Posted at 1:07 pm by Gelene Celis, on June 24, 2015
…is a museum of Islamic art, Iranian art, and Muslim culture.
…also North America’s first Islamic Museum right here in Toronto, ON
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There were pieces from Sicily and Spain though, which got me confused, but then I read on and realized that European cultures had a pretty heavy influence on Middle Eastern & predominant Islamic nations. Duh.
Here’s my personal favorite:
“Said the Prophet, most glorious: Abandoning the world is more righteous than any worship.”
Posted at 10:18 pm by Gelene Celis, on June 6, 2015
“I went to audition in Canadian Idol. I slept overnight in the line-up and then I woke up with a sore throat! I was crying! I called my dad. I was like, ‘Dad! They’re going to put me in the bad audition tape!’ I was crying so much…I went back home. I didn’t audition!”
Wait what? What’s bad audition tape? What?
“At the end of the show, they play the worst auditions in the episode! It’s like bloopers!”
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He ultimately got cast a leading role in a theatre in Madrid for almost a decade though he rooted for Hollywood in the beginning.
Morals of the story:
1. Sometimes, as we walk our paths, we are shown a different direction that is better for us.
2. Before we get to our destination, we have to fail many, many, many times… arguably, to prepare us better for where we’re actually headed before we even know, ourselves, where that is.
I don’t really care much about these things but since he’s my friend, I told him he should’ve gone to the audition anyway so I can watch it for my own entertainment… but yeah, no, had I been in his place, I would’ve done the exact same thing.
Posted at 12:42 am by Gelene Celis, on December 15, 2014
...is a musician/DJ/producer/promoter from Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Here are a couple of my favourites:
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I had a ton of posts on this guy as he is one of my favourite DJ’s/Producer/Musicians. I thought his talk, “PLAY: It’s a serious thing” is really important. A lot of people seem to think that art is all unicorn farts but like he mentioned, someone wanted to do a doc on a day of his life to which he responded, “It’s gonna be fucking boring then” ’cause all he does is sit in front of the computer at home and make music.
I’ve hung out with musicians -> true story. Shows are where they drop it.
Posted at 4:53 pm by Gelene Celis, on September 19, 2014
… a film by Banksy (United Kingdom)
“Los Angeles based Frenchman ‘Thierry Guetta’ gets the idea that he would like to film street artists in the process of creating their work. He tells them that he is making a documentary, when in reality he has no intention of editing the footage into one cohesive movie. Unaware of this latter fact, many street artists from around the world agree to participate. Thierry even gets into the act by assisting them in creating the art. One of the artists that participates is the camera-shy Brit Banksy, who refuses to be shown on screen unless he is blacked out. Banksy does convince Thierry to use the footage to make a movie. In Thierry doing so, Banksy comes to the realization that Thierry is a lousy filmmaker, but he is an interesting character in an odd yet appealing way. So Banksy decides to use the footage and add additional material to make his own movie about Thierry’s journey in this project. Since Thierry spent so much time involved in the process of street art, Banksy also convinces Thierry to become a street artist himself. Thierry reinvents himself as street artist MBW, an acronym for “Mr. Brainwash”. Banksy, in the end, may regret this suggestion.”
– IMDB
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This had limited release but was showing at Yonge/Dundas cinemas for a while.
Rec 1 is what you see here. Rec 2 is a pickup from 1. Rec 3 is a prequel, and Rec 4 picks up from 2.
In film school, we studied “lazy” ways to set up horror films and one of them was isolation, meaning isolating the characters to a confined space and not leaving them much choice. It makes sense that it’s considered “lazy” but I think this is an exception to that theory. There is nothing lazy about the character development and the series of events in the movie at all.
Posted at 6:02 pm by Gelene Celis, on September 8, 2014
Lars Von Trier is a filmmaker from Kongens, Lyngby, Denmark.
He was one of the founders of Dogme 95 during the 90’s, which was a rebellion movement against ubiquitous use of special effects and frou-frou that doesn’t carry much substance, which abided by this manifesto – The Vow of Chastity:
1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.)
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera.)
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.
Many years later, when I heard he’s coming out with a feature, free of the manifesto, I was like, “Wuuut!?!”
Then I found out that it’s about a couple who lost their child where the wife/mother is intensely grieving. The husband is a therapist who decides to treat her, himself, by taking her out in the middle of nowhere.
Two things you must never do as a therapist: treat someone close to you and isolate them.
It did not disappoint.
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Don’t me wrong, I like my big-budget, substance-less blockbuster films on occasion ’cause it’s fun but these things, to me, are so much more interesting to study.
Montage editing was “radical” or just too “out there” back in the 60s or 70s even though a lot of avant-garde filmmakers were already using it at the time.
Mainstream caught on eventually.
Granted, they didn’t use it quite as much as the avant-garde, or even fairly popular filmmakers. with tendencies towards experimentation, do (ex. Darren Aronofsky or Sofia Coppola). Mainstream media gauges it with the market vs the avant-garde, which has a very no-fucks-given sensibility.
Anyway back to Von Trier: he didn’t use special effects in all the conventional ways at all but IMO it’s really compelling because he used it, strategically, to emphasize human emotion in moments where it’s at its peak. As I’m sure you know, what goes on the inside can be very different, sometimes it looks almost like nothing, on the outside, so what he’s done really puts the audience in a subjective, immersive headspace.
Gelene 