For those expecting to see teasers of summer tentpoles like Spider-Man 3 and Shrek the Third while munching on chips and wings this Super Bowl Sunday, Variety reports that's unlikely to happen. In a game that's watched by millions, most studios are passing on showing their ads during the game (one exception: Eddie Murphy’s latest Norbit, which you'll see a lot of during the pregame show).
Here’s how one consultant explains it in the story:
"The problem is, if you're not ready with your creative, you are left way too exposed," noted one gun-shy marketing consultant. He cited the now-classic example of 2003's "The Hulk" spot, which was avidly TiVo-ed and picked apart frame by frame by feverish film geeks. With an f/x-dependent film that typically gets locked only a few days before release, that can be too much attention too soon. The general consensus on the film's look was downbeat, and that made for a grueling trek toward opening weekend.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/30/2007 10:07:00 AM
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Following a Saturday evening awards ceremony, Sundance wrapped its 10-day run today with a series of award-winner screenings on Sunday. At the Saturday event, the drama Padre Nuestro, directed by Christopher Zalla, was announced winner of the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. The Documentary Grand Jury Prize went to Jason Kohn's Brazil-set corruption saga Manda Bala (Send a Bullet). Audience prizewinners included James C. Straus's John Cusack-starrer Grace Is Gone for the Dramatic Audience Award and Documentary Audience Award recipient Hear and Now from Irene Taylor Brodsky.
After the awards announcements, guests spilled into the adjacent party space at the Racquet Club, where they were greeted with thumping techno spinning on the turntables and long lines at the bars — a generally upbeat atmosphere overall, compared with last year's more subdued event.
Festivalgoers still on hand Sunday were able to attend screenings of many of the award-winners, so I headed off to the Eccles Theater for Dramatic Grand Jury Prize-winner Padre Nuestro. Zalla's film follows petty-thief Juan, on the run from some nasty gangsters, and naïve Pedro, who's searching for his long-lost father across the Mexican border. When the illegal immigrants arrive in New York City, Pedro discovers that Juan has stolen his luggage, along with his identity.
Juan tracks down Pedro's father Diego, introducing himself as the 17-year-old son the older man has never met. Openly hostile at first, Diego refuses to acknowledge "Pedro" as family, throwing the boy out, but Juan persists, suspecting that Diego is stashing a large amount of cash, and gradually wearing down Diego's resistance. Meanwhile, the real Pedro wanders the streets, desolately searching for his father.
First-time feature director Zalla uses this straightforward premise to parse themes of identity, family and fate, drawing impressive performances from the small ensemble cast and building the narrative from a fairly banal drama to an emotionally understated thriller. The final scenes in which Diego embraces the self-delusion he realizes is his only remaining hope for survival are heartrending.
[Reporting by Justin Lowe] # posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/29/2007 10:04:00 AM
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Saturday, January 27, 2007
Checking Out Chapter 27
Originally, the Premieres section film Chapter 27, writer-director Jarrett Schaefer’s darkly revealing account of Mark David Chapman’s final days prior to killing John Lennon in 1980, was on my “might-see” list, mostly because I didn’t expect to find a ticket to the January 25 sold-out premiere at the Eccles Theater. That was before I discovered that Jim Makiej, one of two credited editors on the film, would be sharing my Park City condo. Jim was able to get me a ticket to the screening, as well as a spot at the Airborne Lounge party on Main Street afterwards.
Chapter 27 focuses on Chapman’s activities, and his deteriorating mental state, over the three days following his arrival in New York up until he shoots the rock star. Compellingly played by Jared Leto, who gained 70 lbs. for the role, the Chapman character narrates much of the film in voiceover, exploring his obsession with the Beatles, as well as J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, as he gathers with other autograph seekers, including the young Jude (Lindsay Lohan), outside Lennon’s Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side
“With such an infamous main character, the challenge was to tell that in an accessible way,” relates Makiej, whose previous credits include the 2002 Sundance entry Bark. “It’s not an easy story to celebrate.” After cutting the movie with the filmmakers and observing Schaefer’s distillation of Chapman’s psychological implosion, Makiej’s assessment was that Chapman “blurred his comprehension of what was going on. He picked and chose the reality he wanted” leading up to his assassination of Lennon.
At the after-screening party, Schaefer told me that his goals for the film included “a good story well-told,” as well as an examination of celebrity, noting that “now we’re in a culture dominated by celebrity,” which seemed particularly relevant considering Lohan’s participation in the film. As of Saturday, Chapter 27 was still available for pickup. # posted by Justin Lowe @ 1/27/2007 07:57:00 PM
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DOGGED OUT
In the wake of the controversy involving Hounddog, the Sundance premiere which featured a brief scene in which the character played by young actress Dakota Fanning is raped, a North Carolina politician is proposing that the state Senate review and approve screenplays for films receiving the state filming tax incentive.
Citing the controversy surrounding the Dakota Fanning film Hounddog, the leader of the state Senate Republicans says he wants the government to review scripts before cameras start rolling in North Carolina.
That system, said state Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, would apply only to films seeking the state's lucrative filmmaker incentive, which refunds as much as 15 percent of what productions spend in North Carolina from the state treasury.
"Why should North Carolina taxpayers pay for something they find objectionable?" said Berger, who is having proposed legislation drafted.
It is not known whether Hounddog's producers have or will apply for the incentive. A call Thursday to the N.C. Department of Revenue, which oversees incentive payments, was not returned.
Sen. Julia Boseman, D-New Hanover, one of the backers of the new law that created the current incentive system, said she couldn't say much until she saw Berger's proposal in writing.
"There's no bill yet to take a look at," she said. "But I am always willing to consider reasonable ways to improve the program."
She did say she thought looking at scripts before shooting starts might be meaningless because a script could be changed during production.
"We should consider the end product," she said, "which is what our current system is designed to do."
State law denies the incentive to films that are obscene. In state law, obscenity is defined as depicting sexual conduct presented in an offensive way that appeals to prurient interest, lacks any "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value" and is not free speech protected by the state or federal constitutions.
Berger said the film-incentive ban should be broadened to include material considered objectionable. He said there should be no First Amendment concerns because the producer would be seeking money from the state government. But he did say that if constitutional questions confused the matter, it would be better not to have a film incentive at all.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/27/2007 11:05:00 AM
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During a Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony reception Thursday afternoon at the Kimball Arts Center in Park City, the Sundance Institute and NHK, Japan ’s largest broadcaster, introduced the winners of the 2007 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards. The $10,000 annual prizes are given to four filmmakers from Europe, Latin America, the U.S. and Japan to help support the production of their winning narrative feature scripts.
This year’s recipients are Lucia Cedron (Argentina) with Agnus Dei, Dagur Kari’s (Iceland) The Good Heart, Tomoko Kana (Japan) with Two by the River, and Caran Hartsfield’s (U.S.) Bury Me Standing.
