The David O. Russell / Lily Tomlin videos that leaked recently have become the indie world's equivalent of the Paris Hilton sex tape - incendiary and illicitly thrilling. The blogosphere's exposure of the clips prompted Tomlin to laugh off her conflict with Russell, and George Clooney - who famously clashed with Russell on Three Kings and is the rumored co-leaker of the clips, along with sound mixer Edward Tise - denies the charge and has offered $1m to anyone who can link him to the release of the clips.

Russell himself has been notably silent, yet this week there are reports that he is having problems with Vince Vaughn during pre-production on The H-Man Cometh, and there have been widespread snickers at the announcement yesterday that Russell's subsequent project will be Sammy's Hill, a political satire adapted from the book by Al Gore's daughter, Kristin. Quite how much 'Lilygate' has harmed him will only become clear after the dust has settled.

Interestingly enough, most people seem less interested in the tapes in the context of the decline (or otherwise) of Russell's career, and have viewed them more as a cultural phenomenon to be enjoyed and subverted. Below I am embedding for your enjoyment a 'remix' from Youtuber Deadasoren...



...and Paul Rudd and Michael Showalter delightfully re-enacting the conflict for their - and our - enjoyment.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/31/2007 09:02:00 PM Comments (1)

If you were in Times Square last weekend and thought of sitting down in one of those red sofas that signify a Kleenex ad, you might have found yourself in a Greenpeace campaign.

From Gothamist::

Perhaps you've seen the Kleenex commercials where an actor playing a therapist sits with a red couch in a busy public space, ready for people to share their thoughts and feelings - and maybe have a good cry. Well, the Kleenex "Let It Out" campaign was in Times Square over the weekend, where cameras were rolling for passers-by to add their experiences to the reel. Until Greenpeace came in.

Greenpeace activists infiltrated the filming by posing as people who wanted to share stories about loss, but capped it off by saying they were most upset that Kimberly-Clark, which manufactures Kleenex, doesn't use recycled fiber in Kleenex and instead uses "virgin" fiber . Videographer Kelly Loudenberg filmed the protesters on the scene - check out the last part, where Greenpeace activists unfurl a sign behind someone getting emotional on the couch. Apparently filming shut down right after.

Here's the Greenpeace site, Kleercut, that explains its problems with Kimberly-Clark. And here's the Kleenex Let It Out campaign site.

Here's the video of the action:

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/31/2007 01:23:00 AM Comments (0)

It's just one week until Grindhouse is upon us, but in the meantime here are some little tidbits to keep you going. Over at IESB there are behind the scenes clips of all five directors at work, you can see what happened at the Entertainment Weekly's covershoot for Grindhouse here and, if you feel the desire to kill five minutes at work, Time Out will help you pitch a grindhouse movie to Robert Rodriguez.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/30/2007 12:24:00 PM Comments (0)

On the main page: Nick Dawson's interview with The Lookout's Scott Frank and Howard Feinstein's talk with Susanne Bier, director of After the Wedding. Both films open today.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/30/2007 10:36:00 AM Comments (0)

Chuck Tyron at The Chutry Experiment spotlights a special "New Writing for New Media" issue of the journal Post-Identity, as well as his own article in it. Most of the essays -- from Will Luers' "Cinema Without Show Business: a Poetics of Vlogging" to Matthew Clayfield's "A Certain Tendency in Videoblogging and Rethinking the Rebirth of the Author" -- employ the discourse and resources of film theory to examine this technological moment. But the journal also uses new technology with one interactive article: Adrian Miles' "That Moment Might Do: Videoblogs and the Any-Instant-Whatever."

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 3/30/2007 08:06:00 AM Comments (0)

There on YouTube, a blurry clip of Karl Rove getting down at the Radio-Television Correspondents' Association Dinner. It’s one of those the cultural moments so rich in contradictions and creepiness, that one hardly knows what to say. That the man responsible for emptying social programs decides to steal one more thing – the cultural history of rap? That there is nothing more queasy than Rove leaning back and giving himself a homeboy hug? Or more importantly, that the clip’s appearance on YouTube and hundreds of other sites may not be a moment of digital democratic critique, but rather the final stage in another well-tuned media campaign spun by Rove –– I mean, MC Rove –– himself.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 3/30/2007 07:33:00 AM Comments (2)

Today in New York at the IFC Center Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep receives its U.S. theatrical premiere... 30 years after its completion in 1977. Made as the writer/director's UCLA thesis film, Killer of Sheep went on to win awards at the Berlin Film Festival and Sundance, and it was declared a "national treasure" by the Library of Congress. The story of a slaughterhouse worker, an insomniac, struggling to raise his family in '70s Watts, the film blended the work of non-actors and poetic visuals with a deeply humane sensibility that contrasted sharply with the blaxploitation films that appeared in theaters at the time.

Because Burnett made the feature as, essentially, a student film, he didn't clear his music rights, and those clearances have prevented the film from a proper release. Now, Milestone, with help from Steven Soderbergh, is releasing the film at the IFC Center in New York, with, presumably, further bookings to come. We're working on the Spring issue of Filmmaker now, and it includes writer/director James Ponsoldt's interview with Burnett. But since the film is opening today, I thought I'd run an excerpt:

Filmmaker: How do you think the film relates to the world in 2007 versus the world in 1977?

Burnett: I think you can see the seeds of some of the future in the film. The Watts riots were in ’65, and we filmed in the early 70’s, and you can see that little was done to help the community. In a way, you look back and it’s even worse now, in many ways. Then, to some degree, you could get a job doing manual labor, of course there’s always been a job crisis, but now everything is so technical. Then you could at least pick up a trade from your family who were carpenters, or plumbers, and now you have to go to school for it. In the film there’s an anti-southern thing—like the son calling his mother “My dear,” which is like a country code-word, and she tells him not to say that—and there’s a rejection of certain values, and you sort of need those foundations. To Sleep With Anger was partly about the loss of that, and some of My Brother’s Wedding is about your responsibility as a person, and how qualified you are to be responsible for another human being.

Filmmaker: Do you think you were trying to explore how rural, or Southern values, exist within a more metropolitan environment like Los Angeles?

Burnett: More so in To Sleep With Anger and My Brother’s Wedding. Growing up it was a constant clash, of rejecting southern values, and the south, and if you were from the south, people called you “country.” So it was a negative more than a positive. But if somehow you let those values seep in, through osmosis or whatever, you look at your life and realize it’s relevant. And you find people that don’t have those values, and it’s like they’re missing something. I feel sorry for people who didn’t come up with any value system. In the neighborhood where I grew up, the neighbors were like extended family. That’s all missing now—most of it. It’s so urban now, but Los Angeles used to be full of vast, open spaces. It was rural—like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn! You could see for miles. City Hall was the biggest building. You could see the mountains every day. You could have chickens, rabbits, ducks—anything—in your back yard. It was a great place to be at that time. It felt country. There was a sense of community. Now, it’s really dirty. If you go to Africa, in some parts it’s like it’s brand new—you can see for miles, it’s not polluted. You go through Namibia and there are elephants on the road. There’s a sense of newness. It’s not totally exploited.

Filmmaker: I read that you wanted to make a film during your UCLA days about the black revolution, and you told this to some older men, and they laughed at you, said that they loved America. I find your films both incredibly human and political. Do you feel like your films are an attempt by you to reconcile anger, political anger, with telling gentle stories about human behavior?

