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THE HEART IS DECEITFUL...
According to JT Leroy, Asia Argento's film adaptation of his book The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things now has its own Web site. "Imagine Oliver Twist re-made as a horror pic and you'll come close to its essence," wrote one reviewer about the film.
The Heart is Deceitful had its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May, then went on to Toronto in September. Directed by and starring Asia Argento, the cast also includes Winona Ryder, Peter Fonda, Mike Pitt, Jeremy Renner, Kip Pardue, Matt Schulze, Dylan and Cole Sprouse and Jimmy Bennett. The film screens November 8 at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles.
A slide show of Lydia Lunch's still photos from the film can be found on her Web site.
Leroy's latest book, Harold's End (Last Gasp), an illustrated novella with watercolors by Cherry Hood, is due out in December, and Leroy's band Thistle LLC, celebrates the release of its debut EP, November 13.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/29/2004 03:09:13 PM Comments (0)
Although at first glance it might be mistaken for an action-adventure film in the vein of The Crow, Sting: Moment of Truth is actually a straight-forward docudrama based on the life of the pro wrestler known as Sting (a.k.a. Steve Borden). Focusing on his rise to success, eventual spiral into drug use, and redemption via religion, Sting promises lots of ringside action and personal drama. If you like your wrestling with a decidedly Christian bent -- and who doesn't? -- this could be one for you.
# posted by Andre Salas @ 10/29/2004 01:31:18 PM Comments (0)
Nerve.com's Politics Issue, online through Nov. 2, features an article by Lynn Harris on Mommar Qaddafi's sexy female bodyguards, which is also the subject of Rania Ajami's documentary Qaddafi's Female Bodyguards: Shadows of a Leader"Everywhere [Qaddafi] goes he's surrounded by a badass bunch of Lara Croft clones," write Harris, "usually in matching colored camouflage (of dubious use in the desert). They've been described as 'wearing their Kalashnikovs like Gucci fashion accessories.' (Yes, news articles always describe [what] they're wearing. Not like you ever hear the AP mention the 'navy wool, three-button, notched-lapel suits' of the Secret Service.) On a good day, the bodyguards make Qaddafi look like Hef. On a bad day, a Bond villain. On every day, a crackpot."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/29/2004 11:34:09 AM Comments (0)
TRAILER CONTEST
"Want to see your name on a film screen at one of the most important cultural institutions in the world?" The Film Society of Lincoln Center and HBO Films are sponsoring a student competition to create a 45-second-long trailer for the 2005 New York Film Festival. Details can be found here. Deadline: December 31, 2004.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/28/2004 01:13:26 PM Comments (0)
VON TRIER PREPS ANTICHRIST FILM
Lars von Trier, currently editing Manderlay at Zentropa studio's editing facility Klippegangen says it will be years before the third film in his USA trilogy hits screens. "It will be several years before we shoot the final part of the trilogy [begun with Dogville], " said von Trier, "because in the meantime I need to earn some money."
He is currently "preparing a new [English-language] film for a wider audience, a horror film... in the style of The Kingdom," explains executive producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen referring to von Trier's brilliant 1994 miniseries, later adapted by Stephen King for ABC as the tepidly received Kingdom Hospital. "It is kind of an Antichrist [movie] based on the theory that it was not God but Satan who created the world."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/27/2004 04:00:03 PM Comments (0)
NICK NOLTE... PARODIED!
The folks at Greg.org got suspicious first, and their fears proved correct. Nick Nolte's online diary, linked to below, is revealed by its creators to be a parody. Or, alternately, a work of fiction. Or a satire containing photographs protected by Section 107 of the United States Copyright Law. Whatever. For the few seconds it takes to scan a home page and link to it here, we were fooled.# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 10/26/2004 11:58:54 PM Comments (0)
"And it seems to me to be almost the perfect life, really. I mean, I would like to be taller and have more hair [laughs] and things, but apart from those physical things I can't really imagine how my life could be improved. I hope that doesn't sound smug, but it is a pretty good life."
That's British d.j. John Peel, the legendary musical tastemaker who championed and established bands like Joy Division and the Sex Pistols, as quoted in an interview on the B92 website as linked to by the ever essential Greencine Daily. Peel, 65, died yesterday, and, like us, our friends at Greencine saw fit to acknowledge on their film site the immense contribution Peel has made to our modern culture.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 10/26/2004 03:56:55 PM Comments (0)
Did you know that John Sayles, before he became a filmmaker, was a National Book Award-nominated novelist and short-story writer? Mediabistro.com's David S. Hirschman talks with Sayles about filmmaking, his latest collection of short stories, Dillinger in Hollywood, and the current climate in the news media.# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/26/2004 10:38:47 AM Comments (0)
THE DOWNTOWN PLAYS
Last night I caught up with "The Downtown Plays", a production of Drama Dept. and Pace University as part of the Tribeca Theater Festival. Featuring a terrific ensemble cast of 10 actors in nine short plays directed by John Rando ("Urinetown"), "Downtown Plays" is an exhilarating two hours of theater that runs the gamut from poignant drama (Frank Pugliese's "Late Night, Early Morning" and Jon Robin Baitz's "My Beautiful Goddamn City") to dark comedy (Kenneth Lonergan's True to You" and Neil LaButes's "Union Square") to social satire (Douglas Carter Beane's "He Meaning Him" and David Henry Hwang's "Trying to Find Union Square") to outright hysteria (Paul Rudnick's "Pride and Joy," featuring Jackie Hoffman, pictured above). Even the clunkers in the program (Warren Leight's relatively dull "Happy for You" and Wendy Wassertein's madcap "Psyche in Love") were still well worth the price of admission.
