Opening this week in New York is one of the boldest and most interesting of recent independent films, Room, written and directed by Kyle Henry. With a stunning lead performance by Cyndi Williams, Room uses the mental breakdown of a lower-class, struggling, unhappily-married-with-kids bingo parlor worker to look at the psychic mindscape of post 9/11 American life. Also opening is Michael Kang’s The Motel, an unusual and interesting coming-of-age tale centered around a 13-year-old Chinese-American boy living with his mother in a downscale Jersey hotel. Finally, in Who Killed the Electric Car, opening around the country from Sony Classics, director Chris Paine examines the factors that led to the downfall of the eco-friendly, fuel cell powered vehicle.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/30/2006 03:41:00 PM Comments (1)

Spin and Stir runs a post today that purports to be a quiz given to applicants for an assistant position to director Doug Liman (Swingers, Mr. and Mrs. Smith). Among the questions:

1) Doug wants to buy a sheep or a goat as a pet to keep at his farm in Hudson, NY. He wants to buy it this weekend. How would you go about making that happen. Extra points for actually locating a goat.

4) Doug has just found out he needs to introduce Senator Joe Biden. Write a few words for his introduction. The shorter the better. Comedy will score an extra point as will personal Doug details.

5) You find a crushed twinkie on some personal notes Doug has written on his copy of the script he is currently directing. What do you do with the notes?

6) Doug’s mother calls the office and asks where he is. He is skydiving. What is your answer?

7) Doug wants you to hire a pilot for his airplane in Toronto. It is a Mooney Bravo (M20T). His insurance requires the pilot to be instrument rated with 750 hours total time, 50 in type. How would you find this pilot. You should be as specific as possible.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/29/2006 10:15:00 PM Comments (0)

When IndieWire interviews filmmakers they consistently ask: What is your definition of independent film? Directors with work premiering this summer demonstrate the plethora of possible responses to such a question as well as the diversity of the independent filmmakers out there.
Patrick Creadon, Wordplay
“An independent film is a film that is made against all odds.”
Mat Whitecross, The Road to Guantanamo
“…If the term has any meaning, it must be to do with a method of filmmaking which is exempt from the usual pressures and influences associated with studio productions. But it's become such a broad catch-all expression, I'm not sure if it's that relevant anymore.”
Lian Lunson, Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man
“I think the concept of 'independent film' has changed dramatically with the introduction of the digital world. I mean I could get in a car with my camera and my laptop and drive across America and make a film single handedly now…”
Kyle Henry, Room
“…As a nation, we seem to be culturally stuck in a really bad groove of lying to ourselves (Iraq, non-stop commercialization, fundamentalist religion, reality TV, etc.) and I hope a majority of us break free from its grip soon...”
Josh Gilbert, a/k/a Tommy Chong
“My definition of independent film is making a film independent of traditional studio/Hollywood involvement in any and all aspects of the process, from conception through distribution… It's very very very difficult to be truly independent. And very lonely...”
Larry Clark, Wassup Rockers “My films.”

# posted by Laura Davies @ 6/29/2006 01:03:00 PM Comments (1)

Nathan Lee of the New York Times pays homage to the great Jean-Luc Godard’s ego in his Sunday article on the filmmaker’s current self-tribute at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. The exhibit is a collage of art forms, highlighting Godard’s essential works and those of his various muses and influences – Delacroix, Goya, and the Lumiere Brothers to name a few. Lee comments on Godard’s surrealist installation: “The entire exhibition functions as a kind of conceptual filmstrip for which the viewer is the light source and the cinema is entirely inside the mind.” While the exhibit has opened with controversy surrounding Godard’s hard-to-handle attitude, Lee brings up a crucial selling point, “As cinema undergoes its digital sea change and is displaced from the center of popular culture by a proliferation of new media, the time is right to reckon with a filmmaker who has thought longer and harder about motion pictures than anyone else.”

# posted by Laura Davies @ 6/29/2006 01:02:00 PM Comments (0)

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival wrapped up their New York run last Thursday, June 22^nd at Lincoln Center. The first and final screening, Zach Niles and Banker White’s The Refugee All Stars was the perfect bookend, encapsulating the festival’s objective: “to put a human face on threats to individual freedom and give a voice to those who might otherwise be silenced.”The Refugee All Stars tells the story of six Sierra Leonean musicians forced to escape into the Republic of Guinea during the 1991 civil war. Together they form a band and travel throughout refugee camps offering musical inspiration to fellow survivors. The film provides a recurring message, one that all of the Human Rights Watch filmmakers would agree on; art can save lives. While rooted in a conflict that has since been resolved (thanks to the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord), The Refugee All Stars contains subtle moments that speak to today’s audiences. In a candid scene the band’s drummer lifts his drumsticks into the air addressing the camera, “You cannot compare this to a gun.” The festival, which opened on June 9^th, showcased fifteen films including Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’ The Road to Guantánamo and a special sneak preview of Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini’s My American Dream: How Democracy Works Now.

