When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you.
…
I remember in “The Conversation,” they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn’t know, and said the theme is ‘privacy’ and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.
Author Archives: johnke
Hypercritical: An Unsolicited Streaming App Spec
BRB forwarding this to the RTE Player team.
Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, Reviewed by Ethan Coen
In the interest of full disclosure, my editor has requested that I mention that I was Mr. Coen’s writing partner, producer, and creative collaborator on the aforementioned 18 films. I am also his brother. We parted ways prior to Macbeth in a split that the press described as completely amicable. Despite my prior association with Mr. Coen, I feel that I am entirely capable of reviewing his work in a fair and objective way.
Macbeth is Joel Coen’s shittiest movie by several billion light years.
How we made: Billy Bragg’s A New England
By 1980, Margaret Thatcher had been elected, the band had broken up and punk had dissipated into synthesiser groups, so A New England was my way of saying that I needed a hug as well as a new ideology.
Me too, Billy. Me too.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines Artbook
I love a good artbook and Netflix have uploaded the entire artbook for The Mitchells vs the Machines. The film is great and the artbook is lovely.
A handy browser extension to re-skin Wikipedia to make it a bit more modern. Has some nice customization options.
Processing: the Software that Shaped Creative Coding
An oral history of Processing, which has a special place in my heart.
Shadow Planet, by The Cotton Modules
An album made of AI and cassette tapes. Sounds really organic and haunting. They also wrote about the album’s creation.
Never argue on the internet. No one will remember whether you won or lost the argument; they’ll just remember that you are the sort of person who argues on the internet.
“I’m at the stage in my life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5. You’re right, have fun.”
How the Mountain Goat’s “No Children” became a TikTok viral hit
“It’s really cool to have it affirmed that music is a gigantic conversation between all generations,” Darnielle says. “I am a father of two. There is a certain joy in sort of feeling like, well, the kids have got a thing going on that I’m not going to fully get. But I can just enjoy watching. I think people fear getting older and fear that they’ll feel left out, but there’s a kind of buoyancy in that left-out quality sometimes, if you ride it the right way.”
John Darnielle is good people.