Burnett: I didn’t want to make a revolutionary film about taking over the city or the world, necessarily. What happened was that I was thinking about how to make a film that reflected the reality of the situation, and I used to always get my hair cut in Watts at a particular barbershop. There was always some conversation or argument with these older guys inside. I went in there one time, and it was Paul Robeson’s birthday or something, and I went there excited, and their attitude was against Paul Robeson, because they felt he’d turned against his country. And I thought they were mad! They were talking about this guy who was a spokesperson for injustice all over the world. So we got into a big debate, and they were saying things like, “I’ll give you a plane ticket to Russia if you promise not to come back,” but then I realized that they’d lived through the war, they were from the south, they’d been through segregation, experienced the worst of that, yet they still had a profound patriotism and love of America. It was hard for me to reconcile. So they weren’t a part of the Watts rebellion, but they were responsible people who were into supporting America—very democratic, believed in the system. It made me look closely at people who were, say, economically at the lower end, but they still believed politically that they had opportunities, and never thought of themselves as poor because they were working and making a living. It was an eye opener, in many ways.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/30/2007 12:12:00 AM Comments (0)

Over at SF360, there's an interview with director Philip Haas in which he talks about his new movie, The Situation, which deals with the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Haas explains why, as a former documentarian, he believes fiction films have a greater impact than documentaries:

A fiction film could go deeper than a documentary because somehow reportage, whether it's in a newspaper a magazine or a documentary, particularly with this involvement which we are keeping at a distance, the audience become anesthetized to it. I thought if we had a story with flesh-and-blood characters in a narrative arc, people would become emotionally involved. ...I wanted something now, where the weight of history would be on our shoulders now, not years later. …[Soon] the studios, of course, will be doing films about the battle of Fallujah with Harrison Ford or the incident on the bridge with Tom Cruise playing the major - well, not Tom Cruise because it would have to be more sympathetic. Anyway, it struck me that doing something in the [present] could be powerful and meaningful. And I'm sort of interested in a balance between politics and art.

Haas later sheepishly admits that he

loved doing the action sequences. My mission now is to become the Michael Bay of the art world. I could go in the direction of action films. I could do the Axis of Evil trilogy.

The Situation is currently on release - go here to find out where it is playing near you.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/29/2007 03:33:00 PM Comments (0)

Ted Hope, who produced Julian Goldberger's The Hawk is Dying with Jeff Levy-Hinte and Mary Jane Skalski, sent the below email out to his personal list regarding the film's opening this Friday at the Cinema Village in New York. In it, he makes a bold and honest offer that he decided to open up to readers of this blog. I'm glad he did. In addition to his no-risk offer to see a provocative film that finds a new visual language to apply towards cinematic narrative, Hope makes a great argument. I especially was struck by his equation of today's specialty film scene with the stuffy French "cinema of quality," the films that the French New Wave of Godard, Truffaut and Rivette rebelled against.

Hope's email:

Here in NYC it's New Directors/New Films time again. I love this series. And it's an interesting coincidence that this Friday, March 30th, THE HAWK IS DYING is opening at Cinema Village. Many years back at ND/NF I saw an incredible film called TRANS. It was made for a penny with non-actors and a very strong sense of place and individual style. I figured it had an audience of me and a few others, but I approached the director and told him how impressed I was, and how if he ever wanted to do something slightly more conventional, with an actual scripted narrative, I would love to help him out. The director of TRANS is Julian Goldberger, and THE HAWK IS DYING is his film that came out of that initial conversation.

We premiered THE HAWK IS DYING at Sundance in 2006. It was the only Sundance film to go to Cannes where a revised cut (the one you will see in the theaters) screened to great response in Directors Fortnight. The film captures a tour de force performance by Paul Giamatti, raw and incredibly human. Julian's expressionistic style is so well suited to Harry Crews' tale (his first novel to make it to the screen) -- both are reinvented in the process. Ten years ago this would be a film celebrated by the entire industry, but now that INDIE means something synonymous with the "cinema of quality" that the French New Wave rebelled against so long ago, it gets marginalized precisely because of the wonderful risks it takes -- the same very risks that made me and the great team that worked on it want to collaborate with Julian in the first place.

The film truly deserves to be seen on the big screen. We are woefully close to a time when such films will only be available for download, but this, like many others, truly deserves to be seen with light passing through glorious celluloid. I know you know how crucial the early days of a film release are, so PLEASE if you don't have plans for the end of the month, do all you can to get to Cinema Village (or wherever it is playing near you).

I do love the phrase (perhaps slightly ironically) "vote with your dollars", but I do think a ticket here is a vote against a steady diet of NORBITs and HOG WILDs. I truly struggle every day on how we can make sure there is a business that can work that embraces challenging films, films that dare to aim towards art, that involve risk as part of their design. And of course, the key part is all of us buying tickets.

AND HERE'S MY FAITH in the film and such a dream of such a cinema: If you go this weekend and aren't truly glad you went, I will personally refund your money. Just send me your ticket stub at This is that in New York. I promise.

Most sincerely,

Ted

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/29/2007 12:52:00 AM Comments (3)

In Philadelphia this weekend Lance Weiler is staging an innovative event based around his movie Head Trauma. Weiler describes it as a "collision of movies, music and gaming -- a new cinematic experience." After its premiere this Saturday, the event will travel to London, New York and other cities.

More on the event:

WHAT:
Street parking and two parking garages in walking distance

HOW MUCH:
$14 for all seats - seating is on a first come first serve basis

FOR MORE INFO:
Show info and advance tickets and click here for more info on the movie.

And for a little bit more on the concept behind the event, here's more from the press release:

The event consists of three core elements. 1. A screening of HEAD TRAUMA with a live soundtrack performance by Bardo Pond, Espers, Fern Knight, Marshal Allen (Sun Ra), Steve Garvey (Buzzcocks) and others.

The music is mixed live with the dialog and sound effects tracks from the film to create a new alternate soundtrack. 2. Various props and sets from the film are setup on stage and certain characters from the film will emerge from the audience. 3. During the course of the film a phone number appears on screen. When viewers call the number they begin a game that will last through the film and follow them home.

They receive a number of cryptic clues as they are asked to solve a series of riddles. The interaction involves phone calls and text messages from the characters of HEAD TRAUMA that will lead viewers to hidden clues spread across the Internet.

"We're trying to change the cinematic experience. We want to take the concept of narrative storytelling and move it across multiple devices and screens, so it is engaging the audience in new and different ways. People have been calling it a cinema ARG and the response to the initial screenings has been amazing. Not to mention I'm always looking for new ways to scare the audience." Says HEAD TRAUMA creator Lance Weiler.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/28/2007 01:38:00 PM Comments (1)

For years, "The Onion" has presented hilarious new takes on the week's news, usually putting its punch line in its headline. This week featured an article entitled "Anna Nicole Smith Finally Reaches Target Weight." As usual, the head line is succinct,witty and undeniably cruel. Now The Onion joins the growing industry of televised fake news with their internet-based "Onion News Network." In their publicity plug, The Onion explains how they have "set the standard for globe-encompassing 24-hour television news since it was founded in December, 1892. The network boasts channels in 171 languages and can be viewed in 4.2 billion households in 811 countries."

