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Arquivo para a ‘Digital Midia’ Categoria

Between Vertigo and Two Popes

04 Feb

Brazilian democracy does not yet have depth and maturity, everything is polarized between two exclusive points of view and both authoritarian, but neither is the case of Democracy in Vertigo with a clear interpretation of the facts of the young director Petra Costa, nor Dois Papas (Two Popes) under the direction of Fernando Meirelles, are good directors and have a view of the facts.

I start with Fernando Meirelles because it was his interview at Roda Viva (Brazilian TV program) that encouraged me to talk about the Brazilian Oscar nominations, which should make us all proud, although we may disagree, we need to learn this democratic right, both have cultural foundations.

Meirelles explained his vision of Francisco, which would be the original script of the film, which gradually became the dialogue and the admission of papal mistakes, both made mistakes, as we all do in life, but both manage to dialogue and look at the future of the church and man.

Brazilian democracy lacks this to admit the mistakes of the past, but it is clear, first of all, to know it well, otherwise this will never be possible and in this sense I value and liked the film by Pedra Costa.

In fact, it is necessary to know her story, Elena, her first film has what characterizes her and seems to be the guiding thread of her style, puts her “gaze”, which is clear by putting in the documentary she makes a swirling dance , reminiscent of the deceased sister and closes in a close-up of her eye, I mean, she sees herself putting her vision on the facts.

Seeing the debate, and remembering the films of Meirelles O Fiel Jardineiro (2005) and Cidade de Deus (2002), I see that the debaters (in tv program) know little about his work and are fixated on their own polarized opinions about the film, I also highlight the little trendy but excellent film “Essay on blindness” (2008) that would fit very well for what happens in Brazilian culture.

Both Petra’s documentary and Meirelles’ film have emotion, good images and photography, in short they are good, but most will stay with the polarization and not with the dialogue that art seeks.

 

Golden Globe Winners

07 Jan

The highlight is the winner of best actor Brad Pitt in Era once in Hllywood, who had two fair Anthony Hopkins nominations in Two Popes and Al Pacino in The Irishman, best actress went to Awkwafina (The Farewell) who had the nomination of Emma Thompson (Late Night) , the awards can reverse at the Oscars, although the Golden Globe is always considered a preview.
Best dramatic film was for 1917, which won best director also Sam Mendes,
where the Irishman, Joker and Two Popes competed, I didn’t watch the winner, but i had posted that I expected a surprise, which happened, best comic or musical film went to Once time in Hollywood, which deserves to be seen because it also won best screenplay.
Joker won a consolation award with the best soundtrack, i didn’t see the film protesting the praise of violence and an attempt to justify human wickedness in times of autocrats and dangers of war I consider inappropriate for all ages.
The Golden Globe sits an numerous list of award-winning, best actress in series went to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, best actress in miniseries Michelle Willaims, Best actor in a miniseries for Russell Crowe, etc. appear those competitions between children who give medals to All.
One last highlight is the best foreign film for Parasite, those who watched really are impressed with the film.

 

Missing Dialogue

22 Oct

There were no dialogues, there were still abysses, and we were not always clear, there were no clearings, but abysses, few safe bridges, and much lack of love and disrepute.
Brazilian writer Elisa Lucinda says: “My literature is full of this subject of injustice in the world, love as a great antidote is one of my favorite themes” (Interviews Dialogues, Itaú Cultural, 2017).
He wrote about Fernando Pessoa: “The Knight of Nothing”, along with Rubem Alves: “The Poetry of the Encounter”, about its fullness in “Vozes guardadas”, are the ones I know, but there are others in my pile for when the leave space for the pleasant ones.
Elisa Lucinda is an actress, singer, journalist, teacher, singer and poet, little known by the mainstream media, even by committed and conscientious people, but it is an “unprecedented binge”, as she likes to refer to her books, loves and revere.
It makes the most beautiful, unprejudiced and authentic defense of the books: “Children go to school and leave without knowing that book is art, that writer is an artist, unaware that when they love Harry Potter, Snow White and Sun Quixote in the movies, this was all a book. ”
In a time of absent dialogue it is good to remember this brilliant writer, who wrote in the latest fashion book:
“In the sweet seas and in the difficult waters of the raw life, my joy continues, continues.
Stripped of guns and fears, I’m more beautiful naked”, writing Elisa.
If many are afraid, if the news is harsh and unhealthy, we will not be silent or afraid because we will pluck fear out of our hearts and fight the madmen in the streets.
There are no bridges, they erect walls, close doors and talk about darkness, as for us, we keep searching for clearings

 

 

 

Revolutionary method for videos

19 Sep

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a method that without human intervention modifies a video content from one style to another. The method is based on a data processing known as Recycle-GAN that can transform large amounts of video making them useful for movies or documentaries.

The new system can be used for example to color films originally in black and white, some already made like the one shown in the video below, but the techniques were expensive and needed a lot of human effort during working hours.

The process arose from experiences in virtual reality, which in addition to the attempts to create “deep falsities” (altering objects or distorting contents, could appear a person inserted in an image, without it was allowed, in everyday scenes almost always happens this and much people do not accept.

