">Twitter | Photos of Karina | Email
About
Karina Longworth is the film editor of the LA Weekly, as well as the co-founder of Cinematical and the former editor of SpoutBlog. She recently returned to her hometown of Los Angeles after twelve years split between various other cities, most recently Brooklyn. This blog, when she remembers to update it, will be mostly about that.
Don’t ask how I found this. Just say thank you.
This band, Best Coast, opened for Vivian Girls the other night. I haven’t been able to stop listening to this song since.
If you want to understand Obamanomics one year out, look at the demand-side hole we’re still in, the gargantuan boomer deficit we’re heading for, and the mad-as-hell party these bad times have spawned. How Obama deals with all three will be the real economic test of his presidency.
robertreich, my economist heartthrob.
![silvercinema:
Lillian Gish in Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920)
How they shot this scene I don’t even know.
From Bright Lights:
…in Way Down East’s climax…Lillian Gish, David Barthelmess, and Billy Bitzer’s beleaguered camera submit to an actual, godawful blizzard, brusquely defining itself on screen by allowing little more than ten feet visibility. Ice forms on Gish’s eyelashes, and, when she collapses in a drift of real snow, the actress, we learn, had actually fainted from the exposure, and this before being told to collapse all over again on a real ice floe on a real, freezing river […]
There’s no doubt that the irreducible actuality of the blizzard/ice floe sequences is the major reason they complete Griffith’s vision so successfully. The cold and the dim light especially challenged Bitzer and his camera, but as a result, the often-compromised photography has its own visceral integrity. As for the performers, the blizzard shoot was bad enough for Gish, but the weeks of photography on the river had both actors submitting to further dangers and potential frostbite.
Shooting Anna’s rescue in ferocious weather and on real, bobbing ice floes — and visibly threatening the actors’ lives in the process — is thereby something of a stunt, just as making a movie is, fundamentally, a stunt. But in D. W.’s hands, it’s a stunt with an expressive intent that’s both intuitive and considered.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxetirdtvP1qa9nkoo1_500.jpg)
Lillian Gish in Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920)
How they shot this scene I don’t even know.
From Bright Lights:
…in Way Down East’s climax…Lillian Gish, David Barthelmess, and Billy Bitzer’s beleaguered camera submit to an actual, godawful blizzard, brusquely defining itself on screen by allowing little more than ten feet visibility. Ice forms on Gish’s eyelashes, and, when she collapses in a drift of real snow, the actress, we learn, had actually fainted from the exposure, and this before being told to collapse all over again on a real ice floe on a real, freezing river […]
There’s no doubt that the irreducible actuality of the blizzard/ice floe sequences is the major reason they complete Griffith’s vision so successfully. The cold and the dim light especially challenged Bitzer and his camera, but as a result, the often-compromised photography has its own visceral integrity. As for the performers, the blizzard shoot was bad enough for Gish, but the weeks of photography on the river had both actors submitting to further dangers and potential frostbite.
Shooting Anna’s rescue in ferocious weather and on real, bobbing ice floes — and visibly threatening the actors’ lives in the process — is thereby something of a stunt, just as making a movie is, fundamentally, a stunt. But in D. W.’s hands, it’s a stunt with an expressive intent that’s both intuitive and considered.
Last night I met up with my old friend, Famous Artist Brendan Lott, at Dan Sung Sa on 6th street in Ktown. I live on 9th Street, but pretty far west of there, so I thought it would make more sense to take the Purple Line than to walk. I thought wrong, and I ended up arriving pretty late. I got there, and Brendan was already set up with sojo and slightly spicy cabbage/bean sprout/potato soup.
“You can smoke here,” he said. He was sitting at the counter, under a sign with crossed-out cigarette. All around us, young, attractive Koreans puffed Marlboro reds. Brendan doesn’t smoke, but he seemed more charmed than annoyed.
I had read the above Jonathan Gold piece when I first moved into the neighborhood last month, so I knew that magical things had been done to legally outfit Koreatown establishments for smoking, but it wasn’t until last night that I found time to go out and see it for myself. Having been in one of these places, I still have no idea how they make it work. To Brendan’s left last night was a wooden beam, half-assedly constructed to look like a tree — as if all they need to claim that the entire indoor restaurant is actually an outdoor patio is an obviously fake gesture towards nature.
Anyway, I loved it. The seafood pancake and pork ribs were pretty amazing. The omelette and fresh sea squirt were not.
Full disclosure, I guess: Jonathan Gold and I are technically co-workers.
The best part of this is the sad trumpet (wah-wah) and the very-nearly-adult-contemporary sax flourishes.
The Afghan Whigs - “Miss World” (Hole cover)
February 5, 1936: At the New York premiere of Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times, riot police are called in to control the crowds trying to see the stars attending the festivities.
February 1, 1937: During Clark Gable’s birthday party on the MGM lot, Judy Garland sings “You Made Me Love You,” a song she’ll perform in Broadway Melody of 1938.
January 31, 1943: Italian director Luchino Visconti’s gritty drama Ossessione adds the phrase “neo-realism” to the cinematic lexicon.
February 5, 1943: Producer/ “director” Howard Hughes’ controversial frontier drama The Outlaw makes a star of his buxom discovery, Jane Russell.
February 6, 1943: A Los Angeles jury finds Errol Flynn not guilty of statutory rape charges made against him by two teenage girls.
February 1, 1966: After a career that spanned 50 years, with successes on stage, and in front of and behind the camera, Buster Keaton, 70, dies of lung cancer.
February 2, 1969: “King of Horror” Boris Karloff dies of respiratory disease in his native England at 81.
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that in five days I’m moving back to my hometown of Los Angeles from New York, so that I can start a new job as film editor of the LA WEEKLY. I know I should be keeping my personal blog up to date during this time of Total Life Upheaval, but I’m having trouble finding the time, what with all the … upheaving. But, I did turn on Tumblr’s new Ask feature. If you use it to ask me a question that makes me laugh out loud and/or cringe, I will probably answer it.
