Sidney Pollack, director of such films at Tootsie, Out of Africa, Sketches of Frank Gehry, and Three Days of the Condor died today of cancer. He was 73. In addition to directing, Pollack was an active producer (credits include Michael Clayton, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Cold Mountain) as well as an actor, appearing in such films as Eyes Wide Shut, Husbands and Wives, and, recently Clooney's Michael Clayton.

Within the world of big-budget Hollywood moviemaking, Pollack brought intelligence, political awareness, and solid craftsmanship to projects in a variety of genres and subject matters. He was also one of the film world's most well spoken ambassadors to the public at large. Speaking about films and filmmaking in interviews like his appearances on Charlie Rose, Pollack evinced a real passion for the craft of filmmaking and the nuances of storytelling. While still being commercial films aimed at mass audiences, his films were elegant movies attuned to both the DNA of his stars but also to the sociological and political currents of the times in which they were made.

Here is Pollack discussing Bobby Deerfield and one of my all-time favorite films, Three Days of the Condor.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/26/2008 10:09:00 PM

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It is a sign of insanity to do the same thing over and over (like make an independent film) and expect different results? At GreenCine, Jonathan Marlowe re-poses the question of the moment in a piece entitled "Studios didn't build their sales models for you":

Under these circumstances, why are filmmakers still holding out for the legendary promise of a theatrical release? When the likelihood of success for films made on spec (that is, a film made with private money on the hopes of selling it to an established studio or distributor) approaches the same statistics as the chances of winning the lottery, why do so many filmmakers persist? Why do they essentially follow the same established patterns? Why, for instance, are otherwise intelligent people still playing by the studio rules? The whole (to oversimplify) festival-circuit-followed-by-theatrical-release-followed-by-video-debut-followed-by-television-sale - the notion of cascading windows of availability - was created to benefit the multiple-sales cycle of the studios, in essence carving out different periods of time to sell the same "product" again and again. Conversely, this process rarely benefits independent filmmakers at all. For just-starting-out directors, playing by these tired rules generally does more harm than good. Don't expect to hear this angle from the old hands of the business because they've often bought in to the basic storyline.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/26/2008 06:57:00 PM

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Brian Eno, who just turned 60, is interviewed in Wired, and as part of his long conversation he talks about the changing definition of the artist in the digital/social-networking age.

Wired: Much has been made about the way tech (MySpace, digital distribution) has sped up the whole hype/buzz process. Had your career gone from 0 to 160mph the way it could today, how might that have influenced your development as an artist? What effect has Internet technology and culture had on art and artists?

Eno: That's an interesting question. The effect of highly accelerated careers could be this: Ideas are put out into the public sphere much earlier, and less completely formed, than they would have been in the past. This is an invitation for other people to cherry-pick those ideas and finish them in various different ways. I think this makes culture a more widespread conversation, the result of a host of untraceable contributions webbing together to produce new things. It erodes the image of the artist as a lonely genius and puts us into a more "folk music" situation, where anyone can have a go and ideas spread out in all directions.

That doesn't mean there's no difference between the participants. It means that every participant is different, and it's almost impossible to know which participants are going to turn out to be the critical ones. The whole field now is characterized by what Per Bak called "self-organizing criticality": You have no way of knowing which particular grain of sand is going to start the avalanche, and no way of knowing whether that grain was intrinsically more important than all the others.
I’m not saying that we're in this situation — it's just that we're much closer to it than we were 20 years ago. The primary effect of new digital media is to introduce a lot of new voices and skills and perceptions to the conversation, and to make far more cross- links between them.

On top of that, of course, there still exist the remnants of a business structure that want to try to make a living out of things, like we all do, and therefore in whose interests it is to promote the classical idea of "genius": to make the claim that the people they are marketing are special and different and important. Which they might be. Who knows?

The measure of whether somebody is culturally important is really the degree to which they change the cultural conversation. Sometimes it's obvious when that is happening — Radiohead, the Sex Pistols — but sometimes it isn't so obvious. Scott Walker, for example, influenced other artists more than audiences, and his approach was taken up and recycled into successful records for them.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/26/2008 06:27:00 PM

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If you're an indie film pontificator who likes to talk about Radiohead's and NIN's innovative free pricing models, then you should check out the weekly podcast Econ Talk, which spent an hour with Wired's Chris Anderson, whose next book is all about the trend towards no-cost goods and services. (This topic was explored by Anderson in a recent Wired cover story. I subscribe to Wired, not because I read it that much, but because it's only $8, and I get enough out of it to justify that cost. But I didn't read Anderson's piece in Wired, although I did listen to the podcast, which is free, and which I'm recommending to you. There's an economic lesson in there somewhere, but, hey, it's a holiday, so I'll refrain from figuring it out.)

Anderson and Econ Talk's Russ Roberts talk about the economics of free, and while they don't deal explicitly with film, we'd all do well to start thinking about the implications of their conversation. I'm paraphrasing here, but one of Anderson's dictums is that any business that can go digital will go digital, and that digital businesses want to get to free pricing. He and Roberts also discuss economies other than monetary ones functioning in the digital space -- gift economies, charity, etc. -- and, at the end, Anderson talks about his own business model in a way that a lot of filmmakers could relate to. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but Anderson says, "My business is not publishing, my business is 'me,'" explaining why it's in his interest to make as many free copies of his next book available as possible.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/25/2008 06:05:00 PM

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Indiewire has the winners of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and there are surprises all around. First, the Stateside scuttlebutt that Soderbergh's Che would be awarded the Palme d'Or was wrong. Benicio del Toro won the Best Actor award for the film, but the festival's top honor went to Laurent Cantet's Entre Les Murs ("The Class"), the latest from the director of Human Resources and Vers le Sud and the last film to screen for the jury.

Here's the lede from Justin Chang's Variety review:

A fully sustained immersion in the academics, attitudes and frequent altercations of a group of junior high school students, "The Class" marks Laurent Cantet's return to the sharply observed social dynamics and involving character drama that distinguished his 1999 debut, "Human Resources." Talky in the best sense, the film exhilarates with its lively, authentic classroom banter while its emotional undercurrents build steadily but almost imperceptibly over a swift 129 minutes. One of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year, it will further cement Cantet's sterling reputation among discerning arthouse auds in France and overseas.

Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune is equally enthusiastic.

And here are excerpts from Cantet's Cannes press conference.

(A big congratulations to Laurent and the producers, my good friends Carole Scotta and Caroline Benjo from Haut et Court.)

The Grand Prix (runner-up) went to Gomorra, by Matteo Garrone; Best Director to Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys; Best Screenplay to the Dardenne Brothers for Lorna's Silence; the Jury Prize went to Il Divo, by Paolo Sorrentino; and the "Prix to 61st Festival de Cannes" went to Catherine Deneuve, for her performance in Un Conte de Noel, and Clint Eastwood, director of The Exchange.

The Camera d'Or for Best First Feature went to the British artist Steve McQueen for his debut, Hunger. A special mention went to Ils Mourront Tous Sauf Moi, by Valeria Gai Guermanika.

The Palme d'Or for best short went to Metron, directed by Marian Crisan, and Jerrycan, directed by Julius Avery.

Here are the Un Certain Regard prizes:

Prix Un Certain Regard: Sergey Dvortsevoy's Tulpan
Jury prize: Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Tokyo Sonata
Other winners: Andreas Dresen's Wolke 9 (Heat Throb Jury Prize), James Toback's Tyson (The Knockout of Un Certain Regard) and Jean-Stephane Sauvaire's Johnny Mad Dog (The Prize of Hope).

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/25/2008 02:15:00 PM

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The New York Times Sunday business section has an article on Cinetic Media's new digital rights division. Here's the painful lede by Brooks Barnes:

MORE than 3,600 independent features were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival this year, a record driven by inexpensive digital equipment and an abundance of film financing. But only a couple hundred of those movies will ever be distributed in theaters. Does that mean that almost 90 percent of indies have zero value?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/25/2008 12:50:00 PM

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As the fest folds its tent, in this tepid market American distribs have failed to make a major buy. Last year, after all, Miramax bought The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for 3 million and James Gray's We Own the Night brought 11.5 million. This year IFC went on a buying spree, picking up at least six titles. And last minute, SPC acquired two.

Overall, the fest has been a letdown, complete with bad weather, and a large helping of miserablist films depicting social and economic evils. Some good, solid films; no great, magical ones. On the plus side, the internationalism of Cannes enables you to see provocative auteurist works with subtitles that, given the crowded U.S. market, may never come stateside. Delta by Hungarian Kornel Mundruczo is a mesmerizing Bela Tarr-esque fever dream of a brother-sister couple who build their own refuge in the middle of the insular area's shimmering waterways, only to be destroyed by the villagers' hostility toward their "unnatural" union. From the young Swedish filmmaker Ruben Ostlund comes a provocation called Involontaires. Stitching together a series of vignettes that eventually yield a thematic unity, the film portrays people who engage, for a variety of reasons, in games of coercion.

This year also saw the repeated use, or abuse of auteurist tics and smart-alecky mannerisms that should be rationed out or proscribed. They are:

Shooting from the waist, groin, or knees down
Protags with expressionless faces
Plots so subtly drawn you can't tell who did what to whom when or where

As for the human component to the festival, Cannes is like a microcosm of the larger society -- at least a snobby, elitist, royalist one -- in its strict stratification into castes. Apart from the celebs and mysterious money men who wag the tail of the festival, the working writers covering the event form their own non-porous sects. It's not about black/white, rich/poor, nice/shit, Christian/Jew -- it's about perceived status. The whole thing is so oppresive, I needed to fly home to rescusitate my self-esteem. One cocktail hour I'm gracing the Macedonian Film Fund blowout with my presence, segueing from gin to white wine, when a fellow writer confides he's found peace of mind by no longer aspring to mingle with the A-listers (the white badge crowd with bold face bylines). "It's as Aristotle said, People of like status want to hang out with each other. So I no longer try to have dinner with -- " He names a bold name. Now, my bona fides as a cynic are in good order, but I say, "What about if people just simply like each other? Regardless of "who" they are?" "No, it doesn't work that way," my friend insists. "Anyway, I'm just quoting Aristotle."

Aristotle? To me it sounds more like baboons. You out there -- what do you think?

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/24/2008 02:53:00 PM

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It's been a season with no persuasive candidate, as of this writing, for the Palme d'Or. Three films found favor however, with many critics. One is Waltz with Bashir from Ari Folman, a notably original animated doc about reconstructing the memory of atrocities in Lebanon. What grabbed me about "Waltz" is the unexpected mix of politics and haunting surreal imagery. The Changeling by Clint Eastwood unspooled like silk, but was conventional, manipulative, and cursed by Angelina, could-we-hold-the-histrionics, doing acting. Third, Conte de Noel from Arnaud Desplechin, an ensembler about a wildly dysfunctional family. Rather than conventional narrative, Desplechin favors a fluid swirl of cutaways from truncated scenes and direct to camera confessions, all of it buoyed by Mendelssohn at his sunniest. The sight of Catherine Deneuve's face conveying wry bemusement over life's unkind cuts is alone worth the price of admission.

I caught the first half of Steven Soderbergh's Che, which was largely dismissed as unfinished -- though Benicio del Toro drew praise as the titular character. Presumably titled "The Argentine," Part I traces Che Guevara's evolution from doctor with a ratag bunch of rebels, to military leader who unseated Batista. Soderbergh intermittently flashes forward to faux news clips in 1964 of Che's UN speech and interviews with an American journalist.

