If you can spare 5 minutes and 21 seconds of your life, go watch this quick film profile on Ken Burns.
The whole piece is quotable, but this is the key (my emphasis):

Jean-Luc Godard said, “The truth is cinema, 24 times a second.” Maybe. It’s lying 24 times a second too. All the time. All story is manipulation.

Is there acceptable manipulation? You bet.

People say, “Oh boy, I was so moved to tears in your film.” That’s a good thing? I manipulated that. That’s part of storytelling. I didn’t do disingeniunely [sic]. I did it sincerely. I am moved by that too.

That’s manipulation.

If you don’t know who Ken Burns is, first off shame on you. Second, you know already know him if you’ve ever seen the Ken Burns Effect in a movie or documentary.
I also think it could be where Seth Godin was inspired for his latest post on story.

Photographer David Friedman put together a short documentary on the ‘father’ of the video game, Ralph Baer. His wife died to in 2006, but he continues to tinker and invent is his home laboratory. “What else am I going to do? I need a challenge.”, he says. I love how he’s an engineer by trade, but sees himself as an artist:

I still get a big charge out of making something work. I write the hardware, I push the button, I download it into the microprocessor… and it works. Ahhh, beautiful!

I’m basically an artist, no different from a painter that sits there and loves what he does.

Would you ask a guy who’s been painting his whole life why you’re still painting, why don’t you retire? Retire to what?! Stop painting? This is insane.

via The Atlantic

Hillman Curtis died on April 18th. He was a talented, passionate creator.
Here’s a 4-minute documentary he did on himself a few months ago.
The funny thing about Hillman is I never thought much of his web design work. It wasn’t great. It was clean, and organized and a lot of work went into it. But there wasn’t passion.
His passion came out when he stepped behind the camera and began making his short films and documentaries on other talented creators like Milton Glaser, Stefan Sagmeister, Lawrence Weiner and Joshua Davis.
It was when he started making his films that I started paying attention to him.
I’m happy he found his true calling before he died.

On the Road was my favorite book in college.
For those of you interested in seeing the movie, I strongly encourage you to read the book first.
*the title of this post was pulled from the book.
via parislemon

via Ars Technica

via

If you have a skill that allows you to make things, I think it’s really important to not let those muscles atrophy.

—Khoi Vinh

Khoi Vinh – on the grid from The Color Machine on Vimeo.

A new documentary on Charles and Ray Eames is already making it’s way around the States.

via kottke

Neven Mrgan has a great idea for a movie:

So, fun-lovin’, irresponsible manchild, still searching for his true character, blah blah blah, inexplicably hot girlfriend, she gets fed up and dumps him, he now has to clean his stuff out of their shared storage unit. Ok, I’ll give you one scene for free. (The rest are $90,000 per day, haha haha ha.) Gosling – yeah, I’m thinking Ryan Gosling; he’s like the new John Cusack, or will be when we’re done with him. Oh it’s an 80s movie, I’ll get back to that – so Gosling, looking like crap after the breakup, pulls up to this storage unit in his crappy old Hyundai, super-sunny day, storage-unit door opens, dust, cobwebs, maybe a random cat meow in the back Big exaggerated sigh, a box tumbles down. That’s how the trailer opens right there, there you go.

Read the whole thing. I love it.

Great review of a great film over at A Bright Wall In A Dark Room:

Which is why a film like Blue Valentine is so tough to watch. Hollywood, long complicit in the fueling of many millions of happily-ever-after dreams, here slaps us in our collective face: it gives us the whole story. The beginning and the end (and all the highs and lows in between). It’s draining. It’s painful. It’s one of the finest relationship movies I’ve ever seen. Not because relationships are awful – some are, some aren’t – but rather because they are such hard work. And so rarely do we get to see all that hard work – the truly messy and complicated rollercoaster of a living, breathing relationship – onscreen.

via On Display

One of the best scenes from one of Scorsese’s best, Mean Streets:

My wife took me to a prescreening of Beginners last week. What a good film.