An Unfortunate Film By Kurtis Hough

Yikes! This is very a very sad yet funny (sort of) film by Kur­tis Hough. “how to lose $2400 in 24 sec­onds” Sorry Kurtis!

regret­tably filmed by Kur­tis Hough

KH Stu­dios, 2011

www.khstudios.com

Twit­ter: twitter.com/kurtishough

happy 40th anniver­sary North­west Film Center

10 Excellent Video Game Fan Films

Who doesn’t love video games, okay mom’s, but beyond that? One thing is for cer­tain, the mak­ers of the fol­low­ing ten fan films and fake trail­ers sure do! These were def­i­nitely cre­ated by fans and for fans. I am very impressed by their work, cre­ativ­ity and ded­i­ca­tion to detail. With pow­er­ful inex­pen­sive tech­nol­ogy in the hands of fans, Hol­ly­wood should be ner­vous, for these film­mak­ers make films that equal or best any­thing the big stu­dios can make.

A quick note, if you are inter­ested in the the­ory of video games and the cul­tural impact of them, check out these two great sites:

• Machin­ima
• Escapist Mag­a­zine

Half Life: Ori­gins Live Action Short from Infec­tious­De­signer
The music is very riveting.

Beyond Black Mesa from Infec­tious­De­signer
A lit­tle schmaltzy, but still pretty sweet.

The Leg­end of Zelda Fake Trailer
If only it was real…from IGN.com

Poké­mon Apoké­lypse: Live Action Trailer HD
The act­ing could be bet­ter but I like the gritty take on the world’s most annoy­ing game.

Tetris, the movie.
I never real­ized it was so deadly!

Jim Henson’s Res­i­dent Evil 5
Mup­pets and zom­bies, two great tastes that go great together!

“Mario” — SXSW 2011 Film Bumper
Mario Bros. as you’ve never seen it, an indie film! Best line: “Mario you’re a plumber, not some hero.”

Por­tal: No Escape (Live Action Short Film by Dan Tra­cht­en­berg)
This is very poignant and well done.

Mod­ern War­fare 3: Find Makarov — Oper­a­tion King­fish Short Film
Almost too realistic.

Half Life in 60 Sec­onds
Okay not as seri­ous as the oth­ers, but if you’d played the game it’s pretty funny.

2001: A Design Something Every Day Odyssey

I am a big fan of film­maker Stan­ley Kubrick (1928–1999), so you can imag­ine my excite­ment when I saw this post of great pro­mo­tional pic­tures from 2001: A Space Odyssey on the blog Stan­ley Kubrick — Deserv­ing of Wor­ship. A nice sen­ti­ment for one of the great­est film mak­ers we’ve ever seen.

Kubrick was great film­maker and a real artist. His films have been com­pletely digested by the cul­ture and have become a sort of visual short hand.. the mono­lith, Dr. Strangelove, Alex & his droogs… These arche­typal images have burned them selves in or col­lec­tive con­scious­ness like ghosted images on an old CRT mon­i­tor. The great Mar­garet Cho is aware of Kubrick’s iconic power (see here). His last­ing influ­ence  is the true mark of a genius and con­sum­mate craftsman.

In that  vein I designed this desk­top wall paper for my com­puter as apart of my Design Some­thing Every Day Project.

Design Some­thing Every Day 26 of 365

Here’s a few great Kubrick links and resources:

Stan­ley Kubrick: Inter­views (Con­ver­sa­tions With Film­mak­ers Series)
Ed. By Gene D. Phillips

This book includes the amaz­ing inter­view with Eric Nordern orig­i­nally pub­lished in Play­boy (Sep­tem­ber 1968). It has one of my all time favorite quotes, some­thing of a mantra for me:

The most ter­ri­fy­ing fact about the uni­verse is not that it is hos­tile but that it is indif­fer­ent; but if we can come to terms with this indif­fer­ence and accept the chal­lenges of life within the bound­aries of death — how­ever muta­ble man may be able to make them — our exis­tence as a species can have gen­uine mean­ing and ful­fill­ment. How­ever vast the dark­ness, we must sup­ply our own light.” — Stan­ley Kubrick

Some good Kubrick resources:

• The Kubrick Site — an Amaz­ing col­lec­tion for all things Kubrick
• The Offi­cial Warner Broth­ers Site for his films.
• Kubricks IMDB Site

Finally the trailer to 2001: A Space Odyssey, what inspired this post to begin with.