Archive for June, 2004
Saturday, June 26th, 2004
Congrats — and welcome back to NYC — to Manohla Dargis, who returns, in print at least, to the Big Apple as film critic for the New York Times. She replaces Elvis Mitchell, who left last month, and joins A.O. “Tony” Scott and Stephen Holden.
According to Nikki Finke’s piece, Dargis, who is being allowed to stay in L.A., was hired as much for her ability to write longer film think pieces as for her daily reviewing. Dargis has always figured out how to strike that balance between thoughtful ideas and rhetorical provocation, so here’s hoping that the Sunday Arts and Leisure section becomes more of a read with her there.
… Read the rest
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004
Filmmaker has a longstanding policy of not covering projects in which its staff members are involved — which is why you have never read in the pages of the magazine about Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was or The Wife, Harmony Korine’s Gummo or Julien Donkey-Boy, Jesse Peretz’s First Love, Last Rights or The Chateau, Peter Sollet’s Raising Victor Vargas and John Leguizamo’s Undefeated, among numerous other films — each of which was produced by Filmmaker editor Scott Macaulay and his partner at Forensic Films, Robin O’Hara.
However, we’ve been chomping at the bit to spill the beans about Scott and Robin’s latest producing endeavor — and since Variety features the story on its front page this morning, we’ll simply reference that article, “HBO says Hey Ya to pop tuner”:
“Making its first major entry into the musical game, HBO will start production in late summer on an original tuner to star Outkast’s Andre 3000 and Big Boi. …The pic, [to be directed by Bryan Barber], is a full-blown singing and dancing musical that will inject contemporary music into a period tale. Some of the songs will come from Outkast’s Grammy winning album “Speakerboxxx/the Love Below,” but most will be original tunes written by Outkast that will form the basis of a future album.”
Congratulations Scott and Robin!
… Read the rest
Sunday, June 20th, 2004
The Asia Times’ Pepe Escobar is always a good read when it comes to the Mid East and the War on Terror, but today’s web edition of the paper contains this interesting story on Girlfriends, a film that seems to be Bollywood’s (delayed) answer to Basic Instinct. Predictably, the film, which deals frankly with a lesbian relationship, is being attacked — violently — by Hindu right-wing organizations seeking a government ban as well as critics and those on the left.
The “grade C film” tells the story of a lesbian who falls in love with a man, causing her female lover to become psychopathic. Critics and lesbians have attacked the film for suggesting that gay women are violent man-haters, while the Hindu religious right has responded equally predictably.
Quoting the article: “Shiv Sena has criticized the movie claiming that it goes ‘against the grain of Indian culture by portraying scenes of lovemaking between two women.’ A member of its women’s wing told Asia Times Online that films like Girlfriend are ‘a bad influence’ and a ‘blot on Indian culture.’ ‘When most Indian women do not know about things like lesbianism, why expose them to it?’ she asked.
‘Women seeking satisfaction from other women is alien to our culture,’ says a member of Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). ‘We will not allow films like Girlfriend to poison our women by making them curious about immoral things.’
… Read the rest
Sunday, June 20th, 2004
There’s a great lead article in Variety this week by Dana Harris and Claude Brodesser — sorry, subscription only — titled “Films Buried Alive.” And although the headline might lead you to think that the piece is about the many long-delayed films on the Miramax release shelf, it’s actually a perceptive article about the politics involved in greenlighting a studio film. It confirms in print something producers have long known: despite the importance placed by studio execs on the development process, the scripts that actually get greenlit by the studios are often the least developed ones. And if there’s one piece of practical advice contained within the piece for working filmmakers, it’s this: if you’re a director brought on to an existing project, talk about the film, not the script. In other words, put forth a vision of the project that encompasses all the creative elements, and don’t get bogged down in deconstructing the tortured development path a project might have been on.
Here are a few salient quotes from the piece:
“Development has long been a popular topic for complaint, but the process has gotten worse in the past decade, thanks to the immense expansion of studio development teams and the growth of bureaucracy.
But, filmmakers argue, development troops with their script notes often are irrelevant, because the fate of a film depends on an almost mystical convergence of events.