I admired the Fitzcarraldian folly of Soderbergh's effort, a labor of love that gives the finger to commerce -- I mean, four hours? With subtitles? I was relieved to find reverence for Che's mission, rather than pious put-downs of his role in what some consider Cuba's anti-democratic regime. What drives a revolutionary? asks the journalist. Love, says Che. Love for humankind. True, the impact of Part I is reduced by battle maneuvers which are hard to parse and often indistinguishable from other jungle shoot-outs. And though Benicio has charisma, his sleepy charm is less than ideal for a firebrand. And if the film is a hagiography, which is fine by me, the asthmatic revolutionary nonetheless remains an elusive figure. It's exciting to contemplate how Soderbergh will go on to sculpt this rich raw material.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/24/2008 01:52:00 PM

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Cannes fashion report: This year European women are doing black tights and doing them all wrong. Tights are of a piece with long-legged American athleticism, and the dance/gym/fitness lifestyle -- so Old Europe should leave them alone, and just stick with those weird potions to fight cellulite. And what's with all the French women of a certain age sighted on the Rue d'Antibes, who dress like modish teen-agers? Or what the French call "les fashion victimes"?

Cannes quality-of-life report: This village wasn't built for such crowds and simply implodes. Cars and assorted vehicles come so close to walkers, the fenders graze your thighs. At every intersection you get to play chicken with kamikazis hunched over the wheel. Civility bit the dust during the stampede to enter the screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by Steven Spielberg, with reports of journos shouting and shoving to get in. Add to that, rumors at large of an Air France strike. I mean, I'm 100% behind the workers, only not when I'm trying to go home, please!

Well, you know where the sympathies of the Dardenne brothers would lie. Lorna's Silence (pictured) by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne opened to fewer cheers than previous efforts, and from the trades only qualified praise. Yet despite a rather long, complicated exposition, this impeccably composed film offers a moving portrait of a woman torn apart by the need to survive. Hoping to open a snack bar with her boyfriend, Lorna, a young Albanian woman living in Belgium, becomes embroiled in a scheme to make money by organizing sham marriges with foreigners. When she unexpectedly forms a passionate bond with her junkie Belgian "husband," she's forced to choose between her original dream and the need for redemption.

In focusing on the plight of illegal aliens, Lorna's Silence marks a return to the Dardennes' 1996 La Promesse. In a scene similiar to the earlier film (remember Olivier Gourmet trying to jolly up son Jeremie Renier, who has just witnessed the quasi-murder of an African immigrant?), Lorna blithely searches for snack bar locations, briefly oblivious to having sold her soul. But in the universe of the Dardennes, the most debased person reaches a juncture where, propelled by a force perhaps resembling grace, they choose the right thing, even at great cost to themselves.

Unlike the earlier films, though, Lorna's Silence was shot in 35mm with a less mobile camera and wider frames. "We had decided that this time round, the camera would not be constantly moving, would be less descriptive, and limited to recording images." Also, there's a haunting new mystical element to Lorna involving a pregnancy that may be real or imagined, and signals the persistence of hope. At a roundtable with the Dardennes, I asked whether they intended a specifically Christian message. No, just a human one, they replied, though I remain unconvinced.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/21/2008 10:39:00 AM

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Variety's Mike Jones has posted this funny video about the pronunciation of Charlie Kaufman's latest, due to screen in Cannes on Friday.



For the record, and from Wikipedia:

Synecdoche (pronounced /sɪˈnɛkdəkɪ/) is a figure of speech in which:
a term denoting a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing, or
a term denoting a thing (a "whole") is used to refer to part of it, or
a term denoting a specific class of thing is used to refer to a larger, more general class, or
a term denoting a general class of thing is used to refer to a smaller, more specific class, or
a term denoting a material is used to refer to an object composed of that material.
Synecdoche is closely related to metonymy (the figure of speech in which a term denoting one thing is used to refer to a related thing); indeed, synecdoche is often considered a subclass of metonymy. It is more distantly related to other figures of speech, such as metaphor.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/21/2008 09:56:00 AM

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Saul Hansell in The New York Times explains "Why the Roku Netflix Player is the First Shot of the Revolution."

An excerpt:

The future of video is Internet streaming to the television.

This is a bold statement, but I think the Netflix Player proves all the essential concepts. If a TV, with a handful of extra chips, can provide an experience as satisfying as the Netflix Player can, why do we need any other form of video distribution?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/20/2008 08:35:00 PM

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Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, doesn't premiere in Cannes until Friday, but there are some clips online that I think make it look very promising. Check them out.



Flashback: Here's my interview with Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman about Being John Malkovich from 1999.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/20/2008 05:50:00 PM

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The best film news podcast, KCRW's The Business, hosted by Claude Brodesser-Akner, has as its guests this week Killer Films president and producer Christine Vachon and Cinetic Media founder and sales rep John Sloss. The program is titled "Indie Film Shake-Up,", and in it the two discuss the indie market in the wake of Rainbow Media's purchase of the Sundance Channel and the shuttering of Picturehouse and Warner Independent by Warner Brothers.

Among the discussions are Vachon's looking back at how successful indie films like Poison and Go Fish seemed to her when they grossed over $1 million. Now, the studio specialty distributors wouldn't be interested in such low-grossing acquisitions, she says. When it came to IFC and Sundance, Sloss seemed less concerned that one channel would fold into the other, noting that both pay very small license fees. He then brought up one of the pressing issues for indies these day: how to create economic models for new forms of distribution which have not yet reached maturity. He talked about the IFC's theatrical-and-VOD day-and-date releasing system and how filmmakers still don't really have a way of estimating for themselves how successful these distribution efforts are or will be when they ink their deals.

Here's an excerpt of Sloss's comments:

"I think IFC is doing bang up business -- I'm still waiting to get accounting statements from them on the myriad films that we licensed to them. In sheer volume, they are our biggest buyer, our biggest customer, and they're doing deals with theatrical distribution [which] are really driven by VOD. There's a revenue split on the VOD which they are whispering in the filmmakers' ears is going to be significant, and I have no doubt that it can be, but we're still waiting to see the results."

You can listen to the podcast at the link above, but you really should just subscribe to "The Business" via iTunes if you are not already a regular listener.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/20/2008 03:45:00 PM

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In the U.S. the prosperity of your local Starbucks has been viewed as an economic indicator, so why not at Cannes? Producer Noah Harlan of 2.1 Films sent the following email answering the question of whether or not there are fewer people on the Croissette this year.

Everyone is talking about how quiet it is this year. Sales are slow according to most of the sellers I've met with but the best arbiter of whether the crowds are down was relayed to me by a sales agent with a stand in the market. He said he was having a coffee at the market coffee bar and talking to the barista who said there were fewer people this year. When asked how he knew he pointed out that in a typical year, on a typical day, he serves 400-500 coffees. This year he hasn't served more than 300 on any day.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/20/2008 02:16:00 PM

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Brooks Barnes has a funny article in The New York Times about Sanjay Sanghoee, a novelist, hedge-fund employee, and would-be writer/director/producer, who is out there in the wilds of film finance trying to make an adaptation of his book Merger. Let's just say that a rolodex full of multi-millionaire contacts can't buy happiness -- or an independent feature.

An excerpt recounting Sanhoee's arrival in L.A. to pitch his movie:

Mr. Sanghoee landed in a boomtown. More than $12 billion was in the midst of flowing into 150 movies, according to trade estimates. Hedge funds, awash in cash, were eager to write checks. At the restaurant Spago, “I’m raising some capital” became the new, “Don’t you know who I am?”

Ramius ultimately decided to take its toe out of the water — too risky — but Mr. Sanghoee saw an opening. With a novel and, now, a Rolodex full of hedge fund and Hollywood contacts, he would make a movie himself.

“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” he said recently.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/19/2008 10:44:00 PM

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Correction: I was wrong about a thinner crowd at this year's Cannes. At yesterday's screening of a pretentious, portentous bit of mystification titled Afterschool by Antonio Campos (Un Certain Reqard), not a seat went unclaimed in the commodious Debussy theater. I was installed so far left, I effectively saw only half a film throughout. By the end, my eyes had migrated to the left of my face like in a Picasso portrait from his Cubist period ... i'm afraid it's mostly the Yanks who are in shorter supply this year. How I miss those heated confabs with other American journos in front of the mailboxes after the morning Competition screening.

So far no one has fallen in love here, and I'd be hard put to flag a Palmes d'Or contender. Maybe they're saving the best for last. Estimable, is how I'd descrbe the better films, such as Un Conte de Noel (pictured) by Arnaud Desplechin (nabbed by IFC). Toplined by Catherine Deneuve and the ubiquitous Mathieu Almaric -- plus a who's who of French actors -- film follows the chaotic holiday gathering of a family more fractured than most (the word dysfunctional has yet to penetrate the French lexicon). The death of a cherished first-born son forty years back has marked this group with festering scars. One high-strung sister despises her black sheep brother (Almaric), and has effectively banished him from the family after paying off his debts. Meanwhile her son is certifiable. A second brother seems never to have grown up and winks at his wife's affair with a family hanger-on.

The fractious bunch swirl around a mother (Deneuve) who is stricken with the same disease that carried off her first-born. The only possible remedy is a dangerous bone transplant from a compatible famiy member -- a medical detail with obvious wider resonance.

Un Conte de Noel feels long and windy at first, especially since Desplechin must set up so much backstory and entrenched hostility. But the longer you sit, the more you get roped in. The depressive sister is the only one seen consulting a shrink, but you wonder why the rest of them aren't getting a pharma fix. The dialogue is perfectly weird -- mother and son Deneuve and Almaric casually discuss their mutual dislike of each other. And the superb Deneuve conveys fear of her illness, wry bemusement, and irritation at her tiresome brood all at once. In a comic touch, her elderly husband, barely ambulatory, complains they can't have sex with all the kids around.

This won't win me many friends, but I have a beef against Almaric and how he always plays the same loony, no matter the film (and should consider washing his hair). I've also lost patience with Emannuelle Devos (cast as his girlfriend), equally enamored of and always ... Emmanuelle. Doubtless, their smugness plays better with the French ... Though not to everyone's taste, there's magic to be found in Conte. And now I must be off to one of the many posh events, including the Miss Vodka cocktail, that clamor for my presence.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/19/2008 10:01:00 AM

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Film Detail has a truly exhaustive list of links about not only Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but all the other Indiana Jones movies as well as other Spielberg-related stuff. One great find: this YouTube excerpt of Wim Wenders's Chambre 666, 1982 film in which the director asked a group of colleagues, including Spielberg and, also in this clip, Antonioni, to comment on the future of cinema while sitting in a Cannes hotel room. Spielberg's there with E.T., and, remembered today, his thoughts about budgets, schedules, the money people and the future of cinema seem almost wistfully ironic.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/18/2008 11:16:00 AM

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My Francophilia took a hit this morning when the femme de chambre at my hotel said to me, "You want more soap? But I gave you soap yesterday."

And nope, it's not my imagination, but the crowds on the Croisette really do seem thinner this year. Variety speaks of a Flee Market (and lagging sales), while my anecdotal evidence has turned up fewer American journos -- blame the deflated dollar and the forced retirement of many terrific print critics in the U.S.

This year's Cannes also felt a bit off-balance from the start, what with filmmakers like Walter Salles pulling an all-nighter in Paris to get his Linha de Passe in on time; and the last minute inclusion of James Gray's Two Lovers. And are there fewer parties this year? Or is it just -- as I read in an email inadvertently sent my way -- "FYI: she's on the B-list." Well, I did get an invite to the Miss Vodka event, not to mention the Vodomania, Babelgum, and Macedonia Film Society bashes. Hey, Cannes is like downhill skiing, you have to really want to do it....

There are even good movies. Like Waltz with Bashir by Israeli Ari Folman (pictured). It's about how ex-soldier Folman's memory of witnessing a massacre in Lebanon vanished down a black hole, and his effort, through interviewing fellow combattans, to reconstruct what he experienced. Now, this could have been a deadly array of talking heads. But in an inspired move, Folman uses a distinctive style of animation -- one that captures facial quirks, so you're seeing the person almost better than in real life. And these guys are hot; I've never seen such sexy animation. In fact, they candidly explore the conflation of erotic drives with Israel's macho military. The animation in Waltz is also less discombobulating than rotoscoped images. The film veers from the interviews into haunting surreal images to convey nightmarish fragments of the ex-soldiers' memories, one in particular of naked soldiers wading in from the sea. Courting controversy, Waltz fingers Israeli authorities for turning a blind eye to the massacre -- so bring out your big guns, Israel Lobby!