# posted by Laura Davies @ 6/29/2006 01:00:00 PM Comments (0)

In an exchange below, a reader and I have gone back and forth over the art-making strategy of appropriation, a discussion brought up by the lawsuit announced against artist and Yale MFA student Chris Moukarbel, whose World Trade Center was a 12-minute video piece made using portions of the screenplay for the forthcoming Oliver Stone film. He posted this statement to the thread, but I thought I'd bring it up to the main page as it succinctly outlines the specifically political intent behind his piece:

Firstly, I wont be able to address all aspects of this issue pending litigation. I graduated last month from an MFA program and I made World Trade Center 2006 as part of my final thesis at school. I make site-specific video, sculpture and installation, often using found media or objects as my source. My projects explore the idea of memorial, fiction, and the way in which politically driven events are edified. This project was created as commentary on Hollywoods presumed authority to write history. Through their depiction of a historic event, they are ultimately in the postion to influence ideas and effect policy.
Using Stone's script was the meaning of the work. I'm not a commercial filmmaker. Offering their story for free online was a statement on their 60 million dollar effort. I explicitly stated on my site that the video was made using their script so I didn't see the need for the side-by-side comparisons in the press. Though I can't speak to 'Fair use for the purpose of political commentary' in copyright law, I can say that I wasn't trying to make a point about appropriation. I was using that strategy to make a statement about power.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/27/2006 07:52:00 PM Comments (0)

Many filmmakers lately have been interested in blending documentary with drama, mixing real people and places into classically structured stories. Perhaps the best of these recent attempts is also the most timely and vital; Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's The Road to Guantanamo, which tells the true story of three British Muslims who, traveling to Pakistan for a wedding, haplessly wind up captured by U.S. military and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Winterbottom and Whitecross shoot on DV and blend talking-head interviews with the real "Tipton Three" -- who have since been released -- with incredibly dramatic scenes with actors that capture both the heartbreaking chaos and the grim illogic of the current war on terror. It's the most important and to my mind best movie of the year, and it opens this week.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/23/2006 05:23:00 PM Comments (0)

Below we linked to The Smoking Gun regarding a lawsuit threatened by Paramount against an artist who created a twelve-minute video piece apparently based on the screenplay for Oliver Stone's forthcoming World Trade Center.

Interestingly, the New York Times ran a piece this weekend about the same studio's tolerance (so far) of fan-produced Star Trek episodes and movies. The video equivalent of "fan fiction," some of these not-intended-for-profit works have been downloaded 30 million times!

From the article as reprinted in IndyStar.com:

Fan films have been around for years, particularly those related to the "Star Wars" movies. But now they can be downloaded from the Web, and modern computer graphics technology has lent them surprising special effects. And as long as no one is profiting from the work, Paramount, which owns the rights to "Star Trek," has been tolerant. (Its executives declined to comment.)

Up to two dozen of these fan-made "Star Trek" projects are in various stages of completion, depending on what you count as a full-fledged production. Dutch and Belgian fans are filming an episode; a Scottish production is in the works at U.S.S. Intrepid.

A group in Los Angeles has filmed more than 40 episodes, according to its Web site, Hidden Frontier, and has explored gay themes that the original series never imagined. Episodes by a group in Austin, Texas, at Star Ship Exeter, feature a ship whose crew had the misfortune of being turned into salt in an episode of the original "Star Trek" but has now been repopulated by Texans.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/21/2006 05:32:00 PM Comments (0)

Writing in Sight and Sound, Amy Taubin surveys the young Americans at Cannes -- John Cameron Mitchell, Rick Linklater, and, finally, Richard Kelly:

"It's about how a bunch of teenagers are dying because we don't have an alternative fuel source," said Richard Kelly of 'Southland Tales', his hallucinatory, media-saturated, apocalyptic, broken-hearted, future/present follow-up to 'Donnie Darko' - which has just a ghost of a chance of being shown theatrically in its two-hour 43-minute Cannes version. As oneiric and overwhelming as two memorial films of Cannes past - David Lynch's 'Mulholland Dr.' and Wong Kar-Wai's '2046' - and a lot funnier, 'Southland Tales' attributes the war in Iraq and the devastation of the planet to the greed and increasing desperation of Big Oil and to the all-encompassing (at least in the US) media culture, of which the film is unabashedly a part. Kelly's mash-up owes as much to 'It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World' as to 'Kiss Me Deadly' and the aforementioned Lynch Hollywood dystopia, as well as recalling two American underground film-makers - Ken Jacobs and Manuel De Landa - whose work Kelly has probably never seen.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/21/2006 01:48:00 PM Comments (1)

The lawyers at Paramount, who presumably are not fans of folks like Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and other appropriation-based artists, have launched a federal lawsuit against artist Christopher Moukarbel, who we blogged about recently. They are charging copyright infringement with regards to a 12-minute film he created and put up online which is based, apparently, on a copy of the screenplay for Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. (Filmmaker's blog is cited in the Paramount filing.)

The Smoking Gun has all the details, including links to screenplay excerpts, which have been filed as exhibits, as well as a side-by-side comparison of Stone's script and Mourkabel's work. Undoubtedly the Paramount action will draw many to check out the script for World Trade Center and make their own conclusions about the work a couple of months before the film opens.

The damages requested in the suit are unspecified, and the clip has been removed from the artist's website "at the request of Paramount Pictures."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/21/2006 11:24:00 AM Comments (7)

Larry Clark's Ken Park, from a script by Harmony Korine, is notoriously difficult to see in the States. According to Clark in this week's Village Voice, that old nemesis, uncleared music rights, is the culprint. But for those who want to see the movie, Clark relays to writer Jessica Winter some consumer advice while he waits for the song situation to get worked out.