Immigration: The Human Cost

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 3/28/2007 08:21:00 AM Comments (0)

In the current New Yorker, David Denby reviews Shooter and articulates a possible new action movie formula for the post-BushCo age:

On the surface, the movie offers liberal ideological sentiments: it condemns covert overseas operations controlled by oil interests; it’s angry at the higher-ups who escaped blame for Abu Ghraib; it exhibits a clear distaste for the person and values of Dick Cheney. But it places these sentiments within a matrix of gun culture and lonely-man-of-honor myths. Swagger is the latest incarnation of Rambo, the anti-government crazy. The filmmakers may be trying to appeal both to liberals and to the Pat Buchanan conservatives who hate big government and multinational corporations and want American warriors to stay home. The clash of political currents suggests the degree of confusion roiling Hollywood at the moment. How do moviemakers find military heroes in the midst of an unpopular overseas war?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/27/2007 02:08:00 PM Comments (1)

Over at Alternet, Joshua Holland interviews James Scurlock, director of Maxed Out, a documentary on debt and the debt industry in America. Completed in 2006 when it made the festival rounds and now available on Netflix, the pic is unfortunately all too timely given the current collapse of the sub-prime lending market.

Here's Scurlock from the interview:

When I started the project a lot of people didn't even know what bankruptcy reform was, but most do now. A few weeks ago, nobody knew what "subprime" meant and now because of this whole mortgage fiasco I think everyone knows what that means. So here we are, two years after the start of the project and everything discussed in the film and the book has gotten worse. As we talked to people for the film, it became pretty obvious that things were just totally out of control and there was this sense that at some point the chickens are coming home to roost and that's largely what's been happening. I'm not gloating about that -- it's really tragic.

But my sense -- and I've talked to a lot of people since the project's been done -- is that the really big system hits are yet to come. There are a lot of bad mortgages out there; there are a lot of these "liar loan" mortgages out there; there are a lot of credit cards and people used to paying off their bills by refinancing their houses every year.

And, later, he discusses how the credit industry has changed in America:

It's because it's gone from a business based on a conservative business model where you were loaning to people who could safely pay you back and you weren't making a ton of money -- just a bit on the spread -- so you had to look at all your risks very, very carefully in order to make money. That model is now history, and the new one is that you charge a huge amount of fees, and a very high rate of interest. So the trick is actually getting people who will pay the most interest and the highest fees.

Credit card fees went from $1.7 billion dollars per year in 1996 to almost $18 billion last year -- an increase of more than a 1000%, and that's where the money is. Now you take someone who pays their bills on time, who has savings and pays their credit cards down each month, well they're not going to pay those fees. They don't have to. And you want someone who really needs the credit, who will be willing to pay a very high price for it.

One thing you've got to understand is that we have a negative savings rate in this country. Two out of three people can't pay their credit cards off each month. At the same time, last year we cashed $800 billion dollars out of home equity. Trillions of dollars in the last few years have been cashed out of people's homes and much of that went to paying off credit card bills. And the cycle continues. So it's a bit like Enron -- you've got some wishful thinkers, and then there are these bankers making enormous fees and at the end nobody's stepping in to stop the party.

For more on the film, here's the official site and here's an enthusiastic and informative fan site.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/26/2007 10:30:00 PM Comments (0)

On Friday I interviewed Brian Cook, the director of Color Me Kubrick, the new movie about Stanley Kubrick's impersonator, Alan Conway. Cook's film is based on a true story, and there is an interesting little documentary about Conway which I've embedded below (the Italian subtitles were not my idea...)



And while we're on the subject of not Stanley Kubrick, I thought I might as well throw in this collection of bloopers as a bonus offering.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/26/2007 06:31:00 PM Comments (0)

In a LA Times.com interview, horror master Wes Craven talks with Deborah Netburn on the politics of horror. The political slant of his new remake of The Hills Have Eyes 2 is almost too obvious for comment. The all-American family of his 1977 original The Hills Have Eyes and its 2006 remake –- and the bikers in his slap-dash 1985 The Hills Have Eyes 2 – have been replaced by National Guard trainees, who ultimately will be deployed in Iraq. (Of course, the family in the original may be too close for Craven, since he wrote this remake with his son Jonathan.)

Latimes.com: You have an amazing legacy of figuring out exactly what people are scared of at a given moment in time. What do you think is scary today?
WC: The current administration. That's the standard answer now. Unfortunately I'm not even joking. But the basic themes of what is scary have always been the same. A murderous rage that builds up in a family, a neighborhood or a nation, those are things I think are scary.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 3/26/2007 07:50:00 AM Comments (1)

Hot off the servers, here's Jamie Stuart's not-to-be-missed newest creation which again blurs genres (here between the short film, the TV entertainment magazine show and the celebrity interview) to, this time, particularly mind-warping effect.

Director Paul Verhoeven has fried a lot of brains in his cinematic lifetime, and his new film, Black Book, is being considered as one of his best. To interview him, Stuart put away his knit cap and one-ups the master of free-floating perversity by handing the reigns to a chirpy and obscenely animated E!-style news chick. Check it out by clicking here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/26/2007 12:25:00 AM Comments (0)

The Times of London runs a sobering story from a Hollywood producer who can't get a film made. In "Will I Ever Eat Lunch in This Town Again?" "Mr. X" discusses the travails of producing movies within the system.

Here's how he begins:

Ostensibly, I produce movies for a living. The most recent movie I had a hand in producing won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pretty heady stuff, to be sure. The reality, though, is slightly less fulfilling. We shot that film two years ago and, since then, I’ve produced nothing. Zilch. Not a frame of film, a byte of sound, a kernel of popcorn.

How, you may ask, does one survive in the film business without actually making any movies? Or, more relevantly, what the hell have I been doing for the past two years? Good question. Here’s the answer, which is really a guide for those of you looking either to become a producer or waste your time completely. The two are often indistinguishable.

What follows is a blow-by-blow account of the development of his latest project, a thriller set on the Mexican border with an acclaimed African-American actor set in the lead. "Mr. X" takes us through the endless development process, the vexing search for a director, and the crushing apathy of an industry only looking for a sure thing.

With a good project with seemingly saleable elements, "Mr. X" finds himself in a precarious position:

People in the industry were beginning to wonder – what was I working on? Calls were going unreturned. I developed the unmistakable stench of desperation. My wife started leaving the mortgage payment notices (and her shopping receipts) on my bedside table.

A producer friend once told me: “You’re either making a movie or you’re not. Everything else is just talk.” (He hasn’t worked in five years, but that’s another story.)

I clearly wasn’t making a movie. What I was doing was bleeding money. I had rung up a profoundly large credit card bill (wooing the various talents), ludicrously high legal fees (negotiating everyone’s deals) and astounding costs for therapy and medication (very poor health care system in America). This was in addition to actually buying the script, paying for rewrites and flying people back and forth for meetings.

The article is written as an anonymous account, but the author leaves strewn enough clues for insiders to make some fairly educated guesses. (So many clues, in fact, that he must want his colleagues to know what he's going through -- maybe in hopes of getting them to give the project a second look.) Nikki Finke pegs him as Blueprint's Rick Schwartz, who was involved with The Departed, was a former Miramax employee, and has been shopping a script called Southbound with director Terry George attached.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/26/2007 12:11:00 AM Comments (1)

After earning the ire of both the MPAA and alarmed motorists with its unapproved billboard campaign for the upcoming Elisha Cuthbert torture pic Captivity, After Dark Releasing is preparing to court further controversy with its campaign for Wristcutters, a very good film that deals, in part, with suicide.

Here's Gregg Goldstein in The Hollywood Reporter:

Fifteen suicide prevention groups are dead set against After Dark Films' proposed campaign for the comedy Wristcutters: A Love Story, which is set to bill itself with signs showing people killing themselves.

After Dark Films co-owner Courtney Solomon said late Friday that while the film's promotion may feature images of people jumping off a bridge, electrocuting and hanging themselves, they would be displayed as traffic-style stop or yield signs with a barring-style circle and line over the illustrations, along with hearts to reference the film's romantic story line. He said the campaign may change before its mid-July rollout because of the outcry.

