In case you haven't already heard: "Val Kilmer is Moses!"

Starring in The Ten Commandments at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, "Kilmer's passive Moses appears to be following the commandment, 'Thou shall not express passion,' since he responds with somnabulistic detachment to every situation, even underplaying in the face of killer plagues and the parting of the Red Sea," writes Variety.

"This bland, static, overproduced and underdirected musical," adds the New York Times "all but submerges the famous episodes from Moses' life in an oily sea of pleasant but unremarkable pop music. The lengendary journey unfolds like a long, lumbering fancy-dress episode of American Idol."

Those looking for spiritual entertainment on a grand scale would be advised to look elsewhere.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/30/2004 10:26:00 AM Comments (0)

While surfing Ain't It Cool News I came across this sad news that the great exploitation and proto-independent filmmaker Russ Meyer has passed away at the age of 82. Known for outrageous, violent, and flamboyantly pop white-trash epics like Vixen, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (with a screenplay by Roger Ebert) and the impossibly great Faster Pussycast, Kill, Kill!, Meyer made films with lust-crazed guys, massively endowed women and a purely American mixture of sex, violence, and pop culture. Click the link above for Harry Knowles' tribute to Meyer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/21/2004 10:33:00 PM Comments (1)

From a press release received today: "Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier and Michael Pare are the latest actors to join the ever-increasing cast of BloodRayne, the new film adaptation based on the popular video game of the same name. The trio join the previously announced cast that includes Sir Ben Kingsley, Terminator 3 star Kristanna Loken, Michelle Rodriguez, Matt Davis and Michael Madsen.

"Now in production in Romania, where the film is set in the 18th century, BloodRayne is written by Guinevere Turner (American Psycho) and is produced and directed by Uwe Boll. Shawn Williamson of Vancouver-based Brightlight Pictures and Dan Clarke are the producers.

"Similar to the popular video game, the film is based on a sexy, supernatural huntress named BloodRayne (Loken), who is an unholy breed of human and vampire and certainly the most deliciously wicked action heroine ever to grace a console game. She is an explosive force with gymnastic dexterity and has an intense lust for blood and action. Trained by a secret agency called the Brimstone Society which hunts down and eliminates supernatural threats around the globe, BloodRayne is confronted by the deadliest of all creatures, the powerful and evil Kagan, King of the Vampires (Kingsley). Chaplin plays the Fortune Teller, who teaches Rayne that she is damning combination of human and vampire. Kier is the Regal Monk, who teaches Rayne about the three Talisman, and Pare portrays Iancu, the character who uses his butcher shop as a front to sell weapons. As previously announced, Madsen and Davis's characters are vampire hunters who initiate Rayne into their world, and Rodriguez plays the head of the local Brimstone Society chapter.

"The video game was debuted in 2002. This October, when the sequel is set for release, Rayne is challenged with her most personal battle yet in BloodRayne 2, for the Xbox(r) video game system from Microsoft, Sony PlayStation(r)2 computer entertainment system, and PC."

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/20/2004 02:55:00 PM Comments (4)

"New urban challenges, such as the shrinking of cities in Eastern Germany, call for new reflections. In a time of tight budgets the question of how to revive cities and regions with little means is becoming increasingly relevant." Stuggart-based Media-Space 04, which runs October 22-24, will address these and other issues while atempting to bridge the gap between "great architectural and urban concepts... and micro-utopia[s]... arising out of accidentally developing free space."

In conjunction with the program, the non-profit organization Ward 5 will screen works by the alternative media pioneer Stan VanDerBeek.

VanDerBeek started his career in the mid-'50s with experimental collage films in the style of Max Ernst. Although strongly influenced by the Beat Generation, VanDerBeek's films are mostly political satires. Director Terry Gilliam cites VanDerBeek's experimental animation as one of the earliest sources of inspiration for Monty Python.



VanDerBeek developed his work further towards Expanded Cinema in the '60s and was one of the most significant representatives of this heterogeneous movement that keeps influencing media art to this day. He worked with artists like Claes Oldenburg and Allen Kaprow, as well as representatives of modern dance like Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer.


In cooperation with Ben Kwolton at the Bell Telephone laboratory, VanDerBeek developed computer-animated films and experiments with holography towards the end of the 1960s. A pioneer of multi-screen projections, he also explored new possibilities for media presentation starting with his Steam Projections at the Guggenheim Museum, at his Movie-Drome theater in Stony Point, NY, and with the interactive broadcast of his Violence Sonata simultaneously on two TV channels in 1970.

