A few years ago I had the good fortune to be offered an amazing trip by the Italian Trade Commission. A half a dozen producers were invited to tour the Umbria region of Italy as well as Rome over the course of a week. There were great sights, great food, great hotels, great people. At one stop we were interviewed by a local paper who wanted to know our thoughts on Italian film. I riffed off my (somewhat obvious) favorites: Antonioni, Fellini, Pasolini, Argento and Leone. The latter two caused the journalist to laugh at my low-brow tastes. I was kind of shocked -- somewhat about Argento but particularly about Leone, whose films over time really stand up as classics.

So, I enjoyed reading Manohla Dargis's appreciation of Leone in the New York Times which takes the form of a report from the opening of Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone, an exhibition at L.A.'s Autry Museum. The opening featured a puppet-show reenactment of the final shootout in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Here's Dargis:

"...the three giant puppets listed into the courtyard, guns in hand and faces fixed in Leone-style scowls. They got down to their dirty business quickly. As in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the Eastwood puppet shot first and the Van Cleef puppet bit the dust, or more accurately was gingerly lowered to the ground by the puppeteer wearing the great body and carved-foam head. That was it. The bad guy had been vanquished, the Gallo wine quaffed, the gelato devoured. It was time to hit the trail."

Click on the link above for the museum's website, which contains a number of clips and items of interest for Leone fans. The exhibition runs until January 22.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/30/2005 11:32:00 AM

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Assassination Chain Letter is "a film project of global proportions. Instead of the old boring concept of gathering short films into a 'video compilation,'" the team behind Assassination Chain Letter "decided to begin a project that will be formed into one full-length feature film. [They] are gathering short films from filmmakers from around the world, to be put together into one story, one concept and one hell of an idea."

The following call for entries was recently posted on Filmmaker's Message Board:

"Attention All Filmmakers!

"We are working with short and full-length film directors from around the world to make a movie that will hit you like a bullet.

"If you are looking to be a part of something amazing, that might just get your short film seen by more people than you can imagine, check out the website and get ready to start filming.

"If you have an idea that you have been dying to film, but had no real way to use it or market it ... this might just be your ticket. This is somewhat of a contest ... but it is also an amazing opportunity for film makers the world over.

"Visit www.AssassinMovie.com for details and information."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 7/30/2005 10:22:00 AM

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Yahoo! is beginning the Yammys -- an annual contest celebrating short films on the Web. Submissions are being taken through August 17th at midnight. The prizes are awesome but the best is that all the videos will enter Yahoo's video search and the top 25 will be highly promoted on Yahoo -- great exposure.

The Yammys' Grand Prize winner will receive a red-carpet premiere in their hometown, to showcase their winning video with all their friends and family, along with a plasma TV and DVD player. Casio's also providing 30 Exilim EX-S500 cameras.

The Yammys categories are: Bloopers, Pets, Road Trips, Office Humor, and "I Can't Believe It!"
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 7/29/2005 03:04:00 PM

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In the Telegraph's profile of Nicole Kidman, in which she talks about many things, including her involvement in Steve Shainberg's currently lensing Fur, one paragraph stands out:

"When she finishes Fur she has scheduled two weeks' work on the drama The Lady from Shanghai in Hong Kong and has nothing else planned except a vague commitment to do a film with Crowe and Australian director Baz Luhrmann sometime in the not-too-near future."

Two weeks work on a Wong Kar Wai film? Um... I wouldn't lay odds on it.

Of the film and Kidman, the director has said, "Normally I will build a story around one character and I think it will be interesting to have Nicole Kidman play it as a woman who claims she came from Shanghai, and it's very mysterious."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/29/2005 01:00:00 PM

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David Fincher's music video for Nine Inch Nail's "Only," which features effects by Digital Domain, is online here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/28/2005 07:59:00 PM

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In an age in which every last Jess Franco movie is the subject of some scholarly essay or post-modern reverie, it's refreshing to read J.R. Taylor's interview with '70s/'80s grindhouse icon Roberta Findlay in this week's New York Press. And while Taylor starts with a bit of romantic nostalgia for trash-film viewing on the Forty Deuce, Findlay quickly throws some cold water on it all:

"'People who like those old movies seem to have deep psychological problems,' she explains. 'Under the best of circumstances, I wouldn't call any of them art. My first budget was $5,000. That was the deal. You'd be given a budget and then they'd own the film. I'd get a fee, whatever the fee was. Until the last picture I did, when my producer wasn't going to pay me -- for no reason. He punched me in the eye, and then, forbearance to sue, he paid me what he owed me.'"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/21/2005 08:29:00 PM

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If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know that one topic we occasionally post about is the impending synergy between new consumer electronics devices and downloadable visual media (i.e., movies). I posted previously about Apple's switch to the Intel processor and linked to a piece speculating that it had something to do with placing an Intel chip with digital rights management controls within a computer like the Mac mini, thereby creating a kind of Tivo-alternative. Now comes this article on the Ars Technica site which continues this thinking, claiming that what Apple is really after is getting a powerful video-ready chip inside the Ipod so that all elements of Apple's iLife suite can be downloadable to the device.

From the article by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes:

"It's critical to understanding the switch that you not underestimate the importance of Intel's XScale to Apple's decision to leave IBM. The current iPods use an ARM chip from Texas Instruments, but we can expect to see Intel inside future versions of the iPod line. So because Apple is going to become an all-Intel shop like Dell, with Intel providing the processors that power both the Mac and the iPod, Apple will get the same kinds of steep volume discounts across its entire product line that keep Dell from even glancing AMD's way.

If you think XScale is too powerful for the iPod -- it's used in powerful color PDAs -- then you're not taking the device seriously enough as a portable media platform. The XScale is plenty powerful enough to do video playback, and I have reason to believe that Apple is currently working on a video iPod to counter the Sony PSP. (My guess is that we might even see it in time for Christmas.) When the video iPod hits the streets, Apple will have an iPod product that plays each of the media formats (music, pictures, video) represented in its iLife suite."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/15/2005 06:20:00 PM

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As reported in Ratchet Up, "A team of researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has developed the first true, three-dimensional, holographic movies. These movies should appear on a screen near you in about a decade. For the moment, the initial markets for this holographic television system will be in medical visualization and military applications. The system is based on regular digital light processing (DLP) micro-mirror chips, but there is a twist. Instead of using regular lights, the researchers are using laser lights, which are using a unique wavelength. And they feed the chip with interferograms coming from regular 3-D imaging applications. This unique combination leads the micro-mirrors to project a 3-D moving image that appears suspended in air, like a 3-D hologram."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 7/14/2005 01:01:00 PM

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Since I don't think readers of this blog always click through to the occasional comments linked below the entries, I thought I'd highlight here a link provided by an anonymous respondent to my blog titled "The Skin Game," below. In it I highlighted the absurdity of the Department of Justice's new "2257" regulations and wondered why the indie community, which marshalled a veritable army of producers-turned-activists when promotional screeners were banned, has been completely silent on this issue which involves not only de facto censorship but privacy rights, sidestepping the Fourth Amendment and more. (Currently, the Free Speech Coalition, which is an adult trade group, is the only organization battling these regulations.)

In this article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website the organization notes "Why the DOJ's 2257 Regulations Aren't Just a Porn Problem" and explains more clearly the effect of these rules on bloggers, website operators, and online journalists.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/09/2005 11:31:00 AM

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I just returned from the opening of filmmaker Chantal Akerman's new installation, To Walk Next to One's Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge, at the Marian Goodman Gallery on 57th St. in New York. It's a really beautiful work, and anyone interested in the Belgian filmmaker or autobiographical media art in general should make an effort to check it out.

The installation takes place in two rooms. In the first, text fragments from an autobiographical writing Akerman published last year are projected on a scrim which scrolls inward within the space like a gossamer Richard Serra sculpture. In the second, a two-panelled short film by Akerman is projected on a wall through another scrim onto a which a second projection of highlighted images is thrown.

On a formal level, the piece explores concepts like repetition and transparency, but, at its heart, this is tremendously moving and unexpectedly funny piece in which Akerman uses her artmaking tools to journey back through her family history to trace the desires and ambitions of three generations of women. The film features Akerman and her mother discussing the contents of a diary that Akerman found in their house one day -- the diary of Akerman's grandmother.

"I am a woman!" the diary begins. "Therefore I can't express all my feelings, my sorrows and my thoughts... dear diary, onto your sheets I will write them. And you will be my only confidante."

