Thursday 7 February 2008

Deeply Superficial


The Deeply Superficial Blog-a-thon is taking place over at South Dakota Dark all week long. This post has been submitted as part of it.


When I read about the Deeply Superficial Blog-a-thon, I pretty much knew that I'd be going heavy on the screenshots. But what to choose?

I've already done screenshots galore for other beautiful looking films like Tears Of The Black Tiger, Citizen Dog, Princess Raccoon, Pistol Opera and Genesis, so I had to randomly cobble a few choices together. I was finding it difficult in a few spots though, as the beauty of some of the scenes I wanted to capture only really came through with the movement of the characters, objects or the camera itself. A film like "Koyaanisqatsi" might not come across as being a gorgeous feast for the eyes without getting the full motion of many of those scenes.

But anyway, here's a bunch of screen captures that I just love to look at...I guess I could discuss several of them, but then that would be running the risk of being only Somewhat Superficial.


Double Suicide (1969 - Masahiro Shinoda)









Samurai Spy (1965 - Masahiro Shinoda)









Shinoda would make a terrifc choice for one of those Eclipse box sets.


8 1/2 (1963 - Federico Fellini)







Onibaba (1964 - Kaneto Shindo)







Lady Vengeance (2005 - Chan-wook Park)








Raise The Red Lantern (1991 - Zhang Yimou)






Dolls (2002 - Takeshi Kitano)









Metropolis (2001 - Rintaro)









The Tales Of Hoffmann (1951 - Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)









The Conformist (1970 - Bernardo Bertolucci)







4 comments:

PIPER said...

Damn Bob,

Those are some beautiful screen shots.

My favorites from Lady Vengence and Dolls.

Shannon the Movie Moxie said...

Wow, those are amazing.

I watched Raise the Red Lantern recently, and those shots capture it's beauty perfectly.

Of course, now I have more films to add to my 'too see' list! Tales of Hoffman looks spectacular, I've never even heard of it!

Anonymous said...

Breathtaking choices!! I watched both Onibaba and Lady Vengeance in the past week. Posted a review of Lady Vengeance up at the blog if you want to check it out.

I recently picked up Double Suicide, but have yet to watch it. Looks like I'm in for a treat.

Bob Turnbull said...

Thanks for the comments everyone...

I really enjoyed cobbling these together. With some of these films (particularly "The Conformist" and "Tales Of Hoffmann"), pretty much any random frame in the film would've worked equally well. They are true works of art.

Shannon, if you've seen "The Red Shoes" and enjoyed the ballet sequence, you'll likely love "Tales Of Hoffmann". The music is less to my liking than Red Shoes, but I just can't yank my eyes off the screen.

cg, "Double Suicide" was excellent and (in a similar manner to "Dolls") essentially brings to life a puppet story.

I read your excellent review of "Lady Vengeance". I'll post my quibbles with it over there though...B-)