“Our winners’ projects represent incredibly unique work by filmmakers from around the world and we are especially proud to be supporting three extraordinary women directors among them this year,” said Alesia Weston , Associate Director of the Feature Film Program, International.
Kari, who previously directed the features Noi Albinoi and Dark Horse, told Filmmaker “I’m totally honored,” acknowledging that the award is a “very special prize” because of the size of the cash award. The Good Heart, a drama about an ailing middle-aged bar owner who takes in a homeless man who’s recently attempted suicide and trains him to take over the bar, has secured the majority of financing required from Icelandic and European film funds and international co-production companies, including Canal +, Wild Bunch and Cinetic Media.
Accepting her award, Kana noted “Originally, I’m a documentary director, so to make a feature film is a big challenge for me, but I believe that I can overcome it.” Two by the River is a drama about an elderly couple facing difficult decisions as the wife’s health deteriorates.
Cedron announced that Agnus Dei, her drama about the legacy of the Argentinean dictatorship of the 1970s, is fully financed and will begin shooting in February, while award-winning short film director Caran Hartsfield observed that progress on her feature Bury Me Standing is advancing with indie producers Gina Kwon and Effie Brown helping to guide the project.
The winning directors also receive a guarantee from NHK to purchase the Japanese television broadcast rights to their projects, as well as ongoing staff support in seeking financing and distribution from the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. # posted by Justin Lowe @ 1/25/2007 10:29:00 PM
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As you can tell from my post below, I didn't like the Sundacnce Competition film Grace is Gone. At the time, I thought I was in the minority but in the last few days a number of reviews and criticisms have come out faulting the film for its disingenuously "even-handed" use of the Iraq war to kickstart what is ultimately a conventional indie film road movie.
The weird thing about the movie is that star John Cusack has been a vocal opponent of the war, and my guess is that its makers are also sensitive anti-war folk. (I don't know them, so I could be wrong here.) But clearly, there's something about this film that causes some of us to react pretty strongly against it. I just received this email from producer Mike Ryan (Junebug, Fay Grim, 40 Shades of Blue), who was really ticked off by it.
Here it is:
Donald Rumsfeld and all pro-war Republicans will love the new John Cusack film, Grace is Gone. Others, some whom may be liberal, agree: it could be a crowd-pleaser able to reach beyond the indie ghetto. It was bought earlier this week for $4 million.
Rumsfeld will love how the film shows a family coping with the grief following the death of the family's soldier mom. There is no anger at the film's end; we are left feeling that this grief will be healed. The film offers a positive portrait of how a family can pull together in such sad circumstances.
Rumsfeld will love how the film's one dissenting, anti-war perspective is mouthed by a clichéd liberal couch potato. Alessandro Nivola plays a 31-year-old bearded lay about. We see him in mid-afternoon on his mother's couch, dozing off in front of cartoons. This liberal also has unfocused opinions, no ambition, and is really only concerned with eating. And being unable to pay for his own meal, living in his mothers home, he is seen as mooching off the system.
Rumsfeld and most Republicans will agree with Cusack's response to his older daughter's questions about the war. To question the value of the war would lead one to a scary place, "we'd be lost," he says. Better to stay the course and trust that the government has our best interests in mind.
Cusack may think that by showing grief and the pain of a soldier's loss, he's made an anti-war film. He couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, he may have inadvertently made a pro-war, pro-Bush film. I think all Republicans will endorse Grace Is Gone; it does not question the war's purpose, instead it focuses on how the country will get through this difficult period.
Assuming the filmmakers are liberal -- and don't intend to come off as supporters of Bush or the war -- how do we explain these sloppy aesthetics? The filmmakers have said they want to reach the biggest audience possible; they feel the subject of their film is nonpartisan. Truth is, though, there is nothing nonpartisan about the war: you either support it or feel that it was a tragic mistake, one that has resulted in countless innocent Iraqi and American deaths.
The "nonpartisan" excuse is really just a cover-up for the fact that the goal of the film is to make as much money as possible. Profit drives its aesthetics, just like profit has driven this war. In this sense the film is the worst kind of exploitation film -- a film that profits off the unjust deaths of innocents is a heinous, odious thing. Like war profiteers Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and Bush, the filmmakers proceeded ahead without truly and fully thinking out their strategy and understanding the consequences of their choices. But as with Halliburton and Bechtel, their choices will very likely result in enormous profits for them and their clan.
Shame on all war profiteers. And please, let this be a warning to all liberally minded filmmakers: let's think out our choices carefully before proceeding with a war-themed film. We may end up doing more harm than good.-- Mike Ryan
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/25/2007 04:46:00 PM
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Mike White’s comedy The Year of the Dog, which premiered in Sundance this week in the Premieres section, shares a premise with the similarly titled Joan Didion memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. That is, when one is grieving, one experiences a kind of insanity, the “magical thinking” of Didion’s title. One’s relationship to the rest of society as well as one’s self is occluded by the memory of the deceased.
Of course, Didion’s departed was her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne. It’s typical of White’s unsettling wit that the protagonist of his film – a retiring and unmarried 40s-ish female office assistant – is grieving not a person but the sudden death of her dog, Pencil. But dog lovers – as well as all those attuned to White’s gently odd sensibility – will understand that her sorrow is real and that it is capable of motivating all that comes after.
It’s not a diss to say that midway through The Year of the Dog I had no idea where the film was going. Like Chuck and Buck, which White wrote, The Year of the Dog takes offbeat narrative asides and refuses to be bound by the rules that govern Hollywood-produced romantic comedies. (It's also a dog movie with surprisingly few "Awwwww!" moments.) But this mostly pleasurable sense of being lost is also due to White’s attitude towards his characters, a point-of-view that drifts between bemusement, detachment and affection. Casting Molly Shannon as his protagonist, White gives us a recognizable actress who, due to her association with the sketch comedy of Saturday Night Live, fails to bring to the picture the instant, empathy-inducing star persona of a Drew Barrymore or Jennifer Aniston. This is a good thing. In White’s world everyone, from the straights to the weirdoes, is just a bit strange.
Before seeing the film I heard some people have a problem with the ending. After seeing it, I couldn’t figure out why. Or, rather, I didn’t get whether they thought it was too happy or too sad. Undeservedly optimistic or condescendingly cynical. I just went with it. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/25/2007 11:09:00 AM
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Nettelbeck, a producer and one-time music journalist, founded Faust in Wümme, Germany in 1971. The group was one of Virgin Records' first signings and went on to record several highly-influential albums over the next few years, including the seminal Faust and Faust IV, before disbanding in 1975. Several of the original members have since regrouped under the Faust banner to tour and record.
