1 + 1 = 3: Ken Burns on What Makes a Great Story. Beautiful Stop-Motion Animated Film About the Progression of Alzheimer's. Donating = loving Brain Pickings remains ad-free and takes hundreds of hours a month to research and write, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and value in it, please consider becoming a Member and supporting with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner: (If you don't have a PayPal account, no need to sign up for one – you can just use any credit or debit card.)
You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount: labors of love. Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves: The Iron Giant (Man) The Iron Giant - A Story in Five NightsTed Hughes ~ Dirk Zimmer ~ Harper & Row, 1988originally published as The Iron Man ~ drawings by George Adamson ~ Faber & Faber, 1968 I've done some minor sniffing around since I can across this book at the library the other day. Penned by renowned poet (and one-time husband to Sylvia Plath), it's the original novel that inspired the Brad Bird animated, 1998 film classic, The Iron Giant (one of my all-time favorite animated movies). Now, some folks on the internet seem to think the title of the book was changed from Man to Giant after the movie was released, but the version I have is from 1988 - ten years before the movie was released - and already there was a shift in the title. Not sure for what reason, but if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to know.
So the story begins... The Iron Giant came to the top of the cliff. Hughes even wrote a sequel called The Iron Woman, published in 1993. Girl power to the ultimate extreme. Movie Interview - Sarah Polley - A Long Look At What We Feel Is Missing. Hide captionSeth Rogen and Michelle Williams as a husband and wife whose marriage becomes strained in Take This Waltz, the latest film from Canadian director Sarah Polley. Magnolia Pictures Sarah Polley started acting when she was 4, in her native Canada. She earned critical acclaim for her performance as a teenage girl injured in a school bus crash in Atom Egoyan's film The Sweet Hereafter. Polley made her debut as a director with the subtle and devastating film Away from Her — a portrait of a marriage later in life, as the wife (Julie Christie) is pulled away by Alzheimer's disease.
Now, at 33, she's made a second feature film, called Take This Waltz. Polley spoke to Melissa Block of All Things Considered. Interview Highlights On portraying a marriage in crisis "The original idea for the film was wanting to talk about that general feeling of emptiness that all of us have at some point in our lives, if not most of our lives — that feeling that something is missing. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Student Films, 1956-1960. The great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky made only seven feature films in his short life.
(Find most of them online here.) But before making those, he directed and co-directed three films as a student at the All-Union State Cinema Institute, or VGIK. Those three films, when viewed as a progression, offer insights into Tarkovsky’s early development as an artist and his struggle to overcome the constraints of collectivism and assert his own personal vision. The Killers, 1956: Tarkovsky was fortunate to enter the VGIK when he did. Tarkovsky’s adaptation of Hemingway’s story (see above) was a project for Mikhail Romm’s directing class. Romm’s most important lesson was that it is, in fact, impossible to teach someone to become a director. Tarkovsky worked with a pair of co-directors on The Killers, but by all accounts he was the dominant creative force. The story of how we shot Hemingway’s The Killers is a simple one. There Will Be No Leave Today, 1958: Watch the full film here. Inside the Creative Process of Cut-Paper Storyteller Béatrice Coron. By Maria Popova Slicing the different layers we’re made of, or what an 18th-century French statesman has to do with the MTA.
Béatrice Coron has been a shepherdess, a truck driver, a factory worker, a cleaning lady, and a tour guide. But today, Coron is one of the world’s most remarkable cut-paper artists. I first encountered her astounding artwork on New York’s F train last year and was thrilled to see her take the TED stage this past spring. In her fantastic TED talk, Coron — whose beautiful visual storytelling is a living testament to combinatorial creativity, borrowing inspiration from wildly diverse fields and subjects — takes you through her exceptional creative process and how her stories come to life.
In life, and in paper-cutting, everything is connected — one story leads to another.” ~ Béatrice Coron My inspirations are very eclectic. The stories, they have a lot of possibilities, they have a lot of scenarios. Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. MetaMaus: Inside the Making of the Comic that Made History.
By Maria Popova Why comics? Why mice? Why the Holocaust? Twenty-five years ago, beloved comic artist and editor Art Spiegelman published Maus: A Survivor’s Tale — his cult-classic comic book about the Holocaust based on the biography of Spiegelman’s father, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and paved the way for comics as a medium for nonfiction. Today, Spiegelman releases the highly anticipated MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus — a fascinating look at the thinking, tinkering, and creative process behind the making of the iconic comic. The book seems to loom over me like my father once did, and journalists and students still want answers to the same few questions: Why comics? The book comes with a digitized reference copy of The Complete Maus in the form of a bonus DVD, linked to a deep archive of audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a wealth of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches.
Share on Tumblr. 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Writing. Check the Vimeo Awards Finalists. The Hare and the Tortoise: 1947 Encyclopedia Britannica Dramatization with Live Animals. What Makes Hitchcock's Films Great: An Animated Recipe. Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story. By Maria Popova The year of reading more and writing better is well underway with writing advice the likes of David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers.
Now comes Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007) — anarchist, Second Life dweller, imaginary interviewer of the dead, sad soul — with eight tips on how to write a good short story, narrated by the author himself. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.Start as close to the end as possible.Be a Sadist. Why Leadership Storytelling Is Important.
The Basics Of Leadership Storytelling. The Science Of Storytelling. How To Be A Better Writer. Digital Storytelling Tools. Annie Dillard on Winter, Memes, and Living with Wonder. Visual Storytelling: New Language for the Information Age. By Maria Popova We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is. We’re extracting meaning from our minds and our own lives.” These words of wisdom come from legendary inventor and futurist George Dyson, who in a recent interview contemplated the growing disconnect between information and meaning in the age of data overload. It would be ridiculous to try to express by curved lines moral ideals, the prosperity of peoples, or the decadence of their literature. Visual Storytelling: Inspiring a New Visual Language, from the fine folks at Gestalten, gathers the most compelling work by a new generation of designers, illustrators, graphic editors, and data journalists tackling the grand sensemaking challenge of our time by pushing forward the evolving visual vocabulary of storytelling.
Vahram Muratyan: Paris vs. Gregory Ferembach: The Movies Flowcharts Share on Tumblr. Fifty things I've learned about the literary life | Books | The Observer. From time to time, this column is asked for advice, sometimes obsessively, about decoding the many mysteries of "the world of books". There's a widespread view, held by those looking from the outside, that there must be a philosopher's stone for success in literature, a magic formula that will turn everything to gold. The truth is much closer to Thomas Edison's definition of creativity: "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. " So this is not an advice column. In the celebrated words of the American screenwriter William Goldman, "nobody knows anything".
However, in the season of goodwill, here is my list of 50 things I've learned in the byways and saloons of Grub Street. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. Finally: anything goes. Happy Christmas!