A filmmaker has to have a vision for the project, a star has to be eager and available (and affordable) and a top studio executive has to register his support with a firm offer — and all of this has to occur at one brief moment in time…
A project’s greenlight also involve questions of timing and timeliness. Josiah’s Canon co-scripter Brian Koppelman says you have to seize the moment: ‘There’s a brief window of opportunity to breathe new life into a project when a director comes on and writers get hired.’
‘There is a window that opens up with a director and a star in place, and it starts to close with the passage of time,’ says Fox … Read the rest
Saturday, June 19th, 2004
Sitting here editing the latest issue of Filmmaker, I came across this interview segment from Andy Bichelbauer, the “Yes Man” featured in Chris Smith’s outrageously entertaining political doc The Yes Men forthcoming this fall from United Artists.
The Yes Men are a group of political performance-art provocateurs who infiltrate government and NGO-type events and pose as World Trade Organization officials. But lately the group has been having problems dealing with the implications of the Patriot Act, which broadly construes a variety of behaviors as potentially terrorist acts. Within the art world, the first casualty is that of Steve Kurtz, a Buffalo art professor and member of the Critical Art Ensemble. In a truly disturbing case, after his wife died of a cardiac arrest in her sleep, Kurtz found himself in jail when the police officers who arrived at his home found supposed “bio-terrorism equipment” — the Petri dishes and lab cultures Kurtz was using for a new art piece dealing with genetically modified foodstuffs.
Currently, Kurtz’s students are being subpoenaed and the case will be presented before a grand jury at the end of June. Follow the link in Bichelbauer’s quote for more info.
“Filmmaker: Andy, are you concerned that given the rising of the Yes Men it will be more difficult for you to infiltrate these organizations? Or are they just as defenseless as they’ve always been?
Bichlbaum: Right now we’re so busy trying to deal with this FBI USA Patriot Act situation that I don’t know what I think about anything else. We’ve found ourselves conscripted by the current situation described at length at www.rtmark.com. Basically, the FBI has decided to target this artist [Steve Kurtz]. He’s going up before a grand jury in Buffalo on June 15 and he’s a close friend.
Filmmaker: What can people do to support him?
Bichlbaum: Financial donations: The CAE Defense Fund has so far received over 200 donations in amounts ranging from $5 to $400. This is a wonderful outpouring of sympathy, but a drop in the bucket compared to the potential costs of the … Read the rest
Thursday, June 17th, 2004
In our effort to present to you, our dear readers, with links and contacts you won’t find elsewhere, I present the following sincere e-mail received by a reader of this blog, who has crafted a Flash animation site promoting both herself and Keanu Reeves and The Matrix:
“Hello, first congratulations for your website :-)
I present myself: I am a 36 year old young woman, impassioned by the cinema, Internet and Flashmx.
I invite you, by the present one, to come to visit my 4 galleries of
animated photographs, dedicated to the Matrix trilogy and Mister Keanu
Reeves, on the homepage of my website to the following address:
“http://www.frederique.ch”
Of course, my dream would be to work exclusively for the cinema and the
television, but that depends on the success of my work.
I thank you for making us dream and travel with the 7th art and the medias.
I will be grateful to you to give me your opinion and I thank you in
advance.
Please have my best greetings.”
Those who would like to contact Frederique will find a contact e-mail on her site.
… Read the rest
Thursday, June 17th, 2004
This weekend’s Allied Media Conference will feature a keynote speech entitled “Adventures in Illegal Art” by Mark Hosler of Negativland, the recording group famous for testing the limits of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The conference will also feature the premiere of Negativland’s mash-up of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ — which, in a fittingly ironic gesture, was recently stolen by hackers from Negativland’s mainframe computer.
According to the Negativland site, The Mashin’ of the Christ “was created using a combination of decrypted footage ripped from DVDs rented from Netflix and Blockbuster, ‘found’ 16mm film footage, original CGI, films obtained from peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, the ‘found’ vocals of the Rev. Estus W. Pirkle, and original music composed and played by Negativland.”