No further details of Nettelbeck's death are known at this point. Fellow Faust founding member Rudolf Sosna passed away in 1996.
I've been a Faust fan since I was a teenager, and their fantastic blend of Kraut rock, musique concrete, and tape collage has held up and remained inspirational over the years.
And here's from the Faust website, linked above:
"Besides being a sharp-witted but yet charming and loving husband, father and grandfather, he was an outstanding cook, a writer who always generated deep emotions and interest, and a genius, selfless music producer. Thank you Uwe for all you have done for our music. Faust is your work, no doubt ! Your work will outlast all of us. May your soul rest in peace. My sincere sympathy to his family Petra, Anouchka, Sandra, Elisha and Elsa."
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/24/2007 03:12:00 PM
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Ann Thompson at her Risky Business blog has been detailing what she calls "an unexpectedly insane feeding frenzy" at the Sundance Film Festival. Midway through the first weekend people were saying that this seemed to be a weak year at Sundance and that sales would be slow. Then, all of a sudden, a number of unexpected titles caught the fancy of audiences and distributors. There has been one big sale (Son of Rambow to Paramount Vantage for $7 million), several medium sized ones (Grace is Gone and Dedication, both to the Weinstein's for $4 million or so), and heartening pickups of low-budget indies like The Signal (to Magnolia for $2 million) and Weapons (to After Dark Releasing for $1 million). Add to that strong showings by films like The Savages and The Year of the Dog, both of which entered the fest with distribution but looking for critical and audience support, and it seems like a pretty good year... # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/24/2007 02:26:00 AM
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PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE
Now that both public and the politicians are denouncing the war in Iraq, documentaries like Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight, premiering in Sundance’s Documentary Competition, are simply essential. The inevitable withdrawal of U.S. troops is sure to prompt attacks by the real “bitter enders” –- administration officials and neo-cons who will pin the war’s failures on an American lack of resolve – and Ferguson’s sober and straightforward documentary is the necessary rebuttal. Recalling that old piece of screenplay advice, “There are no third act problems,” Ferguson takes us back to the run-up to the war and the months following the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s government to reveal how a breakdown in rational U.S. foreign policy planning allowed the violence that now plagues Iraq to take root and grow.
To anyone who keeps up with the news, much of Ferguson’s argument will seem familiar. Too few troops were dedicated to the country’s peacekeeping after the end of combat operations; CPA Head Paul Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army and embarked on a policy of “De-Bathification,” ensuring large numbers of angry and jobless Iraqis to fuel the insurgency. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps were not given orders to prevent the looting of the country’s infrastructure and cultural landmarks, thus allowing a demoralized atmosphere of lawlessness and despair to take root. And while No End in Sight contains plenty of new (at least to me) details about the execution of the war and occupation (a tale of a just-graduated Georgetown University student with no experience in municipal planning who is assigned the job of designing the traffic grid for all of Baghdad would be hilarious if it wasn’t also deeply depressing), its strength is its meticulous documenting of the way in which politics and neo-conservative ideology trumped the government’s established foreign policy decision-making apparatus.
No End in Sight is Ferguson’s first feature. (Check out Ann Thompson's article on Ferguson and the making of the movie.) With a Ph.D in Political Science from MIT, Ferguson is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (He is also co-founder of Vermeer Technologies, a tech firm whose sale enabled him to finance this $2 million documentary himself.) His connections obviously granted him access to officials who might not have spoken in another anti-war doc. In addition to journalists, political scientists, and Iraqi parliament members, interviewees include Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff; Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State; Paul Hughes, Director of the Strategic Policy Office of the CPA; and Walter Slocombe, the Senior Advisor for National Security and Defense to the CPA. It’s Hughes and Slocombe who have the most dramatic face-off in the film, with Ferguson cutting back and forth between them as Hughes assails Slocombe and his boss, Paul Bremer, for the rash decision to disband the Iraqi Army. Throughout this movie one is struck by how desperate officials like Hughes and, particularly, Jay Garner, the general who was in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq for a few short months before Bremer was installed, seem to tell their side of the story.
Director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) is an Executive Producer of the film, and there are elements of his style (a narrative told through dramatically lit talking heads and archival footage) here. Ferguson has said he reached out to Gibney in the early stages of making his film for some first-time director guidance, and the film is as smoothly compelling as Enron. Even if you think you know this material, I really recommend you check it out. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/24/2007 02:15:00 AM
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Tuesday, January 23, 2007
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
After ten years of trying to get in on screen and months of controversy (Peter Bowen blogs about the latest hubbub) leading up to its Sundance premiere, Deborah Kempmeier’s southern tale Hounddog was unveiled last night.
I guess I should first get out of the way the infamous rape scene that everyone (even if they haven’t seen it yet) wants to talk about. The scene – though in the context of the movie is appalling – is quite tame. Created in the editing room with shots of Dakota Fanning’s face, reactions of the young boy Buddy (Cody Hanford) watching, and the grunting of the attacker, lasting at the most 20 seconds, the scene ends as quick and sudden as it begins. (People opposed to “the film they’ve never seen” will probably turn their efforts from the rape scene to opposing Fanning’s sexually charged performance as a whole once they see it.)
In the film Fanning plays Lewellen, a 12-year-old southern belle who teases boys with her kisses, suggestive words, and impersonations of Elvis’ “Hound Dog.” Hip shakes and all. But back home things aren’t well. Her abusive father (David Morse) is in and out of her life usually leaving his lovers to take care of her. The latest (Robin Wright Penn) one given the task is in fact Lewellen’s mother, though Lewellen doesn’t know it.
As the film progresses we see Lewellen doing chores for her religious grandmother (Piper Laurie) then running off with Buddy to go swimming and do more kissing. But when Buddy tells her that Elvis is coming to town and he can get them tickets that’s when things turn for the worse. When Lewellen shows up at the barn to get her ticket she finds Buddy there with the teenage milk man. Told she has to do her “Hound Dog” dance for the ticket she obliges, even when she’s told to do it naked. In a scene that’s created with the utmost respect by Kempmeier – in the middle of a lighting storm, flashes of light shows the teen in the corner watching Lewellen dance, then he wrestles her to the muddy ground, the weather at its peak blocking her screams. And when it’s over the skies open, breaking sunlight shines in the barn as Lewellen is the only one left there.
The film then loses steam as Lewellen struggles to regain her swagger, her father gets struck by lightening and the snakes appear (your guess is as good as mine). But what kept me interested throughout was Fanning’s unbelievable performance. Whether she’s singing Elvis, being the object of affection to all the neighborhood boys or struggling with her dysfunctional life she captivates the screen.
