Jerry Seinfeld is back with the second season of his web series. He is joined by Sarah Silverman in the first episode.

It’s back on YouTube. No need to skip around in this one.

A friend of mine wrote a blog piece on Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 TV series “Scenes from a Marriage”. In it he writes:

It strikes me that this chapter title cuts to the very heart of the conundrum of negotiating human relationships and that it would have been a great title for the film (or maybe a great new book title for Pema Chodron). Throughout the seesaw emotional battle the husband and wife undergo in this nearly 6-hour journey, we see this issue of “sweeping things under the rug” rear it’s ugly head over and over again. The entire series, in one sense, can be seen as a slow revealing and confrontation of what is under that rug. The range of tonal notes that are played out in scene after scene establish such a believable spectrum of emotive “reality” that it feels as if we are getting the privilege of eavesdropping on an actual couple’s most intimately wonderful and ghastly moments.

Read the rest here.

Prada Marfa

Photo by ?

So, I got up at 4 AM to peep this “game-changing” gear. Was hoping it was focusing gear. There’s still plenty advancement room in that area. However, it’s just a dope stabilizer called the MōVI. It’s light, small, and easy to use. I’m not sure how something $7,500 could be “game-changer” but I agree it is a nice step forward in the stabilization area. Not every DP has a need for a steadicam but when they do and have the budget I can see how this would make things a lot easier. Is $7,500 worth upping your production value slightly for stabilized shots?

More video here.

Quite often when a movie comes along that’s difficult to follow it may be considered good, bad, or self-indulgent. Most times it’s a combination of these. The Tree of Life is a film that’s good but way too self-indulgent to be a great. Beyond The Black Rainbow is just bad. Upstream Color is a masterpiece that isn’t self-indulgent nor hard to follow. It’s just as simple as following Inception but it doesn’t use dialog to instruct you. Director Shane Carruth uses simple visual cues to poetically guide you through.

This is only Carruth’s second film and he already has a catalog that directors dream of. I went to see his first film, Primer, on opening night solely off the premise and was blown away. I saw Upstream Color at MoMa’s New Directors/New Films festival last week. Upstream Color drew every emotion and provoked every thought out of me that I didn’t know I needed. I try not to focus too much on the director of a film when talking about a film but when you write, direct, score, edit, shoot, AND star in a film, it’s hard not to. So when I hear comparison’s to Lynch and Cameron, I cringe. They never have and could never do what Shane has done with his two films. I’m not sure why this film has been labeled a puzzle or too confusing or too abstract. The respect he gives the audience to tell this narrative poetically is a respect I haven’t received in a long time.

Off the screen, Carruth is further into the future than any filmmaker. With Upstream Color he proved that big Hollywood money or big tech isn’t needed to make a masterpiece and release it to your audience. As a filmmaker myself and camera junkie, to see that Upstream Color was shot on the Panasonic GH2 is truly inspiring. The GH2 is known in the filmmaking community as the hacker’s budget camera that can use custom firmware. With awesome glass Carruth creates great visuals. Carruth also being the director of photographer on this is a true note to his genius. So much of the film’s emotional provocation is from the cinematography and editing. The visual parallels along with the narrative parallels were just the right combination to tell the story without giving the audience too much or too little. This is true respect for your audience. Go see it Friday.