Solomon intends to offer screenings or DVDs of the film to concerned organizations in the next few weeks, then discuss the campaign with them and ask for their input. "The movie takes place in purgatory, and its message is that love is better than suicide," he said, adding that the film may even help prevent suicide. "Our job is to get people into the theater in a way that's accessible to them. There are many different ways to skin a cat. God forbid someone was considering committing suicide. This film may change their opinion."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/25/2007 09:09:00 PM Comments (0)

Below, Nick Dawson tells us about 11 new Grindhouse clips online. While he was posting that, I was reading some of the early word on the film.

Jeffrey Wells is mixed on the Rodriguez, but he really digs the Tarantino:

Take away the car-chase finale and the Tarantino flick is almost all sublime, groovy-chick dialogue. This is Tarantino amblin' country, all right -- a place where very cool people (i.e., '70s "street" archetypes) talk and talk and say it just right while sipping a Corona or smoking a Red Apple cigarette or eating a Big Kahuna burger. And yet Death Proof is not, to put it mildly, concerned with notions of unity. It's a scattershot thing that's basically two short films in one. Two separate moods or tones and two separate female ensembles linked by Kurt Russell's "Stuntman Mike" character.

It starts out as a cruising-chicks-in-a-muscle-car movie, then it turns into a hanging-around-an-Austin-juke-joint, Eugene ONeil/The Iceman Cometh piece with Stuntman Mike putting the zen moves on a Hispanic hottie (Vanessa Ferlito) as her friends (Sydney Tamiia Poitier and I forget who else -- the press notes should have photos to go with the cast bios) offer snappy commentary. Then it suddenly shifts into a supernatural-psycho-killer-after-hot-girls movie ending in a major wipe-out/head-on collision sequence (with individual death-and-dismember- ment shots thrown in), and then finally a hot-chicks-get-even film ending with that balls-out country car-chase.

It's a foxy, half-crazy, smirky B-movie wallow with nary a thought or a theme of any kind, but it's a complete fuck-all pleasure to just rock and ride along with, and the car-chase finale (the star of which is New Zealand stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who stunt-dubbed for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill) is the absolute shit.

And over at Ain't It Cool, the estimable Neill Cumpston writes the "only Grindhouse review you ever nead to read."

An excerpt:

First off, the movie lets you know you’re going to get your poop kicked out of you, formed into a set of brass knuckles, and now here comes a poop-punch....

First 300 and now this? I think the summer of 2007 just went, “Hey, let me take you to a free taquito buffet” and you eat all these taquitos and then the summer goes, “Here comes a foot to your stomach”, but you go, “It’s full of taquitos” but it’s too late – there’s a boot in your stomach only the boot is really a motorcycle and you puke up a bikini girl who blows you and then kills your boss with a hammer.

That’s what Grindhouse is. It’s a taquito buffet that you puke up after getting hit with a motorcycle, and it turns into a bikini chick that blows you and kills your boss with a hammer.

Rodriguez and Tarantino probably don’t read this site, but someone should tell them they can use that last paragraph as a quick blurb.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/25/2007 06:37:00 PM Comments (0)

To save yourself the expense of a trip to gay Paris to see David Lynch's bizarre and haunting exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, The Air is on Fire, you can instead take a virtual tour here. Go to the English language version of the site, select The Air is on Fire from the 'What's On' menu, then go to 'Views of the Exhibition' and 'The Works.' (And for those of you who want to see it in person, the show runs until May 27.)

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/25/2007 04:45:00 PM Comments (0)

For all of you out there excitedly awaiting the release of Grindhouse on April 6, you can whet your appetite now by checking out eleven (count 'em) clips here.

The movie clocks in at a sizable 184 minutes, and the news is that Death Proof and Planet Terror will be released separately in Europe, where both films will alledgedly run some 10 or 15 minutes longer.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/25/2007 02:14:00 PM Comments (0)

Danny Boyle's Sunshine, a sci-fi epic starring Cillian Murphy and scripted by novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach) doesn't open here until the fall, but it premieres in the U.K. on April 7 and the early press has me really excited.

Here's Mark Kermode in The Guardian:

Shot not in Hollywood but in the 3 Mills studios in London's East End, Sunshine boasts extraordinary computer graphic imagery so luminescent you feel you could get sunburn just watching the film. As a sensory experience, it's overwhelming. But perhaps more importantly, Sunshine also harks back to a time when sci-fi turned its attention not toward the hallowed teen market but toward the heavens. Although screenwriter Alex Garland has said the inspiration for the film came from 'an article projecting the future of mankind from a physics-based, atheist perspective', this ambitious British fantasy increasingly blurs the boundaries between science and religion. In this respect, it falls within a grand tradition of adult-orientated science-fiction which is haunted by the question of divinity, whether as a presence or an absence.

Samuel Wigley on The Guardian's film blog is slightly more reserved but still very much into it:

But there is a sense of awe about space in Sunshine that I haven't noticed in a sci-fi film for a while. A moment near the beginning has members of the crew alerting each other to a fleeting planetary spectacle suddenly visible from their craft: Mercury is drifting past on its orbit around the sun - a sublime, rare vision that remains stuck in my mind long after the confusing action sequences have faded. This, after all, is the filmmaker who turned a junkie's desperate plunge into the grimiest toilet in Scotland into an underwater fantasia. Despite its cumbersome dramatics, Boyle's new film proves he's still got the touch. Sunshine has the uplift of one of those light-boxes prescribed to SAD sufferers - few films about impending apocalypse have felt so optimistic, nor so attuned to the beauty about to be eclipsed.

From these reports it seems like Sunshine may be the first worthy successor to the philosophical science fictions of 2001 and Solaris (Tarkovsky's version) to come along in a while. To watch several clips from the film, click here.

The new international trailer is embedded below:



In related news, the early buzz on 28 Weeks Later, the Boyle/Garland exec-produced sequel to their 28 Days Later is good, reports Dread Central. A tiny "sneak peek" of that trailer can be seen here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/25/2007 12:27:00 PM Comments (0)

Today someone alerted me to the existence of Hometown Baghdad, an ongoing documentary series about a group of twentysomethings and their far-from-ordinary everyday lives in the Iraqi capital. The project is an innovative collaboration between a group of Iraqi filmmakers and New York's Chat the Planet, a 'global dialogue company'. At a time when it's all too easy to be desensitized by the endless stream of statistics of Baghdad's daily death toll, Hometown Baghdad emotionally re-engages viewers and reminds them that Iraqis are essentially people just like us.

I'm embedding the first episode below, and the other four can be found on Salon.com's Video Dog site.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/23/2007 03:58:00 PM Comments (0)

At his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner reports on the speakers at yesterday's Future of Film Conference in L.A.

Along with various business types discussing new media platforms like Joost, the speakers included a director, Jason Kohn, who discussed his Sundance hit, Manda Bala:

He wants to shoot movies on film, and have them seen in theaters. With his documentary, which focuses on corruption and kidnapping in Brazil, “I was reacting against the future of film. The future of film at the time was video, and I thought the future sucked. So I decided to change the future.” He said he was depressed after listening to all the day’s talk about digital distribution, and watching movies alone on tiny handheld screens. “This was made to be projected in a theater in front of hundreds of fucking people,” he said. “We’re entertainers. We’re not fucking drug dealers, just fulfilling demand.”