Unfortunately most will be interested in the film’s “controversy” before the talent put into it. # posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/23/2007 08:55:00 PM
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WELCOME TO THE PLEASURE DOME
I can easily say, without risk of falling to hyperbole, that the most exciting DVD release in some time is Fantoma Films' recently announced THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOLUME 1, available January 23, 2007.
The beautifully packaged, special edition DVD collects the first half of this legendary filmmaker's career, every film restored to the breath-taking beauty they were meant to be seen in. Influencing visionaries as varied as Lynch, Fassbinder, and Scorsese, Anger's short films need to be seen by anyone even remotely interested in the visual medium.
The dreamlike, surreal quality of the films, the homo-erotic imagery, and melding of heady visuals to music kicked off an independent film movement, and set into motion what would one day become music video culture.
The set includes FIREWORKS (1947), PUCE MOMENT (1949), RABBIT’S MOON (1950, shown here in the rarely seen 16 minute version), EAUX D’ARTIFICE (1953), and INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME (1954), and a 48 page book with a written appreciation of Kenneth Anger by Martin Scorsese.
Pick it up now... and pray for the second volume to be released soon. # posted by André Salas @ 1/23/2007 01:41:00 PM
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Monday, January 22, 2007
NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET
There are many impressive documentaries at Sundance this year but my favorite so far is Jason Kohn’s Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) in the Documentary Competition. Examining the violence, political corruption and rampant kidnappings in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this doc — with a brisk running time of 85 minutes — never lets you catch your breath as it weaves through numerous stories that are sometimes humorous but often excruciating to watch.
First-time filmmaker Kohn uses many traits of his mentor Errol Morris (piercing questions, amazing cinematography, powerful score) to tell his story. The film covers three equally compelling topics that are all too common in Brazil but foreign to us in the States: corrupt politicians whose actions can be tried but because of Brazilian law are untouchable; kidnappings that average one per day in Sao Paulo; and plastic surgery which many who’ve been kidnapped need to repair detached ears or fingers (which has also lead to frightened civilians bulletproofing their vehicles and using helicopters to travel).
Kohn interviews everyone from attorney’s trying to clean up the politics, the small staffed anti-kidnapping police unit, kidnappers and kidnap victims. But Kohn’s most clever tool is using a huge frog farm to parallel the different topics. The farm was built as a money-laundering front for one of the most powerful (and most corrupt) politicians in Brazil, and the farm appears often through the film.
Kohn is an amazing talent and I can't wait to see what he focuses on for his next film. # posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/22/2007 02:05:00 AM
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Sunday, January 21, 2007
GRACE NOTES
Anne Thompson at her Risky Business blog is reporting that the Weinstein Company has bought James Strouse's Grace is Gone here at Sundance, beating out Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics. The price was not announced, but it's rumored to be around $4 million. I'll write more in detail about the film, which I saw at last night's press screening, later, but here's my quick take.
In general, I found Richard Corliss's Time mag broadside, "Sundance Movies are Bad for You," unsupported and churlish, but if there's one film that some of his criticisms might apply to, it's this one. The film is made with obvious sincerity, it's well acted (particularly by Shélan O'Keefe, who plays the older daughter)... but it's full of so many familiar indie-film narrative tropes and plot devices that it was unable to convey anything to me that felt real about the experience of an American family losing a loved one in Iraq.
The film's exploration of its themes is constrained by a poetic and minimalist filmmaking approach which elides any meaningful commentary about the current American political debate. It also has a too-clean, artificial-feeling HD look, making it a road movie without the texture (and extras) of the American road. (And it didn't help my viewing that the story, in which Cusack takes his daughters to an amusement park instead of telling them that their mother has died, kept reminding me of Chevy Chase and family on their way to Wally World. I suppose there's a metaphor at work here, something about our culture's flight to distraction amidst political conflict, but it didn't feel to me that the film was actively acknowledging it.)
Writing elsewhere on this site, James Ponsoldt says that Grace is Gone is not a war film, it's a film about family and grief, and I'd agree with that. (Structurally, the film reminded me a bit of an older Sundance title, Love, Liza.) The film is ultimately about a man processing grief and figuring out how to support his two daughters at a moment in which all their lives are changed forever. My problem with Grace is Gone is that once it uses the Iraq war to set the plot in motion, define character (Cusack's protagonist is an unblinking pro-war Red Stater), and give itself an air of import, it pretty much abandons any kind of political discussion and resolves itself on the simplest and least surprising terms. These final minutes can't help but be terribly moving, and I've talked to several people who were honestly affected by it -- indeed, there was applause at the press screening I attended. But the film had too many political references -- including a tv clip of a Donald Rumsfeld speech near the end -- for me to be satisfied with its succession of tiny, sometimes beautiful poetic moments and slender resolution. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/21/2007 11:40:00 AM
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Saturday, January 20, 2007
MARRIAGE TAX
What are the odds that 2007 would see not one but two documentaries about people whose lives and relationships are transformed when they are blinded by acid thrown in their faces?
Gary Tarn’s brilliant Black Sun, which Peter Bowen has written about for the current issue of Filmmaker, uses the attack on writer Hugues de Montalembert as an opportunity to consider the subject of sight in all its dimensions – practical, philosophical and even ethical. Dan Klores’s Crazy Love (produced and co-directed by Fisher Stevens) takes a different approach. Such issues of sight and seeing are almost afterthoughts in what is ultimately a kooky, only-in-New-York tale of improbable love.
Crazy Love tells the story of a wily, womanizing ambulance chaser, Burt Pugach, and the young beauty, Linda Riss, he falls for one day. Directed in a breezy, music-driven style, the doc zips through archival footage of New York in the ‘50s and ‘60s, family photographs, and talking head interviews with Pugach, Riss their friends and other commentators.
Pugach, a young personal injury attorney, spots the beautiful Riss while driving down a New York street in 1957 and soon he’s courting her 24/7. Riis enjoys the attention until she learns that Pugach has a wife and disabled daughter. She gets engaged to another guy, and Pugach sinks into a kind of depressive psychosis, culminating in his hiring three men to ring Riis’s doorbell and throw lye in her face. One eye is severely disfigured, Riss loses most of her sight, and she also becomes an instant tabloid celebrity.
Crazy Love goes on to tell what initially seems to be the unfathomable story of how Pugach and Riss went on to a 28-year marriage following Pugach’s release from prison. Along the way, the movie opens up to touch upon cultural change in America as Pugach becomes an almost Zelig-like figure, participating in the Attica prison riots and hob nobbing with activist lawyer William Kunstler.
