It was a week before the solstice when Little Helmut finally realized he was being hunted by a polar bear.
I loathe marketing, but this commercial. Damn it.
Tag: videos
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How important were lacrosse sticks with Onondaga traditions? Life and death.
Babies sleep beside their own wooden stick from the day they’re born. And players are buried with theirs when they die.
Alfie Jacques was one of the last traditional stick carvers alive. Alfie passed in June 2023. He was buried with his stick.
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seveneight video essays adapted from the book: The Wes Anderson Collection.There are few perfect books. The Wes Anderson Collection is one of them.
Enjoy.
Almost two decades after the production of Bottle Rocket he (Wes) speaks of the movie with great affection, as well he should. It’s a special movie. Audacious yet gentle. It’s got a loping rhythm that reminds me of what it’s like to stroll around Dallas in the early summer at dusk. Everything is kind of turning all blue. You can hear the cicadas whirring.
– Matt Zoller Seitz
There are few perfect movies. This is one of them.
– Matt Zoller SeitzThe Royal Tenebaums works because as hilarious as it sometimes is, in its heart it’s a drama rather than a comedy. And it’s not remotely kidding about the traumas that it shows us. There is a very specific darkness at the heart of this film, divorce. The bomb that detonates in the prologue.
– Matt Zoller SeitzIt feels lived in. Why? Maybe because it treats all of its characters as if they were real people. People whos dreams and fears actually matter.
– Matt Zoller SeitzIt was in the reign of George III that the the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now
Barry LyndonIn all of these moments you’re aware that you’re seeing something that was made by people, and the movie is ok with that. It not trying to fool you. There’s nothing smooth about these stop motion animals. Wes is not taking his cues from Pixar here. He takes his cues from Willis O’Brien the stop motion animator who created King Kong. He takes his cues from Ray Harryhausen, who followed in Willis O’Brien’s footsteps. Jason and the Argonauts were a big one for Wes growing up.
The movie carries itself as a knockabout comedy-romance, a mere diversion, but it lingers in the mind, by communicating that the right choice is one based on empathy and attention and understanding. Not mindless obedience to ritual or an ostrich like evasion of unpleasant truths. The relationship between tradition and innovation. The old guard and the new. Is ongoing, never fully settled. Sam and Suzy’s ardor is funny because they aren’t fully grown yet, but it’s powerful because they’re doing almost everything else right. Each one is headstrong but not averse to bending if it will make the other person happy. It can be likened to a negotiation, or better yet a dance.
Matt Zoller SeitzThe decay of the body is irreversible. Death is non-negotiable. After that, what’s left? Stories. But not just the stories as the story tellers remember them and then recounted them to others. The stories that people adapt from other people’s stories which then are retold, remade, and handed down until only their essence remains.
Matt Zoller Seitz -
Prince of Persia was hard as…<shout favorite swear word here>.
That’s my lasting memory of it.
The protagonist, we’ll call him Prince, felt so heavy during gameplay. I was accustom to games like Super Mario Brothers. Mario and Luigi were light. They had spring when they jumped. They could don a racoon tail to float and fly past foes.
Prince of Persia? Na man. The Prince had weight. The realm had gravity. And as I learned, this was by design.
The game’s creator – Jordan Mechner explains:
What if we combined that gameplay with a charachter who’s so human feeling that you feel like if you miss the jump and you fall, it’s really going to hurt?
Because in the early platform games charachters were kind of weightless. You know, you would jump, and you’d make it or not, but you’d float down to the bottom. It didn’t feel like you could really get hurt.
Jordan MechnerThis War Stories video is a revealing look at the process behind creating a video game.
Toil and grit man.
Toil and grit.
Have a watch:
Bonus Jam: Jordan’s new book, The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993–Illustrated Edition is out now.
Floodlights and Goalposts 