Archive for May, 2005
Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
Though I was never a big fan of the comic books, for me, the X-Men films were some of the best of recent big-budget superhero movies. Director Bryan Singer kept the focus on the characters and their relationships while also engaging in the de rigeur FX spectacle.
X-Men 3 has been underway and after a prolonged search Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn was hired to helm the film. However, Moriarty over at Ain’t It Cool News has the scoop that Vaughn is no longer on the picture due to his having to deal with personal issues. The film is still slated for a May, 2006 release date and shooting is nine weeks away. Follow the site for what I’m sure will be a week of rumors and speculation over his replacement.
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Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
Via Movie City News comes this link to McSweeney’s and a piece by J. Chris Rock and John Leary titled Reviews of DVDs that May or May Not be Pirated but Were Definitely Bought on the Street in Shanghai for About a Dollar.
Here’s an excerpt:
“The Clearing
Obtained: Wulumuqi Street, just past the #830 bus stop
Price: 7 RMB
One of the worst releases this year, in terms of DVDs bought out of a cardboard box on the street.
The colors are so blown out, we can’t see the pockmarks on either Willem Dafoe’s or Robert Redford’s face. The sound is all high-end hiss. (Is it really that hard to bribe a projectionist?) Turning on the subtitles does nothing, as they’re from a different movie, one that sounds much more interesting — a lot more swearing and mentions of Czech intelligence operatives.
Halfway through, the DVD hiccups and dies. A real disappointment to see Redford and company associated with such shoddy pirating.”
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Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
Ready to be inspired? In MediaRights’ 5th annual Media That Matters Film Festival hip-hop activists, dancing peanuts and claymation teenagers tackle today’s most pressing social issues.
Launching June 1, 2005, Media That Matters brings innovative shorts and take action tools to audiences around the country, all year long.
The 16 jury-selected films by independent and youth producers stream online, tour the country through community screenings, are broadcast on TV and are distributed as a jam-packed DVD to teachers and activists.
World Premiere at BAMcinematek: June 1st, 2005 at 7pm
Watch the films on the big screen, meet the filmmakers and MediaRights staff at the Take Action Table.
Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Avenue (between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tickets are $10.
Encore screening at 9:30pm.
And don’t forget to check out the festival website.
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Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
While in Europe recently I heard about a documentary Martin Scorsese was making about Airbus, the European consortium of British, French, Spanish and German aircraft manufacturers formed in 1970 to rival the dominant American companies like Boeing. Of course, Scorsese recently memorialized an American aerospace pioneer with The Aviator. Today via Variety comes more details about the new project:
“Scorsese will team with Spanish docu producer-director Jose Luis Lopez-Linares (Un instante en la vida ajena, Strangers to Themselves), who will take a co-director credit.
Per Spanish monthly movie magazine Fotogramas, the doc will establish a parallel between the creation of Airbus airliners and a cathedral, recording the contribution of a factory worker, engineer and architect. Pic will shoot in Toulouse, France; Bremen, Germany; and Cadiz, Spain.
The Airbus docu is the latest project from Coleccion Inmortales, a joint venture created in 2003 by Madrid’s Morena Films and Fernando Sulichin’s Paris-based Rule 8 to produce theatrical docs directed by maverick filmmakers.”
The Variety story runs, in what may just be a strange fluke of timing, on the day, according to the Washington Post, that the “Bush administration announced… that it planned to bring a case before the World Trade Organization charging the 25-nation European Union with providing illegal subsidies to Airbus.” According to the paper, the action at the WTO will most likely trigger a competing trade case accusing the U.S. of illegally subsidizing Boeing.
On a certain level, the trade war is a doc-maker’s dream, and it will be interesting to see if there’s room for a discussion of the geopolitics inside Scorsese’s church.
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Monday, May 30th, 2005
There are websites that have counted down the days to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. And then there are fansites that are collectively anticipating Chris Nolan’s new Batman Begins. At Filmmaker, we are counting down the days to Rubber Johnny. The six-minute Chris Cunningham video will be released by Warp Films on June 6 in the form of a DVD and accompanying 40-page book.
In the meantime, however, there’s this review and interview over at Pixelsurgeon.
Synopsizing the film, the site writes: “The titular Johnny is a mutant kid stuck in a wheelchair who is shut in the dark by his parents and amuses himself and his pet dog by shape-shifting and raving! Chris himself plays the part of Johnny and the film itself became a kind of side project that evolved out of a 30-second promo for Aphex Twin’s Druqks and took several years to complete for both the shooting and the editing.”
