criterion also shares this interesting study guide for junior and senior high schools, made by Janus film in the mid-70s.

Dutch video/animation artist Floris Kaayk models with irony and a sadistic taste the possible effects of a technological over-advance. In his pseudo-documentaries, nature and electronic devices, technological appendices, metallic prosthesis blend and evolve together, giving shape to post-darwinian evolutions.

The way people are hooked to electronic media devices, doomed to dehumanization or even to eventual physical infirmities, is convincingly echoed in the metaphor of the “Metalosis Maligna, an extraordinary disease”

Metalosis Maligna is a documentary about a disease that affects patients with medical implants. Metalosis Maligna occurs when a metal implant interacts badly with human body tissue, causing the metal to grow tendrils, which eventually puncture the skin from within and destroy it. The movie shows the development of the disease from its early stages through to the gory advanced stages, by which point entire sections of flesh have fallen away and all that is left is a skeleton of scrap metal.























Related: States of Design 09: Bio-design, by Paola Antonelli on Domus.

Via: WMMNA

Ethel Baraona, whose always interesting articles and links we particularly missed during these two weeks of no-internet, points towards this post on io9 and How to be a retronaut, about the fascinating ruins of the set of James Cameron’s 1989 sci-fi flick The Abyss.

From io9:

‘James Cameron’s undersea set for the 1987 filming of The Abyss at the unfinished Cherokee Nuclear Plant outside of Gaffney, South Carolina.

‘The seven-million-gallon, forty-foot-deep set was eventually demolished in 2007. These shots were taken from 2003-2004.’

Some photos here, check the two sites for more, and here the site as it appeared in 1994.