Movies
Time lapse video
I just got back a little while ago from a visit to Brian, Dani & Jeffrey’s in Rochester. Great times. Great friends.
We went out to Arigato’s for some yummy hibachi, then went home for cake and gaming. Well, one game that lasted a good long time. Loaded Questions – which got off to a bit of a slow start but ended up being laugh-so-hard-you-cry funny. The game deteriorated into “The Turd Ferguson Game” where every answer became a variation of “Turd Ferguson.” Priceless. And we only had a couple glasses of wine. Really.
Here are some videos I made of the trip out and back. The exported video ended up being terribly low res, so these are here for the time being until I can re-export at a higher quality.
Time lapse details
I used an Xbox Live webcam ($40) taped to my rearview mirror. iStopMotion software, which is super simple to use especially while driving. The 1st video was set at 24 fps and the first 44 seconds are recorded at one frame every second. The rest is one frame every 8 seconds, thus the much faster, jerkier quality.
The second video is a compromise at one frame every 2 seconds. This gave a much smoother motion, but obviously longer video length. I should have switched to one frame every second once I got off the thruway for higher quality on the final leg of the drive.
The soundtracks are a remix of Just Let Go by Fischerspooner and a cover of A Forest by Nouvelle Vague (you should be able to figure out which is which).
Watch these movies, then we can talk
Film critic Jim Emerson recently compiled a list of 102 movies that you should see before you can consider yourself movie literate:
“…they [are] the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat ‘movie-literate.’”
I’ve reproduced Emerson’s list here and marked with an asterisk next those that I’ve seen.
* 2001: A Space Odyssey
The 400 Blows
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien
* All About Eve
Annie Hall
* Apocalypse Now
* Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
The Big Sleep
* Blade Runner
Blowup
Blue Velvet
Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
* Bringing Up Baby
* Carrie
* Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
Chinatown
* Citizen Kane
* A Clockwork Orange
The Crying Game
* The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Heaven
* Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
* Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
* Double Indemnity
* Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
* E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Rider
* The Empire Strikes Back
The Exorcist
* Fargo
* Fight Club
* Frankenstein
The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
* Gone With the Wind
* GoodFellas
* The Graduate
* Halloween
A Hard Day’s Night
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
* It’s a Wonderful Life
* Jaws
The Lady Eve
Lawrence of Arabia
M
* Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
The Maltese Falcon
* The Manchurian Candidate
Metropolis
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
* Night of the Living Dead
* North by Northwest
Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
* Psycho
* Pulp Fiction
Rashomon
* Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
Schindler’s List
The Searchers
* The Seven Samurai
* Singin’ in the Rain
* Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
* Taxi Driver
The Third Man
Tokyo Story
Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Vertigo
* West Side Story
The Wild Bunch
* The Wizard of Oz
That’s 43 out of 102 for me–not even half. Kinda disappointing since I consider myself at least a little bit of a movie buff.
This list is highly subjective. This reads like a highbrow list of culturally relevant reference holders. Arguably movies like Star Wars, Forrest Gump, and even So I Married An Axe Murderer (a personal top ten movie) are also necessary fodder for having a well rounded set of movie references to draw upon.
What do you think should be part of this list?
(PS. I have to give credit… got the idea for this post from one on Kottke.org)