Can't tell you much about Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody's latest. He's an icon around here, and the mobs were overwhelming. But my sources tell me its sexy, funny, and a boon to Barcelona tourism. I did manage to catch the 8:30 A.M. screening of Linha, Walter Salles's look at the reduced options of Brazil's slum-dwellers through the lives of four boys living on the outskirts of Sao Paulo with their mother. For once we don't get the impoverished succumbing to violence and crime. The characters in this gritty yet poetic film struggle to reinvent themselves in varied ways, finding strength in fraternity. But Linha has neither the panache of City of God nor the box office muscle of Motorcycle Diaries.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/18/2008 05:27:00 AM

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Here's a new short from one of our "25 New Faces" of 2007, Azazel Jacobs, whose sublime third feature Momma's Man will be released in theaters this summer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/18/2008 12:45:00 AM

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In Cannes, Anne Thompson interviews Michael Moore about his latest documentary, and colleague Mike Jones is there to capture it on his cell phone.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/17/2008 08:39:00 PM

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In honor of Abel Ferrara's latest, Chelsea on the Rocks,, premiering in Cannes, here's a little-seen-in-the-U.S. French pop video he directed for Mylene Farmer. The song is "California."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/17/2008 08:29:00 PM

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It's as if some generalized anxiety disorder had wrapped Cannes 2008 in its clammy embrace. The 61st edition of the fest got off to a somber start with the premiere of Blindness by Fernando Meirelles, an allegorical tale of a group of urbanites who lose their sight in an apparent epidemic, and quickly descend to pre-civilized savagery. Hard on its heels came the riveting "Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman, an animated doc about a former Israeli soldier whose traumatic experience of a massacre of Palestinians in Beirut has induced nightmares and memory loss. While Day 3 brought a heavy helping of disease and angst in Arnaud Desplechin's VERY LONG Un Conte de Noel, a fable about a family battling a mother's illness, and, if I got Desplechin's drift, permanently whacked out by the past death of a son. Add dismal rainy weather on the Croisette, and you've got one bunch of grumpy journos.

As in City of God, in Blindness Meirelles deftly choregographs the movements of frenzied crowds. But even the committed international cast,including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Alice Braga, can't breathe life into what is essentially a parable about humankind, which apparently worked far better as a novel. Weakest link in the cast is Mark Ruffalo as a doctor and would-be leader in the crisis -- somehow with his mellow slacker affect, you wonder how his character got through med school. Bottom line, though, we believe in none of these characters as individuals.

After interviewing Meirelles, who's engaging and charming, I wanted to like the film more. But it's hard to guess what made the filmmaker and his scripter Don McKellar imagine they could flesh out this philosophical tale -- and brief against capitalist greed -- for the screen. (Yeah, I know, Julian Schnabel filmed the unfilmable in Diving Bell, but that was a miracle of sorts.) Meirelles also took on a daunting challenge, conveying on screen the milky white radiance experienced by his sightless characters. Yet you admire the technical inventiveness without being grabbed by the story. And in a bogus feeling ending, when a new community emerges, lead by a dressed-down unmade-up Julianne Moore, with all the women washing each other's backs in the shower for godssake -- well, cue Kumbaya on the soundtrack. That said, Blindness does succeed in tapping into the growing fear of pandemics and meltdown, suggesting that apocalypse may not come now, but maybe sometime next week.

More later about the amazing Israeli doc.

Labels: DIER

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/16/2008 09:06:00 AM

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A bunch of new, mostly cinematography-related stuff has just been been posted on our main page, and I want to draw your attention to it. First there is our article in which four cinematographers discuss the creative and production decision-making behind their latest features. The dps are Ellen Kuras (currently in production on Sam Mendes's new film for Focus Features), Tim Orr, Andrij Parekh and Sean Kirby. On the same page: Damon Smith on Ellen Kuras's documentary, Nerahahoon.

Next is a feature called "Illuminating" in which six directors -- Miguel Arteta, Pete Sollett, Miranda July (who is beginning her new feature with d.p. Ed Lachman), Kelly Reichardt, Aaron Katz and Ronald Bronstein -- think about how they think about lighting when imaking their films. From Arteta:

I think lighting is intuitive. It is one of the key tools with which you can communicate with the audience. But it‘s always the balance of all the tools available to you that you have to consider. Composition, costume, performance, dialogue, casting, camera movement, music and production design are also there. I always ask myself: What is the heart of this scene? Usually that leads me to one close-up that I can totally imagine and that contains the pulse and meaning of the scene.

All this is in addition to Roberto Quezado-Dardon's previously posted piece on the Red camera and Nick Dawson's Director Interview (this week: Georgina Riedel). And, finally, a bunch of people emailed to thank me for posting a link to Barbara Schock's great article from our archives on "Intelligent Script Development." If you are a writer, producer or development exec, I really recommend it.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/15/2008 11:17:00 AM

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FILMdetail has posted a 2.0 version of their "Most Useful Movie Websites" list. I was happy to see that Filmmaker made the cut along with a lot of other sites, most of which I knew but some I didn't. The list also includes an exhaustive list of the best movie podcasts out there. Check it out and bookmark away.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/14/2008 01:00:00 PM

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In the WTF! department comes this story just posted by Dave McNary at Variety: Werner Herzog will direct this summer a remake of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant starring Nicolas Cage.

Really, that's what it says. You can click over there and confirm it. And as the picture to the left notes, this is the first Filmmaker cover film to be remade. (What's next? Suture? 24-Hour Woman? Twin Falls, Idaho?)

Ed Pressman is producing and Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millenium is financing. The script is by Billy Finkelstein.

Bad Lieutenant is one of my all time favorite independent films, and it's going to be hard to top the combined contributions of Ferrara, screenwriter Zoe Lund, and Harvey Keitel. Herzog's involvement, however, makes it hard to write this one off.

We'll have to see post Cannes if this project materializes or whether it's just speculative bait for foreign buyers.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/13/2008 06:07:00 PM

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Recently I was talking to the script readers in my production office about script reading and development and remembered an article we published years ago by filmmaker and former development exec Barbara Schock. It was a great piece that looked at the screenplay development process with a critical eye, examining why the traditional method so often fails to generate great work. Along the way she offered a series of sensible tips on how to make that process better.

I went home and rummaged through my old issue of Filmmakers trying to find it and then thought to try the web. And there it was for me so here it is again for you: Barbara Schock on Intelligent Screenplay Development.

Here's an excerpt from her intro:

A large number of scripts that Hollywood develops are shelved or put into turnaround, but, as filmgoers are well aware, many poorly developed scripts are put into production too. A typical Hollywood development scenario: a producer gets enthusiastic about an idea, sells it to a powerful studio executive, and lands a deal. A high-priced writer is contracted to write the standard two drafts and a polish. The first draft comes in and, in most cases, the producer is disappointed. Something’s wrong – it just doesn’t sing off the page. The producer, his or her development person, and the studio executive prepare critical notes for the writer which are usually inadequate to help the writer make the changes that they feel are necessary. The writer makes a second pass, but sensing their lack of enthusiasm, has difficulty mustering feeling for the rewrite. When the second draft comes in, it’s still not that home run the producer was looking for. The project is dropped, or, depending on how commercial the producer believes the idea is, another writer is brought in.

There is a general awareness that the screenplay development process in Hollywood is terribly flawed. Screenwriters are paid more than ever, but at great artistic cost. One wonders what Ben Hecht or Raymond Chandler would have thought about a young screenwriter being paid $4 million for a violent actioner that includes a gunfight in which splattered brains land on a griddle and are fried next to a hamburger?

As the piece goes on, she dispenses advice, bullet-point style, on a number of topics, including editing first and second drafts, how to talk to writers, and how to run a development company. We ran this piece in 1995, but it's still quite relevant.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/13/2008 04:54:00 PM

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Jason Kottke has a fascinating entry today at his Kottke.org entitled "Approaching the Uncanny Valley from the Other Direction." In case you haven't heard about the "uncanny valley," it's a term originally created to apply to robotics that can now, Kottke says, refer to the human visage in the age of plastic surgery.

First, from Dave Bryan at Glimpses:

Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori is not exactly a household name—but, for the speculative fiction community at least, he could prove to be an important one. The reason why can be summed up in a simple, strangely elegant phrase that translates into English as “the uncanny valley”.

Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human “look” . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.

This chasm—the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis—represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment—affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that.

Kottke links to a New Yorker article on Pascal Dangin, photo retoucher to the stars, who makes "a 50-year-old Madonna look like a recent college graduate who has never lifted a weight in her life.

He writes:

The uncanny valley comes into play here, which we usually think of in terms of robots, cartoon characters, and other pseudo anthropomorphic characters attempting and failing to look sufficiently human and therefore appearing creepy and scary. With an increasing amount of photo retouching, postproduction in film, plastic surgery, and increasingly effective makeup & skin care products, we're being bombarded with a growing amount of imagery featuring people who don't appear naturally human. People who appear often in media (film & tv stars, models, cable news anchors & reporters, miscellaneous celebrities, etc.) are creeping down into the uncanny valley to meet up with characters from The Polar Express. I don't know about you but a middle-aged Madonna made to look 24 gives me the heebie-jeebies.

(Click on the link to his post and see how he's redrawn the Uncanny Valley graph.)

I thought of all of this when I was forwarded a link found on the Coudal Partners website to this reel by video effects artist Bill Pollock. Click on the link and watch as the video toggles through a roster of your favorite celebrities and makes their various facial imperfections magically appear and disappear.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/13/2008 03:38:00 PM

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Created to support high-quality, independent projects at the rough cut stage
of production prior to submission to film festivals, IFP announced today the films that will take part in its May Documentary Lab that connects first-time feature filmmakers with leading industry mentors, which this year includes filmmakers Doug Block (51 Birch Street), Liz Garbus of Moxie Firecracker Films (The Farm: Angola, USA) and editor Keiko Deguchi (Cats of Mirkitani). Excerpts from the films will then screen at IFP's Independent Film Week in New York City this September.

The 10 selected films include:

Burning in the Sun - A young entrepreneur starts producing and selling
homemade solar panels to rural Malians without power, but the harsh realities
of doing business in Mali threaten to overpower his good intentions. Cambria
Matlow (Director, Producer, Writer, Director of Photography); Morgan
Robinson (Director, Producer, Writer, Director of Photography); Claire
Weingarten (Executive Producer)

The Hand of Fatima - The daughter of late NY Times music critic Robert
Palmer investigates her estranged father's transformative encounter with an
ancient Sufi band when she journeys to the remote village of Jajouka,
experiences its sacred musical rituals, and comes to terms with her father's
legacy. Augusta Palmer (Director, Writer); Chris Arnold (Producer, Editor)

Mine: Taken by Katrina - Hundreds of thousands of people lost their pets in
Hurricane Katrina, but 15,000 were heroically rescued and sent to shelters
and adoptive homes around the country. When the original owners want their
pets back, rescuers and animal lovers alike are divided over what is right for
the animals and what is fair to the families who love them. Geralyn Pezanoski
(Director, Producer, Writer); Erin Essenmacher (Producer)

Ocean of Song and Dance - Ngawang Choephel tells the story of Tibetan folk
music, and how Chinese policies have systematically destroyed it since the
takeover of Tibet - and his own story of filmmaker turned political prisoner.
Ngawang Choephel (Director, Producer, Writer); Tim Bartlett (Editor)

The Presence of Joseph Chaikin - The story of the most innovative late-
century American theater director in his own words, and those of his
collaborators. Chaikin's career as actor, director, writer, and leading light in
new theater of the 1960's, belies his lifelong struggle with rheumatic heart
disease and resulting stroke, an ever-present harbinger of death. Troy Word
(Director, Producer, Writer, Director of Photography); Encke King (Writer,
Editor)

The Stranger's Land - An observational portrait of the filmmaker's return,
after a long absence, to rural Spain, where he grew up - rediscovering a
place lost to time and memory. Xavier Marrades Orga (Director, Producer,
Writer, Director of Photography, Editor)

Tijuana, Nada Más - A story of visible and invisible borders faced by four
homeless children in the busiest frontier city in the world. Yolanda Pividal
(Director, Producer, Writer); Carmen Vidal (Director of Photography); Sara
Booth (Editor)

Ulises' Odyssey - The story of the filmmaker's struggle as a Chilean-American
woman to mend a 30-year-old rift between her father and uncle who were on
opposite sides in the 1973 military coup that brought General Pinochet to
power in Chile. Lorena Manriquez (Director, Producer, Writer); Miguel Picker
(Director, Producer, Director of Photography, Editor)


Up With People - The story of the sacrifices and secrets kept from the public
eye of a clean-cut youth group who believed they could change the world
with music as their weapon of choice to attract minds to the American values
of Freedom and Democracy in the riotous 1960s. Lee Storey (Director,
Writer); Bari Pearlman (Producer)

The Visitors – A documentary about the passengers of a charter bus that
leaves New York City every weekend for visits to various prisons located in
upstate New York, reflecting the struggles of a unique culture living at the
intersection of the confinement and the free world. Melis Birder (Director,
Producer, Writer, Director of Photography, Editor)

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/13/2008 11:39:00 AM

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Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reports on a way you can make money while in Cannes. (Actually, there are a bunch of ways you can make money in Cannes, but this one is legal.) The arthouse download site The Auteurs is sponsoring a contest in which you arrive at the festival, pick up one of 250 Flip cameras, make a film while there, and compete for a $10,000 prize. More details at the link.

