"In the country’s wealthiest enclaves, like New York City and Miami, concealment has become the defining aspect of the contemporary kitchen."

"What began with 'appliance garages' and refrigerators and dishwashers that look like cabinets has evolved into a far more ambitious practice of disguise, with custom millwork and technology obscuring everything from sinks and cooktops to electrical outlets and small appliances."

I'm reading "In New Luxury Kitchens, Everything Is Hidden — Even the Sink Camouflaging the fridge is just the beginning for high-end kitchens" in The New York Times, which often lets its adoration of wealth show.

I'm blogging this because I love to use my tag "seen and unseen" and because I find this photograph — "a marble island with a retractable countertop that conceals an induction stovetop and sink" — hilarious:

It looks like a sarcophagus.

Now, how rich are the people who get things like that installed in their homes?

"Flow."

I watched this on Max over the weekend and recommend it for the beauty of the visuals — I love the light and the water — and the wordlessness of the storytelling. 

There are various animals — cat, dog, secretary bird, lemur — but I was interested to see the capybara, because I'd just been reading this New Yorker article by Gary Shteyngart, "How the Capybara Won My Heart—and Almost Everyone Else’s/It’s not hard to understand why capys have a cultlike following on Instagram and TikTok. I fell for the giant rodent decades ago."

Looking back at that now, I see that Shteyngart discusses the movie "Flow":

Miniature effects.

Beautiful attention to detail. Touching, actually. And I recommend the movie, "That French Dispatch," which I watched a few weeks ago. I found that "making of" video because I was looking for something specific in that movie, a view of the outside of a multistory building, where you follow a character walking up various stairways, through rooms, up to the top. You can see part of that sequence at 1:00.

I wanted to see that because, just by chance, I was watching the 1958 movie "Mon Oncle" last night, and there's this sequence, which is clearly what "The French Dispatch" was paying homage to:

"The French Dispatch" is a Wes Anderson movie. "Mon Oncle" is Jacques Tati. I did not realize, when I was watching "The French Dispatch," how much of it was done with miniatures. I have no idea how Jacques Tati made his movies. I'm not sure I want to know! Maybe there should be a spoiler alert on that "Miniature effects" video, because it would be better not to know what, exactly, you're looking at. The old saying is that it's better not to know how sausage is made.

I don't like to use clichés, but I'm saying "better not to know how sausage is made" because it fits with something in "Mon Oncle." Obscure humor at 5 in the morning. It shouldn't be obscure.

You can stream "Mon Oncle" on the Criterion Channel.

FIXED: The second video is now the right one. I'd had the first video repeated. I deeply regret this mistake! 

This is a pretty good list (at Vulture): "The 101 Best Movie Sequels of All Time."

What impressed me enough to blog it was that it didn't do what I thought was inevitable and put "The Godfather II" at #1. 

I think this link will work without a subscription, so check it out.

Another thing I like is that it didn't get too stuck in the last 20 or 30 years, though there is a lot of Superman/Batman/Spiderman dross. It's got some old-timey trashy stuff, notably "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy" (#96). And it's got "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years" (#74), "O Lucky Man!" (#66), "Return to Oz" (a surprising #20), and — at #11 — the movie that had me texting "possibly the most artistic and sophisticated thing I’ve ever seen" — "Playtime."

"In considering the setting for his movie, [Wes] Anderson wanted something like Paris, but a version that doesn’t exist anymore outside of cinema..."

"... like the one of wonder captured by 'The Red Balloon,' and one of whimsy captured by Jacques Tati. One of the film’s producers, Jeremy Dawson, said that Anderson was looking for a place 'with nooks and crannies, corridors, passages, staircases, layers and ramparts.' The filmmakers began their scouting search on Google, digitally navigating the streets of towns that might fit the bill. Then they hit the road to visit a few of them. While in Angoulême, they came across a plaza with a small cafe. Dawson recalled that Anderson suggested grabbing lunch at the cafe. 'When he said that, I knew he’d picked this town,' Dawson said. Angoulême, in the southwest of France with a population of about 42,000, is no stranger to invasions; during the Hundred Years’ War, it was the site of battles between the French and English. These visitors were much more benign. During the shoot, the crew came up with various ways to give the town’s old-world collection of buildings, streets and facades a bit of an Andersonized touch — a cute little vintage vehicle parked here, a peppy striped awning set up there. And sometimes miniatures were used to help enhance the setting...."

From "When Wes Anderson Comes to Town, Buildings Get Symmetrical/For 'The French Dispatch,' the filmmakers set up shop in a real French city to create the setting for the movie’s fictional one" (NYT).

I like that they scouted for the location using Google "street view." At no cost, we can all scout for locations for our movies. What's yours? You have an idea of a foreign place, and, instead of researching and learning what that place is really like, you search for the real place that's closest to that image in your head. Is there something wrong with that?

The NYT excerpt has links to 2 trailers of old films — both of which have been on my list of selected films at the Criterion Collection for about as long as I've been a subscriber (2 months). There's "The Red Balloon":

 

And that "whimsy captured by Jacques Tati" is "Playtime":

I'm about a third of the way through "Playtime." Something I texted someone while I was watching it: "possibly the most artistic and sophisticated thing I’ve ever seen."