From the X-Men to Charade - designing title sequences

I was just looking at my Twitter feed and clicked on a link from @thenfb - the Twitter feed for the National Film Board of Canada and it led me back to Charade, the Stanley Dolan film starring Audrey Hepburn and Carey Grant which I saw for the first time on Saturday night.  I find all these types of  coincidences quite entertaining so I thought I'd share this one.  The twitter caption read
"I'm in a design mood today. Check out the Maurice Binder-esque credits to one of my fav films of this year: http://watchthetitles.com/articles/00223-X_Men_First_Class"

So I duly clicked on the link and watched the title sequence as I still haven't seen the new X-Men film (I wish I'd got to see it when it was still at the cinema but it'll need to be on DVD now unfortunately).  The title sequence is great, very sixties, and my first thought was 'that's really similar to the title sequence to Charade'.  Then I wondered if I was only thinking that because that was the last film I watched (if you haven't seen Charade I can highly recommend it - a Hitchcock-esque thriller, with lots of humour, and amazing outfits from Audrey Hepburn of course!).  As I read down I saw that the designer, Simon Clowes, was influenced by Maurice Binder so I looked him up and sure enough, he designed the title sequence to Charade - spooky!



Ok, maybe I 'm a geek for getting so excited about little connections like that but I just love when connections appear where you don't expect it.  I also just looked up Charade as I was sure there must be a new print of it out as the reason I watched it was because I'd read about it recently somewhere.  There is a new restored high definition print just released by Park Circus films but you can also watch it online.  I watched it for free with our Lovefilm subscription and I noticed it's also available in the UK through Mubi. 

Finding Norman

Staying on the subject of Norman McLaren. I just remembered about a Student Radio Broadcast project which my colleagues and friends Karl Magee and Sarah Neely had been part of whilst I was at Stirling, called 'Finding Norman'.  You can listen to the broadcast on the Stirling Film, Media and Journalism YouTube page. The narrator, a student at Stirling Uni is talking about 'Norman' a show I was lucky enough to see at the MacRobert Arts Centre in Stirling - I wrote a wee preview of the show here. 



Karl Magee gives some background about Norman McLaren and does a bit of promotion for the archive!  There is an excerpt of Norman McLaren talking in the radio broadcast and he says that 'if all his films had to be destroyed except one I would choose Neighbours'.  Of course, I wouldn't want any of his films to be destroyed but I think it's interesting he chose Neighbours.  It's a superb film and the anti-war message is put across so brilliantly - maybe they should show this film to world leaders who are all too eager to start fights and wars with each other!

Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary

I recently found out, via another blog, about a new website set up by the National Film Board of Canada. It's called 'Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary' and it's a treasure trove of wonderful short clips of directors talking about various aspects of documentary film making . There's so many clips that I've only really scratched the surface so far but personal favourites include; Eduardo Coutinho, Interviewing: telling it for the first time, where he discusses why he doesn't ever like to meet interviewees prior to the interview; Kevin Macdonald, Jennings, Morris and Maysles, talking about the impact of these three directors on him; Claire Simon, The French Nouvelle Vague, where she talks about, amongst other things, the work of Agnès Varda, a French documentary film maker whom I had never heard of before but who I am now really looking forward to finding out more about; and Werner Herzog, I memorize the entire footage, where he talks about, surprisingly enough, how he memorises his entire film for as long as necessary then forgets it when the film is finished.

I really like the way the website is set out as well. it's really easy to use, visually appealing and the search options work really well. You can search by name of film maker, by topic, and by just browsing over the photographs of each film maker that make up the home page.