Adam Kempenaar, Filmspotting cofounder, host, and executive producer, is captivated by:
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The Arbor‘s radical conceit eschews talking heads in favor of actors lip-synching pretaped interviews with family members and friends of Dunbar, who wrote three semiautobiographical dramas about coming of age in her Yorkshire council estate. Juxtaposing these performances with street-staged productions of selected Dunbar pieces, the layers of artifice commingle in thrilling, revelatory—and appropriate—ways. Dunbar employed art as a means to understand and ultimately transcend her dysfunctional world; exploiting Dunbar’s own aesthetic, Barnard offers representations of tragic personal experiences that inform and illuminate.
The Artist Michel Hazanavicius’s black-and-white silent film is a delight for what it isn’t. His earlier OSS 117 spy movies were entertaining Bond spoofs, so of course I expected a similar take on the silent era. The Artist, though, carefully avoids spoofing its subject. Here, Hazanavicius’s love of the genre is conveyed through affectionate respect.
As a cinematographer and editor, one of the things I appreciate most about the show is its inclusion of very home-brew-style special effects. Any editor interested in motion graphics will have undoubtedly visited videocopilot.net and realized that Andrew Kramer created the opening title sequence for Fringe. The rest of the show’s exemplary effects all take a page from Kramer’s work.