There are scores of docs that center on the mysteries of character. Why do people do the things they do? Many of these docs leave you unsatisfied at their conclusion, though, when you realize you still don't know what makes these people tick. It’s the ultimate success of Crazy Love that, I think, you perfectly understand these two people by its end. Pugach, quite simply, was (and probably still is) nuts, and his relative cheerfulness in narrating this tale is awfully disturbing. (Jimmy Breslin says in the film that Pugach was the most insane person he met who wasn’t in prison.) Pugach's love of Riss is clearly a form of psychodrama and domination. And Riis, well, midway through the movie she can’t work due to her blindness, is running out of money, and is having problems finding a man who’s not put off by what’s behind her fashionable eyeglasses. Pugach, who has been released from prison, has cash, and he loves her – obsessively, perhaps, but that’s more than she’s got from anyone else. Just as importantly, Pugach and Riss bestow upon each other a strange and very American form of celebrity, appearing together on talk shows and in magazine profiles.
In the film’s disquietingly upbeat third act, the couple is just like those old radio-show characters, The Bickersons. In other words, just like any old married couple. And that’s what’s most shocking about Crazy Love.
(For more on this year's festival, including interviews with fest heads and many of the short filmmakers as well as personal statements from most of the feature directors, click here.) # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/20/2007 05:11:00 PM
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LOVE BITES
I'll write more about it later, but I liked Mitchell Lichtenstein's Dramatic Competition entry, Teeth, a very clever and deftly handled horror comedy that literalizes the myth of the vagina dentata. One can summon up a lot of filmic references -- Cronenberg, Stuart Gordon, and the recent Saved -- but Lichtenstein has taken an outrageous concept and realized it with his own blend of campy humor, splatter gore, and emotional realism. Props to lead actress Jess Weixler too. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/20/2007 03:48:00 PM
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JENKINS RETURNS WITH THE SAVAGES
With one full day in the books the talk around Main St. is about Tamara Jenkins' The Savages. On an eight year hiatus from making features (her last being Slums of Beverly Hills), Jenkins returns with The Savages screening in the Premieres section. Funny yet touching, the story follows two siblings who are forced to interrupt their self-absorbed lives to take care of their ailing father.
Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman (could you think of a better tandem?) play the siblings who finally have to give a damn about their father (stage vet Philip Bosco) after years of non-communication when he’s diagnosed with Dementia. In the hands of trained actors like Linney and Hoffman, Jenkins’ sharp, satirical style is executed perfectly as the film mixes its coming-of-middle-age story with comedic moments that the two actors play off as if they've been working together for years. The film is not unlike Jenkins’ husband Jim Taylor and his partner Alexander Payne’s style. They are executive producers on the film.
Fox Searchlight is distributing the film later this year. # posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/20/2007 01:18:00 AM
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Friday, January 19, 2007
"RISK FACTORS" IS RIGHT!
It's kind of ironic that I'm here picking up the hotel's free Wi-Fi and blogging on the second floor of the Sundance headquarters while waiting in a long line for my press credentials, which are delayed due to the festival's internet being down (and the festival computers having lost a large number of photo files). So far, our small Filmmaker crew has, in less than 24 hours, been hit by said internet failure, food poisoning, lost luggage (along with the entire Delta flight I was on), and a missing condo owner (who was holding the keys). So it looks like I'm missing Tamara Jenkins' The Savages this a.m., which I have high hopes for.
So, while we sort out our logistical woes, check out the stuff we've already got on the site, including James Ponsoldt's interviews with a number of festival filmmakers and interviews with fest honchos Geoff Gilmore and John Cooper. Also, Jamie Stuart is here shooting for Filmmaker and he should have a podcast up by the end of the fest.
More later... # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/19/2007 01:14:00 PM
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Thursday, January 18, 2007
READY TO DANCE
It's finally here. And Filmmaker is on the scene at the Sundance Film Festival to report on all the films we can possible see and everything else that goes on outside of the screenings. Along with dedicating this blog to our coverage, as an added bonus this year we've created a seperate page to the festival. Click here to check it out. # posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/18/2007 06:03:00 PM
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Here's its take on some of the stuff in the New Frontier section, including one project that seeks to inspire a strange nostalgia amongst boomer heterosexual males:
"As digital tools grow cheaper and more plentiful, artists are discovering a galaxy of new ways to mess around with cinematic form. Sundance's foray into the world of 3-D cinema – the kind of stuff usually relegated to swank galleries -- comes in the form of eight installations at its New Frontier on Main venue. For Play (pictured), artist R. Luke Dubois morphs together the faces of each Playboy Playmate since Hef's first issue. With MobiOpera, Shu Lea Cheang asks cell phone users to help script and shoot a DIY "soap-travaganza," to be shown at the festival's conclusion."
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/12/2007 02:05:00 PM
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WU-TANG FOREVER
Though most of my time will be spent watching films at Sundance next week, for those going to Slamdance I highly recommend seeing Casey Suchan and Denis Henry Hennelly’s amazing doc Rock The Bells. Since its premiere at Tribeca last year the film has gained great reviews on the festival circuit and I hope their good fortune continues next week as it will be in competition for Best Doc.
Chronicling the Rock The Bells festival that took place in San Bernardino, California in 2004 that boasted the reuniting of the complete 9-member rap group, The Wu-Tang Clan, we are given incredible access to the behind-the-scenes workings of the all day concert that was over crowded, under prepared and the security overwhelmed to the point where there was almost a riot. The leader of this guerilla unit is Chang Weisberg who we follow every step of the way from promoting the festival, dealing with the lack of security and trying to assemble the Wu to the concert (specifically Ol’ Dirty Bastard).
Throughout the movie Suchan and Hennelly cut away from Weisberg’s journey to focus on the acts on stage who have to deal with broken equipment (acts include Chali 2Na and DJ Nu Mark from Jurassic 5, Dilated Peoples and MC Supernatural) and one camerman’s adventure with Redman to the concert that involves a lot of green smoke.
The access Suchan and Hennelly get is incredible and they use it to paint a gripping (and at times comical) narrative that can be compared to Gimmie Shelter or Woodstock. And for any fan of The Wu Tang Clan or just Hip Hop in general this is a can’t miss.
Screenings are at the Treasure Mountain Inn in Park City. Jan. 24 - 9:30 p.m. Jan. 26 - 10:00 a.m.
Another quick shout out goes to FILMMAKER Senior Editor Matthew Ross whose short film Lola will be at Slamdance as well. Be sure to check it out.
Screenings are at the Treasure Mountain Inn (followed by the feature Crime Fiction)
Here's what Variety's Hendrix just wrote about it:
This isn't a perfect movie, the flaws almost balance the virtues, but it's a fresh, funny, unexpected flick that makes almost every musical out from Hollywood in the last few years (and let's throw in Bollywood's output as well) look like lead-footed dinosaurs. And I shut off the DVD humming the songs, and that's something I haven't done in a long time.
And here's the trailer:
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/11/2007 10:36:00 PM
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FBI memo to Hollywood: If it's not too much trouble, could you please portray our counterterrorism efforts with a bit more realism?
