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SCREENWRITER FUCKS CANCER
Via my favorite non-film and non-politics Web site, the excellent music daily Pitchforkmedia, comes this tidbit of info that relates to a good cause. A number of musicians, including Cat Power, J. Mascis, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion will play a benefit entitled "Fuck Cancer" May 11 at the Bowery Ballroom in New York. The evening will raise funds for Jackie Farry, a young tour manager with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood.
Among the acts is Chavez, the beloved NYC band that hasn't released an album since 1996's Ride the Fader. I've known bassist Clay Tarver for years. After the band he went into commercial directing and screenwriting, which the normally blase Pitchforkmedia finds surprisingly shocking. After citing Tarver's credit as co-writer of John Dahl's Joyride, the website intones, "Your unreal is here... now." Hey guys, film is not as glamorous as it sounds. In fact, we in film think music is cooler.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/8/2004 12:18:04 AM
PROJECT GREENLIGHT
The Top 50 Directors (out of 1733 entrants) in this year's Project Greenlight can now be found on the PGL Web site.
The Top 10 Directors will be named on May 12th.
Director Contestants who reach the Top 10 will each be given an identical scene assignment. The assignment challenges the contestants to be creative, while still following all the assignment parameters. Not an easy task. Judge for yourself.
Project Greenlight will announce its Top 5 Screenplays (out of 4212 screenplays submitted) on June 1st. The Director and Screenplay winners will be announced on July 14.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 5/7/2004 02:44:55 PM
Producers from Hippofilms, a Los Angeles-based film production company, have announced a worldwide casting call for the roles of the young members of Monty Python, the famed British comedy troupe, for a theatrical bio of the late Graham Chapman entitled Gin and Tonic.
The first auditions took place in Hollywood on March 20 for the $12-million-dollar production, to be shot in London later this year.
"The first Monty Python auditions redefined how much fun an auditioning process could be," said David Eric Brenner, president of Hippofilms, who will direct Gin and Tonic from a script he co-wrote with Jim Yoakum. "The costumes were hilarious, the camaraderie amazing, and most important, the comedic talent was inspired. We're expecting more of the same in New York."
New York City auditions will take place on Saturday, June 5 from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM at Theatre Row Studios, 410 West 42nd St. Reservation Hotline (not required): 310-445-9157. (Following the auditions there will be a Python-themed mixer at a nearby midtown pub.)
Hippofilms' last movie was the 2002 romantic comedy Rent Control, written and directed by Brenner, and starring Melissa Joan Hart and Carmen Electra. The company is also developing an Olympic-themed picture, Pepper in the Blood, which Brenner is co-producing with Brian Dyson, former vice-chairman of the Coca-Cola Company.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 5/7/2004 01:45:44 PM
The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke has announced the Arts Project Contest, "a contest to create a 2-minute moving image that explains to the public some of the tensions between art and intellectual property law, and the intellectual property issues artists face, focusing particularly on either documentary film or music.
"Create or mash-up a moving image using your favorite moving image authoring tool, such as Flash, iMovie, or Final Cut Pro. Entries can contain video, animated images, text, and audio. You may incorporate other people's work, but only if you have permission or the work is Creative Commons-licensed or public domain."
Some of the places filmmakers can access public domain or Creative Commons-licensed footage include: the Prelinger Archives, Opsound, and Commoncontent.org.
For additional background info, check out text and Web casts from the recent Duke Law School conference held in conjunction with the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Framed! How Law Constructs and Constrains Culture.
Deadline for entries is August 1, 2004.
Prizes include:
First Prize: The winner may choose either an Apple Power Mac G5 Computer or an Alienware Roswell 4100 Performance Digital Video Editing System Single Processor -- AMD Opteron 242 64-Bit 1GB DDR PC-3200.
Second Prize: Sony Handycam Camcorder (Model DCR-PC120BT).