Each evening "The Downtown Plays," which runs through October 31, is introduced by a different celebrity. (I'm tempted to return Tuesday night when Christopher Walken handles the intro and Molly Shannon joins the cast for the remainder of the engagement!)
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/25/2004 04:21:31 PM Comments (0)
Writing for Ain't It Cool News, someone named Pappy relayed the following interesting tidbit: According to producer Richard Gladstein the release of Finding Neverland, initially completed in 2003, "was delayed because of the release of [P.J. Hogan's] Peter Pan. ...Since that film had the rights to the play, the reenactments of the theater scenes in Finding Neverland had to get Sony's permission to be admitted into the film. In short, Sony gave [the producers] permission if they would release the film after Peter Pan," hence Miramax's forthcoming release of Neverland almost a year later, on November 12, 2004.# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/25/2004 03:21:19 PM Comments (0)
A scene from Polar Express.
In his Game Engine column in the current issue of Filmmaker, Graham Leggat addresses the covergence of film and games. "The two industries are converging and there's no turning back," writes Leggat. "This is a huge kick for the casual observer, but even dispassionate natural historians of contemporary media, seeing the two species gamboling together in the wild, are feeling a sense of excitement, perhaps even liberation. And why not? It looks like progress. It gives you hope. Like anything, though, the novelty of cross-industry adaptation can wear thin. After you've watched several dozen ants launch themselves noisily downstream on leaves you start wishing for an ant that can swim. There's not much to do, however, but be patient and put your trust in evolution."
Walter Murch, talking with Scott Saunders in the print edition of the current issue of Filmmaker, elaborates: "There's a bifurcation which has always been part of filmmaking, but has been kind of latent in the process, which digital technology is forcing out into the open. It's the choice between what I call black-box films and snowflake films. What I mean by black box is a device that gives you absolute control over everything that you do; every pixel is there because you want it to be there. And obviously digital technology allows that to happen. If you force that to its logical conclusion, it becomes a theoretical black box into which you simply think the film. You don't have to make anything anymore; you just think it and there it is. And if you want to change something you think it different. It's kind of a bargain with the devil, and filmmakers will have to comes to term with what that implies about collaboration and about film as a reflection of the world as it exists at the moment a film is made. We're not there yet by any means, but Pixar and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow are waystations in that direction. ...
"The metaphor of the snowflake is that a snowflake freezes faster than the molecules can stay in control of the process. That's why they're all different. If water freezes with more control, it turns into an ice cube -- which to my mind is just a series of excitable bathroom tiles. The snowflake has this beautifully random element to it -- and in that lack of control there is something greater than absolute control. What the future holds is something in the spectrum between those two poles, between the snowflake and the black box."
"At a recent event inaugurating the new Electronic Arts Development Lab building at USC's School of Cinema and Television, filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis addressed this topic," writes Cassie Carpenter in this week's Backstage magazine. 'My influence, when I was a film student here, was a television influence,' said Zemeckis, who borrowed game design techniques for his upcoming motion-capture film The Polar Express. 'In the '80s, cinema became influenced by the pace and style of television commercials. And in the '90s, it was the pace and style of the music video. And I think the next decades are going to be influenced greatly by the digital world of gaming.'
"When asked how long before the two mediums are equal, Spielberg said, 'I think the real indicator will be when somebody confesses that they cried at Level 17.'"
The prospect of that happening anytime soon seems unlikely.
"Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks come as close to commercial infallibility as seems possible in Hollywood," reports David Rooney in today's Daily Variety, but [they] appear to have taken an ambitious misstep with The Polar Express. Straining with all the elaborate, new-fangled wizardry at its disposal to become an instant Christmas classic [ironically] steeped in old-fashioned storybook charm, this visually impressive yet emotionally frigid fable could perhaps more accurately be tagged The Bipolar Express. ... While digital animation has made considerable strides in the past decade, the trick of creating emotionally vivid, realistic human characters has yet to be achieved. Pixar's Toy Story movies got by with peripherally featured humans, but attempts to move beyond that, like Sony's 2001 interactive computer-game-derived Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within have been cold and distancing."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 10/25/2004 01:30:50 PM Comments (0)
It's pretty unusual to wake up in the morning and read entertainment industry news detailing benefits specifically targeted towards independent filmmakers. But that's what this (subscription-only) Variety piece does as it explains provisions in the just-signed American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 that make it more advantageous for investors to invest in independent film.
Writes Susan Crabtree and Ian Mohr, "After years of lobbying, independent filmmakers scored a major victory Friday when President Bush signed a bill that gives a sweeping tax break to movies made in the U.S. Producers believe the measure may draw substantial fresh funds into indie filmmaking."
They go to note, "Independent producers now may write off a movie in a single year if it has a budget of $1 million-$15 million and 75% of that budget is spent in the U.S. The expensing limit increases to $20 million if the movie is made in a low-income area of the U.S....
"'Overall, it's good, it's fantastic,' said Tim Williams, production head at New York-based GreeneStreet FilmsGreeneStreet Films, who co-produced Miramax's 2001 breakout 'In the Bedroom.' 'It's the same concept as the basis for the U.K. sale-and-leaseback (program). The trick now is for smaller companies to utilize it. Can this (bill) be used to leverage more funding on a state and local level?'
"'It's phenomenal,' said Schuyler Moore, an entertainment industry tax law expert. 'Once this gets out, it's going to jumpstart U.S. production in an enormous way. There's nothing like it in the entire (U.S. tax) code. It's just astounding.'"
More on the benefits of this law as they become apparent. I already know a couple of New York producers who are huddling with their accountants to analyze the implications of the change. And please post below if you have specific insight into the impact the law will have on film investment.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 10/25/2004 09:26:56 AM Comments (0)
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