… Read the rest
Wednesday, June 16th, 2004
According to recent posts on the Fangoria Web site: MTV.com is offering a pair of on-line counterparts to fright film news segments that aired recently on MTV, MTV2 and MTVU. “The first piece, titled Hollywood Horror: Made (Originally) in Japan, looks at the Asian horror remake craze, focusing on The Grudge, The Ring and Dark Water. The segment (produced and written by Vanessa White Wolf with Robert Mancini) featured interviews with Grudge star Sarah Michelle Gellar, Rob Zombie, Ringu director Hideo Nakata (currently helming the U.S. sequel The Ring 2), redux producer Roy Lee and Fangoria editor Tony Timpone. ‘It’s all about Hollywood’s new love of Asian horror,’ says Mancini.
” ‘Our second story explores the social context of horror,’ says Mancini, ‘looking at the theory that bad news is good news for horror films.’ Dubbed It’s Alive! Horror is Reborn (Again) and written and directed by Mancini, the segment boasted interviews with directors Wes Craven and George Romero, plus Zombie and Timpone once more.”
In other horror-film-related news: Media Blasters has acquired two new movies from celluloid terrorist Takashi Miike for U.S. release: the violent (of course) Yakuza thriller Deadly Outlaw Rekka and his stunning Ringu-style horror yarn One Missed Call. The former, a 2002 tale of warring gangsters, stars Miike veterans Riki (Dead or Alive trilogy) Takeuchi, Ryosuke (Graveyard of Honor) Miki and Kenichi (Happiness of the Katakuris) Endo, with a cameo by Asian action legend Sonny (Kill Bill) Chiba.
Media Blasters is currently mulling over theatrical exposure for both titles, having scored earlier with Ichi the Killer. Meanwhile, both Deadly Outlaw Rekka and One Missed Call will screen at Montreal’s Fantasia film festival, running July 8 to August 1.
Takashi Miike’s surreal Lynchian/Cronenberg-like Yakuza/horror film odyssey Gozu will open theatrically via Pathfinder Pictures on July 16 at New York’s Cinema Village, August 13 at the Landmark Kendall Square in Boston, August 28 at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX, September 10 at the Landmark E. Street Cinema in Washington, D.C. … Read the rest
Wednesday, June 16th, 2004
While writing the blogs below, I’ve been listening to the new CD remaster of Brian Eno’s great Here Come the Warm Jets, which was recently released along with three other Eno classics from the ’70s. Todd Haynes referenced this album in his Velvet Goldmine, and, if anything, it sounds more inventive and emotionally connecting after all these years.
All four albums are thoughtfully reviewed at Pitchfork Media, and tracks from two of them — Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and Before and After Science, along with a couple of other Eno albums, provide most of the soundtrack to Olivier Assayas’s new film Clean. Here, from Enoweb, the Brian Eno website, is a posting from a viewer, N. Onnymous, who saw the film at Cannes and unraveled its music cue sheet:
“I thought I’d mention that I saw Clean in Cannes. Eno’s music is used so beautifully — not like some semi-mysterious, darkly tinted background, which is the way his music is often used in movies, but as a kind of redemptive aura around Maggie Cheung’s character, and around her little boy. If I remember correctly, the tracks used are: ‘The Lost Day,’ ‘An Ending,’ ‘Stars, Spider and I,’ ‘Taking Tiger Mountain’ (Assayas does something wonderful with that one — in a way, it’s the little boy’s theme), and a tiny bit of ‘The Jezebel Spirit.’”
… Read the rest
Wednesday, June 16th, 2004
Back in 1999, the first film I ever worked on was Raul Ruiz’s The Golden Boat (James Schamus’s first production), and, using some grant money that I raised at my job at The Kitchen, I got my friend John Zorn to do the score. (I ran into Zorn on the street a while ago and he told me he’d score another film of mine if I asked — “But you know the drill,” he said. “I’ll do it, fast, cheap, but I get complete creative control!”
Anyway, John did amazing work for not much money, and one of the score’s best elements was the playing of Robert Quine. My jaw dropped when I walked in the studio and realized that Quine, whose work with Lou Reed, the Voidoids and others is legendary, was doing session duty on a no-budget film. His playing was magnificent. I was saddened to see in various places this week Quine’s obituary. He apparently took his own life after being depressed by the death of his wife last year.
For more on Quine, check the Web site link above.
… Read the rest
