This is probably the most explosive, colorful and bad-ass opening credits I’ve ever seen – for Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void. Wonderful typography going bananas, crazy music track from Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk fame) and an intro to a film that most certainly is just as insane. Sadly, I’ve not seen these credits projected in a big screen cinema with loudspeakers, but that time must come. Here they are, in Flash video embedded from French site DailyMotion. (Via Antville)

Can. Not. Wait. What do you think?

I love mashups. Love ‘em. The new meaning derived from clever juxtaposition of images (often well-known ones) is intoxicating to me. It’s a rising genre within the arena of short web videos, and demands a variety of abilities ranging from insane editing skills, good taste, knowledge of film history and more. As both an avid film buff and film editor, I feel I should make one myself, but I’m hesitating – simply because the best ones are so damn fantastic.

Which brings me to the mashup posted today at TickleBooth, created by Goodiebag.tv, and probably the very best one I’ve seen this fall. Not only does it feature New York, a city so many brilliant filmmakers’ve caressed with their cameras, but this clip – appropriately titled Hollywood vs. New York – is also an homage to a genre I love: The Disaster Film. Though, no video mashup with a New York theme can be successful without referencing Woody Allen, so Goodiebag’s choice of music makes me particularly happy. Get ready for a load of awesome:

In case anyone has a particular recommendation I should seek out this weekend; please let me know, I’d appreciate it – either here or on Twitter. I might just look it up.

A silly, but fun music video for French duo Justice and their collaboration with Lenny Kravitz on “Let Love Rule”. Directed by Keith Schofield, this video turns the end credits of a fake 80s action-movie into the driving concept. Truly successful only when the most campy, it is nevertheless a satisfying piece with a lot of meta-fun for film nerds. Watch it in QuickTime.

I’m almost proud that most of these examples are picked from films I haven’t seen. My main prejudice against the horror genre is the cheap use of tricks, and here they’re under a scrutinizing light. Any other examples of script or image clichés that have been over-used in films? I vote for a revealing montage of all the unnecessary use of “Poetic close-up of hand touching wheat or grass while walking in a field“.

It’s a few seconds more than 1 minute long. An immersive piece of montage:

This is not going to be a long piece – but I want to write a passage about this: The use of subjective point-of-view. I discovered a new music video, which uses this technique, that is worth watching. I found this one through TickleBooth, so kudos to those guys (a brilliant site for discovering web video gems). Anyway, this is a video for the band Cinnamon Chasers and their song “Luv Deluxe”. The band was not familiar to me before this, and the music isn’t actually that great. But the filmmaker, Saman Keshavarz, has in his video brought back this particular visual storytelling choice that is both fun and fascinating to watch, when utilized in a good way. (Video examples embedded after the jump…)

Here’s what the Cinnamon Chasers and Keshavarz have cooked up:

I liked the video a lot, and the choice they made to re-tell and rewind their story twice works well, at least as long as the song is quite boring. This video also brought to mind a novel memory of mine from the decade that defined my pop-culture consciousness: The 90s. The breakthrough video for this kind of POV-use is (of course) Smack My Bitch Up by The Prodigy, directed by Swedish filmmaker Jonas Åkerlund. It is a stunning piece of work, if not also one of the most provocative and shocking (in a good way) music videos of the 90s. Behold a music video masterpiece, NSFW:

«Close-up» (1990, Kiarostami)

So, where was I? Oh, yeah: A few years ago, I started an English language blog called Subtitles to Cinema (archives). I tried hard to write only when there was something important to write, with correct enough English to not completely embarass myself. (It is not my first language.) Obviously, this was too hard to keep up. So, the blog slowly disappeared from my routine – and in 2009 it has been a shadow of its former self, like a flower not blooming in spring. A dead blog, which the web has no use for. But -

CUT TO Early 2009. My friend Eirik and I finally decided to realize an idea: Montages.no, a Norwegian web magazine for film lovers. We’ve built it with a great group of colleagues, and now after summer we’ve decided to go blog. Our society of bloggers is fledging, and hence – Subtitles to Cinema is now reborn, rewritten and revisioned, and hosted here on Montages.

But what will this blog contain? I’m trying to describe it in a short, concise way in the column to the right, but here’s what I wrote on the old incarnation:

Film is a fascinating language, and at this blog I’ll try to write about all kinds of cinema – and use the blog as a sort of subtitle track to films I’ve seen or would like to see. Hopefully, it will be of use for you, my dear readers. As an avid reader myself, I’ll also use this blog to share what I read, watch and listen to on the web – and point to the good stuff.

It still pretty much sums up my reasons for keeping an English language blog at all. So, I’ll go at it again – I hope it leads somewhere interesting and new, even for myself. Please feel free to comment and participate in whatever will go down on these pages – it’ll be more fun that way.