Archive for June, 2004
Wednesday, June 16th, 2004
Producers don’t get all the props that they deserve, so I was happy to see the glam portrait of downtown New York producer Caroline Baron, whose credits include Monsoon Wedding and Bennett Miller’s upcoming Capote, in the new Vanity Fair. The article was as much about Baron’s activities as a specialty exhibitor, though, as her producing.
What is her specialty distribution biz? Baron is the founder of FilmAid International, a non-profit organization that brings outdoor cinema to both countries devastated by war and the populations displaced by its effects. The organization also runs a video program that puts cameras in the hands of young refugees.
From the organization’s homepage: “Civilians have always been the victims of war. Today, they are often the target. The world’s refugee and displaced person population — 30 million — has never been as large. By the thousands, people in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America are forced to abandon their homes, families and livelihoods. Host communities and relief organizations respond quickly to immediate needs of food, shelter and medical attention, but refugees too often go without education, a sense of community and stimulation, or heart-lifting diversion. Trauma and depression can cripple their capacity to cope. These issues become acute as months stretch into years and decades of waiting in a refugee camp. FilmAid addresses what other aid agencies cannot.”
… Read the rest
Tuesday, June 15th, 2004
The great U.K. music magazine The Wire doesn’t have much of a Web site (there are some long interview transcriptions and MP3 downloads from artists like Sonic Youth’s Jim O’Rourke), but the print edition remains invaluable for anyone interested in new music.
The mag has a small column on the Web and, this issue, it points to a couple of interesting sites. The first is The Eye, a Web site containing mini downloadable documentaries on music and media groups like Wire, Papa M, Locust and others. The column also mentions something closer to home — the launch of P.S. 1′s Internet radio station, which extends this New York institution’s cultural reach to the broadband.
… Read the rest
Tuesday, June 15th, 2004
Did the performer Andy Kaufman fake his own death from a rare form of lung cancer in May 1984? Filmmaker Enrique Presley, who is currrently seeking look-alikes for a feature film project, seems to think so. And according to Claire Chanel’s message board and the blog Andy Kaufman Returns — on which Andy is thought to post frequent entries — he is not alone.
More importantly, if Andy Kaufman — who would now be 55 years old — did fake his own death and decided tomorrow to show up at Presley’s casting call… would he get the gig?
You decide.
… Read the rest
Tuesday, June 15th, 2004
For a political documentary persecution might just be the highest form of flattery. As the release date of Michael Moore’s documentary moves closer, so do the roadblocks. First, of course there was Michael Eisner and his Disney-isn’t-political rejection of the film. Now the film must face ratings and the right wing. MPAA has given it a R rating because the documentary is, what? Too violent? Obscene? Truthful?
The right wing doesn’t want either children or adults to see the doc. David Bossie, president of Citzens United wants to tell people the terrible truth about left wing documentary filmmakers. He has targeted not only Michael Moore, but also philanthropist George Soros (whose documentary fund was subsumed by the Sundance Documentary Fund in 2001). For Bossie, “Moore and Soros are consumed by hate, hate of America and hate of President Bush. Soros writes million-dollars checks to left-wing organizations to run attack ads on President Bush. Michael Moore is a liberal filmmaker trying to rewrite history by ignoring the fact that Bill Clinton did nothing while terrorists waged war against Americans. These liberal America-haters cannot undo President Bush’s track record of success in the War on Terror.” Ouch!
Another group just wants the movie never to be shown. Move America Forward is calling on Americans to phone theaters and film execs to urge them to dump the film with the headline, “STOP MICHAEL MOORE FROM PROFITTING IN HIS ATTACKS ON AMERICA & OUR MILITARY.” As Variety reports, “Organizers of MAF also were involved in the Defend Reagan Committee, which leaned on CBS to remove the miniseries about Ronald and Nancy Reagan from its sked.” Move America Forward chairman Howard Kallogian and his group tell visitors, “If you don’t want to see them promoting anti-American propaganda then tell these executives so directly.” Of course, the free-speech door swings both ways. You could also write Move America Forward and tell them you want some Moore. info@MoveAmericaForward.org
… Read the rest
Tuesday, June 15th, 2004
Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me — a tongue-in-beef documentary in which Spurlock eats only at McD’s for 30 days — has been setting box office records in Australia for a non-fiction film. It also has been making enemies. It turns out that Guy Russo, CEO and Managing Director of McDonald’s down under, just isn’t “lovin’ it.” Previously McDonald’s has maintained a hands-off approach, attacking the film through position papers issued by pro-corporate fronts. But now McDonald’s is speaking for itself. The Australians will be airing attack ads and have made the film the centerpiece of its Web site with the headline, “Seen ‘That Movie’ ? / Let’s Separate Fact from Fiction.” Ok, but can I get that with a side of lies.