Hoping for an answer in the affirmative, the FBI hosted its first workshop for screenwriters Wednesday at the Federal Building in Westwood.
"FBI -- Crime Essential for Writers" played well with the standing-room-only audience of executives and writers from several major and minor studios. Enthusiastic attendees had more questions than time allowed answers for, and few if any left the four-hour event early.
The FBI, more so than even the Department of Homeland Security, is the primary agency designated to investigate terrorism in the U.S., and the terrorist threat it is most focused on comes from radical Islam, FBI special agent Greg Wing said.
With that in mind, Wing, along with an undercover agent who asked that his identity not be revealed, presented a whirlwind history of Islam, beginning with Sunni-Shiite hostilities in 682 AD....
FBI agents also showed off a map of the 779 real investigations of potential terrorist activity ongoing in Los Angeles and photos of a list of possible targets that included Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood sign and Disneyland. They also showed photos of some of the equipment the FBI will have on hand as they stake out the 64th annual Golden Globe Awards on Monday.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/11/2007 03:04:00 PM
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The Super Columbine Massacre RPG game has been withdrawn from Slamdance '07. While understanding the different positions people have already taken with the game, we want to express the struggle we had with ours. On one hand, a jury selected a game they believed merited programming, a decision that always leads to our organization supporting the creator's independent vision and freedom of expression. On the other, there are moral obligations to consider with this particular game and the interests and welfare of the Slamdance organization and its community. Ultimately, after much internal conflict and debate, we decided to pull this game and hope a choice like it will never have to be made again.
Apparently, Slamdance was concerned about potential sponsor pressure so it decided to de-select the game, which had been picked by its jury. In the wake of the decision, several game companies are withdrawing their titles from Slamdance in protest, and the decision has caused much debate and commentary on the various gaming blogs. Over at Manifesto Games, Costik offers some description and then commentary on the game.
First, on the controversy, Costik writes:
Super Columbine Massacre is controversial for one reason only: Because our culture continues to assume that games are "mere entertainment," that a game based on so horrific an event must ipso facto be in bad taste. Games are fun, Columbine was a tragedy and never the twain shall meet; a game on Columbine must by nature trivialize or cynically exploit the event. Q.E.D.
Yet we do not make the same assumption about any other medium: a documentary on the Columbine massacre, or a novel, or a New Yorker essay would, a priori, be treated with respect, at least until the viewer or reader had experienced it, after which a judgment might be made as to its merits. And if the work proved insightful, somber,and respectful of its material, the world would consider it unexceptional.
I will suggest, therefore, that no one is entitled to criticize this game until they have played it--and am morally certain that those who do have not. Because those who do will find it insightful, somber, and respectful of its material.
And then, on the game:
Perhaps the riskiest artistic decision in Super Columbine Massacre is in casting the player as the murderers themselves--risky because we expect to identify with game protagonists, take pleasure in their actions, and share in their triumph. The emotion most games strive to evoke is 'fiero,' the joy of triumph over adversity--inappropriate, in the context of a story where there ought to be no joy, there is tragedy rather than triumph, and where there is scant adversity: unarmed children pose little challenge to the heavily-armed PCs. In another designers' hands, this choice would have been crippling.
But the insight Super Columbine Massacre provides about its subject matter derives precisely from the fact that the player is forced to take the roles of the pepetrators. The player is exposed to their world: the music, the games, the heedless cruelty of high school life, the thoughts and words of Harris and Klebold themselves. Few people of intelligence and sensitivity emerge unscarred from the relentless anti-intellectualism and the cruel cliques of the American high school, and while most of us are not driven to murder (rather more to suicide), this game does a good job of evoking the thoughts and emotions of Harris and Klebold--without glamorizing or exculpating them.
He concludes:
And a game such as Super Columbine Massacre can lend insight into the events of that terrible day that newspaper reports, or somber and thouthful essays, cannot. Not necessarily better insights--but different ones--precisely because it makes you complicit in recreating the events.
As gamers, and those who love games, our reponse to this game, and to the criticism of it, should not be to hide, or run away, or hope that it goes away. Instead it should be to say: You do not understand, nor are you attempting to understand. This is not a glamorization of the murderers, nor yet a trivialization of the tragedy; it is a work of serious artistic intent and accomplishment, based on considerable research, that in fact illuminates and reflects the horror of that day. Just as there are novels of the Holocaust, there can be a game of Columbine, and neither need trivialize a tragedy.
Meanwhile, over at Grand Text Auto, Andrew Stern and Michael Matea, creators of last year's Slamdance game winner, Facade, write an open letter to Slamdance.
An excerpt:
As recipients of last year’s Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance game festival for Façade, we wish to express our strong disapproval of Baxter’s decision, and urge him to reconsider allowing Super Columbine Massacre RPG! to rejoin this year’s competition.
We recognize that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! addresses a highly sensitive and incendiary topic, of the sort that gamemakers, independent or otherwise, are still experimenting with and learning how to address. Also, we recognize that the general public is unaccustomed to games about such subject matter, thereby risking negative publicity for Slamdance by including it in the festival.
We give no judgment here about how successfully Super Columbine Massacre RPG! addresses its topic. However we feel it is extremely important that the game community, including high-profile festivals such as Slamdance, support such experimentation. Games, as a medium, are as fully deserving and appropriate as film and other more established media forms, to deal with such subject matter.
(Thanks to Steve Gallagher for the tip on this.) # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2007 10:47:00 PM
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iEXCITED
The new Apple iPhone. It's a widescreen iPod (but, um, at only up to 8 gigs? What gives?); OS X powered; a full version of Safari; WiFi and Bluetooth. Looks very cool.
I'm officially very up on this and will be over-the-moon about it when it upgrades to a larger hard disk. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2007 03:31:00 PM
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THE GREEN PARTY
As you may have read below, Filmmaker is hosting an evening with animator and artist Brent Green this coming Wednesday. I think his work is really great and hope you can come and check it out. If you want to learn more about him, check out this essay on the Creative Capital website. Green is a Creative Capital fellow, and their support helped him realize his new Paulina Hollers, which we'll screen on Wednesday before its Sundance screening next week.
An excerpt from the Creative Capital page:
Picture this: a Santa Claus who's a skinny, irritable old cuss who guzzles cough syrup for the buzz and whose workshop is home to scrawny blackbirds and big-eared, dancing mice. And imagine his story told with a tremulous voice muttering snatches of prose over scrawled drawings held together with bits of Scotch tape. That's Hadacol Christmas (pictured, 2005), Brent Green's adamantly handmade twelve-minute animation, a rough, cobbled together thing that makes your head spin with its barrage of unexpected moments, like a shotgun blast spewing poetry.