In the meantime, Clark directs interested parties to the Internet. "You can go on eBay and get the DVD. The Russian DVD is good, the French DVD is good, the Dutch DVD is good. But don't get the Hong Kong DVD, because they pixelated all the nudity out."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/20/2006 08:23:00 PM Comments (0)

Via Ray Pride at Movie City Indie: David Lynch is selling ringtones. $3.99 a pop.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/20/2006 10:55:00 AM Comments (0)

Pitchfork Media has just put up one of their mammoth surveys, this time 100 Awesome Music Videos, complete with mini-critiques and, for each one, a link to the video itself. It stretches back to the beginning days of music video and seems to have most of the major clips covered. Check it out.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/20/2006 10:49:00 AM Comments (1)

Many of the greatest directors -- and many more of the not-so-great -- aspire to create the cinematic equivalent of a great piece of music. DJ Danger Mouse, the brilliant 28-year-old composer/producer who just scored a huge in the U.K. with his Gnarls Barkley collaboration with Cee-Lo (the U.S. numbers are, not surprisingly, more modest) has found inspiration in the opposite direction: he wants to be a auteur.

In yesterday's excellent New York Times Magazine profile, Danger Mouse, AKA Brian Burton, says that his musical identity began to materialize once he discovered the work of Woody Allen. "When I got to college, I saw Manhattan and Deconstructing Harry," he tells Chuck Klosterman. "I thought to myself: Why do I relate so much to this white 60-year-old Jewish guy? Why do I understand his neurosis? So I just started watching all of his movies. And what I realized is that they worked because Woody Allen was an auteur: he did his Thing, and that particular Thing was completely his own. That's what I decided to do with music. I want to create a director's role within music, which is what I tried to do on this album."

# posted by Matthew Ross @ 6/19/2006 08:45:00 PM Comments (1)

Over at Caveh Zahedi's blog, Zahedi is talking about teaching at the European Graduate School in the Swiss Alps where he's hanging out with and listening in on classes taught by Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Nancy, D.J. Spooky, the Quay Brothers and others.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/13/2006 12:00:00 AM Comments (0)

Over at Suicide Girls, Daniel Robert Epstein interviews the great horror director Stuart Gordon and talks about the reissue of the fantastic 80s horror film From Beyond as well as an upcoming project -- another episode in the Re-Animator series:

DRE: I read that House of Re-Animator is going to set in the White House.
SG: Yeah, we’re excited about that. We’re in the process of writing it, so that’s a little ways off.
DRE: Are you definitely directing it?
SG: Yes, we hope to start at the beginning of next year.
DRE: What has brought you back to Re-Animator?
SG: It was when George W. Bush became president, I want to say got elected but he really didn’t. I actually believed that Donald Rumsfeld had died. I couldn’t believe he was still around. Suddenly I had this idea that this was a reanimated Cabinet. I got very excited about the idea. I’ve actually been pestering Brian [Yuzna] to do this House of Re-Animator idea for awhile. It wasn’t until Bush started his second term that Brian had finally said, “Okay. I think we should do it.” I think he was afraid of the idea originally.

Meanwhile, the New York Times writes about Gordon's newest film, an adaptation of David Mamet's fantastic play Edmond.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/12/2006 11:52:00 PM Comments (0)

Actor Sung Kang (pictured) stars in both Michael Kang's indie The Motel, which opens in a couple of weeks and Justin Lin's very big budget The Fast and Furious 3. Here's a mash-up that unites the two movies entitled The Motel and the Furious.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/12/2006 11:44:00 PM Comments (0)

The BBC runs a fascinating dialogue between MPAA President Dan Glickman and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's John Perry Barlow.

Here's a taste:

JPB: These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices. And I don't have a question about who's going to win that one eventually.

There are a lot of kids out there copying and distributing movies not because they care about seeing the movies or sharing them with their friends but because they want to stick it to the movie business. It's widely assumed that you can't compete with free and that seems like a reasonable thing to think. But this has not been my experience. I mean I've made a fair amount of money over the years writing songs for 'The Grateful Dead' who allowed their fans to tape their concerts.

We were at one point the biggest grossing performing act in the United States, and most of our records went platinum sooner or later.

It's an economic model that has worked in my experience and I think it does work. It's just that it seems like it wouldn't. It seems counter-intuitive.

DG: It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature.

All of us kind of need to chill out
Dan Glickman, Motion Picture Association of America
Would a clothing store give all their clothes for free? Would a car dealership give all its cars for free? Of course not. If they don't make a profit in this world they're out of business. That's just the laws of human nature.

JPB: If I were to encounter Dan Glickman on the street and we were to have a civilised conversation about this subject, which would be a long shot, I'd tell him to relax.

I'd tell him to spend less of the resources of his industry on fighting the inevitable and more on learning about the conditions that they find themselves in and recognising the opportunities, which I think are vast and very encouraging. But they can't get to those opportunities until they quit trying to stop progress.

DG: First of all I'd tell John Perry Barlow that I'm very relaxed and if we met each other we'd probably have a very good time. But all of us kind of need to chill out.

The fact of the matter is that people who create content for movies and television have to make a profit. If they don't you won't see all this wonderful stuff and listen to it.

