Out of silence, a lone, distorted electric guitar begins its cry. The air around its wriggling notes swelters. Barroom shutters flutter in the dry wind, a stagecoach zooms out of town so as to escape the imminent confrontation. When the dust clears, two worn men, twenty feet apart, stand frozen. They stare at each other, legs spread, right hands hovering near hips. A harmonica bounces off the guitar, and the tension rises. The street is desolate. First one and then the other reaches for his six-shooter. The guitar screeches. One man falls to the ground, dead.
We've seen this sequence or something like it in hundreds of Westerns ranging from the taut High Noon to Elvis's misbegotten Charro. They all climax with the gunfight that the audience has been screaming for. In the best of them, these blasts release both the actors and the folks in the theater. Starting in the late sixties, Sergio Leone directed a series of smart, barbed Westerns that took on the form's conventions only to tweak them obliquely. Morricone's austere, troubled score is integral to Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone's greatest film; Leone edited and cut the film to this majestic music, rather than the traditional other way around. This theme to the movie doesn't include the electric guitar or the harmonica (you have to go deeper into the film for that), but its orchestra does suggest something majestic and terrifying at the same time.

"The Superman serial was a 1948 15-part black-and-white movie serial starring an unaccredited Kirk Alyn (but billed only by his character name, Superman) and Noel Neill as Lois Lane. It is notable as the first live-action appearance of Superman on film and for the longevity of its distribution." 

Hoag sez, "VODO, a new project from one of the figures behind STEAL THIS FILM, is a an attempt to harness the power of filesharing networks for the benefit of filmmakers and other creators. Its unprecedented coalition of filesharing sites and services, including Mininova, Isohunt, The Pirate Bay, Legal Torrents and many others, has offered to promote new works by creators who want to share their works. VODO then encourages downloaders to donate directly to the filmmakers.
VODO's just distributed its first film, US NOW by Ivo Gormely, which is now highly seeded on Mininova and available on many major filesharing sites under a CC-by-SA license."
An official selection of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, OUTRAGE investigates the hidden lives of some of the country's most powerful policymakers - from now-retired Idaho Senator Larry Craig, to former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy - and examines how these and other politicians have inflicted damage on millions of Americans by opposing gay rights. Equally disturbing, the film explores the mainstream media's complicity in keeping those secrets, despite the growing efforts to "out" them by gay rights organizations and bloggers.


The Dutch public broadcaster VPRO is currently running a thematic week on the
Flickr user Graphic Nothing has a delightful set of "Movie Posters for Minimalists" that contain the minimum visual information necessary to convey a sense of the film. I have a feeling that a lot of these would work better for people who've already seen the movies, rather than as enticement to go to the cinema in the first place, but I'm still very pleased by them.









I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness. Her name is Leslie Van Houten and I think you would like her as much as I do. She was one of those notorious "Manson girls" who shaved their heads, carved X's in their foreheads and laughed, joked, and sang their way through the courthouse straight to death row without the slightest trace of remorse forty years ago. Leslie is hardly a "Manson girl" today. Sixty years old, she looks back from prison on her involvement in the La Bianca murders (the night after the Tate massacre) in utter horror, shame, and guilt and takes full responsibility for her part in the crimes. I think it's time to parole her.


thekinginyellow
The Clash, Blondie, and Cobain sneakers from Converse
snakedart
Robots dance the Nutcracker Suite
Robin Boast
LibDem rank-and-file make emergency motion for net freedom
Johnny Cat
The Clash, Blondie, and Cobain sneakers from Converse
apoxia
Little Billy's Letters to famous and infamous people
anansi133
EU Parliament votes 663-13 against ACTA's enforcement measur
moioci
Widespread support for toilets that separate crap from urine
Chuck
Man marries body pillow girlfriend in Korea
Boba Fett Diop
Robots dance the Nutcracker Suite
JoshP
Adam Savage: my Blade Runner gun