With his Cine Naps project, VanDerBeek attempted to move beyond Expanded Cinema to the collective unconscious of "community dreaming" in Florida.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/17/2004 11:53:00 AM Comments (0)

The Independent Feature Project kicks off its 26th IFP Market, Conference & Expo in New York on Monday with a screening of Brad Anderson's The Machinist, starring Christian Bale and Jennifer Jason Leigh; the director, actors and screenwriter Scott Kosar will participate in a panel discussion about the making of the film on Tuesday. Paramount Classics will release the film, in which Bale plays a man who has not slept in a year and who is slowly becoming delusional, later this fall.

The Market will close on September 24 with a screening of Rodney Evan's Brother to Brother, which will be released theatrically by Wolfe Video in October. Evans's film, about a young gay black writer who meets a surviving poet from the era of the Harlem Renaissance, received a Gordon Parks Award for best screenplay from the IFP in 2000.

Included among numerous other events planned throughout the coming week are sneak preview screenings of Robert Altman and Gary Trudeau's miniseries, Tanner on Tanner, which will air as four half-hour episodes on the Sundance Channel each Tuesday in October, beginning October 5 at 9:00 p.m. Part political satire and part wry portrait of an independent filmmaker, Tanner on Tanner revisits subject matter first explored in Altman's 1988 miniseries Tanner '88.

Throughout the week the IFP Market will screen 224 projects in various stages of development at the Angelica Film Center in lower Manhattan; numerous panel discussions and workshops will take place at the nearby Puck Building, and at locations throughout the city.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/17/2004 09:56:00 AM Comments (0)

Nine short films will be presented with the twenty-five feature films and several special events in the 42nd New York Film Festival, which runs from October 1 to 17, 2004. Three of the nine shorts are from the United States and the other entries are from Argentina, France, Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Highway 403, Mile 39 (USA, 2004, 8 minutes) Mitch McCabe's fractured, highly personal account of an accident, in which memory competes with fear in trying to establish what really happened. Shows before Triple Agent.


The Patio (El Patio) (Switzerland/Argentina, 2003, 15 minutes) In Milagros Mumenthaler's languid vignette, two sisters bide their time waiting for their mother to call from abroad. Shows before In the Battlefields.

Frozen River (USA, 2004, 15 minutes) One Christmas eve, the maternal instincts of two women who smuggle immigrants across the Canadian border are tested. Directed by Courtney Hunt. Shows before Or (My Treasure).

Boy (New Zealand, 2004, 15 minutes) A hit-and-run accident sets in motion Welby Ings's haunting, visually inventive tale about coming of age and into sexuality. Shows before Tarnation.

Little Apocrypha No. 2 (Kis Apokrif 2) (Hungary, 2004, 22 minutes)
A moody, dream-like work by Kornel Mundruczo, in which the whole world seems to open up on the banks of a river. Shows before Woman is the Future of Man.

Flowers for Diana (France, 2003, 8 minutes) In Reynald Bertrand's unsettling portrait of willful abjection, a documentary crew trails a belligerent, freeloading dropout on her way to the bottom. But who will get the last laugh? Shows before The Holy Girl.

Supermarket (USA, 2003, 12 minutes) In show biz you're one flop away from minimum wage, so count your blessings and smile: you still have your fan base. Directed by Illeanna Douglas. Shows before Rolling Family.

Nits (UK, 2004, 11 minutes) In Harry Wootliff's film, seven-year-old James wants to tell his mum something, but when his parents come back from the hospital, he learns how hard it is to say certain things. With Keane.

Never Even (Nie Solo Sein) (Germany, 2003, 10 minutes) Done than said easier is drink to something getting, backwards going world a in up wake you when: end the was beginning the in. Schomburg Jan by directed. With Sideways.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/08/2004 05:42:00 PM Comments (0)

Film festival favorites Whisky (from Uruguay; with multiple awards at Cannes, soon to screen at the Toronto Film Festival), Uniform (China, award winner at Rotterdam and Vancouver festivals), Buffalo Boy (Vietnam, to be screened at Toronto) and What's A Human Anyway (Turkey, award at Istanbul Film Festival) are among the titles to be distributed in the U.S. in 2005 by The Global Film Initiative, it was announced today by Susan Weeks Coulter, Chairperson of the Initiative, and Holly Ornstein Carter, the Initiative's Executive Director.

