Archive for July, 2004
Friday, July 30th, 2004
Producer Jeff Levy-Hinte (Thirteen, High Art, and the Venice-bound Mysterious Skin) wrote one of the most important articles Filmmaker has ever published in our current issue. Entitled “The Digital Divide,” it’s a trenchant and provocative attack on the intersecting political and lobbying efforts that comprise the MPAA’s “War on Piracy.”
Levy-Hinte uses last fall’s “screener battle” (which he, Ted Hope, the IFP and the IFP/L.A. as well as an alliance of independent producers all fought) as the jumping off point to discuss what’s next when it comes to the effect of anti-piracy policies on independent filmmakers. By parsing the history and economics of intellectual property law, fair use and the growth of piracy, Levy-Hinte constructs a startling argument, charging that the MPAA’s policies are specifically designed to “protect” one specific style and genre of film above all others…
To get the news out on this important piece, we’ve posted the article as a downloadable PDF. Follow Jeff’s argument here.
… Read the rest
Friday, July 30th, 2004
This season’s oddest cultural convergence? A play, two movies, and a novel about killing the president, via NewYorkmetro.com:
“Even before the Patriot Act, dropping the merest intimation that you’d like to do harm to the president of the United States was always enough to draw the Sauron-like gaze of the Secret Service upon you, or at least earn you a little coffee-stained Post-it somewhere in your FBI file. And beyond that, admitting to assassination fantasies has always seemed creepy: Among sane people, the glamour quotient of John Hinckley Jr. has never been particularly high.
“But recent widespread feelings of anxiety, frustration, and helplessness seem to have caused a curious blip on the cultural radar: Assassination has become the taboo du jour….”
… Read the rest
Thursday, July 29th, 2004
IndieWIRE has posted an interesting interview with prolific director Takashi Miike, whose latest film Gozu opens in limited release via Pathfinder Pictures this weekend.
J-horror aficiandos should also check out photographer Michael Lavine’s full-page portrait of Miike in Filmmaker‘s summer issue.
Lavine will regularly contribute portraits of filmmakers and behind-the-scenes photographs from movie sets to future issues of Filmmaker.… Read the rest
Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
Filmmaker doesn’t run a lot of letters to the editor. We’re usually strapped for space at our regular 96 or 112 page count, so we can’t publish all the letters we’d like to. One letter that calls out to be published, at least here on the blog, is below. Feel free to post if you can answer this fellow’s question.
Hi,
I am interested in an adult scene in film and video which is connected with both Paramount (then run by Barry Diller) and Tri-Star (when Columbia was owned by The Coca-Cola Company).
I believe the film was released in 1979 and the video in 1983.
I am interested in the special effects/visual effects relating to a scene concerning a “particular man” and the use of a derivative mirror image scene of his head in video and film.
The scene was constructed with the use of mirrors in which the particular man’s head was substituted onto the body of another man i.e. the particular man’s head replaced the head belonging to another body.
The scene depicts self-stimulation and a sink.
In regard to the creation of the initial scene, one method, I believe was called the shuftan process, or the front-screen projection process, allegedly revised significantly as the innovation process. Apparently, it’s not usually done for replacing performers, but is done to place outscaled objects in the frame by reflecting an off-screen object directly into the camera lens via a front-surface mirror. Part of the mirror silvering is scraped away so that the camera can shoot through the mirror and pick up the talent. Because line-up has to be precise, the camera can’t move.
Can you provide me with any information regarding this scene and can you advise me as to the methods that may be available in regard to checking Columbia’s videotape library?
Thanks,
Daniel
… Read the rest
Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
The Program for Media Artists (formerly the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowships) has announced the recipients of this year’s Fellowships.
The Program for Media Artists awarded 20 Fellowships of $35,000 each. Two additional fellowships of $7,500 each acknowledge emerging artists working in film and video.