But he is right to the extent that we need to be finding new and different ways to get our content to people, whether it's internet or whether it's iPod or whether it's remotely accessed in various parts of the world. If [we] don't the consumer will not be satisfied and in this business the consumer is king and queen. If you don't make them happy they won't buy your product.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/12/2006 11:23:00 PM Comments (0)

Following up on a post from a couple of weeks back, there's a preliminary Web site up for Youth Without Youth, Francis Coppola's "return to personal filmmaking." Included are a few absolutely fascinating diary entries from the maestro, all written last September and all concerning his obsession that he may have outgrown his talent. An excerpt:

"WITHOUT
Without what? What is missing? What could be the reason that the same person, later in life, is unable to compete with himself as a younger artist? Is anything missing at all, or is the answer simpler — that each person is given only one or two truly worthy ideas, like a couple of arrows in a quiver. When such ideas come on the scene in an exciting work of art, it appears like magic; it's news. Critics and journalists require fresh blood for their own professions, and so it's understandable that a new artist with a new idea is seized up and catapulted into fame . This is true, also, for a series of works from one artist: a trilogy or tetralogy. Aren't the fourth books of The Alexandria Quartet or Mishima's The Sea of Tranquility the weakest of the group? Could it be that the ideas and innovations of the first or second book have already been demonstrated and are played out by time the last are written? Originally, I didn't intend to make more than one Godfather film; yet economic forces at the studio were insistent: "Francis, you have the formula for Coca-Cola; are you not going to make more?" But the first film expended most of the arrows in my quiver or, more aptly, the slugs in my revolver. So, the second film had to stretch into new and more ambitious territory to show a few more; otherwise, it would have been weaker than the first. By the time the third arrived, the basic ideas that made the first fresh and excited were all but used up."

Will Coppola rediscover his creative youth? Time will well....

(Via Anne Thompson.)

# posted by Matthew Ross @ 6/12/2006 10:27:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at GreenCine, David Hudson compares and contrasts the work of Joe Swanberg and Andrew Bujalski. Bujalski, of course, is the director of Mutual Appreciation and Funny Ha Ha. Swanberg made Kissing on the Mouth and LOL and also helms a web series called Young American Bodies (pictured) over at Nerve.com. Typically, Hudson's analysis is full of tons of links, and observations like this one:

First, I have no idea how much of an inspiration Bujalski might be for Joe, but that's ultimately beside the point. I'd argue that each gives us something in his films the other doesn't. There are similarities, of course. They're about the same age, or in the same neighborhood age-wise, and so are their characters. The question of what to do with one's life - as opposed to what one's done with it - lurks and occasionally pounces. Improvisation is part of the process behind LOL and YAB and, though Bujalski insists his characters speak the lines written for them, there's an improvised feel to the dialogue in the work of both filmmakers (hence critics' autopilot Cassavetes allusions).

But there's also more of an improvised feel about Joe Swanberg's camerawork, even though he often ends up making more conventional choices about where to place that camera (though certainly not always). With both filmmakers, we spend a lot of time indoors, but Bujalski more often tends to want to take in an entire room within the frame; he always makes sure we know exactly where we are, whereas in some of Joe's scenes, particularly in YAB, location is practically irrelevant. And of course, there's texture. Shot in grainy black-and-white, great swaths of Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation look as if they could have been filmed in 1980 or even 1960. Joe's very mid-2000s digital video work occasionally soaks up saturated colors, or, every now and then, as in scenes in a club in YAB, he doesn't seem to mind at all if the screen goes black - it only draws Ben and the girl he's flirting with closer together as they lean in towards a candle's flame and away from the noise all around them.

The most important difference between the character-driven films of Swanberg and Bujalski, though, as Karina [Lombard} suggests, lies in the characters themselves. No character is ever completely truthful, but Bujalski's do tend to try harder at it; there's a lot more conscious lying going on in Joe's films.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/11/2006 06:53:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at his blog Self Reliant Filmmaking, filmmaker Paul Harrill is beginning a two-part series discussing books on productivity and their effectiveness for artists. He starts with David Allen's Getting Things Done, which is the bible-of-the-moment for productivity seekers. It has even spawned a website, 43 Folders, which applies its principles to computer organizational systems and various lifehacks.

Harrill starts by summarizing some of the key points of Allen's simple system:

Something comes across your desk. What now?

First, you process it:

If you can’t act on it, you trash it, file it away for later, or you save it for reference. Examples: junk mail, an newspaper article you might want to adapt into a short film someday, or a new phone book, respectively.

If you can act on it then:

1) You can act on it immediately if you can accomplish the task in 2 minutes or less. (Great for email.)
2) You can delegate someone to do something about it.
3) You defer it to be acted upon later, preferably by putting it on your calendar or by assigning a “next action” to it.

#1 is the most immediately satisfying, in the sense that you’re dealing with stuff very quickly.
#2 is useful if you have someone to whom you can reliably delegate.
#3 is for the important (or at least time consuming) stuff.

I won’t go into details about the actions (this is most of the book), but Allen stresses that you must define what the next actionable step is. Failure to do this means you’ve just pushed it aside and you’re going to end up spinning wheels. But (theoretically, at least) if you follow the system, you’re going to figure out a meaningful action that you can take and then you’ll do it.

Harrill's been playing with Allen's ideas for a year, and he goes on to summarize the good and the bad:

I also found that its orientation towards specific, actionable tasks was immensely helpful. It’s not enough to say “I swear I’m going to finish editing my documentary.” And it’s even worse to say, “I’m going to figure that problem scene out.” Figuring something out isn’t an action. You have to say, “I’m going to try to cut it from character X’s perspective and see if that solves the problem I’m having with the pacing.” That’s action, which, um, gets things done. Again, as I said, some of this is straightforward, common sense stuff, but even applying the slightest bit of theory to your productivity can help you become aware of what is and isn’t working for you.