Says Cunningham in the interview: “I wanted to see how fast you can go before it becomes nonsensical, a mess. The editing style in Rubber Johnny is actually very old fashioned and simple. If you were to watch it at half speed you would see that. It was incredibly difficult to edit this video and find that line, where it seems breakneck, but still flows and makes sense as a sequence. I would have to redo each shot about twenty times in order to find something that worked. It involved a lot of experimentation. It was closer to animation than editing and I had to create the video 2 frames at a time. Sometimes spending a day on just getting two frames to work to the music.”
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Saturday, May 28th, 2005
Adam Bhala Lough is one of our 25 New Faces alumni, and his feature Bomb the System opened in New York this weekend. Here are quotes from an interview with him in the Gothamist.
On the difficult of making sympathic graffiti artist characters:
“…anyone who’s walked up to their apartment in NY and saw a fresh tag on their door, literally dripping because it just went up, and got pissed off, they’re going to bring that hatred to the movie. A lot of people even asked me, ‘why did you even bother making a movie about graffiti writers? They’re horrible people.’”
On the look of the film:
“I wanted to achieve with the visuals and cinematography what graffiti writers achieve with their spray can: a blend of styles. That in your-face style, yet at the same time raw and gritty, not polished. And I think that’s the most successful aspect of the film to me. I experimented and I tried to do something different.”
His dream cast:
“Mark Webber, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Tera Patrick and Old Dirty Bastard – may he rest in peace. I wrote a part for [ODB] in a movie and then he died. It sucks. It was a really pivotal role.”
What he would bring to a dramatic adaptation of Paris Hilton’s Confessions of an Heiress:
“It would be a tragic porno film. It would be a hardcore porno, but really sad. It would really f*** people up.”… Read the rest
Friday, May 27th, 2005
The Hollywood Film Festival and ArcLight Cinemas have announced a new monthly series for film lovers — The Hollywood World Cinema Salon. Each month a quality film will be screened, followed by a reception and networking session where film fans can engage in thought-provoking conversation. The Salons will be hosted by film journalist David Poland.
The inaugural Hollywood World Cinema Salon will take place Monday, June 6, at the ArcLight Cinemas and it will showcase Palm Pictures’ Cronicas starring John Leguizamo. The film is written and directed by Sebastian Cordero and produced by acclaimed filmmakers Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro. The next Hollywood World Cinema Salon will be Monday, July 12, and it will feature Miramax’s Secuestro Express written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz and starring Mia Maestro.
The sponsors of the Hollywood World Cinema Salon include ArcLight Cinemas, Moviecitynews.com, The Hollywood Reporter and Screen International, among others.
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Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
Via Variety comes more details about the long-awaited June 17 opening of IFC Film Center in Manhattan at the site of the old Waverly Theaters. The IFC has assembled a high-powered advisory board to lend its clout to the venture.
Writes Willa Paskin in the trade, “Helmers Steven Soderbergh, Alfonso Cuaron, Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, Errol Morris, John Sayles, Rebecca Miller and Gary Winick will be among those serving on the center’s advisory board. Nonhelmers Noah Cowan, Cynthia Swartz and Dan Talbot also are members.
“According to IFC prexy Jonathan Sehring, board members will mainly be involved with programming, ‘be it presenting new filmmakers or hosting a weekend of personal favorite films.’ Smith and Cuaron in particular are already discussing possible screening series.”
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Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
The Global Film Initiative, the New York-based not-for-profit distributor specializing in independent films from the developing world, has announced the nine films that will receive finishing-fund grants this spring. The projects are:
99% Murdered, Esteban Schroeder, Chile/Uruguay
Asleep In The Sun, Alejandro Chomski, Argentina
Dark Legend, Zhang Ming, China
The Gaze, Sepideh Farsi, Iran
To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die, Djamshed Usmonov, Tajikistan
I Am From Titov Veles, Teona Mitevska, Macedonia
Nasreen, Sabine El Gemayel, Lebanon
The Sacred Lake, Zeka Laplaine, Congo/Senegal
Waiting, Rashid Masharawi, Palestine
The Global Film Initiative granting program is a semi-annual event with grants given out in the spring and the fall. The next submission deadline is September 15, 2005. This year three films from The Global Film Initiative grants roster were screened at the Cannes Film Festival, including Cinema, Aspirin and Vultures (Marcelo Gomes, Brazil).
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Monday, May 23rd, 2005
Filmmaker magazine’s Message Board has been completely redesigned and relaunches today.
We have created a number of forums to enable filmmakers, screenwriters, d.p.s, musicians and actors to network, trade info, seek jobs, promote themselves or discover new opportunities, and to suggest new forums.
Users can also post pictures and create links within their messages.
The relaunched Message Board is still free, however it now requires visitors to register in order to post topics, or to respond to topics already posted.
We hope that the login feature will help curb the amount of spam on the board, which in its previous incarnation had been over-run with money-making scams.
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