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A Prison Camp is for Escaping: Grand Illusion (1937) : [Image: Posters for Grand Illusion , currently out of print from the Criterion Collection]. For the first film in Breaking Out and Breaking In a distributed film fest—where you watch the films at home and return here to discuss them online—co-sponsored by BLDGBLOG, Filmmaker Magazine , and Studio-X NYC , we watched Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), recently described as one of the 100 best films of world cinema ( Seven Samurai , if you're curious, was #1). I will limit myself to discussing Grand Illusion solely from the perspective of this film fest of prison breaks and bank heists (which will be true for all the films discussed in this series). In other words, I'll focus specifically on the topology of escape—on holes, tunnels, walls, and borders. And I should note: there are spoilers ahead. [Images: From Grand Illusion , courtesy of the Criterion Collection]. The first attempted escape of the film is through th...

How to dismantle your door: A Man Escaped (1956) : [Image: From A Man Escaped (1956), courtesy of the Criterion Collection]. Breaking Out and Breaking In: A Distributed Film Fest of Prison Breaks and Bank Heists —co-sponsored by BLDGBLOG, Filmmaker Magazine , and Studio-X NYC —continued last week with Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956). Spoilers ahead! Bresson's film tells the story of Fontaine—a French prisoner held by Nazis in a prison in occupied Lyon—and it operates through the " close scrutiny of salient details ," in Roger Ebert's words. Fontaine himself becomes an avid student of the prison interior, always looking askance for points of weakness. This has the effect of explicitly foregrounding the space of confinement in which Fontaine is held, including, as we'll see, the objects in the cell with him, deemphasizing characterization in favor of an intense focus on architectural setting. Ebert continues: In this way, we watch Fontaine examine his ce...

Initial Points : [Image: Initial Points: Anchors of America's Grid at the Center for Land Use Interpretation]. A new exhibition at the Center for Land Use Interpretation opened last week, called Initial Points: Anchors of America's Grid , produced in collaboration with the Institute of Marking and Measuring . Through maps, surveying devices, and other artifacts from the process of land marking and measurement, the exhibition "depicts and describes the 37 Initial Points of the Public Land Survey System , the rectilinear grid that covers more than two thirds of the landscape of the USA. These surveying points, located in places such as swamps, under manhole covers, in roads, and on top of mountains, are the physical locations that tie this grid to the ground. Looking at them in a contemporary context explores the process and importance of the endeavor of surveying, and reveals a latent cadastral history of the nation as it expanded westward." [Image: A view of the exhi...

CHRISTMAS TIME.... : ～天氣總算照著時序來著～ 農曆冬至呼著吃著熱湯圓， 接著迎向西洋聖誕節到來， 天冷一群人包裹著羽絨太空裝在百貨主題街上湊熱鬧， 暖暖熱鬧的燈光照著，跟萬物主告解發個小願....， ～好快，又要過一年咧.....。 祝 朋友們～ Merry Christmas 聖誕快樂！！！ (c)2011 by lusonsky/ D90 / taken Taipei City, Taiwan

CHRISTMAS TIME.... : ～天氣總算照著時序來著～ 農曆冬至呼著吃著熱湯圓， 接著迎向西洋聖誕節到來， 天冷一群人包裹著羽絨太空裝在百貨主題街上湊熱鬧， 暖暖熱鬧的燈光照著，跟萬物主告解發個小願....， ～好快，又要過一年咧.....。 祝 朋友們～ Merry Christmas 聖誕快樂！！！ (c)2011 by lusonsky/ D90 / taken Taipei City, Taiwan