“I think there are a lot of stories to tell,” said Aayush Bansal, a Ph.D. student at the CMU Robotics Institute, who said of a film production that was the main motivation to help design the method, he said, allowing that the films were produced faster and cheaper, and added: “it is a tool for the artist that gives them an initial model that they can improve,” according to the CMU website.

More information on method and videos can be found at Recycle-Gan website.

 

 

Brief history of the lie

11 Sep

People always tell stories in a way that their story seems a little better than it is, understand story with h are not those of the books, but the facts for which there are artifacts, which in law is called instrumental proof.
One could go in classical antiquity, where we would find Diogenes to look for an honest man with a flashlight, I would say today In times of partisanship, which seem more fanciful football fanatics or some kind of fundamentalist belief, the truth is distorted everywhere, the recent fact in Brazil of the Bolsonaro stab had from conspiracy theories of a poorly executed crime, to whoever defended that it was all a staging, this said by intellectuals … amazing.
In recent history I find the thinker and poet of the Spanish Modernism António Machado y Ruiz, who wrote La verdad is also invented, so fake news are older, what has changed now is that intellectuals of little notoriety and ignorant people can also do so, and with it to gain a false reputation, but it is in fact notoriety.
Antonio Machado y Ruiz and encounter three very interesting phrases: “Never lose contact with the ground because only then will you have an approximate idea of ​​your height”, and “if it is good to live, it is better to dream, and the best is to wake up” , but we should always wake up and sometimes this requires pruning, cuts would say, that the more mature the deeper.
I remember Cecilia Meirelles’s phrase: “I learned from the primroses to let myself be cut and to return always in full,” I also remember the Poem by Mário de Andrade, The Valuable Time of the Mature.
In the novel The Less Traveled Way, Scott Peck makes a statement to think: “It may seem less objectionable to fool the rich than the poor, but it is a mistake. Under the law, there are differences between committing a fraud in a business, handing over the fake income statement, using scrapbooks on a test, or saying at home that you stayed to work late when you are unfaithful. It is true that some mistakes are worse than others, but in reality they are not all lies and betrayals, “he would say in politics, to” believers.”
I remember once again Antonio Machado y Ruiz: “It is proper for men of medium-sized heads to invest against everything that does not fit in their heads,” those who invest the most against others have dogmatic truth, medium wisdom (if any) and arrogance to pounds.
I continue to invest in education that is neither dogmatic nor pragmatic, but the hermeneutics of the one who always doubts and is always open to the thought of the Other.

 

Why it is important to read Sloterdijk

29 Aug

I informed in the last post that besides the spheres of Sloterdijk, I have my own sphere, borrowed from Teilhard Chardin: the Noosphere. I read Sloterdijk´s Spheres only I that was published in Portuguese, of the others I have comments of the own author and of his readers and interpreters, 
An answer I read recently from an interview with him gave me an important synthesis of my closeness to his thinking, when asked about what he expected from the academic world, he said ceremonially, “From the 19th century onwards (let’s think of Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche), the world of philosophers is divided between those who, like me, seek an alliance with the media of their time (at that time, literature, today the press, radio and television), and those who do not do it, betting on the classic link between university and book publishers as their only cognitive biotope, “among many things I read, this is the coolest.
I do not bet on the media of social networks, blogs like the one I write to ten years, by fad or affirmation of my thinking, but because I think it is important to dialogue with what is now media, I refused some time, for example, to Twitter who is impulsive and angry.
Another point of contact is his view of the comfort zone, in the same interview published in the Folha São Paulo 2003 space Mais+, but which I randomly found on a website to re-read what influenced me at the time, which made me soon buy the book : Rules for the Human Park, published by brazilian Estação Liberdade, at the turn of the millennium, but soon stopped reading.
I only came back years later alerted by a student to the importance of his thinking.
This point of security, therefore, is not a zone of comfort, explains: “We are thinking how the human being architect the security of its existence. How does he live? How do you prevent future eventualities and catastrophes? How do you defend yourself? How do you integrate into your cultures, understood as communities of struggle? It is a paradigm shift: from philosophy to a general immunology, “that is, we seek a” place “to be sure, there is an analytic of the place, I would say in my analysis, in direct opposition to nihilistic and Kantian pragmatism.
A preview of Sloterdijk can not fail to be noticed in this interview, when predicting fascism in the USA: “From the point of view of media theory, fascism is monothematism in power. If a public opinion is structured in such a way that uniformity increases too much, we have a pre-fascist symptom, “there are several points on the planet with this symptom, and of course we can plunge into a new pre-war fascist era.
We can not fail to see this in positions in Latin America, and in Brazil in particular.

 

Hologram make success

26 Aug

Of unexpected firmness, a singer who is a three-dimensional hologram, Hatsune Miku conquered crowds for her shows in various cities of Japan.

 

Hatsune fans, which is a holographic production simulating a 16-year-old girl, shake their luminous apathetic and shake during the show as if the artist were real.According to the Daily Mail report, Hatsune’s voice was created with voice samples from Japanese actress Saki Fujita. All these samples contain sounds that, when placed in series, become words and phrases.

