#Conrad Hall

[oldshowbiz]

1964.

[citizenscreen]

Three-time Oscar winning cinematographer Conrad Hall was #botd in 1926.

[filmy420]

[cinenthusiast]

joanna frank in "zzzzz" from the outer limits a queen bee turned human sent to procreate millions w/ a man who has figured out how to talk to bees!? directed by john brahm (!!!) and shot by conrad hall (!!! he shot 15 episodes of the original series). totally absurd and oddly moving.

[fallensapphires]

Colors: Blue and Grey

There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors...it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job.

[postersbykeith]

[dark-but-just-a-game]

Jennifer 8 (1992)

[2ndaryprotocol]

The film adaptation of Truman Capote’s true crime thriller ‘In Cold Blood’ startled moviegoers this day 55 years ago. 🪦⛓🚨

“𝙸'𝚍 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚙𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚒𝚣𝚎, 𝚋𝚞𝚝... 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚝𝚘?”

[shanshotdeck]

Boxing and Beautiful Losers

I can always count on Metrograph to lift my spirits. They lean slightly pretentious as far as third places go, but their film programming is quite good. And I love escaping to a neighborhood that even in its transplant takeover still feels like the New York I met 15 years ago.

I took way too many trains on a Sunday evening to catch FAT CITY (1972), starring a young but severely weathered Stacy Keach. I made it to my seat in the big cinema with the balcony just as the lights began to dim. Me and all the Conrad Hall obsessed film-bros were in attendance. I noticed the men's restroom line after the screening was significantly longer than the women's restroom line. I guess that comes with the territory of a John Huston boxing movie.

There is so much I could say about the film. But this is my blog, so I want to talk about boxing and beautiful losers.

I have an ancestral connection to boxing. My Mexican great grandfather was a welterweight champion. My Irish great uncle also boxed. I started boxing training five years ago, and I deeply enjoy feeling like a tough guy. My Mexican great grandfather was also an alcoholic. My dad remembers visiting him as a young boy for Sunday dinners in Fontana, California -- unable to feel his legs from years of excessive drinking, my great grandfather would ask my dad to punch his feet while he drank and shared stories from his boxing days. He experienced racism as crowds chanted to "kill that greaser" while he fought. He would cry remembering it. Then he would drink some more from the gallon of wine he kept on his bedside table and sing "Cielito Lindo" or recite Gunga Din for my father who took in all the beauty and the sadness of this once strong man.

FAT CITY is compelling to me in it's deliberate movement -- the camera seems to be constantly moving ahead while the characters struggle to keep apace. The opening sequence alone, with Stacy Keach's Billy Tully willing himself out of bed for a cigarette that he never manages to light, grinds forward in story and Billy's physicality. I can feel the hangover, the injuries, and the slow realization that the money is still gone, but maybe a drink could fix his problems.

I didn't realize how much I could personally relate to the film until I began to feel how familiar Billy Tully felt to me. I never met my great grandfather, but I know him through the stories, and my own relationship to lost dreams and boxing.

I'm also newly obsessed with Susan Tyrrell. What a performance. Talk about active and alive with clear needs, disgusts, and pain all bubbling up at once behind her eyes. A character that dreams are made of -- the opportunity for full abandonment of self and the deepest dive into an alcoholic woman's soul.

The scenes between Oma and Billy are boxing matches. Two heavy weight actors one upping the other to win the fight of their lives. I'm not sure big league actors still do this for each other anymore. But god a girl can dream. I want to get in the ring with the toughest motherfucker and go round after round with the relentless drive for truth in brutal, but wickedly fun to play, imaginary circumstances. Actresses still want that right? Or is it just me?

[amityvilleplanet]

[dinnickhowellslikes]

Continuing to experiment with gobo lighting in Cinema 4D and Redshift. Here a rain streak effect is projected with light onto a stone bust. This was inspired, in part, by that famous scene in the 1967 film In Cold Blood, with Robert Blake giving a dark monologue near a rain covered window, with light shining through. The result was one of cinematographer Conrad Hall's most famous shots, where it looked as if Blake's whole face was crying as he told a tough story.

You can watch this scene here.

[oldshowbiz]

Conrad Hall’s Fanfare For a Death Scene (1964)

[citizenscreen]

Cinematographer Conrad Hall (June 21, 1926 – January 4, 2003)

[filmy420]

[streamondemand]

The original 'The Outer Limits' – sixties SF TV on MGM+

Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We have control of your streaming app. We have provided you with access to The Outer Limits (1963-1964), the original incarnation of the TV science fiction anthology series. It wasn’t the first such program and it was always in the shadow of its more literate (and more popular) cousin The Twilight Zone, but the hour-long The Outer Limits made its mark on the…

[robinsonranch]

The Art of the Lighting Cameraman

Allen Daviau, ASC; Conrad Hall, ASC and James Wong Howe, ASC