Kohn is a real firebrand. He worked on the movie over five years. After the first edit, he and his investors realized he didn’t have a compelling ending. The movie didn’t make it into the Toronto International Film Festival. So he went back to Brazil, and eventually met the dangerous character who provides a solid ending for the movie. Kohn doesn’t have distribution for Manda Bala yet, but it sounds like talks are still pretty active.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/23/2007 09:51:00 AM Comments (4)

Hey, check out this article in Bookforum I just came across profiling an old friend, Ira Silverberg. I first met Ira years ago when I was the Programming Director of The Kitchen. At various times a literary publicist, head of Grove Press and agent (now at Donadio and Olson), Ira would pitch -- and I would program -- readings by people like Mary Gaitskill, Kathy Acker and Joel Rose. After a few of these I suggested he cut out the middleman (me) and become the curator of a new Kitchen literary series, a program he directed for several years. Elizabeth Schambelan's piece nicely captures Ira's great taste, ironic humor, and his ability to propel the work of writers like Acker, Dennis Cooper, and William Burroughs out into the world.

An excerpt:

In a career spanning more than twenty years, Silverberg has maintained a deep commitment to avant-garde and experimental fiction and poetry, as the books in the SoHo apartment where he has lived since 1990 attest. His collection is carefully edited, he says: "There's no room—about a year ago I sent eleven cases of books to Housing Works, because they had taken over the space." (He later tried to buy some of his favorites back.) Even so, his wall of minimalist white shelves presents a remarkably concise précis of a particular cultural genealogy, one that encompasses literature from Sade to Genet to the Beats to the downtown New York literati of later decades. Additional branches extend into visual art (Andy Warhol and the Factory milieu, Jack Smith, Nan Goldin), pop culture (with an emphasis on the darker effusions of Vietnam-era Los Angeles, as represented by Manson in His Own Words and a first edition of Joan Didion's White Album), and unreconstructed kitsch. In the last category, in addition to Susann's complete oeuvre, Silverberg possesses a copy of singer-songwriter Dory Previn's 1971 book of confessional poems On My Way to Where. Explaining how this curio survived the Housing Works purge, he stares at the cover, which shows an impassive Previn working an Ossie Clark look, and muses, "Just the whole idea of her writing about her husband [composer André Previn] being stolen by Mia Farrow, and being photographed in that coyote coat with the aviator sunglasses and what I would call a Jew-fro, though I don't think she's a member of the tribe—I mean, how can you give that away?"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/22/2007 10:23:00 PM Comments (0)

Finally... this blog has an RSS feed. That little symbol next to our logo above... use it to click through to an RSS page. Or search for Filmmaker magazine on your RSS reader. Or simply cut and paste this code -- http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/sitefeed/atom.xml -- and receive this blog on your RSS delivery system of choice.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/22/2007 09:20:00 PM Comments (2)

The success of Phil de Vellis's 1984 video has been such a thorn in the side of Clinton supporters that they have responded with this. Where do they get their ideas from??!!

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/22/2007 08:55:00 AM Comments (0)

There's an interesting thread going on over at Jeffrey Welles's Hollywood Elsewhere. Welles has been talking up Mike Binder's upcoming Adam Sandler-9/11 pic Reign on Me, and a recent posting linking to Anthony Lane's positive review has turned into a war between the talkbackers (one, Scooterzzz, in particular), and director Binder, who is replying on the site. Binder has challenged Scooterzzz to post his real name and to email Binder his address so Binder can refund him his admission; Scooterzzz says it was a press screening and that it's impossible to compensate him for the lost two hours of his life. (For the record, Scooterzzz says he doesn't hate the film so much; he just compares it to a Lifetime TV movie.) Along the way, there are discussions about the ethics of anonymous bashing, the British blonde who played Binder's wife on his tv show, The Mind of the Married Man, and the appropriateness of a director answering his critics on internet message boards.

Here's the Anthony Lane review, by the way.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/21/2007 10:53:00 PM Comments (0)

Since I posted about the political ad mash-up that composites Hilary Clinton into Ridley Scott's celebrated "1984" Apple Macintosh ad on March 5, the YouTube clip has gone from hundreds of views to hundreds of thousands of views, becoming a media sensation in the process. Keith Olberman has devoted a couple of spots to it, and various pundits have attempted to figure out the identity of the creator.


Today, on the Huffington Post, the author of the work reveals himself. Here's Arianna on the whole affair,", and here's Phil de Vellis, aka ParkRidge47, the originator of the spot.

An excerpt from his piece:

I made the "Vote Different" ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process. There are thousands of other people who could have made this ad, and I guarantee that more ads like it--by people of all political persuasions--will follow.

This shows that the future of American politics rests in the hands of ordinary citizens. The campaigns had no idea who made it--not the Obama campaign, not the Clinton campaign, nor any other campaign. I made the ad on a Sunday afternoon in my apartment using my personal equipment (a Mac and some software), uploaded it to YouTube, and sent links around to blogs.

The specific point of the ad was that Obama represents a new kind of politics, and that Senator Clinton's "conversation" is disingenuous. And the underlying point was that the old political machine no longer holds all the power.

De Vellis worked at Blue State Digital, an internet company that provides technology services to campaigns (including Obama's), but has since resigned so as not to "harm them" by association to this clip.

Far from being a stunt or internet prank, I think this clip is the first of what will be many in which imaginative voters will use media tools to reshape the images of their favorite candidates as well as those, as we have seen here, of their opponents.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/21/2007 08:17:00 PM Comments (0)

This year I attended SXSW for the first time (embarassingly), and, as a juror for the Narrative Competition, spent a lot of time at the famed Alamo Downtown Cinema and Drafthouse. I watched a lot of their really fun trailer reels, ate a bunch of their burgers and chicken sandwiches, and wound up really getting off on the place's hip calendar-house/movie fan palace vibe.

I guess I should be glad I made it down there this year because, as this article in Ain't It Cool News reveals, Austin's Alamo Downtown is soon to be no more due to the typical culprit -- an exired lease and rising rent. The Alamo will be moving to the nearby Ritz theater which will receive a makeover, including "plush VIP seating," but it certainly seems like some kind of end of an era.

If you live in Austin, the Alamo has planned a number of special screenings for the last three month's of its existence, so check them out.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/21/2007 11:05:00 AM Comments (0)

This weekend the IFP and Filmmaker will be hosting four screenings of Michael Tucker's The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. We'll be doing Q and A's with director Tucker (whose previous film was the Iraq doc Gunnar Palace) after the 5:15 and 7:20 shows, Friday and Saturday, at the Cinema Village in New York.

The doc was a bit hit down at SXSW and I'm eager to talk with Tucker about its production.

Here's how the filmmakers describe the film:

In an absurd comedy of errors, a freedom-loving Iraqi journalist is mistaken as Tony Blair's would-be assassin and sent to Abu Ghraib Prison where he discovers the true meaning of liberation. The film from the directors of "Gunner Palace" continues where that film left off with one detainee picked up in a raid by the US military and tells his incredible personal story -- and unique relationship with one American soldier -- putting a human face on the civilian impact of this conflict.

And here's the trailer:

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/20/2007 11:33:00 PM Comments (0)

I've long argued that filmmakers shouldn't view theatrical distribution as the be-all and end-all of their filmmaker efforts. Other forms of distribution, DIY or otherwise, are often more financially remunerative and somethings even emotionally rewarding, depending on the films.

But I've never made the argument that filmmakers should sidestep the film festival circuit. One filmmaker who is at least posing that argument now is Sujewa Ekanayake, who decided not to submit his Date Number One to festivals while he launched his one series of DIY screenings. In this blog post, he explains his rationale and then makes a counterintuitive proposal: he's starting a film festival.