Genevieve Anderson, Los Angeles, CA: Too Loud a Solitude, a feature film made with puppets about a waste compactor who rescues banned books from the trash and thus exposes the consequences of an oppressive government upon the human spirit. In addition to directing live-action and puppetry films, Anderson has also produced, directed, performed and designed for theater.
Kenneth Anger, Los Angeles, CA: Mouse Heaven, an experimental short reflecting on the iconic power of Mickey Mouse and commenting on the cultural and sentimental value placed on commercial merchandise. Anger has made experimental 16 mm films for more than 60 years. The author of several books, including Hollywood Babylon, he is currently working on his memoirs.
James Benning, Val Verde, CA: 13 Lakes, an experimental meditation on nature, offering portraits of 13 different lakes throughout the United States. Benning has made experimental films for more than 30 years. A 1993 Media Arts Fellowship recipient, he is a professor at the California Institute of the Arts and Bard College.
Natalie Bookchin, Los Angeles, CA: agoraXchange, an experiment in online collaboration — the goal is to collectively build a multiplayer game that offers “a tangible political alternative to our current world order.” Bookchin teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. Her work focuses on the Internet as both a distribution medium and as subject matter.
Andrew Garrison, Austin, TX: Between Earth and Sky, a narrative about a Mexican-American police detective investigating the death of 19 illegal immigrants as they cross the Mexico-U.S. border. Garrison’s documentaries and narratives have screened at festivals and on public television. He teaches at the University of Texas-Austin.
Sam Green, San Francisco, CA: The Universal Language, a documentary about global utopian vision through the lens of Esperanto, the universal language created in … Read the rest
Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
With the growing success of documentaries in the theatrical marketplace, studios are now scouting film festivals for potential breakouts. The 29th Toronto International Film Festival yesterday made the first announcement of this year’s nonfiction film selection. Among the 24 titles to unspool at the festival, which runs September 9-18, are 11 world premieres and six North American premieres, including:
Ken Burns’s Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, about the first black man to win the heavyweight boxing title;
George Butler’s highly anticipated film on John Kerry, Going Upriver — The Long War of John Kerry;
Peter Raymont’s Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire, about the U.N. commander’s return to Rwanda a decade after the genocide;
Susan Kaplan’s Three of Hearts, about a “trinogomous” 13-year relationship between two men and one woman;
Thomas Riedelsheimer’s Touch the Sound, about a deaf percussionist who “hears” sound through his entire body;
Bruce Weber‘s A Letter to True, a poetic reflection on war and peace;
James D. Stern and adam Del Deo’s The Year of Yao, about Chinese baskeball star Yao Ming’s first year in the NBA;
Michael Epstein’s Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate, about United Artists’s disatrous release of Michael Cimino’s 1980 film starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Isabelle Huppert, Joseph Cotten and Jeff Bridges;
Jacques Richard’s biopic about the founder of the French Cinematheque, Le Fantome d’Henri Langlois;
Gunner Palace, by Michael Tucker and Petra Eperlein’s, two jounalists embedded with troops in Iraq who report the news unreported by American television;
Peter Lynch’s Whale of a Tale, about the discovery of a whalebone during the excavation of a new Toronto subway line;
Hubert Sauper’s Darwin’s Nightmare, which examines the economic disparity of Africa’s Great Lakes region;
Don Boyd chronicles a gay marriage in Andrew and Jeremy Get Married;
Raymond Depardon’s 10e Chambre, Instants D’Audiences is an unprecented look at the French judicial system;
Clara Law’s Letters to Ali chronicles an Australian … Read the rest
Tuesday, July 27th, 2004
Fernando Di Leo’s La Mala Ordina (The Italian Connection)
The retrospective of the 61st Venice International Film Festival, September 1-11, will focus on the pioneers of Italian genre films.