Previously we wrote about the Obama Campaign's "Obama in 30 Seconds Competition" user-generated political ad competition. You can see the winner and the runners-up at the link.

Ted Hope forwards a Variety link that will either make the American producers in our readership totally envious of their U.K. counterparts or else completely depressed that such initiatives are not available here. From Ali Jaafar's piece, "BBC ups producers' stakes in pics""

....the BBC is creating a corridor for the producer from the equity it recoups. This will apply wherever the tax credit has not been treated as producer’s equity....

"We’re delighted that the BBC has shown the way forward with this initiative, which will make a real difference to British film producers,” said Andrea Calderwood, Pact’s vice chair of feature film and topper at Slate Films. “Independent producers put a lot of investment -- of commitment as well as money -- into their films to make them happen, and this will give them the chance to make a proper return on their investment.”

The trades and blogs were full this weekend of the now all-too-familiar box-office schadenfreude that occurs when a studio tentpole tanks. Over at her Spout blog, Karina Longworth offers a corrective: Five Reasons Why Speed Racer's Failure is Bad for Movies.

Finally, a few posts below, Jason Guerrasio noted the firing of critic Glenn Kenney from Premiere.com. I'm happy to now link to his new blog, Some Came Running, which already has several entries. Anthony Mann, Michel Piccoli and Thin Lizzy all make appearances in a blog that is now on my list of go-to bookmarks.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/12/2008 09:08:00 PM

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After just a few postings, Jamie Stuart has reached a conclusion at his nascent blog over at Wonderland: user-generated video is dead. (Oh, and by the way, long live user-generated video.)

From the piece:

Well, so much for that. Hope you enjoyed it. And I'm sure you never even realized it was over.

Trends rarely last longer than 4-5 years, so by that measurement this recent burst of online DIY activity is finished. By my estimation, this trend in film culture and filmmaking encompassed the period spanning roughly from 2002-2007, give or take....

During this same period, sites like MySpace and YouTube surfaced offering users the ability to generate their own content within the context of a community. Once both of these companies were bought, their respective owners immediately began studying what was so successful about the user-generated content and culture to mine it for profit. And ultimately, what's happened is that the DIY aesthetic that came about during this brief explosion (not unlike indie film/music in the early-'90s) has been co-opted by the professional media and subtly marketed back to the community without its consciousness of this take-over. Just like switching tracks on a train.

You'll have to read the piece to get his whole argument, and one can certainly debate this several different ways, but Stuart's main point seems to be that the possibility that user-generated video held out -- the possibility of a new way of making work (when filmmaking reached the level of "pencil and paper," Stuart writes) -- has been quietly snuffed out and that, in the brevity of its lifespan, it has failed to offer the only occasionally reachable utopian dream that most successful indie models briefly promise.

What do you think? Has user-generated video been co-opted before it has even had a chance to develop and grow?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/12/2008 08:27:00 PM

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Will you see a huge billboard of Robert Downey Jr. in blackface. The promotion is for the upcoming summer release Tropic Thunder, which also stars Jack Black and Ben Stiller (who co-wrote-directed) as a group of actors making the most expensive Vietnam War film and finding themselves in real combat. Downey Jr. plays super serious actor Kirk Lazarus who's been cast in the role of a black solider. Not enough? Tom Cruise has a cameo as a bald, foul-mouthed studio head.

Image courtesey of Variety's The Circuit.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/12/2008 07:50:00 PM

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Over at Variety's The Circuit, Mike Jones digs up a very helpful article by a director who travelled to Cannes to pitch his project... that happened to appear a couple of years ago in Filmmaker. Producers and directors about to make the trip over would do well to check it out.

An excerpt from Richard Press's Cannes Diary:

A week before I leave for cannes to participate in L’Atelier du Festival, the co-production market of the Cannes Film Festival, I receive an e-mail from the festival reminding me to bring my black tie; without it I will not be allowed to ascend the Red Carpet for the competition screenings. Then, as an aside — a whisper of the protocol to come — they add, “And don’t wear white socks.” I think they’re joking, but in a flurry of good-natured e-mails I’m assured that more than one unfortunate fashion “faux pas-er” has been forced to turn around and head down the steps in sartorial shame.

Soon after my arrival in Cannes it becomes clear that the festival doesn’t shy away from the whole truth of the movie industry. Rather, it embraces and celebrates the glamour, the commerce and the art of filmmaking in equal measure. It’s a heady, over-the-top mix that makes my 10 days at the Atelier an intoxicating carnival.

Read more at the link.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/10/2008 11:22:00 PM

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The New Yorker this week reports on a Hollywood job opening in this generally deteriorating entertainment economy. The "Talk of the Town" piece by Lizzie Widdicombe quotes an "unofficial" email about what is apparently a real position: cultural attache to Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer. Here's the email:

This person would be responsible for keeping Brian abreast of everything that’s going on in the world; politically, culturally, musically. . . . They’re also responsible for finding an interesting person for Brian to meet with every week . . . an astronaut, a journalist, a philosopher, a buddhist monk. . . . There is LOTS of reading for this position! Grazer may ask you to read any book he’s interested in. You’ll probably get to read about 4 or 5 books a week and you may be required to travel with him on his private plane to Hawaii, New York, Europe—teaching him anything he asks you about along the way. . . . You will also be provided with an assistant. . . . Salary is around $150,000 a year. . . . You will be to Grazer what Karl Rove was to Bush.

If you haven't already applied, it may be too late. From the piece:

“I’ve met a lot of good candidates,” Grazer said, reached on his cell phone en route to a meeting with the screenwriter for Angels and Demons. He said that he’d been hiring cultural attachés for twenty years, ever since he asked Jonas Salk’s assistant to help him track down interesting people in science. Fifteen or twenty people have held the job since then. (The “attaché” title started out as a joke.) “They have to be really resourceful,” Grazer said. “I like to meet people in dangerous organizations, and my cultural attaché finds out who that person is—who runs the Yakuza, or the Masons, or MI5.” The best attaché so far, Grazer said, has been Brad Grossman, the current one, who is leaving the post, after four years. Grossman is thirty-two; he owned a tutoring business before taking the job, and Grazer said that he is especially good at explaining the things he’s asked to learn about—bacteria or makeup or superdelegates. “I’m looking for a person who has that teacherlike quality,” Grazer said. “Also, it’s good to have a person who is a connector, who is liked by people.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/10/2008 04:05:00 PM

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Roberto Quezada-Dardon's article on the Red One camera is one of our most widely read articles on the website this month. If you want to read about the Red from a different angle, check out Steve Tammi's piece, "Beta Sight: Red Digital Camera Red One," in the current Millimeter, which is online at their Digital Content Producer site.

Here's his lede:

I have been shooting with the Red Digital Cinema Red One Camera for almost six months now. Although I have been asked to write about my first impression of the camera, it is important to realize that shooting with the Red One camera is a continuous progression of first impressions. New camera accessories, firmware, and production software have been released on a continual basis since I've taken delivery of my camera. Unlike other camera companies, Red Digital Cinema plans to continually upgrade and refine the original cameras — a welcome change to the usual cycle of purchasing new cameras every few years and sending the old model to the auction block or shelf to collect dust. With that in mind, let's talk about what the last six months of first impressions have been like.

Labels: cinematography

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/09/2008 07:06:00 PM

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Here's Ricky jay, who co-stars in David Mamet's Redbelt, currently in release, performing a card trick alongside his discussion of Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance.



Both Mamet and Jay were interviewed this week, separately, on the XMPR Bob Edwards radio show, and the discussions can be listened to or downloaded here. Both men are fantastic raconteurs and interview subjects, so this is a great hour, with Mamet talking about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the fight film and noir genres, the link between drama, magic and con games, and his approach to rehearsing film actors. Jay discusses performing, card magic, and The Life, Adventures and Unparalleled Sufferings of Andrew Oehler, an account of a Zelig-like magician who travelled throughout the U.S. territories in the late 1700s where he was continuously jailed by authorities convinced his ghost shows were real.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/09/2008 12:55:00 AM

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I've wondered several times on this blog why more filmmakers don't try to make original works for the web, works that challenge and alter the storytelling conventions of their feature or other narrative work. Well, now on the Sundance Channel website comes Green Porno, a series of shorts designed to be watched on computers and cellphones.

Here's what Sundance and Rossellini say about the project:

Green Porno is a series of very short films conceived, written, co-directed by and featuring Isabella Rossellini about the sex life of bugs, insects and various creatures. The films are a comical but insightful study of the curious ways certain bugs “make love”. “Green” echoes the ecological movement of today and our interest in nature, and “Porno” alludes to the racy ways bugs, insects and other creatures have sex, if human, these acts would not be allowed to be screened or air on television, considered instead as most filthy and obscene.

Each film is executed in a very simple childlike manner. They are a playful mixture of real world and cartoon. Each episode begins with Isabella speaking to the camera “ If I were a…(firefly, spider, dragonfly etc.). She then transforms into the male of the species explaining in a simple yet direct dialogue the actual act of species-specific fornication. The costumes, colorful sets and backdrops as well as the female insects contribute to the playfulness of the films. The contrast of this “naïf” expression and filthy sex practices adds to the comicality of Green Porno.

Green Porno is an experiment specifically conceived with the third screen, namely cellular screens, computers and ipods.

Green Porno, directed by Jody Shapiro and Rossellini, is odd, disarming, and, finally, quite charming and wonderful. Click on the link above to watch these shorts.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/08/2008 06:00:00 PM

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Variety is reporting the stunning news that Warner Bros. is shutting down both Picturehouse and Warner Independent. Speculation has been running in the indie community about the fate of the companies following the demise of New Line (which was a co-owner, with HBO, of Picturehouse) as a standalone studio and distributor. Observers had imagined a variety of scenarios, but I don't think anyone thought that both companies would be folded.