Look for it in the D.C. area this fall, but, until then, check out the piece linked here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/20/2007 10:57:00 PM Comments (4)

The force of nature that is Kelley Baker - better known as The Angry Filmmaker - is currently on tour bringing his screenings and workshops to universities and theaters around the country over the next two months or so.

His current schedule, according to his website, is:

March 22nd - - University of Tennessee at Knoxville
March 27th - - University of North Carolina at Pembroke
March 29th & 30th - - Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
Open Apperature Film Festival
April 4th & 5th - - Emerson College, Boston
April 7th - - Kicking Bird 7 PM @ the Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third Street, NYC
T* April 16th - - Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH
April 18th - - Columbia College, Chicago, IL
T* April 19th - - DePaul University, Chicago, IL
May 8th - - Fall Out Boy Concert (in Portland, OR I am taking my daughter...)
May 10th - - Coaster Theater, Cannon Beach, OR
May 18th & 19th - - 911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, WA (screening and workshop)
May 24th & 25th - - Oregon State University

Some dates are tentative and others are still to be added, so keep checking back on his website to see if he’s going to be in your area. His IRS Tour (2005), Kicking & Screaming Tour (2004) and Pissed Off in America Tour (2003) have given him something of a legendary reputation, so catch him if you can.

To give you a taster of what you can expect, I’ve embedded Kelley’s latest short film, Stolen Toyota, below:

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/20/2007 01:46:00 PM Comments (0)

There seems to be some sort of war going on. "New York Magazine" this week whipped up the conflict with their "London (The Other New York" piece that pits New York against England's capital in terms of finance, food, and culture. Now the Brit film mag "Sight & Sound" put on their cover "American Indie: The State They're In." Unfortunately you'll have to go to the news stand to find what that "state" is, since "Sight & Sound" have not put the article on line. But Greenzine gives a taste with the teaser: "Is today's American indie cinema anything more than a refuge for slumming stars in tales of dysfunction and depression, funded by the very system it supposedly opposes?" An excellent question.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 3/20/2007 11:15:00 AM Comments (0)

Following on from Scott's post about the 'download-to-burn' debate, I noticed that the New York Times ran not one but three articles yesterday on films on the internet,
Little Films on Little Screens (but Both Seem Set to Grow), The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse and The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (if You’re Patient).

One of the points raised is simply that the technology being used to deliver movies online is new and therefore relatively unrefined, which means that it is easier (if not cheaper) to watch a film in ways that we are used to. A.O. Scott, however, convincingly makes the case that, although the internet looks unlikely to take the place of established forms of distribution (ie, theatrical, DVD), "it seems likely that a hot new filmmaker will be soon discovered on a download site and given a shot at old-fashioned Hollywood success, a chance to make movies for the big screen."

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/19/2007 09:17:00 PM Comments (0)

There's a spirited conversation going over at Twitch about whether or not small companies now releasing cult films on DVD should shift to a "download-to-burn" distribution model. The conversation centers around genre and catalog titles, but it's applicable to our current independent cinema too.

Here's an excerpt from Swarez's original post, but click on the link to read all the comments as well.

The brick and mortar stores are out to make money and any good business man will tell you that it doesn’t make sense to stock the store with titles which the average viewer knows nothing about. Of course he will rather go for the latest title. I think us cult film fans over estimate how popular we think our favorite films are and are ever so confused when a cult film doesn’t get the attention as the latest Hollywood blockbuster. The smaller companies have a growing difficulty of getting their product noticed on the streets but fare better in the online world. Is that their new frontier?

Would it make sense for them to either stop selling their titles in stores and focus exclusively on the internet? It makes sense in a way because cult movie fans thrive on the net. It’s where we get all our information and we come together in a place like this to discuss our love for cinema. Also does it make sense to offer some titles only as download-to-own releases?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/18/2007 01:53:00 PM Comments (0)

I sat on the Narrative Feature jury at SXSW last week. As you know, we gave the Grand Jury Prize to Itty Bitty Titty Committee, Jamie Babbit's riot grrl riff on Lizzie Borden's early '80s feminist indie classic, Born in Flames. In addition to its spirited run through the history of late 20th century feminist political action, from Angela Davis through the Guerilla Girls, the film contains a set of relationships -- the Latina lesbian protagonist, played by Melonie Diaz, and her accepting family; Melanie Mayron's power lesbian and her psychologically enabling lover/rent girl (played by Nicole Vicius) -- that add complexity and casual nuance to the movie's pop storytelling.

But many of the press reports failed to mention the two Special Jury Prizes we gave out, so I want to say a few of words about these films.

We awarded a Special Jury Prize to Ry Russo-Young's Orphans for "its personally crafted visual aesthetic." The film, which placed the story of two sisters attempting to reconcile after the death of their parents amidst a textured collage of pastel backgrounds and flowing party dresses, has its share of Bergman references but it also shares something with the experimental melodramas of Peggy Ahwesh and Ronnie Abate.

We also gave a Special Jury Prize to Ron Bronstein's Frownland (pictured, above) for its "uncompromising singularity of vision." I was particularly happy about this award, because Bronstein's first feature is the kind of outsider cinema that deliberately pushes an audience's patience and thus is easy to dismiss by those unwilling to approach the film on the terms it lays out for itself.

In a festival in which many films dealt, ostensibly, with "problems of communication," Bronstein's film explored this theme to its fullest and most painful degrees. Frownland follows for a few days the psychologically impaired Keith Sontag, a self-described "troll from under the bridge," as he quarrels with the arrogant musician roommate, tries to console a suicidal female friend, and hopelessly attempts to make money by door-to-door coupon selling. Bronstein's camera fixates itself in long takes on Sontag (played by Dore Mann, an ex-Pathmark deli clerk who currently mans the night shift at a suicide hotline) as the character lurches way below the social safety net in particularly hellish ring of outer-borough New York. In long scenes Sontag stammers and grimaces his way through awkwardly circular dialogues that never once achieve any moments of catharis, closure or just basic conversational clarity. There's a stunning sequence at the end in which Sontag stumbles into a deafeningly noisy hipster party, and a bold digression in which we follow roommate for fifteen minutes or so as he bizarrely tries to scam his way through an LSAT test. (It was at this point in the film that I realized I had no idea where it was going and how long it would take to get there.)

Frownland reminded me a bit of Lodge Kerrigan's recent Keane,, but where Kerrigan's handheld camera and jump-cut style (and his protagonist's narratively-attuned psychological issues) created storytelling drive, empathy and audience involvement, Bronstein resets our inner movie clock. Disoriented, we are forced to wonder about his -- and our -- attitude towards his characters. Should we feel sorry for Sontag or, like pulling off a piece of chewing gum stuck to our shoe, try to get him out of our lives as soon as possible?

Bronstein's day (or, often night) job is projecting films at places like MOMA and the American Museum of the Moving Image, and, in person, he evinces the passion of a true cineaste. At the SXSW Closing Night party he enthused to me about screening Jacques Rivette's 12-plus hour Out 1 earlier this month, and in his press notes Bronstein (pictured above right) hails great influences: Mike Leigh's Nuts in May and Bleak Moments along with films by Monte Hellman, Alan Clarke, Cassavetes and Mad Magazine.

Like I said, Frownland's sludgy miserabilism can be a tough watch, but now that the festival is over, it's the film that has resonated with me the most. Some of my affection towards Frownland is no doubt due to the underground tradition it salutes. Bronstein told me at SXSW that he wanted to make a film with "no narrative center" and at the awards ceremony in his brief remarks, he acknowledged the difficulties of his approach, noting that some viewers had told him that they wanted to "mark both a '1' and a '5" on their Audience Award ballot. (At my screening, the first post-screening comment Bronstein got from an audience member was, "Your film reminded me to keep taking my meds."