That's the good. Here's the bad:

Beyond some of the most basic concepts (like the ones outlined above) I’ve largely abandoned the GTD system. In fact, some of the more advanced concepts in the book — like the fabled 43 folders — I tried for only a few days before dropping. At times I felt like I was pushing paper and not getting much done. At other times I stressed more about the system than the actual tasks I was using the system to accomplish. Wasn’t this supposed to be stress-free productivity?

I definitely relate to Harrill's comments; I read Allen's book about a year ago too. For me, there were simple tips in the book that were great, like the "two-minute rule." Basically, if something comes up that you can do in two minutes, you have to do it because the time to organize it, come back to it, and do it will take longer than two minutes. (The book never seems to really address what happens if your day becomes comprised of a series of incoming two-minute actions that wind up taking your mind away from bigger projects.) The "next action" rule Harrill described above is also excellent. But like Harrill, I found that the system's relentless mental categorizing creates a drone-ish, non-creative feeling. And what's very interesting about the book is that it's tailored to high-powered executives but never really addresses the role of an assistant -- which most of its readers obviously have -- to achieve some of the goals defined in the book.

Has anyone else out there tried Allen's book or one of the other ones out there? Comments, please.

I'll be looking forward to Harrill's part two, in which he looks at a productivity book just for artists.

And, on a related note... the 14-Day Screenplay Challenge is a website that is structuring the energies of its readers to finish a script in two weeks. There are downloadable progress bars, forums with postings by various writers, links to stimulating and related blogs (all of which, it seems to me, might distract you from finishing your script). The current round started June 3.

Here's what the site has to say:

In the 14 Day Screenplay we challenge you to write a feature length screenplay (90-120 pages) in just 14 days. It may sound crazy but that is less than 7-9 pages a day, each day for the 14 days. With a little preparation it should take less than two hours a day. Most people can find bits of time through the day, and what'ss getting up early for a fortnight if you have a screenplay written at the end?

This is a competition, however there are no prizes. You are competing with yourself and the grand prize is the satisfaction of knowing you too can write a script. The point is simply this - finish a screenplay!

It doesn't matter if your script is no good. If it's your first then odds are it won't be, however consider it a first draft. Consider it proving to yourself that you can writer a script and use your new found confidence to continue writing. After all, a lousy first draft is better than no draft at all.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/11/2006 12:55:00 PM Comments (0)

Below Matt Ross points you to the iTunes Music Store and Chase Palmer's short, "Neo Noir." I just clicked over there and found another one of our "25 New Faces" up on the site. For $1.99 you can download Cary Fukunaga's incredible Victoria para Chino, a tremendously shocking and moving look at a horrific scenario concerning illegal immigration.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/09/2006 08:11:00 PM Comments (2)

Writer-director Chase Palmer, one of Filmmaker's 25 New Faces from 2005, just sent us an email letting us know that his terrific short Neo Noir is now available for purchase at the iTunes Music Store.

"It's a sly, swinging little mystery yarn I hope to see go viral, or at least find new life on the web," Chase wrote us. To get Neo Noir, click on SHORT FILMS in the music store area. Inside you will see the link to the Shorts International page. Hopefully Chase will keep us posted on how he does sales-wise.

# posted by Matthew Ross @ 6/09/2006 05:52:00 PM Comments (0)

Cinematic sinners are accustomed to squawking when the MPAA threatens an NC-17 on a guns-blazing, sex-filled entertainment. But Matt Drudge links today to a report from the Scripps Howard News Service which describes a complaint by a group of Christian moviemakers behind a movied called Facing the Giants who say that the MPAA has given them a PG rating (instead of a G) because their film is "too evangelistic."

From the piece:

The MPAA, noted [Provident Films v.p. of marketing Kris] Fuhr, tends to offer cryptic explanations for its ratings. In this case, she was told that it "decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions. It's important that they used the word 'proselytizing' when they talked about giving this movie a PG. ...

"It is kind of interesting that faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about."

Overt Christian messages are woven throughout "Facing the Giants," which isn't surprising since the film was co-written and co-produced by brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who are the "associate pastors of media" at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. In addition to working with the megachurch's cable-television channel, they created its Sherwood Pictures ministry _ collecting private donations to fund a $25,000 movie called "Flywheel," about a wayward Christian used-car salesman.

"Facing the Giants" cost $100,000 and resembles a fusion of the Book of Job and a homemade "Hoosiers," or perhaps a small- school "Friday Night Lights" blended with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association movies that used to appear in some mainstream theaters. Sherwood Pictures used local volunteers as actors and extras, backed by a small crew of tech professionals.

The movie includes waves of answered prayers, a medical miracle, a mysterious silver-haired mystic who delivers a message from God and a bench-warmer who kicks a 51-yard field goal to win the big game when his handicapped father pulls himself out of a wheelchair and stands under the goal post to inspire his son's faith.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/07/2006 01:26:00 PM Comments (6)

As Brokeback Mountain rides into the sunset, a new battle over the hearts and libidos of Americans is on the horizon. No, I am not talking about our president’s opportunistic call for a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. Rather it is Superman, that man of steel in super cute tights. Defamer.com has been doggedly covering the gay aspects of the new Superman. Back in September Defamer’s entry ”Inside The Bulge, Part II: Superman's Package Will Be Safe For Kids” cites a Newsweek piece in which costume designer Louise Mingenbach says the following on the Super subject:

There was more discussion about Superman's 'package' than anything else on the suit," she says, laughing. "Was it too big? Was it not big enough? Was it too pointy? Too round? It was somebody's job for about a month just working on codpiece shapes. It was crazy." And the final verdict? "Not big," she says, and laughs again. "Ten-year-olds will be seeing this movie."