"I'm not, so much, into polished stuff," says Green, whose work is all about the improbable splendor of the broken down, the rickety, and the barely-held-together. "I don’t see any beauty in it."
This pursuit of the unexpected is what drew Green to filmmaking in the first place. After writing a short story, Green decided he wanted to bring it to life. So he taught himself how to animate, maniacally drawing thousands of images that second by second became his first film, Susa's Red Ears (2002), a story about a girl who sleeps on top of a bureau. Pleased with the fact that the moving images approximated his vision of the story, he kept going, working next on Francis (2002), based on a soundtrack by the band Califone. Green's three films wiggle and jump with hand-drawn characters. And in each, there’s that voice-over narration, spoken by Green himself with an edgy urgency that drives the films forward like freight trains at night.
Funded by the Creative Capital Foundation, Green's current project is Paulina Hollers, an animated film that draws on his own family history. "My family was originally from West Virginia," he says, "and for this project, I tried to write an Appalachian folk tale where everything gets worse and worse, but there's still this tinge of hope around the edges." According to Green, "the story centers around an asshole kid who dies and goes to Hell. His mother kills herself so he won't be alone. She finds him and they try to escape."
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2007 01:03:00 AM
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it's a term a friend and i coined to describe films that don't bore me.
add (attention deficit disorder for those of you living under a rock) + intelligence.
the film not only has to move quickly, but it has to do so with intelligence, not wasting time on explaining the obvious or even the not-so-obvious. quick editing and moving pictures aren't enough, i have to be engaged intellectually as well. preferably both intellectually and emotionally. however i can deal with intellectual stimulation without the emotional, but not vice-versa.
combine that standard with idiosyncratic likes and dislikes and you end up with a person with a fairly low enjoyment rate of most entertainment. however, it never ceases to amaze me how severely films fail this personal certification.
for instance, today i tried to watch 'cache.' (don't worry, no spoilers here).
i tried watching the film for the first 20 minutes or so. and definitely there are cultural differences (french films have no problem showing real conversations, no matter how boring), but really, the set-up here could have been done in *much* less time.
after the first twenty minutes my add kicked in and i switched into addi-compensation mode: watching on 2x fast-forward with subtitles on. i'd go faster, but subtitles on my dvd player only display up to 2x. anything after that they don't bother (like i can't read that fast?? please).
even that wasn't enough. it's not just the slow pace that doesn't make sense in this film. it's the character choices. for example, for no reason the main character doesn't want to tell his wife what he's thinking. there's a whole scene in which she berates him for this. who cares? it's a dumb choice, frustrating to watch and doesn't do anything for the story, and it's a lame device that sets up the main character to visit a location alone, instead of with help as his wife suggests.
eventually i progressed to just jumping foward to the next indexed scene after watching the current one briefly, and then gave up a litte after the one hour mark....
the bottom line is information. im sure it's not just me. we've all grown up in a media-saturated environment where information is instantaneous and omnipresent. playing videos games, using the web, watching tv, films, music videos, commercials and comic books; we know how to absorb visual information incredibly quickly. so if you linger too long on a scene or show me superfluous detail, im already bored.
plus, we've seen every story numerous times. it's hard to do something original, but if you can't do something original at least do it quickly!
...i guess then that it's no surprise my favorite film of last year was syrianna. definitely ADDI-compliant!
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2007 06:19:00 PM
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Her only project on the horizon is with visionary French director Michel Gondry, whom she worked with on Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. "[It's] about somebody who everybody knows, but I can't say who it is," Dunst teases, before admitting her character is a "well-known singer", giving credence to reports that she is to play a very abstract take on Deborah Harry of the band Blondie.
This is from the Urban Legends reference page, linked above, and is quoted from a 1989 newspaper article:
The way Deborah Harry recounts the story is absolutely frightening. The rock singer, best known for her work in the post-disco, New-wave band Blondie, was just trying to hail a cab. It nearly ended in disaster.
"I was trying to get a cab on the lower east side of the Village in New York, and it was kind of late," Harry said. "This was back in the early '70s. I wasn't even in a band then . . . I was trying to get across town to an after-hours club . . .
"A little white car pulls up, and the guy offers me a ride. So I just continued to try to flag a cab down. But he was very persistent, and he asked where I was going. It was only a couple of blocks away, and he said, 'Well I'll give you a ride.'
"I got in the car, and it was summertime and the windows were all rolled up except about an inch and a half at the top. So I was sitting there and he wasn't really talking to me. Automatically, I sort of reached to roll down the window and I realized there was no door handle, no window crank, no nothing. The inside of the car was totally stripped out.
" . . . I got very nervous. I reached my arm out through the little crack and stretched down and opened the car from the outside. As soon as he saw that, he tried to turn the corner really fast, and I spun out of the car and landed in the middle of the street."
The driver, Harry concluded more than 15 years later, was serial killer Ted Bundy, who was executed last January in Florida's electric chair.
"It was right after his execution that I read about him," she said. "I hadn't thought about that incident in years. The whole description of how he operated and what he looked like and the kind of car he drove and the time frame he was doing that in that area of the country fit exactly. I said, 'My God, it was him.'"
Urban Legends goes on to say that Harry's story must be false:
At no time in his life did Ted Bundy show up in New York City. The closest he ever got to NYC was a trip he made to visit relatives in Philadelphia and to look up his birth record in Vermont in early 1969, five years before he began kidnapping and killing young women.
In fact, the site quotes Bundy biographer Ann Rule on what is actually a small phenomenon:
A dozen or more young women have called me since 1980, absolutely convinced that they had escaped from Ted Bundy. In San Francisco. In Georgia. In Idaho. In Aspen. In Ann Arbor. In Utah . . . He could not have been everywhere, but, for these women, there are terrified memories of a handsome man in a tan Volkswagen — a man who gave them a ride, and who wanted more. They are sure that it was Ted who reached for them, and declare that they never hitchhiked again. For other women, there is a man with a brilliant smile who came to their door, ingratiating, and then angry when they would not let him in. "It was him. I've seen his picture, and I recognized him."
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2007 05:38:00 PM
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THE SUNDANCE MOB
In an effort to capture the Park City experience through social networking, text messaging and camera-phone reporting, Lance Weiler has created a "social mobile experiment" to document Sundance and Slamdance this year. Head over to the link for more info and to sign up.
Here's how Weiler describes it:
WHO: We're looking for people headed to Park City - so if you know anyone else that might be interested please forward them this email
WHY: This is a free social mobile experiment to capture the festival experience from multiple people and to create a collage of those experiences.
WHAT: We need people who would be interested in documenting their daily activities. Here's the cool part, you use your mobile phone to text message in your updates. Nothing more than 100 characters, so it's a sentence or two. What are you watching, attending, drinking, eating, or seeing? For those who have cameras you're welcome to snap and record your experiences and then email them for automatic posting.