Ultimately, though, Frownland may be one of the few pieces of anti-commercial cinema that is best described by its creator. Here is Bronstein, excerpted, from his director's statement:

[Frownland is] a jagged little pill of a movie, in turns scary and strayed, honest and threatening, funny, frustrating and frazzled. A crummy window into a world where not just its creators but everyone feels rootless and displaced.

More succinctly, Frownland is my own small contribution to the sinking barge of the 16mm indie model; both an overripe tomato lobbed with spazmo inaccuracy at the spotless surface of the silver screen and a mad valentine to the craggy tradition of unadulterated cheao-o-independent expression. Its inelegance is its spirit. I hope you dig it.

Here's the trailer from the film's MySpace page:

Frownland [trailer]

Add to My Profile | More Videos

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/18/2007 01:05:00 AM Comments (13)

Over at On Five, the Criterion Company blog, designer Eric Skillman tells -- and shows -- us how he got to the DVD design for the Criterion release of Jules Dassein's Night and the City.

Here's the intro. Click on the link for further commentary and all the mock-ups that lead to the final design, seen here.

When I was designing the cover for Night and the City, I wanted to find a slightly different idiom to represent “noir,” to get away from the pulpy, dime-novel look that’s normally associated with that era and style. (Something I think illustrator Geoff Grandfield achieved brilliantly with his recent cover for Green for Danger, by the way.) I love that pulpy style on Raymond Chandler novels, but to me, most old film noir posters in that style pale in comparison to how artfully the films themselves are shot.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/15/2007 10:02:00 PM Comments (0)

I was interested to note the ten directors chosen by Forbes magazine as their
‘Tastemakers’.

The list is as follows:

Pedro Almodóvar
Sofia Coppola
Alfonso Cuarón
Guillermo del Toro
Clint Eastwood
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Spike Lee
Richard Linklater
Michael Moore
Martin Scorsese

With the exception of Scorsese and Eastwood (the two most recent recipients of the Best Director Academy Award), there is a case that can be made that all the directors chosen are, in one way or another, ‘independent’ filmmakers. However, all of these ‘indie’ directors – apart from Almodóvar – are essentially working within the Hollywood system, and it is a sign of how integrated independent filmmaking has become with Hollywood that a magazine such as Forbes chooses such directors for its elite top ten.

The author of the Forbes piece, Elisabeth Eaves, intriguingly also puts forward the argument that, due to all the “money, talent and cultural influences converging on Hollywood from all over the world” we are seeing “the collapse of the old notion of a ‘foreign film.’ ” Eaves later clarifies her statement by explaining that there has been a recent “globalization of one of America's most emblematic exports” - meaning that it is not foreign films that have changed, but rather Hollywood films.

With the recent success of films like Pan’s Labyrinth, Babel and Letters From Iwo Jima, it is clear that American filmgoers are no longer daunted by the prospect of seeing a film with subtitles.

Moreover, American directors are showing a willingness to make films in foreign languages. A case in point is The Pool, documentarian Chris Smith’s debut fiction feature which won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in January. Although based on a short story by his friend and collaborator Randy Russell which was set in Iowa, Smith transposed the tale to Goa in India and shot the film in Hindi. Equally, the first film by L.A.-based writer-director Jason Cuadrado, Tales From the Dead, is a horror film in four parts which Cuadrado filmed with a cast of Japanese actors speaking their native tongue.

One of questions that arises from all of this is, with the growing number of foreign-language films being made by American or U.S.-based filmmakers, will there still be room in the marketplace for ‘genuine’ foreign films?

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/15/2007 05:19:00 PM Comments (3)

To complete my series of posts about author Jonathan Lethem and his recent work thinking about -- and practicing -- a sort of "open source" approach to creative rights management, here's news of his new novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, and how he's handling the film rights.

From his website:

On May 15th I’ll give away a free option on the film rights to my novel You Don’t Love Me Yet to a selected filmmaker. In return for the free option, I’ll ask two things:

I’d like the filmmaker to pay (something) for the purchase of the rights if they actually make a film: two percent of the budget, paid when the completed film gets a distribution deal. (I’ll wait until distribution to get paid so a filmmaker without many funds can work without having to spend their own money paying me).

The filmmaker and I will make an agreement to release all ancillary rights to the film (and its source material, the novel), five years after the film’s debut. In other words, after a waiting period during which those rights would still be restricted, anyone who cared to could make any number of other kinds of artwork based on the novel’s story and characters, or the film’s: a play, a television series, a comic book, a theme park ride, an opera – or even a sequel film or novel featuring the same characters. For that matter, they can remake the film with another script and new actors. In my agreement with the filmmaker, those ancillary rights will be launched into the public domain.

If you've been reading this blog, you'll remember that Lethem recently released the film rights to a swatch of his short stories for free on a non-exclusive basis to makers of short films and plays. In that announcement, and in his great Harper's essay, linked to in my post below, he discusses what has inspired his offer. Again, here's Lethem from his site:

Lately I’ve become fitful about some of the typical ways art is commodified. Despite making my living (mostly) by licensing my own copyrights, I found myself questioning some of the particular ways such rights are transacted, and even some of the premises underlying what’s called intellectual property. I read a lot of Lawrence Lessig and Siva Vaidhyanathan, who convinced me that technological progress – and globalization – made this a particularly contemporary issue. I also read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, which persuaded me, paradoxically, that these issues are eternal ones, deeply embedded in the impulse to make any kind of art in the first place. I came away with the sense that artists ought to engage these questions directly, rather than leaving it entirely for corporations (on one side) and public advocates (on the other) to hash out. I also realized that sometimes giving things away – things that are usually seen to have an important and intrinsic ‘value’, like a film option – already felt like a meaningful part of what I do. I wanted to do more of it.

Lethem's proposal has already generated buzz. Bloomberg News has a story with more details, including news that Lethem, his wife Amy Barrett, and Maria Full of Grace director Josh Marston are scripting Lethem's last novel, The Fortress of Solitude, for Marston to direct.

From Bloomberg:

"In terms of mainstream filmmaking, this is completely unprecedented, and if it actually happens it would be a groundbreaking model," Creative Commons Creative Director Eric Steuer said in a phone interview about Lethem's proposal. "For a writer of his clout and prominence, it's really cool that he's the one to take the charge on something like this."

Variety, in a piece by Stephen Zeitchik, has more in a piece that tries to put a pecuniary spin on Lethem's offer:

For You Don't Love Me Yet, his L.A.-based, music-themed novel that sees release this week, Lethem will give away the film option to a "select filmmaker." By eliminating the option fee, he hopes he also has removed a deterrent faced by some producers.

But in what amounts to a variation on a backend deal, he wants to be paid 2% of the budget once the pic's made -- and that's no small sum, if the budget starts to climb.

Arrangement gives Lethem control over who would make the film; he says he hasn't decided on anyone in advance or made a secret deal with a producer.

For those not familiar with book rights deals, it's pretty typical to negotiate in addition to an upfront option fee, which gives the holder the exclusive right to develop a script and raise production financing for a specified period of time, a "purchase price" that is usually paid when the film goes into production. This purchase price is most often a percentage of the budget (anywhere from one to three or four per cent). So, Lethem's deal points on this issue aren't, as Variety seems to imply, that out of the ordinary.

