The Editblog

Very clever. Very cool.

I had the tv on Letterman the other night and he was pimping the premiere of the new Survivor series. He apparently got the date wrong as I heard a really bad audio dub go by in the background. I rewound and yep, it was bad. If you’ve ever been to a Letterman taping you know they like to do the show live to tape and not go back and edit if at all possible. This was obviously the quickest fix but man is it bad. Just listen for the word “eleventh.”

There was great tweet that came over the ether from David Stripinis that linked to this YouTube video: The 100 Cheesiest Movie Quotes of All Time. It’s priceless and worth 10 minutes of your time if you like movies at all. If you really want to enjoy it to its fullest click over to the actual YouTube page and open the info box on the side where the creator has listed all of the movies in order of appearance.

The Late Show with David Letterman has started a segment called the Technical Maintenance Minute. The 1/5/10 segment was about Avid and for us Avid geeks it was great. Sorry the quality sucks as I grabbed it with my iPhone as the segment went by. I need to figure out how to pull good video off the Comcast DVR … so crank it up:

And there was a ProTools one back in December (after the jump)

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It’s 2010, the year we make contact.

In 2010 we will have …

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Every now and then I’ll set the terribly crappy Comcast HD DVR to record MHD Palladia during the overnight hours so I can get a fix on some good hi-def music videos. Sure some of them won’t be hi-def but hey … who’s counting. Come to think of it, CMT HD has been broadcast now for month and months and as far as I can tell (and many others) they haven’t aired a frame of HD content either despite the fact that I know there have been country music videos finished and mastered in HD!! What a waste of bandwidth.

Anyhoo … one of the videos on my last Palladia viewing was director Chris Milk’s Audioslave video Doesn’t Remind Me. I was reminded what an incredibly awesome this music video really is. A great story, snappy editing, gorgeous images and not a frame of performance from the band. It’s a mini movie. Why can’t more videos be told this way? If you have any favorites of this type of video please post a comment. There’s part of the video embeded below from Milk’s Vimeo page but it only seems to load the first couple of minutes of the video (probably by request) so you can click over to see the full thing. You have to watch it to the end for full effect. On the “official” Universal Music Group channel on You Tube they’ve disabled embedding and the whole experience is so peppered with ads so I’m not even going to link to it.

Audioslave – “Doesn’t Remind Me” [HD] from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

I also learned that Milk directed the wonderful 42 second short film Last Day Dream.

The above video has been making the rounds lately. I’m a sucker for single shot productions that are well executed and this Johnnie Walker piece is a great example of a simple concept, talented delivery and great production value that all come together to pull it off. Now if only Johnnie Walker was half as good as a nice single malt like Laphroaig or Lagavulin.

It’s fun to look back at all of my movie stubs when digging through receipts while getting ready for taxes. And it’s even more fun to put them in order of what I saw. The thing that struck me this year was how few movies I saw in the theatre! I am ashamed of myself because even though there is Blu-ray, big HD tvs and great sound I still love the experience of going to the theater. It was a busy year and I didn’t make it to the local film festival since they scheduled it the same week as NAB. And if they seem a bit off it’s because some of these flicks were released in 2007 and didn’t get here until 08! I try to do this every year ’cause it’s fun to list ‘em out.

1. The Dark Knight

2. Slumdog Millionaire

3. WALL•E

4. There Will Be Blood

5. The Curious Case of Benjamen Button

6. Tropic Thunder

7. Cloverfield

8. Hancock

9. Speed Racer

10. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

And there there was U2:3D which was really good and a very unique concert film experience.

So Francis Ford Coppola is working on a new film called Tetro. According to the film’s website:

TETRO is Francis Ford Coppola’s first original screenplay since THE CONVERSATION. It is his most personal film yet, arising from memories and emotions from his early life, though totally fictional. It is the bittersweet story of two brothers, of family lost and found and the conflicts and secrets within a highly creative Argentine-Italian family.

Coppola has made some of the greatest films in modern film history. He’s also made some real stinkers. But I’m of the opinion that a Coppola failure is usually much more watchable than a lot of the dregs out there today. Someone on Twitter (I can’t remember who) pointed to Coppola’s video that he made introducing this new film. I look forward to its release.

The annoucnement has been made for the nominatons for the 81st Academy Awards. Here’s the nominees for Achievement in Film Editing:

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (Paramount and Warner Bros.), Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall
• “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.), Lee Smith
• “Frost/Nixon” (Universal), Mike Hill and Dan Hanley
• “Milk” (Focus Features), Elliot Graham
• “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Chris Dickens

My money (and hope) is on Slumdog!