This Savage Art

I don’t want to bring attention to the obvious but…

Here is Cinema Scope’s latest issue cover:

Here’s some artwork I did a month ago having some fun with all the director on director fighting going on in the media:

Popularity: 15% [?]

Some events in life are too surreal to put into words. This is one of them. On April 3rd, 2008 at 1:15 p.m., my son, Nico Giordano Speruzzi entered the world. He came in at a fighting weight of 8 pounds 11 ounces. Yeah, he is a big boy.

They say stimulation is important for newborns so in time I’ll be breaking out the Cassavetes DVD box set. He’ll be weaned on the greats. Kubrick, Peckinpah (What? Too violent?), Huston. The Neo-Realists. Noir. Scorsese. I’ll even throw in some Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder, that is) and Caddyshack for good measure. Too many to mention here. Oh yeah, this boy will appreciate finer cinema, high culture and low, if I have anything to do with it.

Until then I have to change some diapers so you’ll have to excuse me.

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So today marks the beginning of what will prove to be one of the most challenging year of my life. I [not alone of course] will be bringing a new life into this world. No name as of yet and if I had one I wouldn’t tell you all anyway. A friend [actually a couple of them] told me not to tell people what name you’ve chosen for your child because if they give a look that isn’t exactly complimentary you will be living with that look for a very long time. Good advice.

I spent the last couple of weeks seeing some friends and spending some quiet time with the family and Linda. Quiet is good, trust me.

Creatively, I will be pushing forward with everything as per usual. Writing, screening, shooting, editing, learning…always learning. My time will definitely be consumed in the months to come especially after April (the due date is April 14th, give or take a couple of weeks.) I have a theory that the busier you are the more productive you potentially can be provided you’re busy the good way not the mind-numbing, grinding, spinning your wheels bad way. I got a Canon HV20 HD MiniDV Camcorder so I intend on shooting more which will be good. It’s not a prosumer camera but it can be hacked to produce some beautiful images at 24p. I’m still working with FCP 5.1.4 so getting the HDV format into my system might keep me up a couple of nights. It’s not a full on DV/HD camera like the DVX-100 or the HVX-200 but it will serve me well for small projects and experimenting. Anyway…

I wish everyone who stops by [This Savage Art] a healthy 2008 and thanks for reading and remaining interested.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Two things happened yesterday; I reluctantly turned 40 (like how I crowbarred that in?) and The Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon came to an end on Sunday (I’m still anticipating a couple of stragglers.) It turned out to be a great success with many thought-provoking and compelling arguments, check them out if you haven’t already. These blog-a-thons can fail miserably without contributors so I would like to thank all who did take the time to submit and to those who brought attention to [This Savage Art.]

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Every film just by the nature of economic and creative force, internally or externally, has the potential to fail ambitiously. No man or woman sets out to make a bad film. No one person is immune to this plight and no crystal ball can foresee its final destination regardless of what Variety has to say about it. The pure will to create a work that will endure endless scrutiny and hardship takes a dedicated craftsman, politician, psychologist, leader, editor, visionary, disciplinarian, economist and historian. Pushing the limits of budget, creativity and patience can all be a bust in the end but that is in the eye of the beholder. Can hindsight work in a film’s favor? Was the criticism deserved or misguided? What makes a film that aspires to reach beyond the boundaries of entertainment go down in flames? Who gets to determine its demise? What is an ambitious failure? That’s what we’re here to find out.

Join in and contribute. To read the guidelines check out the original announcement post here.