Here's Warner prez and COO Alan Horn's statement:

"With New Line now a key part of Warner Bros., we’re able to handle films across the entire spectrum of genres and budgets without overlapping production, marketing and distribution infrastructures. After much painstaking analysis, this was a difficult decision to make, but it reflects the reality of a changing marketplace and our need to prudently run our businesses with increased efficiencies. We’re confident that the spirit of independent filmmaking and the opportunity to find and give a voice to new talent will continue to have a presence at Warner Bros."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/08/2008 01:36:00 PM

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Adding to the already long list of axed film critics, Glenn Kenny announced this morning on his blog that he's been terminated from his position at Premiere.com. One of the only (if not thee only) survivors when Premiere closed its print edition over a year ago, Kenny's blog has since been a marvelous edition to the blogsphere as his colorful style and almost scary knowledge of film was wonderful to read daily (and the comments were always entertaining to read). Here's his post from this morning:

I've just been informed that my position at Premiere.com is being terminated. What this means for this blog is still up in the air; I've got meetings this afternoon in which such things are to be negotiated. In any case, I now join the ever-growing ranks of film critics without staff positions. I very much hope to keep this blog going...and get some good freelance work, quick.

I had the pleasure of getting to know Glenn a little bit when I interned at Premiere and hope things work out for him. We all here wish him the best.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/08/2008 01:30:00 PM

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CNN is reporting that Weinstein Company head Harvey Weinstein engaged in a "heated phone call" with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in late April in which he pressured her to accept a plan in which he would finance primary revotes in Michigan and Florida.

From the piece:

In a heated phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late last month, Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut off campaign money to congressional Democrats unless Pelosi embraced a new plan by the movie mogul to finance a revote of the Democratic presidential primaries in Florida and Michigan, according to three officials who were briefed on the contents of the conversation.

The three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the private phone conversation, said Weinstein, a top supporter of Clinton’s presidential campaign, appeared determined to buy Clinton more time in her battle against Sen. Barack Obama by pushing for the revote and pressing Pelosi to back off her previous comments that superdelegates should support the candidate who’s leading in pledged delegates in early June.

Weinstein called CNN to deny the report.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/08/2008 11:00:00 AM

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Susannah Breslin has a positively surreal interview at Radar Online with Ira Isaacs, the 57-year-old L.A.-based director currently awaiting trial on obscenity charges for his, um... scat videos. Kudos to the photo editor at Radar for the two improbable shots that run with the piece -- one of Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal (voted in 2004 by a group of art critics as the most influential piece of art of all time), and the other of Martha Stewart.

On her own Reverse Cowgirl blog, Breslin had previously written about Isaacs and the novel defense he's mounting against the charges that his videos Laurie's Toilet Show and Hollywood Scat Amateurs 7 are obscene. She called it the "Two Girls, One Cup Defense."

From her blog post:

And perhaps most interestingly, Isaacs and his lawyer, he says, intend to pursue an unprecedented legal defense. The 2 Girls 1 Cup defense, that is. Isaacs explains: "'What it is, is, there's videos all over the internet of millions of people watching this [Two Girls, One Cup] video, and it's a shock video, and people record their reactions...' '[T]he idea is, millions of people are watching this video... and they are not, I think, obviously looking for prurient interest to masturbate. People are trying to shock themselves, because in today's world, everything is shock on TV... People need a lot to be shocked these days... What I've done is, I think, really shocked people, and I think that's why the federal government is on this case.'"

She also links to Boing Boing, which has a similar story. In that piece, a poster named UndergroundBastard offers some legal commentary:

In United States v. Gugliemi (819 F.2d 451), the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals considered the legality of bestial pornography, sided with Alan Dershowitz' contention that the grossness of the events depicted in the defendant's film, "The Snake F**kers" was so extreme as to not appeal to the prurient interests demanded of the pornography standard. In short, it was so gross it was beyond pornography, which is what the defendant here is arguing.

In her interview, Breslin talks with Isaac and discovers that he has the heart of an independent filmmaker;

RADAR: How did you get started making these movies?
IRA ISAACS: When the Internet was happening, I wanted to enter it in some way, and I wanted to do something different. In the past, you needed a lot of money and people to make a movie. Until video cameras were invented. Then the Internet was a big breakthrough for distribution. So, I started making a lot of money with these fetish shock videos. I was distributing shock art films from Europe.

What do you mean by "shock art films"?
You talk about art? What is art? Art is what artists do. If it shocks you, it's art. One of the things art should do is make you think and question things. Shock art has always been something that has been a very popular thing through the 20th century and the 21st century. People used feces as shock art. There was a guy who shit in a can and sold it for the price of gold. [In 1961, Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni canned his feces in 90 tins and sold them for the price of their weight in gold.] So, the Internet allowed me to be an artist, to reach a lot of people. It allowed me to be on the edge, to do what I would never do as a fine artist. If you're going to paint, you've got to compete with Picasso. If you want to write a great classical music piece, you're competing with Mozart. I would never write anything like Kafka's The Trial. If I was going to make a mark, I was going to do it in some extreme shock way.

Later in the interview, we learn that Isaac's Kafka reference is not just some random musing:

So you were indicted.
In July [2007], they indict me. This has all been very surreal. I'm a big Kafka fan. I always dreamed to be Josef K. [the central character of Kafka's The Trial, who wakes up one morning to find he is being prosecuted for an unknown crime]. And now I am. I'm rereading the book, and I see the similarities. In fact, the director's credit I use in all my films is Josef K. I am Josef K., the character. Now I get to play Josef K. I get to go to court and do all these things. This whole thing is art. Now I get my 15 minutes of fame.

Isaacs is not the only one facing jail time at the moment on an obscenity rap. Boing Boing rounds up a number of links about the prosecution of John Stagliano, a porn director we featured in Filmmaker in 1993. As the Boing Boing post notes, Stagliano's case promises a constitutional showdown over elements of its prosecution, particularly its reliance on a law that says that the internet can not be used to send offensive material to anyone under 18.

Boing Boing quotes from a piece by Mark Kernes at Adult Video News:

One charge, however, that hasn't been seen before in a case involving adult material accessible from a Website is under Chapter 47 of the United States Code, Sec. 223(d), "sending or displaying offensive material to persons under 18."

That section reads, in pertinent part, "Whoever, in interstate or foreign communications, knowingly ... uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that is obscene or child pornography, regardless of whether the user of such service placed the call or initiated the communication; or knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under such person's control to be used for an activity prohibited by paragraph (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/07/2008 10:01:00 PM

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There's nothing like a film getting the Criterion treatment. And having this job I get the privilege of finding out before many what they have next up their sleeves. But the latest announcement doesn't have to do with a film but of the company adapting to new technology. The Criterion Collection is preparing to put several of their titles on Blu-ray. Read below.

The time has arrived! Several titles from the Criterion Collection are set for Blu-ray treatment beginning in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and will be priced to match Criterion's standard-def editions.

Titles lined up at this point include:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

Alongside the DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, Criterion will also release the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. The Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer. An updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg's outback masterpiece will be released at the same time.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/07/2008 07:58:00 PM

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In a move that has been rumored for months, Variety reports today that Rainbow Media (which also owns AMC and Independent Film Channel) has acquired the Sundance Channel for $496 million.

According to the story:

Rainbow Media will exchange about 12.7 million shares it owns in GE, tax-free, with a cash adjustment based on the value of the GE shares in relation to the total purchase price. GE will get all of the GE shares, and CBS and [Robert] Redford's entities will get cash for their stakes.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/07/2008 01:28:00 PM

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(Hat tips: GreenCine and Coudal Partners.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/06/2008 11:08:00 PM

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Over at his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner writes about the new Seattle-based IndieShares, which is another one of those "democratize the process" companies that has sprung up around some aspect of the film business. Democracy, of course, is (mostly) good. Filmmaker's mission statement even includes the goal of democratizing the production process for beginning filmmakers. And last week I interviewed Lance Weiler and learned more about his From Here to Awesome festival (which I've concluded is a really cool and good thing, and I'm not just saying that because I know Lance and he's a writer for the magazine), and he also talked about how FHTA is all about democratizing the process of marketing and distribution.

The new IndieShares aims to democratize another aspect of filmmaking: the investor experience. It joins a number of new ventures using the social networking and educational functions of the internet to bring production dollars to filmmakers. But whereas other companies, like IndieGoGo, make their pitch in more holistic terms, promoting their sites as places for filmmakers and investors to discover each other and make movies around shared interests, IndieShares seems primarily about pitching the thrill of the idea of feature-film investing to a mainstream audience.

From the site:

...the independent film revolution is about connecting audiences with movies by more than just buying a ticket. It’s about making you a part of the experience. After all, why spend $10 on a ticket when you can own a piece of the action for the same price?

And from the site's FAQ, here's the answer to "Why should I invest in a film project?"

Because you’ll get to be an integral part of the production process as an executive producer. Not only will you get to see the film come together firsthand, but you’ll also have exclusive access to interactive content such as clips from the shoot, chat sessions with the talent, and bragging rights to your friends. Again, please be aware that there is no guarantee that you will make a return on your investment and there is a risk that you may lose some or all of your investment depending on the success of the individual film. Please review the “Risk Factors” section in the applicable offering statement.

Whenever I've raised private equity for a film project, I've done it the traditional way via a private placement memorandum and subscription agreement given to accredited investors only. (Accredited investors are often individuals with over $1 million in net worth.) And I've also tried to find as few investors as possible. The fewer people, the easier it is to deal with them and to satisfy their desires to really participate in the process.

IndieShares is taking the opposite approach. You don't have to be an accredited investor (that's the democratization part), and shares are priced at only $10. You can buy anywhere from one to 250 shares, meaning that a $5 million film has to have anywhere from 500,000 to 2,000 investors. (I'm not a tax and investment expert, but I'm sure that some of these numbers have to do with securities requirements. I also notice that, at present, the site can only accept investors from 17 states.)

Significantly, as the FAQ responsibly notes, that "integral part of the production process" doesn't include the most standard of investor perks, a ticket to the premiere. (In fact, one of the site's arguments for having so many people contribute to the financing of a film is that investment scheme this will naturally enlarge the paying audience for each produced movie.)

To its credit, the site is clear-eyed about the profit potential of an independent film investment. They repeatedly tell people that they could lose all their money. Still by primarily selling the investor experience and then by diluting down that experience so much (no set visits!), I don't think IndieShares is doing independent film any favors. Let's face it, most one-time-only indie film investors lose their money, and what benefit they do gain from the experience comes from either being closer to the production process than will be possible via the IndieShares model or by enabling a worthy project that they themselves also feel passionately about.

So far, the three pitches on the IndieShares site don't seem so impressive. Furthermore, the site tells you virtually nothing about the writer/directors (I'm assuming the writers are directing, although it's not really clear), nor anything about who the collaborators on the project (d.p., editor, etc.) might be. (There is info about the IndieShares principals. Founder Jay Schwatz has done business development for companies like Nike; CFO George Brumder was a v.p. of finance at Washington Mutual. There's also a small advisory board that includes producer and director Eugene Mazzola, whose company will apparently produce the first selected script.)

How were these initial three films selected? Through a "proprietary Indiescore process" that ensures that only "quality scripts enter the production process." And what goes into that IndieScore? They won't tell you -- that, they say, is "their secret sauce." In other words (and the way I read it), you cede the development process to a small group of executives and their vaguely technocratic process, and then the resulting three projects are uploaded on the site in the form of script summaries and video pitches for you to vote on. The winner then gets fast-tracked into a $5 million production that's bonded with a professional crew and you get to see streamed dailies and participate in web chats with the talent.

But here's what's staggering -- at least in the initial stage, you can't read the scripts! I searched around the site for a link to the screenplays and found none. Anybody knows that screenplay writing is 10% concept, 90% execution. The idea that you are being pitched an investment for a film that you can't read the screenplay for is unfathomable to me. (I must be missing something here. This statement from the site -- "Does he drive off a cliff? Does she get the guy? You tell us—it's Your Movie" -- implies that there is some kind of development process that must kick in at a later date. I wonder how many reshoots these films are budgeted for...)

