Archive for February, 2005
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005
Unfortunately, I didn’t see Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou-Chou when it was released theatrically by Cowboy Pictures in 2002 following its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, but I finally caught up with the film via Home Vision Entertainment’s DVD release this past weekend.
This is one of the most stylistically innovative and haunting films I have seen in quite some time. Focusing on the devotees of a fictitious Japanese pop star who communicate through a fansite bulletin board, director Shunji Iwai originally conceived the idea of exploring the world around a teen pop star after attending a Faye Wong concert in Hong Kong and witnessing the almost religious devotion of her fans. Although he initially wrote all of the BBS entries himself as an experiment in creative writing, the imaginary Lily Chou-Chou fansite soon obtained a cult following, and Iwai’s creation took on a life of its own as more and more people began writing in to debate the ideas explored in her (non-existent) music.
Iwai never finished the novel he set out to write; instead, he adapted the BBS entries to fashion a screenplay based on the Lily Chou-Chou phenomenon, in which isolated teenage fans communicate anonymously about the singer before finally converging at one of her concerts, at which one of them is mysteriously murdered.
As Anthony Leong writes in his review of the film: “Several years in the making and having gone through multiple incarnations (including an unfinished novel and an on-line forum), All About Lily Chou-Chou is a film that confronts the destructive power of teen alienation in modern-day Japan head-on.”
Iwai himself says, “This new film looks in uncompromising details at the everyday life of 14-year-old teens, as blunt and direct a blow to the body.”
.… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005
Although the films selected for New Directors/New Films have not yet appeared on the Web sites of the Film Society of Lincoln Center or the Museum of Modern Art, which jointly present this renowned festival, Variety today announced the 2005 lineup, which will open on March 23 with first-time Angolan film director Zeze Gamboa’s The Hero (California Newsreel), which recently won the grand prize in the World Cinema Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
Additional Sundance titles selected for the 34th ND/NF include Jeff Feuerzeig’s The Devil and Daniel Johnson, which won best director in the Documentary Competition, as well as Henry-Alex Rubin and Dan Shapiro’s Murderball (ThinkFilm), and Phil Morrison’s Junebug (Sony Pictures Classics).
Among the remaining titles selected for ND/NF, which runs through April 3, are: Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s U.S./Cuba co-production, Young Rebels; Hubert Sauper’s documentary Darwin’s Nightmare, about globalization as reflected in a Tanzanian eco-disaster; Abdelatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive (New Yorker Films), one of my favorite films at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival; Robin Campillo’s They Came Back; Ismael Ferroukhi’s Le Grand Voyage (Film Movement), which won an award for Best First Feature at last year’s Venice Film Festival; Matteo Garrone’s Primo Amore (Strand Releasing); Saverio Costanzo’s Private (Avatar Films), which received the Golden Leopard at last year’s Locarno Film Festival; Eleonore Faucher’s Sequins (New Yorker); Cate Shortland’s Somersault (Magnolia Pictures); and Nimrod Antal’s Kontroll (ThinkFilm).
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Monday, February 21st, 2005
It’s Monday morning and I’ll allow myself one posting based on the a.m.’s quick scan of what’s out there on the web. The choices? Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile pager records and phone book… or perhaps, this engaging interview with our friend, the author, critic and programmer Kent Jones. appearing in Gothamist.
From the piece:
“I mean, I really, really hate TV — the commercials, the ‘hand-held’ camera, the music, the personalities of the newscasters. I’ve given things like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos a try, and I see their merits but they seem like canned art to me — stuff that’s already been carefully digested (the non-functional American family, the odd juxtaposition of the macabre and the everyday) and then sold as cutting edge: how else could it get on TV? Having said that, I love old TV: The Honeymooners, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, which I’m watching a lot of right now with my sons.”
.… Read the rest
Sunday, February 20th, 2005
A few years after its move to Potsdamer Platz, the old dead zone between East and West Berlin that’s now a somber (at least in rainy February) pedestrian mall lit by the logos of its surrounding corporate spires, the Berlin Film Festival represents a shrewdly intelligent answer to the questions surrounding film production, exhibition and distribution today. Whereas the success of most festivals boils down to the cruel calculus of distribution deals and premiering masterpieces, the Berlin Film Festival, through its accompanying Talent Campus and its various retrospective programs, embraces a kind of “film festival as film school” model. By streaming 530 young filmmakers from around the world between its screenings and their various meetings and seminars at the nearby Campus, Berlin topper Dieter Kosslick and his team implicitly argue for the perpetual regrowth of cinema: if you don’t like any of the films on display, then who’s to say that one of the campus talents won’t return next year with one you do.
I’ll have more to say about the festival and the Talent Campus in the Spring print edition, but, for now, here are quick thoughts on some of the films I managed to see.