The grandmother's diary spurs the two women to discuss World War 2 -- her mother's time in the camps and her feeling that she never regained her life afterwards -- and the mother's support of Akerman's early career as an artist. At one point, Akerman remembers her father watching her first film, Blow Up My Town, saying that that was the moment that he finally thought there might be some future for his daughter in her profession. She also says that the film was the only time she was ever successfully able to mix comedy and tragedy, something she's been trying to do since.

It was also great to see Akerman at the exhibit. My partner Robin O'Hara had been in touch with her recently on my behalf when, through a friend, a Very Famous Filmmaker asked me to track down a video copy of her classic film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles for him to see. That's a film referenced by Gus Van Sant in his new Last Days. In the upcoming Filmmaker, Van Sant recounts how his d.p. Harris Savides announced one day on the set how he "cracked the visual code" of the film which has influenced many but is quite hard to screen these days. So, given that, don't miss the chance to see something new of Akerman's work if you are in New York. Akerman's installation runs at the gallery (24 West 57th Street) through August 26.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/08/2005 08:58:00 AM

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Via this article in Variety comes sad news: Renaissance, the London-based sales company, has shut down, declaring bankruptcy and pinkslipping its employees.

A company that mades its name as a producer of such films as The Madness of King George and Wings of a Dove, Renaissance was one of the international sales companies that took an active interest in the American independent sector. It invested production coin in films like Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects and was sales repping such films as We Don't Live Here Anymore, Todd Louiso's upcoming Macbeth, Gregg Araki's upcoming Creeeps and two 2005 Sundance selections: Junebug and Pretty Persuasion.

According to the paper, Renaissance never recovered from production losses that bled through a $40 million dollar investment in the company by Hermes, a British pension fund.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/07/2005 01:32:00 AM

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Filmmaker has been on press the last week so that has meant that we've been slacking on the blog. But one of the things I've been meaning to post about is the government's new "2257" regulations which, on the sheer basis of their audacity, should be provoking outrage in the independent world. Strangely, though, our indie sector has been quiet on this government intrusion on content creators, probably because it specifically targets adult entertainment.

Anyway, this Newsday editorial does a far better job than I could have explaining why you should care about these new regulations. Here's an excerpt:

"Regardless of one's feelings about adult entertainment, the situation is a disturbing illustration of a larger trend in the Bush administration: the use of regulatory powers to advance a conservative moral agenda.

Part of a revision to the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, the new regulations were quietly published last year and target a seemingly mundane part of the porn business - record keeping. While huge corporations such as Time Warner make a hefty profit broadcasting adult entertainment, porn is largely produced by smaller entities, often operating without even an office.

Individuals and small companies producing adult entertainment will be devastated by new regulations requiring them to provide copies of government-issued IDs for performers retroactive to 1995. In addition, these small producers, perhaps operating out of a garage or second bedroom, will need to have a public office, open at least 20 hours a week, where their records are available for inspection....

By focusing on regulatory enforcement, the Department of Justice cannily avoids repressing adult entertainment on the basis of content, knowing that the First Amendment presents a challenge that probably cannot be overcome. But the effect - suppression of protected speech, whether or not it is deemed obscene - is achieved outside the normal checks and balances of American government.

The Bush administration has a track record of attempting to regulate morality behind a smoke screen of law enforcement, bureaucratic rules and scientific research. These efforts are often focused on unpopular issues, where the administration is fairly certain that public opinion will provide protection, regardless of the ethics involved. Few citizens in an increasingly conservative America will fight to protect the constitutional rights of pornographers."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/07/2005 01:05:00 AM

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In this article in The Guardian on London's winning Olympic bid, the newspaper gives a mini-review to a new film by Luc Besson:

"Earlier, Paris had been the first to address the IOC. The French attempted to match their audience, using exclusively white middle-aged men to deliver their message, culminating in a plea from President Jacques Chirac.

Even a promo film directed by Luc Besson seemed staid, featuring enough talking heads to suggest the great auteur has a future in corporate videos should the Hollywood commissions end.

It was unspectacular, but many believed it still might be good enough to deliver the games, particularly after New York, Madrid and Moscow delivered no surprises."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 7/07/2005 12:56:00 AM

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