Online film investment is a really tricky area, and I commend IndieShares for trying to dot all the i's and cross the t's when it comes to their paperwork. Schwartz has a post in CinemaTech's comments thread where he goes into a bit more detail about how the company is complying with SEC regulations. Although here again is something weird. The biggest variable in independent film -- distribution -- is barely addressed on the site. The company simply says it will try to secure distribution for the finished films What if it fails? From the FAQ:

The film’s management has a legal obligation to the preferred shareholders to secure the best sales or distribution deal. In the event that a film cannot be sold or distributed, management has the right to purchase the film from the preferred shareholders at fair market value. This ensures that the sales effort does not go on indefinitely.

Potential investors, I got news for you -- the "fair market value" of a film that, like the majority of independent films produced, is rejected by all distributors could be zero.

Finally, though, my beef with IndieShares revolves not around business issues but around what I see as its simplistic promotion of concepts like "democracy," "It's Your Movie," and even "independent film" as a means of building a company around movies that don't appear to have strong artistic identities. What independent film needs now is not another technocratic financing model, contest, or gimmick-y come-on (does anybody even remember any of the Project: Greenlight films?), but rather ways to build communities linking passionate creators with energized audiences based on shared values and specific interests. That and a saner distribution model that finds ways to cost-effectively place these films in front of these viewers. I don't see IndieShares doing any of this.

But then again, maybe I'm not the target audience. Here's a comment from a respondent to the company's blog: "I like this idea. I could get used to telling people I'm in 'The Biz.'"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/05/2008 12:40:00 AM

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It’s a hard festival to wrap your head around (especially if you’re a New Yorker), with too many sections with vague names and programming sensibilities that begin to bleed together, but after awhile, the internal logic of the Tribeca Film Festival, which just wrapped its seventh and probably its best edition, begins to become clear. Although they would never refer themselves thusly, TFF is beginning to resemble a smaller, more hype-centric, less sales activated, Spring bound cousin to the Toronto Film Festival, another sprawling, premiere-savvy Metropolitan fest in a North American cinema capital that offers far too many riches for any single moviegoer to behold in one stretch and basks in both star wattage and high art in equal measures. In general, critics and observers seemed more pleased with the size and quality of the selection than in year’s past, although very few movies bowing at Tribeca, especially among the world premiere narratives, seemed to draw impassioned or universal praise. I caught around twenty features or so at this year’s festival, a small sliver of the 121 on display. I missed a large swath of films I wanted to see. Many of the films I did catch I had anticipated from earlier fests, while several took their initial bows in Tribeca, by filmmakers both new and old. Perhaps most fortunately, as you always hope for at any film festival, even big, almost but not quite market fests like this, I happened to catch a few movies that seemed to materialize out of nowhere and take my breath away. The whole thing just makes you want to whip out your American Express card and make a movie with it. The parties aren’t bad either.

From the hyper-cute, pseudo-satisfying, “gee wouldn’t it be great to have a kid”, studio delivered opener Baby Mama to the magnificent revival of Ethiopian cineaste and professor Haile Gerima’s didactic and frenetically lefty, post-Salassie, 1974 would be student feature Harvest: 3000 Years, to the uncompromising, sober eyed American historical gaze of John Gianvito’s experimental doc Profit Motive and The Whispering Wind, Tribeca had just about something for everyone. Everything about the festival seems to be a mish-mash, a stream of contradictions. The small cadre of titles playing Tribeca which were released commercially during the festival, such as David Mamet’s terrific dip into Los Angeles’ Mixed Martial Arts world Redbelt, Harmony Korine’s ethereally beautiful and oddly touching Mister Lonely and Errol Morris’ chilling account of the truths buried within the photos from Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure, are each excellent products by true auteurs and couldn’t be more different from each other.

Personal favorites would have to include five of the six titles I mentioned above (I’ll let you guess which one to scratch), along with a number of titles that upon reflection seem to represent a cross-section of what the festival had to offer. Nina Paley’s fantastic animated feature Sita Sings The Blues, which marries the tunes of obscure 30’s blues songstress Annette Hanshaw to a retelling, by three hip, Gen-Y Indians, of the Indian myth Ramayana and a mildly autobiographical story of a Seattle based female cartoonist loosing her husband to his job in India, is both heartfelt and consistently witty, the type of low-fi animated musical that puts Disney to shame. Paley’s animated stylings are rich and constantly shifting, making it all the more impressive that she did the intricate and amusing animations herself. It is another terrific western made film kicking around the festival circuit with Indian themes and locales, following titles as varied as Ritchie Mehta’s Amal (Toronto 07’), John Jeffcoat’s Outsourced (Toronto 06’) and Chris Smith’s The Pool (Sundance 07’), none of which have the indiewood distribution muscle behind them that glossy yet blander titles like The Darjeeling Limited and The Namesake bring to the table.

82 year old Pole Andrzej Wajda, whose early masterpiece Ashes and Diamonds turned fifty last year, was back with his Academy-award nominated and Berlinale approved Katyn, a harrowing, multi-layered account of the massacre of captured Polish officers by the Russians during World War II and the beginnings of the repressive state of denial which they imposed upon the Polish people in its aftermath. Wajda has been ruminating on these very same themes since Kanal, but more seems to be at stake for him then ever before (his father died in the Katyn Forest massacres, which aren’t depicted until the film's harrowing closing passages) and the picture is certainly as powerful as anything he’s crafted since Man of Iron.

Plenty of marital strife was on display amidst the world and international premiere narratives. Irishman Declan Recks’ Eden, from Eugene O’Brien’s play, takes an almost comedic look at the dissolution of a marriage in the run-up to the couple’s tenth anniversary. Aiden Kelly and Eileen Walsh are both very good and the pic has a legitimately dynamic visual style that manages to transcend the smallness of its stage origins, but the inevitable betrayal and attempts at betrayal never sting as much as Recks wants them to and its not saying anything especially novel about the state of modern love. Walsh deservedly walked away with the fest’s best actress prize for her portrayal. Aussie Christopher Weekes’ un-ironically titled Bitter and Twisted, much buzzed about by certain critics during the festival, does have a host of serviceable performances by people who look like real life, exurban Aussie losers, but its visual style, with a few exceptions, is pure TV movie and the whole thing is staged at a lighter weight pitch than the material, which has shades of The Sweet Hereafter or Snow Angels in it, seems to want it to be. Meanwhile, the divorcee female truck driver confronted with the son she never wanted, as portrayed by svelte Michelle Monaghan in Trucker, isn’t even capable of maintaining boyfriends, favoring half night stands in seedy motels instead. Writer-Director James Mottern has a terrific script and he clearly has a keen visual eye, his HD lensed pic full of sumptuous visual treats, but in Monaghan and Benjamin Bratt, both of whom act with conviction and nuance, he casts people who don’t fit into the world he’s creating – their collective in-authenticity bounces off the walls of the screening room. He probably would have been bettered served by casting the sandpaper voiced Joey Lauren Adams as the title character and reserved Monaghan’s soaring cheek bones for the dying man’s new belle.

Two of the three titles swallowed up by Sony Classics at Sundance and subsequently screened (in secret, sort of) at SXSW, both of which are second films by promising filmmakers, Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness and The Duplass Brothers’ Baghead, failed to rouse me upon there New York debuts, although the starlets of both pictures, Olivia Thirlby and Greta Gerwig, clearly have big things ahead of them. Both are likable enough, with strong casts (I could watch Jane Adams read the phonebook. For a week.) and plenty of humor, but are underserved by formulaic writing in the former’s case and mediocre directorial execution in the latter’s. Now if someone set a mumblecore tinged, tongue in cheek horror movie among depressed, Jewish, pot dealing, hip-hop obsessed, ice cream salesmen in 1994, they’d have one helluva picture.

Among a largely disappointing field of world premiere narratives was Richard Ledes’ snoozer private dick/corporate corruption thriller The Caller, which inexplicably took home the “NY,NY” narrative prize. I guess it’s a step up from last year’s winner, ex Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst’s Jesse Eisenberg vehicle The Education of Charlie Banks. Robert Celestino’s Chazz Palminteri/Christine Lahti dice hustling with an autistic son movie Yonkers Joe would have been a more appropriate choice, with its earnest, attractive performances and fairly predictable but satisfying cadences, yet that’s not saying much and I’m sure the jury was as psyched as I was to see Elliot Gould play a private detective again, even if The Caller was never going to be a worthy successor to Robert Altman’s classic Philip Marlowe deconstruction The Long Goodbye.

Winner of the World Narrative Competition and soon to hit screens via Mark Cuban’s Magnet, Swede Tomas Alfredsson’s grisly and sensual Let The Right One In is easy to like for a movie in which middle aged men drug, string up and drain innocent, dog walking teenage boys to feed the twelve year old vampire they shack up with. Uber-stylish, teeming with long lense shots that would make Tony Scott envious, Alfredsson gives his vampire girl a love interest in the form of an awkward blond kid who lives across the courtyard in a quaint apartment complex and occasionally, when not being bullied by near homicidal middle school hooligans, is stabbing trees and asking them why they aren’t squealing. Alfredsson deftly imposes the angsty alienation of adolescence onto a vampire coming of age narrative and thus makes it okay for us to take pleasure in the beheading of middle school bullies. Great. This is a beautiful, engaging movie that has cult classic written all over it, but its not quite as smart (or, shall I say moral) as Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess, Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day or Larry Fessenden’s Habit and left me kind of cold thematically. It's teeming with life though and at least the word vampire isn’t used until the second to last reel.

The narratives definitely bottomed out for me with The Blair Witch Project co-director Daniel Myrick’s horrendous The Objective, a not so slick, seemingly made for Sci-Fi Channel Predator rip-off that plunks a horrifyingly similar scenario (to both that film and his previous movie) in the middle of our troubles in Afghanistan. As one of its producers is known to say, it has more implication than drama, but its deeply embedded derivativeness, wooden performances and generally unspooky 90’s revival of The Twilight Zone vibe wear thin real quick. It has the makings of a camp classic if viewed in the right circumstances. Call the kid from The Wackness.

The legacy of John McTiernan’s imminently quotable Schwartznegger vehicle (“If it bleeds… we can kill it”) also factors prominently in Christopher Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster, a terrific look at the intersection of 80’s popular culture and steroid use, in Bell's family as well as in the worlds of bodybuilding and professional team sports. Its one of the pair of docs, along with James Marsh’s wonderful Man On Wire, that Magnolia scooped up at Sundance and NY Premiered at Tribeca. These will both figure heavily in year-end award buzz among the doc set.

Perhaps the doc that lingers in my film battered brain the most is Brazilian Paula Gaitan’s Days In Sintra, her chronicle of returning to the Portugese city she and deceased husband Glauber Rocha, a major figure in Brazilian cinema of the 60s, exiled themselves too in the midst of Brazilian’s political implosion. Mixing contemporary video footage of the beautiful if mildly decaying city with archival film footage of her final years with Rocha in the late 70s/early 80s, the film is a minor marvel, lyrical and tedious in equal measures, but a nonetheless gorgeous and mature work by someone searching for truth and beauty among the shards and fragments of her former self, using this thing we call memory to illuminate the personal and the political-historical. In its loose, jazzy rhythms, meticulous traveling shots and romantic eye it recalls the work of avant-gardists Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, particularly Brakhage’s monumental Anticipation of The Night. You know, the one where he was going to hang himself at the end and then didn’t.

