Eternal Gaze's Blog

Volkswagen's Night Driving site offers a commercial remixing tool. Quality of content/film makes this compelling.

commercial, moving image, remix, videocommercial, moving image, remix, video

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Portable Film Festival is a no-nonsense, straight-talking, and sleekly put together Australian initiative. It does exactly what it suggests: showcasing mobile films.

Voting finishes tomorrow on the festival selection.

The first couple of episodes of Ben Hibon's animations to accompany PS3 videogame, Heavenly Sword, are here and here. I had to meet this French director after I'd checked out his previous, award-winning, Codehunters, and we talked about this project he was working on. Nice to see it coming to fruition finally. One of his frustrations with that project was the way it changed, and he wasn't able to imbue it with explicit narrative -- that's not the case here with an explanatory narrative which sets up the videogame scenario in forthright terms. Animation starts impressively, and continues subtle use of colour and considered mise en scene. All five episodes should be available soon.

Michel's hitting his feature film stride now transferring prolific MV work rate to the big screen, with his next imminent: Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black and Mos Def. Rather than quirky rom-com a la The Science of Sleep, he's gone for all-out absurd comedy. Same kind of strategy Linklater used with Black on School of Rock. So he's going for commercial success as well as critical acclaim now... Trailer looks more than promising.

Direct Youtube link

In a deal that signals the ascendance of the independent video creator, MySpace will host and feature the Lonelygirl15 season finale this Friday. The finale, a culmination of the series to date, with 12 episodes released every hour over starting at 8 a.m. Pacific, is a bit of creative freedom that the Lonelygirl creators are taking to wrap up some storylines and play with the pacing of their show in real time.

[via NewTeeVee]

Direct link to LonelyGirl season end wrap-up video

Just been made aware of Plaster Casts of Everything by Liars, and directed by Patrick Daughters, through Stashmedia Feed. Like an amphetamine-fuelled Karma Police, down a Lost Highway, the promo rejects heavy VFX for horrific Gondry-esque projections onto driver, passenger, and naked roadrunner. Part of The Directors Bureau stable, Daughters is currently working on debut feature project.

Particularly like this music video as there's so many visual signifiers to an interesting backstory. It is not all flash. There's a concentrated narrative, just waiting to spill out.
[via Stashmedia]

Just read Michelangelo Antonioni has died aged 94 on the same day as another cinematic great, Ingmar Bergman, aged 89. A dark day for 'intellectual cinema' as the NYT has it. Where has the cinema for the cineastes gone?

I had the pleasure of listening to Antonioni at a press conference at the Venice Film Festival for one of his later films, Beyond the Clouds, with John Malkovich. It was still like nothing else in the festival, even if it wasn't up there with his greats, and favourites of mine like Blowup, Zabriski Point, or The Red Desert. After receiving a standing ovation, everyone was rapt, intent at gleaning the words of this legendary artist. It was electrifying to be in his presence.

Both directors will be missed.
[via Boing Boing]

The new Fuel TV-backed Swerve Festival is seeking innovative narrative and documentary short and feature films, animation, design films and music videos. Audience and Jury awards will be given in multiple categories. Films must have premiered after January 1, 2006 to be eligible. Final deadline is August 6, 2007.

Swerve Festival is a new annual film, art and music festival in Los Angeles that celebrates the creative subculture of action sports with film and video screenings, live music performances, art exhibitions, workshops and a televised awards show. The festival is directed by Jonathan Wells, founder and former Festival Director of the acclaimed international film festival RESFEST.

The arts/culture events scene is hotting up again on the U.S West Coast. The Swerve Festival takes place September 28-30. Also look out for Terrabyte 2.0 at the LA Arboretum and Botanical Gardens on August 26.

I've just recently completed an essay to be included in the upcoming monograph Modern Living: The Graphic Universe of Han Hoogerbrugge, a book on this pioneering flash animator's work. The book will be published later this year through BIS Publishers in cooperation with SubmarineChannel.

It's given me a chance to reengage and fully explore Hoogerbrugge's work again, as I haven't been in contact with him since writing my contributions for the On Air: MTV book. I suggest you indulge in the interactive narratives of Hotel and other pieces on his website when you've got a few spare cycles. Hans is definitely seeding his own fertile territory in moving image, and lives up to the billing of being an 'Actionscript Auteur' as I call him in my provisionally titled piece, Flipping out and Floating Away.

Hoogerbrugge.com

Lumines and Rez's Tetsuya Mizuguchi decides to build a re-imagined Tokyo for the denizens of Linden Labs' mammoth world.

Tetsuya Mizuguchi to build Virtual Tokyo in Second Life [via Joystiq]

online worlds, second life, tetsuya mizuguchi, tokyoonline worlds, second life, tetsuya mizuguchi, tokyo

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