Italian Kings of the Bs (1960-1980) will include 30 to 35 films by directors such as the late “maestro of mayhem” Fernando Di Leo, who made notable contributions to the spaghetti western and slasher films but is best known for his “Milieu Trilogy” of noir thrillers (Milano Calibro 9, La Mala Ordina, and Il Boss), which depict Italy’s cities as seedy hotbeds of crime and corruption; gothic horror director Mario Bava, who created and defined the giallo, a form of the thriller which concentrates on violent death as opposed to prosaic police procedural; Vittorio Cottafavi, director of historical fantasy films such as The Legions of Cleopatra, Goliath and the Dragon and Hercules and the Captive Women; the Italian “godfather of gore,” Lucio Fulci; musical comedy director Antonio Margheriti; crime film helmer Sergio Sollima, best known for the pre-Godfather mob story The Violent City; and exploitation specialist Sergio Martino, who created many notable crime films, sex comedies and giallos, along with many other directors.
Among those expected to attend the festival to introduce films in the retrospective are Quentin Tarantino and Joe Dante.
According to Variety: “This year’s 20- to 25-pic Venice retro is part of a broader four-year rediscovery and restoration project called ‘A Secret History of Italian Cinema,’ for which the fest’s parent org, the Venice Bienniale, has teamed up with the Prada Foundation…
“From the 1930s onward, Italian cinema developed and grew… thanks to lowbrow movies, in which filmmakers dared to create the country’s first genre films, capturing the market without relinquishing their innovative charge,’ said fest director Marco Muller.”
… Read the rest
Monday, July 26th, 2004
The 42nd New York Film Festival, Oct. 1-17, has announced three films as part of its gala screenings: Agne’s Jaoui’s Look at Me (Sony Pictures Classics), which won for Best Screenplay at this year’s Festival de Cannes, and which will be released in 2005; Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education, which Sony Pictures Classics plans to release on November 19; and Alexander Paynes’s Sideways, to be released by Fox Searchlight Pictures on October 20.
… Read the rest
Thursday, July 22nd, 2004
Forget Ringu (Ring), the overhyped and frankly underwhelming snoozefest that was only marginally improved in its American re-make. The ultimate word in Japanese horror is Ju-On: The Grudge, director-writer Shimizu Takashi’s nightmarish vision that follows a longtime national tradition of dreamy, surreal terror that goes as far back as Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan in 1964.
Opening theatrically July 23, Ju-On: The Grudge is a haunted house story presented in a deliciously oblique, non-linear narrative that would put Mulholland Drive and Memento to shame. What we manage to glean is that a horrible murder and suicide occurred in the now tainted home, and anyone who steps foot within its doors is to be a victim of a curse born out of revenge and rage. Our heroine, pretty home-care worker Nishina Rika (Megumi Okina), stumbles into this dwelling of the damned. But can she solve the mystery before she is claimed as its next victim?
Chillingly effective at evoking screams and shudders, Ju-On: The Grudge succeeds admirably at creating an overbearing sense of dread and hopelessness: word of mouth made it a surprise smash in Japan’s tough theatrical market, and a sequel — Ju-On: The Grudge 2 — was spawned.
Look for an American re-make this October, directed by Takashi and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. Or don’t. After seeing the original, you may not need to.
… Read the rest
Thursday, July 22nd, 2004
On Monday, August 2 at 8 p.m., Josh Wood and John Cameron Mitchell present a special one-night-only benefit reading of Scene One of Tony Kushner’s new play, “Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy”. Writer-director-actor John Cameron Mitchell (Golden Globe nominee for Hedwig & the Angry Inch) portrays the First Lady of the United States, Laura Welsh Bush, who reads Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov to dead Iraqi children! He is joined by Patricia Clarkson, who is typecast as an angel. Emmy winning actress Kristen Johnston hosts the evening.
Following the reading, Tony Kushner joins Kristen, John and Patricia for a lively roundtable discussion and audience Q&A.
American Airlines Theater
227 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Tickets: $25
800-494-TIXS
… Read the rest
