Run Lola Run Lola Run Lola Run Lola Run from shiffman on Vimeo.

Via kottke.org.

Fabulous collection of “The End” movie title cards.

Missing my favorite though:

Which is admittedly better pre zoom and title:

Via Daring Fireball.

In The Believer is a conversation that took place at Brandeis University in the fall of 2007, moderated by Alice Arshalooys Kelikian. And this is the best conversation I have ever read:

ERROL MORRIS: Yeah. The intention is to put the audience in some kind of odd reality. [To moderator] Werner certainly shares this. It’s the perverse element in filmmaking. Werner in his “Minnesota Manifesto” starts talking about ecstatic truth. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

But what I do understand in his films is a kind of ecstatic absurdity, things that make you question the nature of reality, of the universe in which we live. We think we understand the world around us. We look at a Herzog film, and we think twice. And I always, always have revered that element. Ecstatic absurdity: it’s the confrontation with meaninglessness.

I was talking with Ron Rosenbaum, a friend of mine, who had just finished a book on Shakespeare. We were talking about the meaning of meaninglessness. Is there such a thing? And I would say: yes. Werner’s work could be considered an extended essay on the meaning of meaninglessness.

WERNER HERZOG: Thank you, yes. It feels good to hear that. [Laughter]

Later:

WH: [. . .] And I said that we were going to do a film there in Plainfield, and that really upset Errol a lot. He thought I was a thief without loot. This was his country, his territory, his Plainfield, and I shot in Plainfield. I shot a film, Stroszek, which I think is forgotten and forgiven by now, and we can maintain friendship over this now.

EM: I told Werner: For you to steal a character or a story isn’t real theft. But to steal a landscape, that is a very, very serious crime.

WH: I understand that. I take it to heart, but there actually is a film out there, and we can’t take it off the map.

EM: It’s a very good film.

WH: It has a beautiful end with a dancing chicken, and I really like it.

EM: Yes.

Via cityofsound.

Basically, it’s the story of Thomas’s doomed attempt to interview Ballard. He takes a taxi to Shepperton, and before he knows it is in a parallel dimension, being driven by a gruff hoodlum with clear contempt for his passenger.

Via cityofsound.

Via cityofsound.

Forget the film, watch the titles
Cracking site showing great film title sequences, animation etc. [via Chris Jones]

[Dr. Strangelove’s] frightening absurdity was established in the very first frame of the main title sequence designed by Pablo Ferro.

Via Jim Coudal.

Posted to Salon.com.

One of the better introductions to “Zoo” that I have read, though the interview is pretty lame (not the writers fault, heh)

I can understand anybody’s reluctance to engage with the issues raised in “Zoo,” a lovely, subdued film, washed in midnight blue, that flirts with the outer edges of documentary reconstruction and poetic license – and is certain to make you uncomfortable. But much of the outraged response to “Zoo,” almost all of it from people who haven’t seen the film (I heard a lot of this myself, after covering it at Sundance), is based on willful ignorance and incomprehension.

Posted by MANOHLA DARGIS to NYT > Movie Reviews.

“Zoo” is, to a large extent, about the rhetorical uses of beauty. It is, rather more coyly, also about a man who died after having sex with a stallion.

Opening in NYC this week, also a review in the The Village Voice

I hear a rumor that it has been accepted into Cannes, not sure if that means in competition, or what, but pretty crazy anyway.

A decent review in the NYT

That they don't all do it like we do.

Great films, kind of like Gondry's stuff. I recommend Off The Beaten Track. Link.

Via MAKE: Blog.