So if I learned anything at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, other than the fact that producer Mike Ryan drives something akin to a pimpmobile (so cool), actress Natasha Lyonne is in a bowling league at The Port Authority (equally cool) and multi-hyphenate Melvin Van Peebles has the ass end of a VW Bus coming out of his living room wall (the coolest of them all), its that there’s no place to see a movie quite like New York. Only our town could put on a festival quite like this one. Even at its trimmest and classiest level yet, it still is a big bad metaphor for our love of the loud, profane and massive. I can’t wait until next year.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 5/05/2008 12:16:00 AM

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With the demise of New Line -- one of the two partners behind the creation of Picturehouse (HBO is the other) -- speculation has arisen over what's going to happen to the specialty shingle now that it, like New Line, has been absorbed into Warner Brothers. Warner, you remember, has Warner Independent already on its lot. Anne Thompson penned a piece in Variety stating that WIP head Polly Cohen and Picturehouse head Bob Berney "are likely to accept a bicoastal co-head arrangement." Stu Van Airsdale at Defamer ran his own story, saying that there are rumors that Berney will be "starting fresh at a new company underwritten with hedge fund cash." Now, at the end of the weekend, Jeffrey Welles at Hollywood Elsewhere posts his own piece on the rumor that Berney is leaving that contains the choice phraseology headlined above:

Now I've been told by someone very close to things that the latter scenario is not true. Berney has "been open to Warner Bros. proposals, but they actually haven't made any real decisions yet on how much they want to be in this 'indie' part of the business." They haven't made any real decisions? In my experience that means they've made a decision but lack the character to express it...no? "So this thing may drag on for some time," the insider comments.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/04/2008 09:55:00 PM

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The Hollywood Reporter hosts a roundtable on the economics of independent production with five noted players: Newsweek film critic David Ansen; Kirk D'Amico, president and CEO of Myriad Pictures, a production and sales company; Cassian Elwes, co-head of William Morris Independent; Mark Gill, CEO of finance and production company the Film Department; and Avi Lerner, co-chairman and CEO of Nu Image/Millennium Films. Stephen Galloway leads a conversation that, by my read, offers a pretty accurate and succinct take on the American independent film market at the moment. They discuss overproduction, the demise of New Line, foreign markets, the plight of the Sundance film, and more. I was particularly taken by this exchange at the end, when, after a discussion of the rise of local production abroad, Galloway asks, "What should America do to protect its own independent film culture?" Elwes and Lerner both suggest the kind of non-free market solutions that European governments have embraced and that may be necessary to preserve a more vibrant indie sphere in America:

ELWES: I would love to see the government help small distribution companies and subsidize them so that they can grow and allow the independent cinema to be vibrant in this country.

LERNER: They should make a law that the television networks have to buy a certain amount of movies from the independents. All the basic and pay television, 99% is from the studio -- it is like a cartel. Otherwise, at the end of the day, it will all be controlled by the studios.

The full conversation can be found at the link above, and a video excerpt can be watched here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/03/2008 08:23:00 PM

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Although the festival does wrap until Sunday (and feels like its lasted about a month), The Tribeca Film Festival announced its winners last night. Here they are:

The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature – Let the Right One In (Lat den rätte komma in) directed by Tomas Alfredson (Sweden). Winner receives $25,000 cash and the art award "Maternal Nocture: Clearing Storm” created by Stephen Hannock.

Best New Narrative Filmmaker – My Marlon and Brando (Gitmek) directed by Hüseyin Karabey (Turkey, Netherlands, UK). Winner receives $25,000 cash, sponsored by American Express, and the art award “Bonfire,” created by Ross Bleckner.

Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film – Thomas Turgoose and Piotr Jagiello in Somers Town directed by Shane Meadows (UK). Sponsored by Delta Air Lines. Each winner receives a business elite ticket voucher for anywhere Delta travels.

Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film – Eileen Walsh in Eden directed by Declan Recks (Ireland). Sponsored by Delta Air Lines. Winner receives two business elite ticket vouchers for anywhere Delta travels.

Best Documentary Feature – Pray the Devil Back to Hell directed by Gini Reticker (USA). Winner receives $25,000 cash and the art award “Liza Minnelli,” created by Timothy White.

Best New Documentary Filmmaker – Old Man Bebo directed by Carlos Carcas (Spain). Winner receives $25,000 cash, sponsored by American Express, and the art award “Maquette for Primary Compass,” created by Don Gummer.

“New York LOVES Film” – Zoned In directed by Daniela Zanzotto (USA,UK). Winner receives $5,000 cash, sponsored by New York State Governor's Office for Motion Picture and Television Development, and the art award “Table Odeon,” created by Donna Ferrato.

Special Mention: Hotel Gramercy Park directed by Douglas Keeve (USA)

Best Narrative Short – New Boy directed by Steph Green. Sponsored by Edelman Studios. Winner receives $5,000 cash and the art award “Air” created by Francesco Clemente.

Best Documentary Short – Mandatory Service directed by Jessica Habie. Sponsored by Edelman Studios. Winner receives $5,000 cash and the art award “The Screamer,” created by John Alexander.

Student Visionary Award – Elephant Garden directed by Sasie Sealy. Sponsored by Apple. Winner receives an Apple Mac Pro Desktop with a 15" Display and Final Cut Studio 2 and the art award "Harmonium" created by Clifford Ross.

The Jury Award will be announced on Sunday. This years jurors were:

World Competition Categories:

The jurors for the 2008 World Narrative Competition were Peter Hedges, Gregory Hoblit, Callie Khouri, Oliver Platt, Christine Vachon.

The jurors for the 2008 World Documentary Competition were Jared Cohen, Whoopi Goldberg, Ross Kauffman, Padma Lakshmi, Jose Padilha.

New York Competition Categories:

The 2008 “Made in NY” Narrative Feature Award jurors were Peter Dinklage, Fred Durst, Greg Mottola, Stephen Schiff, Annabella Sciorra.

The 2008 “NY Loves Film” Documentary Feature Award jurors were Liya Kebede, Doug Liman, Esther Robinson, Josh Schwartz, Jay McInerney, Andre Leon Talley.

Short Film Competition Categories:

The 2008 Narrative Short jurors were Mario Batali, Christine Lahti, Molly Shannon, Lili Taylor, Zac Posen.

The 2008 Documentary and Student Short jurors were David Bowie, Red Burns, Matthew Modine, Lee Schrager, David de Rothschild.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 5/02/2008 02:08:00 PM

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Remaining Screening Times: May 2nd, 10:30pm (AMC Village VII), May 4th, 11:00am (Village East)




John Magary is having a good year. Fresh off winning a prize at SXSW and a run at the Student Academy Award with his powerful short film The Second Line, which debuted last year in Edinburgh, he finally has a chance to screen in front of a hometown crowd. His newest project, Blood Abundance, or the Half-Life of Antoinette, was workshopped at the Sundance's January Screenwriters Lab and was recently accepted into the June Directors Lab for his newest project. John, whose girlfriend Myna Joseph (Man) is a terrific filmmaker in her own right, was part of a dynamite 2006 MFA Film class at Columbia that included 07' 25 New Faces Fellipe Barbosa Gamarosa and Moon Molson, both of whom will also be at the June Director's Lab with there projects.

Filmmaker: Tell us about the genesis of The Second Line - what initially inspired you, what the writing process was like, how you raised money, etc...

Magary: I went with my brother Jim and girlfriend Myna to New Orleans a few months after Katrina. While we grew up in Dallas, my brother and I had never been there before, and we figured--I don't know what we figured, that we would see it for the first time at its lowest, and maybe do something to help out. We got in around New Year's Eve, and volunteered briefly with a now-legendary activist recovery group called Common Ground Collective, gutting a house in Plaquemines Parish, which is a drive out of the city.

We also ate a bunch, drove through the okay neighborhoods and the ruined ones. We saw Ray Nagin twice; the first time he was eating beignets at Cafe du Monde and the second time he was ushering in the New Year at a very foggy Jackson Square. We were not impressed with Nagin then, and we aren't now.

Still, I fell hard for the city. We all did. It was a remarkable few days. The act of gutting a house is pretty grueling, pretty unpleasant. You're basically tossing someone's material life away, which you have to, because it's all been rendered useless and harmful, covered in molds and muds. Story ideas don't come very easily to me, but I knew I wanted to shape a short narrative around this act of house-gutting. Ripping out the innards of a stranger's house.

I'd written a feature script with two side characters named Natt and MacArthur, and decided, on Myna's advice, to base the script around them. The writing process took months and months. The first drafts don't much resemble the last ones. I got a great deal of help from friends at Columbia, and my friend Jeff McMahon in LA. My teacher Eric Mendelsohn was exceedingly helpful with the script.

Geoff Quan, another Columbia student, agreed to produce it--it would be his thesis, as well. We got an initial grant from HBO Films, one given through Columbia--that made the whole thing seem real. Then it was a matter of writing desperate letters to family and friends, and taking out heaps of student loans. Geoff and co-producer Myna Joseph worked some very good deals in New Orleans, and in Dallas. (Myna, who had more experience with production than Geoff, was indispensable--we couldn't have made it without her. Seriously, she saved us.)

We had to fly in some key crew positions--oddly enough, as a money-saving tactic--and got the rest of the crew from the area, mostly through the University of New Orleans. We scored a great local AD, Matt Paul, as well as an amazing local production designer, Mara LePere-Schloop, who's gonna be a Captain of her Field and must work with me always. All in all, our crew was great.

In earnest, pre-production was about four to six weeks. Shooting was seven days, in total. Post-production seemed like seven years. For a twenty-minute film. Who'd 'a thunk it.

That was such a long-winded answer. I'm sorry.

Filmmaker: Post Katrina New Orleans is often portrayed in the news media as a cesspool of misery and violence - what was your experience like shooting there?

Magary: Well, shooting was relatively smooth, partially because--and this is a sad reason--it was so empty in parts. We shot in a FEMA camp at UNO, which we were very nervous about--you're dragging track around someone's front yard, and they're not exactly happy to be there in the first place--but it was close to Christmas, so most of the students were gone. Also, and this was hilarious, but college students in general have such low expectations for housing that some of these guys were absolutely digging their new trailers. And they had a point: it was just them! Their own pad! Pretty funny. All in all, though, just being in those trailers can wear hard on you. They're cramped, and they smell weird. And some have been found to be toxic.

The other location was an ungutted house, and what you see in the film is what is was: a flooded house, full of muck. There wasn't much design there, beyond shifting piles around. Of course, there were safety issues. Black mold is toxic, so we were careful to supply the cast and crew with masks and Tyvek suits. We shot all the gutting scenes in one day. It was not a pleasant day.

The violence issue is tricky in New Orleans--part of it is perception, that you're in this notorious city, where, as we've seen on TV, everyone just walks around shooting at cops, who are usually too busy looting Wal-Marts to notice. Some of those perceptions have a lot to do with race, and the fact that a lot of white people are scared of black people.

The other part of it, sadly, is statistics: the murder rate is very high there, as is the rate of handgun ownership. Add to that poverty, struggling public education, criminal government negligence, and sweltering humidity. I don't want to overstate it, but there's certainly a more off-kilter vibe in the city. It's smart to keep your wits about you.

On the flipside, and this is a big part of why I love the place so much, New Orleanians don't just say hi on the street, they ask how you're doing. There's more hugging, more compliments out of the blue, more dancing with strangers, and in general, a hell of a lot more fun. It's a warm place, leisurely, but also socially complex in a way that very few places are. In his stage directions in A Streetcar Named Desire, sixty years ago, Tennessee Williams called New Orleans a "cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town." As far as I can tell, it's still like that.

Another long-winded answer. Two for two. I guess I'm lonely.

Filmmaker: What were your biggest challenges when constructing the film in post-production?

Magary: I edited the film myself, which presents its own psychological challenges--why did I write that? Where are the takes? Why did I say cut?

It took a few solid weeks, and again I had great notes from my peers at Columbia. A constant struggle to sharpen the narrative.

My old college roommate Kai Gross did the music. I'm very proud of his score, all played by friends individually in Kai's home studio, then mixed together beautifully by our sound editor Paul Bercovitch. Scoring and spotting and sound mixing are processes I really, really love.

The worst challenges ended up being pretty boring. Issues with HD transferring, and timecode errors, and on and on. We shot on Super 16--Chris Teague, an amazing DP who has worked with me on most of my films, shot it--but knew we probably wouldn't have the funds to make a 35mm print, so we finished on an uncompressed HD tape. We were lucky to be able to use a new HD facility at Columbia, and got a lot of crucial help from the post supervisor at Columbia, Cecil Esquivel-Obregon, who has a zen-like patience. The room enabled us to cut uncompressed HD, but we were guinea pigs, so...as I said, many days lost to a boiling sea of 1's and 0's.

