My favorite film maker by a long way is a feller called Terry Gilliam.
I'm not going to waffle on endlessly about him - if you follow the link you'll find his bio.
It's a pretty good fan site.
The picture I've included today is from one of Terrys most wonderful films, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
In this particular scene, The Baron and Polly have made a hot ait balloon out of hundreds of pairs of ladies knickers so they can escape from the attacking Turks.
The film was plauged with absolutely awful production problems, common in Terry's career.
One of his recent projects, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was canned after only a week of filming - documented in the film Lost in La Mancha, a depressing but very good film.
I'm posting about Terry today because I'm re-reading a book called Losing the Light, about the ghastly production Baron Munchausen was.
It's a good read in general, but for anyone interested in film and film production it's a must.
A must I say!
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Gilliam
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2 comments:
Terry Gilliam is quite genius. I think 12 Monkeys is one of the best sci-fi to come out in a while, and Tim Bandits is uniquely imaginative as well. If you enjoy reading books about film productions, you should check out "The Devil's Candy" by Julie Salamon, which details the travails of Brian De Palma's Bonfire of the Vanities. It's an entertaining read if nothing else.
Terry Gilliam is one of my very few heroes.
I'm constantly dissapointed by the fact that so few film makers understand images.
They know how to shove a camera around, but are completely unaware of things like composition and setup.
Being an illustrator Gilliam is very much at home with these things - his shots are often painterly in their composition.
So yeah - he's wonderful.
12 Monkeys is brilliant and I think will one day be seen as a classic, and Time Bandits was huge when I was a kid; Knights in Armour, spaceships, monsters...I couldn't have asked for more.
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