2011 from hey_rabbit on Vimeo.

Via PetaPixel.

The clip is made up of several segments, and is literally the next best thing to actual time travel. As best as I can plot it the car follows this route from 2nd Street to Grand, to 5th Street to Flower and back up to 2nd. I’ve already spent too much time scrolling through it frame by frame just entirely mindblown at the slice-of-life details to be discovered in the people and places and passenger vehicles the camera captures in passing, and invite you to get lost in this record of a long-gone Bunker Hill (best viewed full screen in 1080p) :

Heads up: Tonight is the No Budget Film Festival, a nifty experiment in which filmmakers are challenged to make a movie without a budget.  Literally – these aren’t movies made on a shoestring budget; these are made without the shoestrings, period.  Filmmakers only could rely on things they already had, things they could borrow, or things that were donated.

Out of the 50 or so films that were entered in the festival, 15 were chosen for tonight’s screening at the Downtown Independent. And, of course, there will be prizes: the Critic’s Choice Award, as well as the Audience Choice Award, chosen by you, truly.

Tickets are $10 online and $15 at the door.

The number of versions of “Blade Runner“, which had already jumped the shark, has now jumped the Loch Ness Monster: director Ridley Scott plans to make yet another “Blade Runner” movie. It is not yet known whether the new “Blade Runner” will be a sequel, prequel, reboot, or otherwise. Either way, what can Angelenos expect if the new “Blade Runner” is again set in Los Angeles?

In the original “Blade Runner”, L.A. was full of digital video billboards, rain, darkness, squalor, and Asian people. What kind of future dystopic Los Angeles might be represented in the next version of the movie? With a stretch of the imagination, one could envision distracted drivers plowing into each other while texting, a city paralyzed by fear because of one road construction project, rabid sports fans beating each other nearly to death, proposals to ban circumcision of male babies, fast-food burger joints spreading like kudzu, an epidemic of elective cosmetic surgery, … oh wait …..

My favorite moment comes when the legendary and still sorely missed Jay’s Jayburgers at Virgil and Santa Monica Boulevard makes an appearance at the 1:34 mark. Dig in:

I’ve read her book, No one belongs here more than you. I’m looking forward to seeing her Eleven Heavy Things installation at PDC. I read her blog, and I can hardly wait for her new movie, The Future, to screen in LA. And so, when I saw that she was appearing at Cinefamily to kick off their new show-and-tell series, I bought a ticket right away.  According to Cinefamily, their show-and-tell series

invites artists, filmmakers, musicians and other cultural heroes to divulge their deepest, darkest media obsessions by opening their closets, digging through their attic and plundering their garages to curate an evening of…whatever they want to share! From thrift store finds to late-night Tivo, from foreign film bootlegs to home movies, from the popular to the perverse –- all media will be presented live by the honored guests, as they take us on a personal tour of the material that has inspired them, delighted them, or just plain freaked them out.

If you know Miranda July’s work at all, you know that this is a slow pitch right to her. In a post on her blog she says she’s not just going to show videos

FAR FROM IT. Here’s a hint: I will need one participant with a very clean mouth and/or scalp. So if you are on the fence about coming, but your mouth or scalp is fastidious and overlooked, come as a favor to me.  (Did I just do the kind of promotion that actually repels people from coming?)

So I’m all excited, and I was going to post something here yesterday about the event (which is tonight at 8), but then I saw that it was sold out. Sad for you, b.la readers. But wait…good news…today I read that they will live stream the event right here starting around 8:00. So hurrah, b.la’ers, you can watch along with me!

Having done my due diligence and told you about the MJ stream, I will now digress for a moment to say that the more press Miranda July gets, the more it seems chic to hate her. I recognize that that’s probably inevitable given the fundamental anxiety about losing your edge to the kids who are coming up from behind. But still. Time was when you could look forward to being hated after you gained mainstream popularity (can you say “David Lynch”). Poor MJ seems to be victim of an acceleration in the hipster life cycle whereby one becomes last week’s news before ever being this week’s news. Well, I’m not giving in to the haters. I love Miranda July. I don’t care if everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that I know.

We Angelenos are certainly no strangers to the old saw about everyone in LA having a screenplay they are working on or trying to sell, but here at Blogging.LA we know that’s not true. The city’s waitstaff don’t have screenplays, because they’re waiting for their big acting break.

But LA is not a city where everyone is simply waiting for something big to happen; some folks are out there really doing it. To wit: the Egyptian is showcasing some local talent next Wednesday night with a screening of short films by LA filmmakers. According to the theater’s website, there will be nine short films screened, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.

What: Locals Only! Showcase of Short Films
Where: Egyptian Theater, Hollywood
When: Wednesday, July 13th, 7:30pm

Goldstar has tickets here.

“Blade Runner” is, for Angelenos, part of our cinematic DNA. It envisions a dystopic future Los Angeles that borrows from the past but, to some, it disturbingly resembles the present. However, I suspect that more than a few Angelenos are jaded by the repeated “Blade Runner” viewings and the comical number of versions that have been released, especially the “Blade Runner For Dummies” narration of the original U.S. theatrical release. As one such Angeleno, I was mesmerized upon discovering the above video showing the real-life “Blade Runner” filming locations matched shot-for-shot with their depictions in the movie.

The “Blade Runner” video above was created by Herve Attia, a blogger who makes it his mission to visit the locations of movies such as “Die Hard”, “The Shining”, and one of my favorites, “Once Upon a Time in the West”, where he works his location shot magic. In the case of “Blade Runner”, as many Angelenos know, those locations include the historic Bradbury Building, Frank Lloyd Wright‘s 1924 Mayan-themed Ennis House, Union Station, and more. However, I found it fascinating the way Attia includes iconic shots from “Blade Runner” and then dissolves to the matching present-day location. In this case, viewers can see how director Ridley Scott and his team layered colors, filters, lighting, projection, and other elements (I’ll defer to the production experts among you for the details) to create a future/past L.A. that will remain in the minds of many of us forever.

In a city that doubles as one of the world’s most popular movie sets, where the line between reality and cinematic fantasy is often blurred, count me as now truly impressed and un-jaded.