Filmmaker: Al Thompson and J.D. Williams, who, despite their relative youth, both seem like veteran New York actors, are terrific in your film - tell us about working with them.

I'd seen their work, and made heartfelt offers to them, and bizarrely enough, they accepted. It's funny, originally, of course, I wanted to work with all local talent--wouldn't anyone shooting in New Orleans?--and we have two great local actors, Dane Rhodes and Karen Pritchett, at the heart of it. But we just couldn't find the right guys for Natt and MacArthur.

Al and J.D. have been in a lot--commercials, features, shorts. They were relaxed and professional, which was crucial, because we weren't able to do much in the way of rehearsal. With the help of another actor in the film, we'd gone through some very cursory dialect work, some cadences of New Orleans. And then we just went from there. They're pretty unfussy: they've waited around before, they've had the home cooking, they've been in odd locations--neither was happy about eating muffalettas, but we got through it. We set them up in the French Quarter--I think everyone had a pretty great experience, honestly. Geoff and Myna and Nelson kept them very happy. No pretensions, no huffs.

I'm not sure I threw them any curveballs, really. J.D.'s performance is right out there--he's not swallowing anything up, really, because Natt's a bit of a hothead. Al was trickier--he gives such a muted performance, there were times, I admit, when I'd turn to Chris and whisper if he's seeing anything. It was one of those cases--when I was cutting it together, I saw exactly what Al was doing. He's quiet, but there's a growing disturbance. I was so happy with his performance.

And then there were these little unexpected bonuses from their past work. At the climax, J.D.'s character is required to do some minor stunt work. Of course, from his days on The Wire, J.D. is stunt certified, so he's really orchestrating it all there. We were in good hands.

And they were patient when I sometimes gave them mumbling paraphrases instead of useable actions. And they let me know when some of my stabs at African-American dialect were goofy. God bless 'em.

Filmmaker: Your film was made in conjunction with the MFA Film Program at Columbia and clearly was not cheap. If you hadn't been working toward a degree, would it have been feasible to make this kind of short? With very little infrastructure to support non-feature, artisanal film work, are shorts worth making in and of themselves?

Magary: No, it wasn't really cheap, though you'd be horrified to know how much cheaper it was than some shorts, especially some from schools. We didn't waste money, that's for sure.

These are great questions, really. Would I have made the film if I didn't have that thesis deadline? I've asked myself that a bunch. Motivations and deadlines help me out a great deal--ask anyone who's worked with me. I need a deadline.

Without Columbia breathing down my neck, I would've made something in New Orleans, but probably not on this scale. Film school is a horrible money-suck, but while you're in the thick of it, you're getting loans and you're using their facilities. On top of that, we got a grant that ended up being over a third of our budget--without Columbia, there's no grant, without the grant, we're probably not making a twenty-minute short on Super 16 1300 miles away from our apartments. Because how would we?

There's the added pressure, too, of this being Your Final Short Film ever, which is a mistaken perception, but that's the way it's set up as you grind into your last years of school. You do want to make it count. You've learned a lot (hopefully), you've formed relationships with teachers and peers, and you just want to make something...I want to say "good," but "good" doesn't require a budget. I wanted to make something better, certainly, to tackle something I hadn't tackled before, in the framing or in performance or in the whole conception. I wanted to shoot on film, for whatever reason, as did Chris. My shot design often required a good, fluid dolly. We needed lights, we needed a good central crew. We couldn't fake the locations. I'm sure someone could've shot this script in two days handheld on DV, and done it well. But I couldn't, and moreover, I didn't want to. So you scrape up the money, and you ask your mom if she'll cook food for everyone. Which she did. And it was tasty.

Are shorts worth making? Of course! Some expressions are short--that's that. A million things can dictate length: character, plot, formal requirements, pace, tone. Beyond that, budget, format, interest, someone's schedule. Shorts only seem like an inferior form because we never get to see them. That's our loss.

What you can do with a short--where you can show it, how you can show it--is another issue entirely. There are markets for shorts, but they're mostly in Europe. Here, you just hope they can be seen in a theater with a nice audience at some festival somewhere. If someone wants to see a DVD, you send it to them. Maybe some day it'll be on PBS or HBO Zone or whatever, or, less preferably in my case, the web. Humble goals for a short, really.

In any case, if you've never made something, and you want to, a short is as good a way as any to learn. Smaller cost, smaller risk, smaller regret when you inevitably fuck it up.

Filmmaker: You've had a tremendous festival run so far, with stops at Edinburgh, Sundance, San Francisco, Clermont-Ferrand and the Student Academy Awards, along with prizes at SXSW and AFI Dallas. What advice would you have for short filmmakers about to embark upon the often dizzying festival trail?

Magary: Oh man. I might be the wrong person to ask. I miss deadlines all the time. Sarasota? Boston Independent? They sound great, but yeah, I forgot to apply. Next year--

There are so many festivals. I would advise you pick the ones you might actually want to go to, and check on their infrastructure, their taste. Do they program good stuff? Because if you've made a good film (or you think you've made a good film, anyway), you're not going to get into a festival with dumb programmers, because they're dumb and they'll pick a dumb film. Nothing more annoying than getting rejected by a festival run by half-wits.

I would also advise, ALWAYS, asking for a fee waiver. Just write the festival a nice little email, stating your case, saying if you've gotten into anything, and asking if they might waive or reduce your fee. Otherwise, you might be spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars just to enter festivals, which is absurd. Most of them will say no; some will take pity.

It's looking more and more like an industry, a festival industry. Every city and town each needs their own six opposing festivals, and regardless of their history or taste, they'll charge you forty bucks just to look at your eight-minute film. Then you fly to it, and they don't do a Q&A, the projection's crap, the other movies are crap, there are six people in the audience, and you're out another five hundred bucks. And you're staring at a cash bar.

Don't get me wrong, some festivals are great. You interact with people, you talk about the process, you talk about the work, what you could possibly have been thinking when you did X, etc. Those kinds of festivals give you the brass to keep going.

But yeah, it can get overwhelming and frustrating. If I were you, dear reader, I'd apply to a slew at the outset, see what happens, don't get discouraged, but also don't drag it on forever. There's no point. Make another film. Also, if you do get into some festivals, but you can't afford to go, then don't go! Your film will be seen either way, and that's what matters most--you're reaching a new audience.

Filmmaker: Tell us about your new project.

Magary: I have a feature script set in New Orleans, tentatively titled Blood Abundance, or the Half-Life of Antointette. How's that for convolution? It's about a mother raising seven kids.

I was really lucky to get the script into the Sundance Screenwriters' Lab, and now it's going into the Directors' Lab in June. it's been a great experience. They're tremendously supportive, Ilyse McKimmie, Michelle Satter, Mike Mohan, all of them. Their reputation precedes them, of course, but seriously, to phrase it with a dated urban slant, their shit is for real. They want me to make the movie I want to make, and I am eager to oblige.

So, yeah, I want to make the feature, I desperately want to make it. The scale of the thing's a little large--it's a period piece with approximately eight gazillion characters--so I want to write a back-up script, something much smaller, much closer, something totally different. To keep my motor humming, in case things develop slowly, and then POW, I make another one. POW.

And there's a short I'd like to make in the summer sometime. And maybe some specs or sketches or whatevers, with friends. You know, for giggles. Things we can afford. We all keep saying, a bunch of us from Columbia, we don't MAKE enough films. Why aren't we making more? Are we scared? What the hell's our problem?

I'm also planning on writing even longer answers to blog interviewers. You know, REALLY getting into it.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 5/02/2008 01:27:00 PM

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In a post below, we noted Matt Zoller Seitz's decision to abandon print journalism -- and that includes blogging -- in order to concentrate on filmmaking. Now, at GreenCine, David Hudson draws attention to one other blogger calling it quits and another who is contemplating an exodus as well. Over at Flickhead, Ray Young issues a simple farewell, reprinted here in its entirety:

"“It was more than being holy and it was less than being free”

All things must pass...I’m outta here...

A more detailed explanation is found buried in his comments thread, when Young responds to the various posters with this:

The Walmart-style overdevelopment of film blogs, however, has left a bad taste for me. There are just too many, and my antiquated method of concentration can no longer keep the pace nor adequately process what little I’m able to read.

Plus, I feel this proliferation has divided a lot writers and readers into segregated camps — academics and intellectuals, pop culture and nostalgia mavens, etc. I rarely sense a middle ground.

As an example of one of my misgivings, here, in this comment box, I should be providing some long-winded and exact explanation of my actions. (Many bloggers favor run-on sentences and bloated paragraphs, and will jump on the tiniest crack in one’s beliefs.) But the subject is vast, and by the time I could formulate a proper evaluation everyone will have long since moved on to The Next Thing.

However, I’ve sensed the so-called blogosphere has slowed somewhat; is my blog’s demise part of a dawning exodus?

I’ve already started doing other work that you may eventually find online.

This was fun for a while, but, like I said, all things must pass. Thanks again for your support.

As Hudson notes, one of the posters on that comments thread is Tim Lucas from Video Watchblog. Over at his own blog, Lucas writes his own admission that film blogging isn't what it used to be. The entire post is very much worth reading, but here's an excerpt from the ending:

As this world of ours continues to place all its hopes for information and community like so many eggs into this ether basket, people ought to know what I am not ashamed to admit: that, sooner or later, it becomes the secret wish of all bloggers to stop blogging. The instant gratification of this format is nice, but it only lasts for an instant. It wouldn't surprise me if all the blogs I check each day -- rather than reading some of the acknowledged great writers whose works I've never read, finishing Thomas Pynchon's most recent book, or starting in on Alexander Theroux's new and forbiddingly long novel -- disappeared off the face of the net within the next year or two. One thing I can promise you about published writers, and generally about any writer of quality: once they have tasted publication, they are in it for keeps, and they will swim upstream toward maintaining that livelihood as long as there is breath left in them. As for Matt Zoller Seitz, to whom I send my best wishes and highest hopes, he's jumping into another stream with stronger rapids -- filmmaking -- but it's still a form of writing and, these days, perhaps the ultimate form of publication.

No, I'm not resigning this blog yet, but, like the wretch who lives in a small room containing nothing but a chair, a table and a loaded revolver, it's something I contemplate every day. For better or worse, so far, other contemplations have won the upper hand.

Filmmaker planned in the last issue a piece on the changing face of film journalism that focused on blogs, but when we thought that everything that could be said had been said, we decided to postpone it. Shortly after that decision, there have been a slew of articles and news about blogging and the blogosphere, and we certainly didn't predict that the tone would be so downbeat. But, honestly, I get it. I mean, I keep up this blog, but I am nowhere near the kind of daily poster that many of the stars of the blogosphere are. And I don't write much criticism because I have a hard time writing snap judgements of things hours after seeing them at festivals. I tend to like to stew on them a bit and then, in Filmmaker style, maybe talk to the director, weave in quotes, etc. So, I greatly admire those who are able to get those instant reactions up on the internet so quickly. But I do enough posting on this blog to greatly appreciate those who write with greater volume or greater depth on theirs.

And because we recently added Google Analytics to this blog, I also now understand the kind of anxiety the writers above allude to with regards to traffic stats. It's easy to become obsessive about analyzing your traffic reports, seeing who is linking to you, seeing what the top key words are. You can be bummed out that an old blog post that Steve Gallagher wrote titled "Nazi Porn" (about the cancellation of the publishing of a German book due to the notoriety of its claims of secret SS porn movies) regularly sends more traffic to this blog than a great article like, for example, Lance Weiler's digital distribution DIY tutorial in the Winter Issue (and then realize as you are typing this that you have cynically goosed your numbers once again, albeit at the expense of your bounce rate.)

I'll have more on this later, and there will undoubtedly be more commentary around the blogosphere on Young, Seitz and Lucas's posts. We'll keep you posted.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/01/2008 09:12:00 PM

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