Eadweard

True ish story of photographer eadweard muybridge, born in england, 1830, according to wikipedia dot com. In 1850, he came to the united states. This film starts in 1867. Muybridge is already an established photographer, but yearns for improvements and how to capture motion; so he goes about photographing things moving. And doing everyday things. And nudes. Men and women. Pretty unorthodox at the time. By showing the images in succession, he has invented the movie projector, where we see still images move! And this, just a couple years before he shoots and kills someone. Interesting life. I had never heard of this guy before. Directed by kyle rideout. Already an accomplished actor, he began directing in 2010. The film has male and female nudity. And we do see the murder. Currently showing on kanopy channel. Interesting.

I already knew a fair bit about Eadweard Muybridge before I went into this movie and I don't know whether or not that may have given me a slight bias, but this movie was incredible. The film revolves around Eadweard Muybridge (as the title would suggest) the incredibly eccentric "father" of cinema who or more less invented motion pictures. The story was incredibly interesting (to me anyway), seeing them reenact these immortal moments in much the same way that Eadweard would have done was amazing and the story involving the relationship between Eadweard and his wife was also incredibly well done. The film does have a few pacing issues at the beginning, showing us five years of Eadweard's life in as many minutes was fairly jarring but after that, it flowed at a consistent pace. The acting was fairly good for the most part (the worst performance coming from a woman who seemed to be Irish-Australian?) but the show-stealing performance thankfully comes from our lead star, Michael Eklund. The only other thing I've seen Eklund in is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and despite not having a large role in it he's very entertaining to watch. I only wish he had more to do in that show because he was phenomenal in this movie. He felt so much like a real person, putting so much effort into making the eccentricities of the character feel realistic. My personal favourite thing about the film was the soundtrack. An interesting use of accordion, washboard, violin and vibraphone gives the entire film a unique feel. The film is a tribute to the man who started it all and I wish more people were aware of it as it deserves much more praise than it's been getting… especially Michael Eklund who was really, really good.

Just saw this at our local theatre in Stratford, ON with both Kyle Rideout and Josh Epstein on hand to deliver the print all the way from Vancouver! Wonderful little film that has all of the right elements working for it, script, acting, directing, music and especially cinematography! AND they made it for $150,000. 100X better then most things in theatres today. A real (reel?) gem for anyone who loves film and film history. As I write this there are bigger names trying to get other Muybridge projects off the ground (Cumberbatch, Oldman etc.) but I guarantee they won't have the passion that this has. Sure it has a fairly unknown cast but so did Citizen Kane and Star Wars.

Watched it three times over the years. It's pleasant in a different way each time. Loved the close-up scenes, as well as how well I could hear every little movement. Don't care how historically correct this is.

Kyle Rideout deserves applause. Not many directors can con investors & distributors out of millions of dollars based on a script with zero sympathetic characters and absolutely no character development. Anybody who can't generate audience interest with a naked Jodi Balfour, Sara Canning & Vanessa Walsh should be banished from narrative storytelling. This film plays like a music video of "Taps." He should be paying you to watch this travesty.