RIP filmmaker Les Blank, 1935-2013.
Les Blank served as director and cinematographer of dozens of films, mostly documentaries. He’s probably most famous for his 1982 film Burden of Dreams, which chronicles Werner Herzog struggling against nature and humanity alike to make Fitzcarraldo. For me, the two films are inseparable. Here is Blank talking about making that film:
(Les Blank also made Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe).
Blank was also famous for documenting blues, jazz, folk, and other types of roots music in a naturalistic, earthy fashion.
He also loved gap toothed women:
One day I will write about the time I saw US Maple at The EARL in Atlanta and saw the cheerleading film Bring It On at some bar next door before the show and how several mentally-handicapped fans came to the Maple show in full camo and how my friend spent the entire show in the back of my other friend’s Mazda in an agonizing migraine and how the show was maybe the weirdest and most oddly aggressive show I’ve ever seen and how the Maples kept bumping into each other and they wore homemade vests and the whole deal was deeply disorienting and then after the show the Mazda broke somewhere on I-95 and we drove all the way back to Gainesville in 3rd gear and got home some time as the sun was coming up.
I reviewed the first full trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby back in early summer of last year. The film, originally slated for a Christmas 2012 release, was delayed supposedly to finish effects, add new music (featured in this trailer), and give the film a higher-profile summer release.
Biblioklept 