 
Now the creators of the hologram can compose any song that the “avatar” will sing even without much elaboration.
 
 

A pause for Cannes

14 May

Cannes is not very charming, they say here in Europe, but I disagree when looking at some films that are there, I would say that about 5 people caught my attention, but at least 9 could be watched closely, especially by Brazilians. I read anything about 5 and 4 films I knew.

From the filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (Golden Palm in The Past of 2013, The Apartment of 2016 and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2017), his film name Todos lo saben, set in Argentina and Spain has Latin actors known in Brazil, as Penépope Cruz, Jarvier Bardem and Ricardo Darin.

The second one I think is worth it is Wim Wenders’film Francis: Man of His Word (from films like Wings of Desire, City of Angels and Paris Texas) and the main actor no less than Pope Francisco, I still remember that he made a documentary also about brazilian photografic Sebastião Salgado.

The third, for Star Wars enthusiasts and also for the main actor who participated in the two Blade Runner films, Harrisson Ford who played the role of Han Solo in the original series, but now done by Alden Ehrenreich, still very young when the pilot of Millennium Falcon meets his friend Chewbacca and Calrissian (Donald Glover) well before joining the Rebellion.

According to the news reports of the movies, this one was stuck since 2015, but now appears in Cannes, the Brazilian Cacá Diegues The great mystic circus, which tells the story of five generations of a circus family, with Juliano Cazarré, Bruna Linzmeyer, Antonio Fagundes, Jesuita Barbosa and Frenchman Vincent Cassel, apparently promises, is worth checking.

The fifth and last I make a comment, it’s back the racial question brings back Spike Lee, who tells a real story in Blackkklansman, a black cop Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan and reaches the lead a local group.

Movies that I have little information but the critics are commenting on are: Under the Silver Lake (by David Robert Mitchell, Bad Current), Fahrenheit 451 (Ramin Bahrani), The House that Jack Built (from the controversial Lars von Trier) and The Man who killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam) which brings a repagination of the historical novel Don Quixote.

Today I return to Artificial Intelligence theme.

 

Oscar 2018 without surprises

05 Mar

Dunkirk took 3 statues, the best actor and best actress winners were Gary OldmanBest animation for Viva la vida, I did not like it.aEstatueta (The Destiny of a Nation) and Frances McDormand (Three ads. for a crime).
My favorite Blade Runner 2049 took two statuettes (Best photography and visual effects), as well as “Three ads for a crime”, the Chilean film “A fantastic woman” with Daniela Veja was the best foreign film.
After 14 nominations, the cinematographer Roger Deakins finally at age 68 earned his first statuette.
Actress Frances McDormand was responsible for the most political word: “We all have a story to tell. Let’s talk about our projects, which need funding. We have to have inclusion”, referring also to his poster movie of a mother asking that the crime that killed her daughter be cleared.
Another appeal was the best director’s winner, Guilhermo del Toro, Mexican, spoke about the importance of “erasing the frontiers” direct allusion to Donald Trump.

Best animation for Coco (in portuguese The life is a party), I did not like it.

Jordan Peele became the first black man to win the Original Screenplay Oscar in “Run.”

 

My darks of the 2018 Oscar

29 Dec

Mudbound, Tears on the Mississippi is one of my favorites, of course aoBladeRunnernot yet released in Brazil (scheduled for February 22), but the theme attracts me and perhaps also get ahead by addressing the unprecedented theme of racism and feminism during 2nd World War, has in the cast: Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell and Carey Mulligan.

Annihilation is a film in the line of Ex-Machina, which impressed critics a lot (it only will be won special effects), now after the great success of Ex-Machina: Artificial Instinct (Oscar winner for best special effects), director Alex Garland prepares another science fiction, about a biologist participating in an experience in which the laws of nature do not exist, in the cast are Natalie Portman in the lead role, alongside Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
One of the good old films forgotten last year was The Lobster from the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos, perhaps being one of the writers and directors of the most creative contemporary filmmakers, now with a family drama may have some chance, with a partnership with Colin Farrell in this new mix of drama and suspense, about a surgeon and his wife (Nicole Kidman), transforming the life of a troubled family, the Sacrifice of the Sacred Deer is scheduled to launch in Brazil on February 8.
A film that may surprise, is The King of the Show, by unknown director Michael Gracey, a digital effects expert, but the film is about a circus that charmed the US Barnum & Bailey, just the story of PT Barnum with good actors Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Williams, with the special effects and the visual of the time is a good promise.
He was expecting something for Blade Runner 2049 (from director Ridley Scott), Harrison Ford repeating the role 35 years later, K (Ryan Goslind) and Joi (Ana de Armas) (photo), but the cult movie plus and box office less, has few chances, perhaps a tribute to the whole of the work for Harrison Ford, I continue to cheer, is an epic of fictions.
I am out of the Glamour of the best actors and actresses, directors and co-stars since the “white” Oscar of 2016, I consider the indications more politically correct and not artistically correct.