The Entries:

6.20

Ill Wind Blows Coppola No Good from Edward Copeland

Alien 3 from Ray DeRousse

The Quiet American from Paul Hackett

The Horror…The Horror from William Speruzzi

M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable – Ambitious Failure? from Simon Crowe

Death Driving Ms. Henstridge from Erich Kuersten

6.21

The Offer That Should Have Been Refused from Chris Daniel

Drowning in Ambition? from Pacheco

Sgt. Peppers Ambitious Failures Club Band from Pat Piper

Fading in the last leg from Wagstaff

6.22

The Folly of The Fountain from Robert Humanick

Dune: Its Name Is A Killing Word from J.D. Lafrance

6.23

Jose Rizal from Oggs Cruz

Charles Burnett: To Sleep With Anger from J.J. Murphy

6.24

Contact High from Bob Westal

Tears in Rain. Thomas Vinterberg’s It’s All About Love from Jeremy Richey

Still Coming In

Sisa and Ambitious Failure 2 from Noel Vera

Popularity: 44% [?]

I just moved all the old posts from the Blogger version of [This Savage Art]. It’s something I hesitated doing for a long time because well, think of the chaos that could result in importing over 300 posts and comments to a totally different web publishing platform but it is done! So if you take a look at the Archives you will see that everything goes back to May 2005. You can read all those early posts [uhhhh.]

The older posts may look a little messy because of Blogger’s coding conflict with WordPress and various plugins. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to tagging and cleaning up each individual post but I’ll do a little when I can. Hope ya like.

Popularity: 9% [?]

David Samuel Peckinpah. Born February 21, 1925. Died December 28th, 1984. A director with a reputation for creating mayhem on screen and off.

Always unpredictable and never tame, Peckinpah lived his life to make movies. Everything else was just filler. Today we celebrate this sometimes misunderstood, sometimes reviled loner auteur.

I’ll be adding links as I get them so please feel free to contribute through the weekend. Make sure you contact me with your link. A big thanks to everyone who contributes and visits.

Links:

Forager Blog: The Osterman Weekend

The High Hat | Nitrate: Sam Peckinpah

[This Savage Art]: Bloody Sam And Theme Explored

Cineaste: Sam Peckinpah’s Legendary Western Collection Reviewed

The Hollywood Reporter: Risky Biz Blog: Happy Birthday Sam Peckinpah

Oggs’ Movie Thoughts: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

[This Savage Art]: Intoxicated With The Madness

Big Media Vandalism: “There’s nothing sacred about a hole in the ground or the man that’s in it. Or you. Or me.”

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Sometimes you just don’t feel right until the little things in your life are working. After days of tooling around I think I have a good look for [This Savage Art]. I tried a couple of themes but at the same time didn’t want to depart too much from the last interpretation. Moonlight from Blaze New Media seemed like a good fit. The color scheme reminded me of Mann’s new Vice. A cool slate blue but dark. The grayish off-white and light blue text are easy to look at and won’t fatigue your eyes too much. The header font is still the same, Downcome. Phffeeewww, now I can go back to staring at the wall.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Instead of importing all of my posts from my old Blogger site I thought I would gradually bring in the ones I deemed worthy by the old cut and paste method. Of course you can still go to the old site and look up everything. Every Sunday I’ll add a new one.

Popularity: 5% [?]

As you can see I’ve made some minor aesthetic changes to [this savage art...]. Still minimal and clean but a little more refined. This is what’s different:

• Starting from the top, I made the header title bigger and more pronounced by using a new larger font and painted it a bold white. The font is Downcome and it’s part of the Misprinted collection from Eduardo Racife. Fonts are cool. I can spend hours looking at them.
• The wrap in the center has been changed to black. Once I made the change it seemed like it should have always been this way. Once you go black…
• In general, just made the text bigger and easier on the eyes. Instead of tiny text in blaring white, I greyed it out and notched up the font size.
• I highlighted the most recent entry by boxing it off and cleaning it up. This carries over to all the pages when you choose a link.
• My favorite addition is this hover effect on the sidebar. Float your cursor over the categories and watch it highlight the whole block. Cool.
• Added highlighted metadata at the bottom of all posts, not just the most recent.
• Added a new Archive page in navigation bar. Archive list on sidebar – gone!
• Footer is now black also.

So that is it. Now maybe I can get down to some content filled entries.

Popularity: 5% [?]