But according to Alonso Duralde, the Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Advocate in his cover article ”How Gay is Superman”, 10-year-olds won’t be the only ones checking out Superman’s package. He succinctly explains why in a sub-title: “Superheroes — let’s face it — are totally hot.”
Citing Duralde’s piece, John Horn in his June 2, 2006 article ”How Will A Gay Icon Fly at the Box Office” in The Los Angeles Times reiterates the traditional fabulousness of fab crime fighters:

No one suggests that Superman in "Superman Returns" is, in fact, gay. But, as several entertainment and cultural writers have noted, superheroes hold obvious — and growing — gay appeal. In addition to being strikingly good-looking, the characters often are portrayed as alienated outsiders, typically leading double lives. In the case of Superman, the beefcake character historically has struggled with romance, all the while running around in a skin-tight suit.

Horn also considers the business and marketing challenges inherent in bringing gay issues to popcorn movies:

…four of the movie marketing executives, all of whom declined to speak on the record, said gay "Superman Returns" interest presented two potential box-office problems. First, teenage moviegoers, especially those in conservative states, might be put off by a movie carrying a gay vibe; among some teens, these executives agreed, saying something "is gay" is still the ultimate put-down. Second, the attention threatens to undermine the film's status as a hard-edged action movie, making it feel softer, more romantic, and thus less interesting to young ticket buyers who crave pyrotechnics.

After letting the gay issue slide, the Warner Brothers publicity department seems to be now spinning this potential gay headache with a 1950s tactic – he’s not gay, just sensitive. In Joseph Gross’s ”It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's the Man of . . . Feelings!” in yesterday’s New York Times, the new Superman is more catch than hunk. Director Bryan Singer (who is for the most part out as a gay man) speaks to/for the ladies when he describes the new man of steel: “He's virtuous, he doesn't lie, and he's handsome! And I think these are, these are idealistic qualities in the male that you, in someone that you'd want as a husband, I'd imagine." I'd imagine too.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 6/06/2006 02:36:00 PM Comments (0)

Taking a cue from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Al Gore discusses the five stages of coming to terms with global warming in this long interview with Ray Pride (pictured with Gore) about the excellent documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

From the interview:

GORE: First of all, David Guggenheim, in my opinion, has done a spectacular job of making a really entertaining movie out of a slide show! [laughs] It was his idea to use the short biographical pieces, not mine. He convinced me that on film it’s important to provide a basis for the audience to connect personally to a character or characters…. And he said… “You’re it!” By then, he had gained my trust to an extent I knew anything he did would be done sensitively and well. In a live stage presentation, whoever it is, even if it’s me, you’re going to have a certain dramatic tension just because there’s a live human being talking to you. On film, that doesn’t automatically translate. You have to supply the narrative thread to enable the audience to make that connection. Now, on the point of avoiding this transition straight from denial to despair, there is a global scientific consensus now that’s as strong as it gets. It’s based on five points that are all interrelated. Number one, global warming is real. Number two; we are principally responsible for it. Number three, the results are catastrophic. And number four; we have to fix it now. And number five; it’s not too late.

PRIDE: The very important part—

GORE: Yeah. For some people, they’re still on point one. “It’s not real.” Now, President Bush has retreated from point one to point two. He now says it’s real but it’s not at all clear that human beings are largely responsible for it. The scientific community is not confused about that. It’s just him and ExxonMobil and Dick Cheney and a few others. But there are those who say, “The results won’t be bad.” There are those who say, “We shouldn’t try to fix it because it’ll mess up the economy.” But the most insidious of the trenches that people retreat to is when people say, “it’s too big, we can’t solve it, nahhhh. We might as well not even try. “ Well, that’s the moral equivalent of being a suicide bomber, really. "

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/06/2006 12:34:00 AM Comments (0)

Steve Gallagher emailed today to pass on news about the newly launched website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, "the world's largest multi-media collection showcasing Ingmar Bergman's professional career, dating back to 1938." It's one of the best single-director websites out there, an exhaustive catalogue of the great director's work delivered, at times, in a surprisingly light-hearted tone. For example, here's the opening of the page dealing with Bergman and the theme of Death.

Bergman and Death have become the subject of parody, and a gentle (or otherwise) mockery of the art house cinema scene. The personification of Death in The Seventh Seal has been made fun of – or more respectfully extolled – in countless films, television programmes and cartoon comics. Death has made an intriguing journey from the European art house to popular entertainment. The Bergman inspired image of death is so prevalent that it prompts Hubert I. Cohen, in his book Ingmar Bergman: The Art of Confession, to reflect: "In fact, at times we may even half-imagine that a black-cloaked figure wearing a stocking-tight, black cowl around his chalk-white face is going to attend our own expiring, and that he will be speaking Swedish – with English subtitles across his waist.

Death is certainly a recurring theme in Bergman's films, yet hardly more so than in the work of many other filmmakers. And more people die in virtually any action film than in Bergman's entire oeuvre. That Bergman and death should feature in Bergman's Universe is therefore almost entirely due to The Seventh Seal. But the theme did not begin there....