… Read the rest
Monday, June 14th, 2004
Amid a pre-election summer of sweltering political films like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and John Sayles’s Silver City comes maverick director Esther Bell’s “ficto-documentary” Exist.
Weaving together documentary and fiction, Bell takes real activists — she calls them “actorvists” — and builds a dramatic narrative film around their experiences, intimately probing the individual lives of the millions marching in the streets.
Playing for the first time in the United States at a special preview screening sponsored by Clamor Magazine on June 19th at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, Exist is a centerpiece of the Allied Media Conference.
The Allied Media Conference takes place June 18-20 in the swing state of Ohio, where thousands of young people will participate in activist workshops about media coverage and the forthcoming protests that will surround the Republican National Convention.
Exist is Bell’s second feature following Godass, a semi-autobiographical film starring Julianne Nicholson and the B-52′s Fred Schneider, which was picked up by Showtime and the Sundance Channel following a successful festival run.
A lifelong activist, Bell is the founder of the Unamerican Film Festival, now in its third year. This traveling selection of trailers, teasers, and short films showcases political features and documentaries by American filmmakers that many Republicans attack as “unpatriotic”.
… Read the rest
Monday, June 14th, 2004
For Philip K. Dick fans out there — and I’m one of them — there’s a lot of excitement surrounding Richard Linklater’s new film, A Scanner Darkly. Based on one of Dick’s best books, the film promises to capture the Dick-ian mindset, with its mixture of philosophical paranoia, ’70s drug-era existentialism, and topsy turvy identity questioning, in a way that none of the other Dick adaptations (Bladerunner, Total Recall, Minority Report, etc., have done.
Jason Koornick has long operated a Philip K. Dick fansite which recently went “official” with the participation of the Dick estate. On the site, there’s now a page from Dick’s children talking up the new film with some new on-set photos to boot. Check it out here.
… Read the rest
Thursday, June 10th, 2004
Calling Jeff Krulik:
Kathy Hilton, mother of Paris and Nicky, continues her search for “14 deserving men and women” to take part in an unscripted television series for NBC. “Hilton will use her social status, celebrity connections, knowledge and experience to help transform the lives of the worthy contestants by exposing them to the glamorous lifestyle of the rich, famous and powerful.”
The throngs of social-climbers who show up this Saturday, June 12, from 9AM – 5PM at New York’s Tavern on the Green, headshots in hand, could potentially transform this casting call for NBC’s ill-conceived reality series into the 21st-century equivalent of a Depression-era bread line.
… Read the rest
Wednesday, June 9th, 2004
In the late sixties and seventies, foreign films and foreign-film distributors found themselves sharing theaters with a burgeoning porn industry. In fact many serious European art films were promoted by enterprising theater owners in lurid and lascivious ways, suggesting some heady cinematic brew was actually a steamy orgy.
Of course, art theaters — and porno — have gone the way of DVD. But China has now revived this cinematic bait-and-switch.
Reuters recently chronicled the history of one small film, Maiden Work, which was pushed it into the realm of pornography by the Chinese company that purchased it for distribution.
… Read the rest
Wednesday, June 9th, 2004
As reported in the Guardian Unlimited today: “The Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has thrown Bayreuth into confusion. Not by his outrageous take on the operas of Richard Wagner, nor by spectacular fallouts with divas — but by admitting that he is not up to the job of directing the festival’s forthcoming Ring cycle.
“A statement from the festival said the sudden resignation by Von Trier, the director of Dogville and The Idiots, stemmed from his conviction that ‘the Ring would clearly exceed his powers, and that therefore he would not be able to fulfill his ambitions of his own high standards and the special standards of the Bayreuth festival.’ ”
Another filmmaker who has thrown in the towel on a future project according to the Guardian is Kevin Smith, who “has reportedly taken himself out of the director’s seat on Miramax’s forthcoming comic book adaptation of The Green Hornet.”
Smith’s decision is apparently unrelated to speculation that Disney is ready to sell the Miramax film company back to founders and co-chairmen Harvey and Bob Weinstein after the row over Michael Moore’s new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11 — which Moore, following a well-received preview screening of the film in Los Angeles yesterday, predicted would gross as much as three times the box office of Bowling for Columbine.
According to yesterday’s New York Times, Disney chief executive Michael Eisner was considering the move after experiencing “accumulated aggravation with the Weinstein brothers.”
… Read the rest
