For your consideration — "Sad, beautiful facts" edition

Sound on Sight: The "Gray Ones" Fade To Black — A passionate personal essay that really wells up my own sense of generational despair. Will 20th century movies be watched the way 19th century novels are read now, by only dedicated academics and adherents?

Meanwhile, Kate Kulzick counterpoints: Why the True Classics Will Never Disappear

On a not unrelated note: NPR: The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything

Also NPR: On Location: Mansfield, Ohio's 'Shawshank' Industry (audio)

Also also NPR: Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books — Unsurprisingly, more than half of the top 50 have been movie-ized in one form or another.

independent.co.uk: The Science of the Trailer

Great movie taglines according to Filmsite and Tagline Guru

CNBC: The 15 Lowest-Grossing Oscar Winners

Jim Emerson: Our Hospitality: Buster Keaton and gravity

A Bright Wall in a Dark Room: Amanda McCleod on Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris, a film I like quite a lot. Now I'm in the mood to see it again.

Slate: I Watched Every Coen Brothers Movie. Here's what I learned. Plus: What Are the Best and Worst Coen Brothers Films? Addendum: The readers speak and David Haglund follows up

Also Slate: The Saddest Movie Scene Since 1995

Parallax View: "You're Goddam Right I Remember" – Howard Hawks Interviewed — Originally published in Movietone News 54, June 1977

Juan Cole: Jordan Plans Green Star Trek Theme Park — Cole on, among other things, science fiction as an international attractor.

Cracked: B-Movie Posters for Classic Films

io9: Why We Love Suspending Our Disbelief

Also io9: "To the Moon" is like a backstage pass to the the sights and sounds of 1960's NASA

Click to sharkify. Via Medium Large

Music: John Barnes Chance
Near at hand: Wind-up robots

The Girls on Film

"Here at The Girls on Film, we take great film scenes between men and recreate them with women."

And yep, that's what they do. When I first clicked a random link to their Star Trek video, I figured "The Girls on Film" would be just another easy YouTube-bound spoof-and-goof, or someone's film-school project with cute undergrads, or, if I were lucky, a Funny or Die pastiche I hadn't caught yet. 

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the result is more than just an exercise in pastiche, or in refracting gender through a clever prism (although it is both). As I watch actors Laura Miyata and Ashleigh Harrington recreate a scene from No Country for Old Men, and do so very well, the Coen Brothers' spare, every-word-counts dialogue rises to the surface, letting me listen and appreciate it with fresh ears.




In a scene from 2009's Star Trek, Harrington so adeptly replicates Chris Pine's subtle choices and tics, I see the character of young Kirk emerge despite the removal of the Y chromosome.



In all their videos so far, there's also something to admire in the fidelity director Jeff Hammond and his crew hold to the original camera shots, sets, and lighting within the limits of what I assume must be shoestring budgets.

And yeah, it's also just a fun Internet thing.