Mary Blair was the designer behind the look of Disney in the 1950’s. You can learn more about her at The Disney Family Museum’s exhibit, MAGIC, COLOR, FLAIR: the world of Mary Blair.
Blair’s joyful creativity―her eye-appealing designs and exuberant color palette―endure in numerous media, including classic Disney animated films, such as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan, and theme park attractions at Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort, most notably the “It’s a Small World” ride.
Here’s a video featuring her work. You can find out more in The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. And you can catch a glimpse of one of the most significant influences on her work in the documentary Walt & El Grupo, where a cross-cultural exchange with South America inspired her more modernist, colorful style.
Academy Originals: Hollywood Filmmakers Talk About What Inspires Them
Posted on July 3, 2014 at 7:00 am
In this short from the terrific Academy Originals series, Seth Rogen says that it is friendship that is at the center of the stories he likes to write. “Academy Originals” is AMPAS’s first original digital series. The initiative is a documentary-style video series which examines everything from the creative process, to the moments that changed the course of filmmaking, to the artists who are charting its future. New Academy Originals are available every Monday on Oscars.org/AcademyOriginals and YouTube.com/AcademyOriginals. Check out the other episodes:
Go behind the scenes with film critic Kevin Lee to see a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of “Transformers: Age of Extinction.” I love the way he incorporated the amateur videos made by fans as the big-budget studio film was being made in Chicago. You can read more about his experience of making this documentary on Slate.
Lee writes:
There were three types of filmmaking happening all at once, I then realized: a multimillion-dollar global Hollywood blockbuster, my modest independent documentary, and the dozens of amateur videos all being created in an instant. I started to wonder about the connections between the three, and what they might have in common. Trying to answer those questions in documentary form led me to understand Hollywood movies, their production, and our shifting relationship to them as viewers and consumers, in ways that I hadn’t before….
Frankly, it humbled me as a filmmaker, because it drove home the realization that everyone is a filmmaker now. I also realized that everyone in their own way was making their own version of Transformers, based on the small privileged glimpses they had of this massive production. I started to notice these videos popping up on YouTube, and not just from Chicago, but from Utah, Texas, Detroit, Hong Kong. After a weekend of keyword-spelunking through the caves of YouTube, I emerged with 355 videos that documented the production. In a sense, the documentary of the making ofTransformers had already been made, in 355 pieces. Now it was a matter of figuring out how the pieces fit together.
John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands were at the forefront of a revolution in cinema that led to a new era of naturalism in subject matter and performance. Cassavetes, best known as an actor for starring opposite Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. But as a director, he was a pioneer of independent film. Working with his wife, Gena Rowlands and friends like Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara, he made movies of startling intimacy and honesty. Every film that is (or appears to be) improvised by its actors is inspired by Cassavetes and Rowlands.
Leonard Maltin calls Cassavetes’ 1959 film, “Shadows,” “a watershed in the birth of American independent cinema”.
Rowlands was nominated for an Oscar for her fearless performance in “A Woman Under the Influence,” a 1974 film that piercingly portrayed her character’s mental collapse.
Great News About What’s Coming from Pixar, Kristin Wiig, and The Magic Schoolbus
Posted on June 17, 2014 at 8:00 am
Great news about three upcoming projects!
* Pixar has announced that its summer 2015 release will be “Inside Out,” which takes place inside the mind of an 11 year old girl. Her emotions will be the characters: Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). It sounds a lot like the old Cranium Command attraction at Epcot, which I remember fondly. With Pete Docter of “Up” as director and a terrific cast, this sounds like it could be one of Pixar’s best.
“It’s based on a strong emotional experience I had watching my daughter grow up,” says the “Up” director, who noticed that when his daughter Elie turned 12, much of her childhood joy disappeared, and she became more moody and withdrawn. “There is something that is lost when you grow up” — and the film became a way to explore that change on an emotional level.
The film centers on a young girl named Riley Anderson, “one of those kids who seems like she was born happy,” Docter says. “In truth, Riley is not our main character; she is our setting.” To demonstrate what he meant, Docter screened the first five minutes of the movie, a good segment of which was still in a pencil-drawn storyboard state. (The finished film will open June 19, 2015.) Sure enough, “Inside Out” takes place in Riley’s subconscious, where a crew of anthropomorphized emotions manage how the girl feels at any given moment from a control panel that looks something like the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise.
* According to the New York Times, Kristin Wiig and her “Bridesmaids” co-screenwriter Annie Mumolo are working on a new project. This time, Wiig will direct as well. TriStar Productions says that the film is about “best friends who find themselves in over their heads and out of their depths, which were, perhaps, not too deep to begin with.”
* And an old friend is coming back, via Netflix, which has announced that Ms. Frizzle and the Magic School Bus will be back with new adventures for a new generation!
And more: “9 to 5” co-stars Jane Fonda and Lili Tomlin are reuniting in a series for Netflix. Can we hope that Dolly Parton shows up to guest star?
. But as a director, he was a pioneer of independent film. Working with his wife, Gena Rowlands and friends like Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara, he made movies of startling intimacy and honesty. Every film that is (or appears to be) improvised by its actors is inspired by Cassavetes and Rowlands.
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