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/05/2006 11:53:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at Ain't It Cool News, Elston Gunn interviews producer Lily Bright, discussing her productions of M Blash's recent Lying, which premiered at the Cannes Director's Fortnight, and Asia Argento's The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. Particularly, she discusses being in roll-up to the release of Argento's film when the news that author J.T. LeRoy, who wrote the underlying work, was a literary hoax:

Well, we'll never really know, but I do think it was very unfair and unintelligent for critics to say a film of a story based on a hoax is pointless. Asia was inspired by the material as a work of fiction, the producers option the material as a work of fiction, it stands alone as a fictional story; what made it slightly more sympathetic and redemptive was the autobiographical reference. It's still a film, a story which requires the viewer to go into discomfort zones, which I personally think is brave and exciting particularly in a world - specifically the U.S. - where we are spoiled with comfort and numb to pain.

That being said, there was a redemptive factor when it was supposedly based on a true story. For some, the story still is true in what it represents, so it doesn't matter. It's still prescient and courageous film making, which is what inspires me most.

She is also starting a company called BrightLab which will specialize in creating merchandizing opportunities for independents:

I think tasteful and stylish merchandise allows filmgoers and lovers of independent cinema ways to support material and stories that they love and relate to. I obviously feel very passionate about this. I aspire to create an additional revenue stream for filmmakers and distributors by creating sell-thru merchandise that goes along with a films' marketing and promotional strategy. Eventually, BrightLab will be a distributor's best friend, as proper merchandise only creates more visibility for a film and will prolong the life of a film.

For more on Bright, visit her website.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/04/2006 11:34:00 PM Comments (0)

Below Peter Bowen blogs about the crossover between film production and criticism, namely the emergence of internet-distributed mash-ups and "web cinematic essays" as a new form of dialogue about the movies.

So far, most of these pieces have been about films that have already been released. Now, though, the artist Chris Moukarbel has gone the mash-up editors one better by pre-empting Oliver Stone's forthcoming World Trade Center with an twelve-minute web-distributed art project based on a bootlegged copy of Stone's screenplay.

From the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art:

Moukarbel makes site-specific video and installations, often using found media or objects as his sources. His projects explore the idea of memorial, and are concerned with the way in which political events are edified. World Trade Center is an adaptation of an extract of the screenplay of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming film. The video was made entirely in the artist’s studio using student actors and then released on the internet, intentionally pre-empting Stone’s film release in August 2006. It describes the relationship between two firemen caught in an inescapable situation, stuck in the rubble of the World Trade Center. The dialogue between them reveals their admiration and professional respect for one another, and is completely out of synch with their present circumstances. Moukarbel offers a glimpse into human behaviour at a time when death is imminent, making it seem perversely futile.

Moukarbel's project can be viewed here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/03/2006 12:07:00 PM Comments (0)

In her Risky Business blog, Ann Thompson links to John DeFore's "Bootleg Movies," a piece appearing in Slate detailing "the strange films you find in the back alleys of the internet."

From the piece:

These businesses, outgrowths of the kind of tape-trading scenes familiar to Grateful Dead fans, are run by enthusiasts out to finance their own hobbies, not to make a killing. (Traditional bootleggers charge a premium, but most offerings here are half the price of ordinary releases.) They sell everything from forgotten silents to auteurist curiosities to spaghetti westerns—usually on discs mastered from an old VHS release or TV broadcast, but occasionally from a collector's personal film print.

Isn't that illegal? Dealers proudly cite a chunk of copyright law called the Berne Act, which they interpret this way: As long as a movie hasn't had a commercial release in America, it's fair game. Given that a few of these enthusiasts have done business for years at the same Web addresses, perhaps Hollywood's "cease and desist"-happy lawyers believe there's something to the argument.

I've always been of two minds about these sites. The film geek in me loves to know that lost obscurities and never-released cult titles are available for viewing. The conscientious member of the film community part of me, however, knows too many very poor directors who have been startled to discover that their underground movies are being distributed without their knowledge and consent. Also, I know a few directors who have made films that have acquired a bit of a repution in their making but which the director's don't intend to release. That's up to them, as it should be, and I know they'd be furious if they discovered those unfinished rough cuts floating around the internet.

All of that said, if you want to know where you can get a copy of Quentin Tarantino's true first feature, My Best Friend's Birthday ("The 36 existing minutes, mastered from a fairly degraded videotape, have the ill-lit, black-and-white look of Clerks but with setups and camera movement Kevin Smith would never have attempted."), Todd Haynes's copyright-flaunting Superstar or Robert Frank's legally enjoined Rolling Stones doc Cocksucker Blues, DeFore lays it out for you. And for the true cinecultist, DeFore does answer the obvious question: no, he didn't discover a copy of Jerry Lewis's Holocaust-drama The Day the Clown Cried (pictured).

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/02/2006 10:31:00 PM Comments (0)

I don't know if it's the editing of the interview or the thought processes of the director, but Jenifer Merin's interview with Omen director John Moore in New York Press seems quite bizarre:

From the piece:

MERIN: The Omen’s the first feature to use 9/11 World Trade Center towers footage in a story other than the story of 9/11. And, you’ve included images from Katrina and other disasters. Why?

MOORE: To contextualize the story. I want to make films that comment on what’s going on in the world, but not be ugly, stupid and raw about it by making dumb-ass angry-young-man new genre of self-aware derivatives—like remakes of Hostel or some of Tarantino’s oeuvre that’s so tongue-in-cheek and disposable. It’s dangerous.