Unfortunately, I missed probably the most talked about film in the Competition, Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, a drama about two Palestinian suicide bombers that was filmed in Namblus. “An olive branch” between the Jewish and Palestinian communities is how one U.S. distributor described the film, which has a script developed at the Sundance labs. While some feel that the film’s subject matter and its humanistic take on the lives of two would-be suicide bombers will make a major U.S. distribution deal unlikely, the enthusiastic public and critical response (although it confounded predictors by failing to win an award) should prompt someone in the States to pick it up.
I also missed Mark Cornford-May’s U-Carmen, a South African film about a production of Carmen staged in a South African township that won the grand prize, the Golden Bear.
But I did catch the other film dubbed before the festival as a hot … Read the rest
Saturday, February 19th, 2005
The 55th Berlin International Film Festival has announced the prizes for this year’s event.
The top prize, the Golden Bear, was awarded to U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (Carmen in Khayelitsha, South Africa, 2004), by Marc Dornford-May.
“Director Mark Dornford-May’s adaptation [of Bizet's Carmen] is based on his own thorough analysis of the opera. Transposing a previous stage production into a feature-length film, his screenplay sets the story of the love affair between Carmen and Don Jose against the hardship suffered by those living in a South African township. For the film’s soundtrack, the opera’s lyrics were translated into Xhosa.”
.… Read the rest
Friday, February 18th, 2005
As if I needed any further proof that Kim Jong-Il is completely insane, my friend Paul Zucker showed up for dinner earlier this week with an unexpected gift: On the Art of the Cinema, Kim’s absolutely bizarre treatise on good movies and revolution. Written in 1973, 13 years before Kim kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-Ok and his ex-wife, actress Che Eun-Hui, and kept them for eight years while making them produce propaganda films, the book reads like a 329-page spoof written by the staff of The Onion.
Chapter subheadings include:
“A screen portrayal demands first-class filming techniques”
“Make-up is a noble art”
“The assistant director is a creative worker”
“A song with unfailing appeal is a true masterpiece”
On the Art of the Cinema currently has a five-star rating on Amazon (three reviews). List price: $27.50, with free super-saver shipping.
.… Read the rest
Friday, February 18th, 2005
The IFP/NY, which administers financing to documentary projects in various stages of development through its Anthony Radziwill Documentary Fund, has announced this year’s recipients.
Leslie McCleave (How Sweet the Sound –The Blind Boys of Alabama), Tara Wray ( Manhattan, Kansas), Jay Rosenblatt (Suicide), Sam Green (The Universal Language) and Lourdes Portillo (When the Tide Comes In) will receive $10,000 each.
“The Documentary Fund is named in memory of the late Anthony Radziwill, an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer, and was originally established in 2000 by Lee Radziwill and Carole Radziwill to provide a single unrestricted stipend annually to an emerging documentary filmmaker for an outstanding completed documentary feature as part of the IFP Gotham Awards. As of 2004, grants [are now awarded to multiple] projects at the development stage.”
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Wednesday, February 16th, 2005
“For the second year in a row, the Berlinale Talent Campus plays host to The Talent Press. A group of young film critics and journalists gain valuable writing experience and insight on the business of covering a big international film festival by being integrated into the pipelines of the Campus and the various other sections of the Berlin International Film Festival.”
Nigerian Film ciritic Steve Ayorinde from The Talent Press profiles the Berlinale’s Talent Campus and its focus on “the positive side of cultural globalisation” in IndieWIRE today.
.… Read the rest
Wednesday, February 16th, 2005
Kudos to the folks at Dependent Films, an Illinois-based independent film production company, which offers downloadable sample contracts, budgets, storyboards, templates for call sheets, continuity logs and daily production reports, among numerous other FREE files on its Web site.
.… Read the rest
Monday, February 14th, 2005
Among the artists scheduled to show their work at the forthcoming -scopeNewYork contemporary art fair, March 11-14, is Thomas Allen, whose debut exhibit at Foley Gallery in New York closed earlier this month.
“Inspired by a View-Master and ‘pop-up’ books as a child, Allen,” who hails from Minnesota, “became interested in recreating these three-dimensional experiences” — which he does to great effect by cutting up old books and pulp fiction paperbacks, which he then uses as still life subjects.
“Allen gently cuts around the shape of his figures, physically releasing them from their two-dimensional surface. They are brought to life from their pages and covers with detailed lighting and a thin focus. Pulled and positioned, their intended drama comes to life.”
“Pop-up art ascends to sublime heights in these twenty-by-twenty-four-inch chromogenic prints of constructions made from old books,” writes The New Yorker magazine about the recent exhibition at Foley. “Why not view the books themselves? Because here the artist controls the lighting, perspective, and focus to create multidimensional scenes rich in detail.” The resulting images are distinctively cinematic.
.… Read the rest