I'll be going to Park City but will be checking out the site... but maybe starting next week. Several bloggers have already started posting and the pre-Sundance entries include such tidbits as "Eating Burger King after class," "Taking a nap... so tired" and "Making that good old coffee." # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2007 02:06:00 PM
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BOWIE TURNS 60
Over at GreenCine, there's a translation of a piece by Tobias Ruther on David Bowie and his film influences, posted as a salute to the artist on his 60th birthday.
An excerpt:
He lived out his dreams of youth in Berlin. "The first film that ever moved me," he once said, "was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. I was around fourteen. Later, I saw M and Metropolis and films by Pabst, Murnau, and they all came from Berlin." He becomes deeply enthralled with German Expressionism, rides his bike to the Brücke Museum in Grunewald, paints: a child in the stairway, a Turkish father with his son, Iggy Pop in front of bare trees, halfway decent imitations of Müller, Kirchner and Heckel, whose woodcut portrait of Kirchner, Roquairol of 1917, is mimicked on the cover of Heroes.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2007 01:48:00 PM
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Sunday, January 07, 2007
YOU'RE NOT ON THE LIST!
Filmmakers attending Sundance next week may hear the line above as they stand outside the Cinetic or William Morris parties, but for, oh, a couple of thousand feature directors, those words came a bit early – when they got their Sundance rejection letters.
As Filmmaker’s editor, I go through several phases when I review Sundance’s annual list. There’s my first, “Oh, great, that got in” reaction when I see that films I’ve been looking forward to screening have made the cut. And then there’s the “Wow, how did they get that finished in time?” take on movies that entered production in August, September and even October but have managed to still slip into the fest. Next are my “They selected that!” exclamations when I see that films I think are going to suck are debuting in Park City. (Last year, one of these films -- A Guide to Recognizing your Saints, which I read the script of and didn’t like, turned out to be one of my favorites, so go figure.) Then there are the films and filmmakers I’ve never heard of, the ones that send me to the search engines for more info.
A few days later, though, another list forms in my mind: the films I expected to see but for whatever reason aren’t in the fest. Some weren’t finished in time, are in need of reshoots, are planning to premiere in Berlin or Cannes, ran out of money… but most, simply, just didn’t get in.
In a rational marketplace, this wouldn’t be such a terrible thing. But given that so many indie-film investor business plans end with the words “and then we premiere at Sundance,” it’s painful to talk with producers and directors who have not a clue as to what to do with their movies now that the Sundance programmers have given them the axe. Especially sad are the rejections received by films that the industry dubs as “Sundance films.” Sometimes said as praise, sometimes said pejoratively, the terms refer to American independent films that are often human-scale and character based… “ethnographic fictions,” Amy Taubin has called them. But it also refers, subtly, to films from emerging talent that are perceived to need the programming imprimatur and early critical exposure of the festival to convince a distributor to buy them.
There are Sundance films that never went to Sundance and were acquired elsewhere (George Washington and Sling Blade are just two examples), and there are other festivals and venues where Sundance films films can be screened and acquired (although their collective sales record last year was poor). But for a Sundance film without a smart “Plan B” in place, a Sundance rejection can be fatal.
If you’ve got a film that didn’t get in, what are you doing now? Post anonymously if you want. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/07/2007 07:38:00 PM
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Friday, January 05, 2007
BRENT GREEN AT THE IFC CENTER
Those of you in New York should come down to the IFC Center next Wednesday, January 10, for an evening Filmmaker is co-presenting featuring the very interesting work of animator and artist Brent Green. Coinciding with his solo show at the Bellwether Gallery, the evening will feature Green's original animations, including his Sundance-bound Paulina Hollers (pictured at right), a Q and A between myself and Green, and films by special guest artists. The show starts at 7:30, and I'll post more on it next week. For now, though, here's what I wrote about Green in 2005 when we selected him for our "25 New Faces" feature.
“BRENT GREEN LIVES AND WORKS IN A BARN IN CRESSONA, PENNSYLVANIA,” begins the bio of this 26-year-old animator who has developed a novel distribution strategy for his haunting, charmingly low-fi animated shorts. “When I finish a film we do live shows with bands and sell DVD-R’s with hand-painted artwork,” Green says. “The bands improv the soundtracks and I yell the narration like a preacher. I get to work with artists I love — Califone, Sin Ropas, Garland of Hours and Brendan Canty from Fugazi.”
Green says he’s more influenced by music and books — Vic Chesnutt, Smog and the above musicians as well as writers Kurt Vonnegut, Langston Hughes and Jack Kerouac — than he is by other filmmakers. He thought up the story for his first short, Susa’s Red Ears, and decided to animate it just to see if the result would “look the way it does in my head” and was shocked when, six months later, it did. He sent the short to his favorite musicians and one, Tim Rutili from Califone, wrote back and asked if he could include the short on his next CD.
Green is working on his latest film, Paulina Hollers, with the support of a Creative Capital grant. “It’s about an asshole kid whose mother is a religious zealot and who shoots rabbits from his window,” Green says. “He gets hit by a bus and his soul slips through the floor into hell. His mom shoots herself so she can slip into hell and try to get him out.” The aboveground footage will all be stop-motion wood-carved animation, while “hell” will be hand-drawn. Again, for Green filmmaking is about communicating what’s inside his head. “You think everyone sees the world the way you do,” he says, “but then you realize, Holy crap, they don’t!” — Scott Macaulay
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/05/2007 05:43:00 PM
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While Variety says that Solo's exit from ICM was expected, "Newman's exit was a jaw-dropper, bringing Endeavor a client list that includes Danny Boyle, Guillermo Del Toro, Mike Figgis, Baz Luhrmann, Paul McGuigan and Robert Rodriguez." The article goes on to note Newman's strength: identifying hot directing talent early and guiding them to successful careers. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/04/2007 12:39:00 AM
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Wednesday, January 03, 2007
SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST ANNOUNCES '07 SLATE
Running March 9-17 in Austin, Texas, SXSW announced its Opening Night Film will be Scott Frank's crime thriller The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Isla Fisher and Jeff Daniels. Other titles playing at the fest include Dollan Cannell's 638 Ways To Kill Castro, Lauren Lazin's The Last Days of Left Eye and Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes The Stairs. And a panel that's sure to draw attention will be a case study on the YouTube craze Lonelygirl 15. The three creators will be present. # posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/03/2007 03:25:00 PM
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Monday, January 01, 2007
WHAT I DIDN'T GET
I know it's churlish to complain about what you didn't get for Christmas, but, Microsoft, what gives?
Oh well, I'm a Mac user anyway. # posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/01/2007 05:47:00 PM
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