The Omen offered the chance to finesse an idea and say something. It’s a great story—almost Shakespearean. Doing the remake’s a bit like asking an actor if he wants to do Macbeth or Death of a Salesman. Nobody in their right mind says no. Plus, there was the small but definite opportunity to contextualize as we do at the film’s beginning.

MERIN: Have you gotten flack for using 9/11 footage?

MOORE: Well, some people said, “Geez, couldn’t you have just put Rwanda?” But I included 9/11 footage because of the ongoing failure to interpret what happened that day as part of a larger picture. Continuing to believe it’s a singular evil act is dangerous, I think, and has driven this great nation towards a dark precipice.

In Hollywood moviemaking, very few vehicles allow you to say something. Now there’s a rash of scripts about Iraq, but most are bad because there’s little contemplation behind the scripts. They’re going to be vomited upon us.

The Omen’s such a well-established, lean racehorse of a story. You know it works. The other side of that coin is that you get beat up for doing a remake.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/02/2006 10:10:00 PM Comments (0)

David Kehr in discussing the fate of contemporary film criticism, especially in the light of the recent dismissal of Jami Bernard’s from the New York Daily News, suggests a fascinating idea – that the future of web-based film criticism lays with filmmakers, not cranky old writers.

I’m starting to think that the best criticism on the internet isn’t coming from writers at all, but the desktop video editors who are putting together brilliant little pieces.

As way of example he provides this tasty trailer for the (non-existent) film 10 Things I Hate About Commandments, a parody that turns Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments into a teen comedy. While this clip adds to the wonderful new genre of trailer parodies -- think all those Brokeback pieces -- Kehr’s overall point is worth considering. With the wide-spread availability of editing tools and film clips, as well as a liberal understanding of fair usage policy for copyrighted material, cunning editors and filmmakers can easily turn out web-based cinematic essays, works that explore film on their own terms. Think Jean-Luc Godard's rarely seen Histoire(s) du cinema.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 6/02/2006 01:04:00 PM Comments (2)

Over at Green Cine -- yes the site also has a collection of great original material as well as its excellent daily collection of links -- Thomas Logoreci interviews Jay and Mark Duplass, whose The Puffy Chair opens today in San Francisco, Austin, Berkeley, Boston, Portland and DC.

In the piece, they talk a little bit about what they are doing next:

Jay: We're trying to do a relationship movie in a horror genre. We're not sure that it's going to work, but we're going to make it anyway.

Mark: There's some trepidation, but we do feel very confident in our ability to make movies about the minutia of [life for] middle-class white people. When we failed in the past, I'd go back to my Linda Seger books and think I must be not doing something right. I don't even think about the three-act structure anymore. Now, I think very instinctually and just trust that I've watched thousands and thousands of movies.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/02/2006 11:21:00 AM Comments (0)

Capitalizing on the trend towards flat-screen and plasma TVs -- and television as home design -- Microcinema has announced a partnership with Colorcalm, "the best-selling producer of of ambient media and design-led programming," that will result in a new label. Microambience will be "a dedicated distribution service and channel for ambient designers, producers, labels, and ambient moving image connoisseurs worldwide."

So far, the label ranges from video fireplaces to more interesting stuff like Colorcalm - By Design, a shorts compilation designed to play as a continuous loop which images by designers Peter Saville, Irma Boom and John Maeda and music by Michael Nyman, Ryuichi Sakamoto and others. The website also sells classic works of the genre, like Brian Eno's Mistaken Memories of Medieval Manhattan and Thursday Afternoon.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/02/2006 11:02:00 AM Comments (0)

In the Summer Issue of ArtForum, Gary Indiana’s “Dick Head” takes a philosophical look at Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly in particular and the director in general. Here is a bit of his keen observation:

He is, unquestionably, the Dostoyevsky of movie dialogue, however flighty and paper-thin his interdigitating narratives appear to be. The repressed and unconscious yodel forth from caricatural druggies, deadbeats, quotidian "romantic couples," high school bullies, nerds, rapacious cheerleaders, authority figures, bourgeois parents, cops; even when they're uttering boilerplate banalities, there's something defective and unsettling in their delivery, tense evidence of a yawning abyss between what they articulate and what's really churning through their minds.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 6/01/2006 05:19:00 PM Comments (0)

A story going around the N.Y. production community: When an Environmentally Aware Big Name Actor signed on his latest production, he asked that he be driven in a hybrid vehicle. Production informed him that there were no hybrids available to rent from their vendors. "But should we just drive you in a compact or mid-size instead?", they asked, looking for a fuel-saving alternative. "No way!" he replied, and the production went ahead with the customary -- and fuel guzzling -- town car.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/01/2006 12:27:00 PM Comments (1)

From Rob Nelson's interview with Rick Linklater in this week's Village Voice:

If Linklater leaves the big questions of his movies to their audiences, how does he think they'll respond when A Scanner Darkly opens in July and Fast Food Nation in the fall? "You can never prove or predict the cause and effect of anything, whatever its purpose," he says. "When The Jungle was published a hundred years ago, they enacted the FDA. But in today's world, we're more likely to see legislation enacted to prevent us from criticizing the way things are. In Texas, it's against the law to criticize an agricultural productóeven though this [fast food] industry is potentially harming us. I guess Fast Food Nation would be immune to this law for being 'fiction.' Or would it? Kind of interesting, isn't it? I mean, can Fox Searchlight enact legislation to prevent you from writing a bad review of my movie?"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 6/01/2006 12:24:00 PM Comments (2)