(Often there will also be a "ceiling" on the purchase price, but for a novelist of Lethem's stature that would be at least $400,000 or $500,000, which equates to $16 or $20 million film budget -- quite a large one for the kind of character-based film this novel would most likely generate. And, significantly, most book deals come with a "floor" -- a minimum amount the book can be bought for. Lethem's doesn't. So, I really don't think he is scheming for some kind of hidden upside here.)

While all of the news reporting has focused on the offer of a free option and the release of the ancillary rights after five years, I think the media has missed some of the other crucial elements of Lethem's offer.

1) Lethem has made the proposal himself and is negotiating the rights himself. Rather than require filmmakers to contact his agent and go through a lengthy negotiation, Lethem has streamlined the whole process and is, through his assistant, presumably deciding all of this personally.

2) Lethem has pre-announced a May 15 date by which he'll give away the rights (although he is reserving the right to extend the deadline for various reasons he details on his site). Instead of trying to engineer a bidding war type situation in which an agent goes back and forth between various producers, Lethem, by removing the financial aspect and by setting a firm date, is putting the focus on the creativity and persuasiveness of the filmmaker.

3) Finally, and most importantly -- he is giving away the rights to a filmmaker. In Hollywood, most film rights are bought by producers who acquire a property and then bring in a succession of writers and directors who pitch their "takes." A writer is hired who (sometimes working underneath an attached director) generates a draft and a polish. That writer is let go; another writer does a draft, sometimes starting from scratch. The attached director often moves on to another project, and the cycle continues ad infinitum. Lethem's giving the rights away to a filmmaker who is genuinely enthused about the work, who has good ideas of how to realize it, and who is free to make it for $50 million with a studio or $50,000 with his friends -- that is his truly radical idea.

As for the ancillary rights release, I'm with Lethem on this. Years ago my partner Robin O'Hara and I produced a film directed by Jesse Peretz based on Ian McEwan's First Love, Last Rites. McEwan and his agent were extremely reasonable about the terms but insisted on non-exclusivity after seven years. We figured, who else is going to make a movie about two young lovers and the rat that lives inside their apartment walls? We agreed to the terms, and several (more than seven) years later two young film students from Sweden contacted me because they wanted to make a 40-minute version of the same story. Although they didn't have to, McEwan and his agent had them contact me as a courtesy. I was happy to wish them the best with the proviso that they send me a copy of the film when it's done. I got it not too long ago, it's very differrent, and I think it's cool that two versions of the same McEwan story exist in the world.

If you are a filmmaker interested in the film rights to You Don't Love Me Yet, email jonathanassistantlucy@gwi.net.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/14/2007 11:35:00 AM Comments (0)

Canadian Front 2007 begins tonight with the New York premiere of Sarah Polley's Away From Her at MoMA. The next four days include eight films made in Canada by a diverse group of filmmakers including four women making their feature debuts (Polley being one of them). Film description and screening times are below.

Remembering Arthur. 2006. Canada. Directed by Martin Lavut. Arthur Lipsett was a leading Canadian experimental filmmaker whose 1961 short Very Nice, Very Nice remains a seminal work of the avant-garde. A troubled man, Lipsett committed suicide in 1986. Martin Lavut, who knew Lipsett and many of his contemporaries, presents a full-bodied, passionate biography of one of cinema's neglected masters. George Lucas wrote, "No one understood the power of image and sound better than Lipsett." 90 min.
Wednesday, March 14, 4:30; Saturday, March 17, 6:30. T2

Away from Her. 2006. Canada. Written and directed by Sarah Polley, based on a story by Alice Munro. With Julie Christie, Gordon Pinset, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy. A married couple, together for many years, separate at the woman's insistence. She knows she is beginning to lose her memory and seeks care in assisted living, yet her bereft husband is reluctant to accept the separation. Actress Sarah Polley's moving directorial debut examines the dynamics of change and the surprise of adaptation. Courtesy Lionsgate. 110 min.
Wednesday, March 14, 6:15 (followed by a question-and-answer session). T1; Saturday, March 17, 4:15. T2

Maurice Richard (The Rocket). 2005. Canada. Directed by Charles Biname. Screenplay by Ken Scott. With Roy Dupuis, Julie LeBreton, Stephen McHattie. Scott, the screenwriter of Seducing Doctor Lewis (2003, featured in MoMA's New Directors/ New Films series), returns with a biography of one of Canada's greatest sports heroes: Maurice Richard, the hockey player who brought the Stanley Cup to the Montreal Canadiens eight times during the 1940s and 1950s. The film is distinguished by exciting footage of the game, its recreation of the tension between the French and the English in Quebec, and Roy Dupuis's electric performance as the laconic "Rocket." In French, English subtitles. 124 min.
Wednesday, March 14, 8:45. T1; Sunday, March 18, 1:30. T2

Stone Time Touch. 2006. Canada. Directed by Gariné Torossian, with the artistic and conceptual collaboration of Arsinee Khanjian. Torossian, an experimental filmmaker whose work was featured at MoMA during a one-woman Cineprobe program in 1995, created a personal and somewhat autobiographical work for her first feature. In search of her identity, she visits Armenia, the land of her forebears, and makes a vivid and impressionistic diary of beauty, wonderment, and sadness. In English, Armenian; English subtitles. 70 min.
Thursday, March 15, 6:30; Monday, March 19, 8:30. T2

Immigrant. 2006. Canada/Bosnia. Written, directed, and photographed by Bojan Bodruzic. With Emily R. Laue, Bojan Markovic, Jovan Milojevic. Two Balkan immigrants in Vancouver adapt to a life in exile. One is a young filmmaker who returns with his Canadian girlfriend to Dubrovnik and Sarajevo, where cultural differences strain their relationship. The other is a widower who cannot rid himself of his memories of Bosnia. Bodruzic divides his two parallel narratives into nine quietly compelling chapters. In English, Bosnian; English subtitles. 101 min.
Thursday, March 15, 8:30; Monday, March 19, 6:00. T2

Radiant City. 2006. Canada. Directed by Gary Burns, Jim Brown. Gary Burns, best known in New York for Kitchen Party (1997, featured in MoMA's New Directors/New Films series), and journalist and broadcaster Jim Brown collaborated on this witty quasi-documentary about suburban sprawl and the social lives it diminishes. Peppered with interviews by passionate urban critics like James Howard Kunstler, Joseph Heath, and Mark Kingwell, Radiant City follows—sort of—the Moss family as the patriarch stars in a community musical. 86 min.
Friday, March 16, 6:00; Saturday, March 17, 2:00. T2

Dans les villes (In the Cities). 2006. Canada. Written and directed by Catherine Martin. With Hélène Florent, Robert Lepage, Hélène Loiselle. Photographer and filmmaker Martin's second feature is an emotionally modulated study of the intersecting lives of four lonely, isolated people in Montreal. Among them is a blind man—played affectingly by the celebrated director Robert Lepage—whose life is suddenly enriched by an accidental encounter. In French, English subtitles. 87 min.
Friday, March 16, 8:30; Sunday, March 18, 6:30. T2

Rechercher Victor Pellerin (Looking for Victor Pellerin). 2006. Canada. Written and directed by Sophie Deraspe. According to Deraspe, Victor Pellerin was a highly successful and eccentric Montreal artist in the mid-1980s. In 1990 he recalled his work, purportedly to be photographed for a catalogue, and burnt all his paintings before disappearing. In her first feature, Deraspe rediscovers Pellerin through a series of interviews with colleagues, critics, and lovers, and she journeys to Colombia to find the missing artist. In French, English subtitles. 110 min.
Saturday, March 17, 8:30; Sunday, March 18, 4:00. T2

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/14/2007 11:26:00 AM Comments (0)