All are part of the slate of developing-world films that comprise the Initiative's 2005 Global Lens touring series, to be seen in major cities across the United States.

The full roster of titles includes:

Buffalo Boy (Vietnam; Minh Nguyen-Vo) A coming-of-age tale set in 1940 French-occupied Vietnam about 15-year-old Kim, his aged father, and their lives raising water buffaloes in the country's southernmost landscape. Premiere
at 2004 Locarno Film Festival.

Daughter of Keltoum (Algeria; Mehdi Charef) A young woman raised in urban Switzerland, returning to a remote part of Algeria to reunite with her estranged mother, confronts her past and culture.

Fuse (Bosnia/Herzegovina; Pjer Zalica) A comedic look at an opportunistic town in Bosnia preparing for a visit from President Clinton.

Hollow City (Angola; Maria Joao Ganga) The story of an Angolan orphan and the characters he meets on the run in a country wracked by a 30-year war. Winner of prizes at the Film Festival of African, Asian and Latin American Cinema and at the Paris Film Festival.

Kabala (Mali; Assane Kouyate) A young African, banished from his village in shame, returns four years later to experience the conflict between local traditions and modern ways.

Lili's Apron (Argentina; Mariano Galperin) A broad comedy about Argentina's economic crisis, involving an out-of-work man who masquerades as a woman to work as a live-in maid.

Uniform (China; Diao Yinan) New guises alter the lives of a man and his girlfriend in an industrial city in a remote part of China. Winner of awards at Vancouver International Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam.

What's A Human Anyway (Turkey, Reha Erdem) The chaos of daily life consumes a large cast of characters in Istanbul, involving the loss of memory and the mystery of a precious ring. Winner of the FIPRESCI (International Critics' Association) Award at the 2004 Istanbul Film Festival.

Whisky (Uruguay; Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll) The story of the owner and his employee in a sock factory in Montevideo, who, having barely communicated over the years, are suddenly forced to pose as a long-married couple. Winner, Prize of Regard Original from the Un Certain Regard Jury and the FIPRESCI (International Critics' Association) Award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival

Five of the films are recipients of the Initiative's completion grants to films from the developing world.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/07/2004 03:17:00 PM Comments (0)

According to Variety, "Vincent Gallo will star in indie helmer Abel Ferrara's Mary, an eclectic Bible-themed drama that Ferrara described [at the Venice Film Festival] as 'a search for the heart of my religious upbringing.'"

Gallo will reportedly play two roles in the film, including the star-director of a controversial film-within-the film about the life of Christ. The actress who plays Mary Magdalene in that film, and who later develops an obsession with her, is the central focus of Mary.

"I had been thinking about this project since way before The Passion [of the Christ]," said Ferarra.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/07/2004 01:33:00 PM Comments (0)

American filmmaker Jon Jost, attending the 61st Venice International Film Festival with his most recent feature, Homecoming in the Cinema Digitale competition, announced the upcoming production of a new film, a documentary essay which will deal with the "kidnapping" of his daughter, Clara Jost, on November 2, 2000, by her mother, Portuguese film director Teresa Villaverde.

According to the press release: "Clara Jost was illegally taken from Italy by Teresa Villaverde... and has since been held in Portugal.... Following the advice of the US Consulate General and of his lawyer in Portugal, Mr. Jost went through the legal procedures in Portugal only to find that the entire system was utterly corrupted, and that legality, in any meaningful sense, simply does not exist in that country. Following an illegal ruling by the Portuguese Appeals Court (Tribunal do Relacoes) in October, 2001, Mr. Jost commenced an Internet exposure of the corruption of Portugal's Judiciary, its Attorney General, and finally of its President, all of whom are involved in this case. In June, 2002, in response to this internet-based effort, the Portuguese newspaper, O Independente, published an article on the matter, ending with the statement that, 'The writer of these e-mails does not know that corruption is a Portuguese illness seldom mentioned and never investigated.'

"The as-yet untitled work is being made with BulletProof Film, of Chicago, IL, and with the collaboration of ... 26-4... an organization for Portuguese parents who have had to deal with the juvenile court systems of that country, which have chronically shown themselves to be corrupted and to operate in illegal manners, most frequently adversely to fathers."

Additional information about the case, and about Josts's forthcoming documentary -- which he hopes to complete in time for next year's Venice Film Festival -- can be found on his Web site.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 9/02/2004 04:33:00 PM Comments (0)