Third Prize: Apple iPod 20GB Digital Music Player.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 5/7/2004 11:04:26 AM
I AM MY OWN WIFE
This past weekend I finally managed to get to the Lyceum theater in NYC to see Doug Wright's (Quills) I Am My Own Wife, in which Jefferson Mays (left) gives a tour de force performance re-enacting scenes from the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde in 1928), who managed to survive both the Nazis and the East German secret police while living openly as a transvestite and tenaciously amassing a huge collection of turn-of-the century furniture and other household relics in a "museum" in the basement of her Eastern-bloc home."The various perspectives on Charlotte's life are all enacted by Mr. Mays in a simply splendid, genuinely artful performance," wrote Bruce Weber in his review of the production for the New York Times this past winter. "The characters include a television talk show host, more than a few brutal authoritarians, several of Charlotte's family members and friends, as well as Mr. Wright, the playwright himself. The total number of characters is 35, each with a separate voice and many with differing accents. Mr. Mays is able to render quite remarkably an American newsman whose German is inflected with a Texas drawl, but no less remarkable is that he consistently switches roles not only with vivid persuasion but also with uncannily precise timing."
Directed by Moises Kaufman (Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The Laramie Project), with exquisite lighting by David Lander and sound design by Andre J. Pleuss, I Am My Own Wife was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and more recently the Outer Critics Circle Award for best play.
Those of you unable to make it to New York to catch the Broadway production of I Am My Own Wife should check out Rosa von Praunheim's 1992 docudrama I Am My Own Woman (based on Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's autobiographical book, I Am My Own Woman: The Outlaw Life of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf, Berlin's Most Distinguished Transvestite), which features von Mahlsdorf herself (pictured, far right, with Jens Taschner, who plays Charlotte from 15-17, and Ichgola Androgyn, who plays her from 20-30) in a featured role.As Randy Turoff writes in a PlanetOut review: "What's most interesting about von Praunheim's film treatment of Charlotte is the absolute equivalence given to her achievements as a longtime sexual pervert, Nazi resister, gay liberator, and conservative-looking housekeeper with a genius for restoring palaces, manors, and antique mass-produced Victoriana. Charlotte is not a simple character: she's complex and colorful, with a repertoire of bawdy stories and gruesome World War II recollections; at the same time she is a historical gay figure who's made a huge difference simply by following her own queer proclivities with boundless bravery and enthusiasm."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 5/4/2004 11:22:17 AM
THE MATRIX PING PONG
Via Video Link Japan, a streaming video blog from Tokyo, comes this link to "The Matrix Ping Pong"... from a Japanese TV show on NTV called "Kinchan and Katori Shingo no Zen Nihon Kasou Taisho". It's the funniest video we've seen in a long time. This is better than every Matrix film put together, and they didn't even use CG. Check it out (for Win. Media Player w/broadband).
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 5/3/2004 12:33:33 PM
Also from Video Link Japan comes the following link to Iraq in the Aftermath: Visions of the Future by Lee Siu Hin, a Bay area video activist who just returned from Iraq and has posted dozens of media clips online featuring man-on-the-street interviews. "A great chance for you to see what it really looks like and what people on the street are saying."
Lee Siu Hin is also selling an interactive CD-ROM for $15 to benefit ActionLA, Peace, No War, and to help finance an indie media center in Bagdad.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 5/3/2004 11:49:03 AM
Fortissimo Film Sales has released the following description of Wong Kar-wai's highly anticipated new film, 2046, which debuts in competition at the Cannes Film Festival:"He was a writer. He thought he wrote about the future but it really was the past. In his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while. Everyone who went there had the same intention... to recapture their lost memories. It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed. Nobody knew for sure if it was true, because nobody who went there had ever come back -- except for one. He was there. He chose to leave. He wanted to change."
The film, which was lensed by cinematographer Chris Doyle, stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Chang Chen, Faye Wong, Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau Ka-ling, Gong Li, Kimura Takuya, Bird Thongchai McIntyre, with a special appearance by Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 5/3/2004 10:33:38 AM
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