Archive for June, 2005
Monday, June 27th, 2005
Film Independent (formerly the IFP/Los Angeles) announced the winners of its 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival. Mark Banning won the Target Filmmaker Award for Best Narrative Feature for his Jellysmoke, and the Target Best Doc Award went to Beth Bird for Everyone Their Grain of Sand. The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know. David Zeiger’s Sir! No Sir! won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature. Luc Jacquet’s March of the Penguins won the Audience Award for Best International Feature.
Catherine Kellner and Ebon Moss-Bachrach of Leslie McCleave’s Road won for Outstanding Performance in the Narrative Competition.
Describing Jellysmoke, the fest writers, “In his feature debut, Jellysmoke, Mark Banning paints the portrait of a young man searching for love and a way to maintain his sanity. Though sweet, handsome, and well-liked, Jacob suffers deeply from bipolar depression. After a stint in the psych ward, he resolves to find normalcy and sees the key to securing it in the love of a beautiful stranger and her young son. Quietly nuanced, Michael Ealy’s performance is a beautiful and apt reminder of how heartbreakingly fragile, yet ultimately hopeful life can be.”
And re the doc winner: “Beth Bird shows a small town’s struggle for survival in the face of corporate greed and how it powerfully demonstrates the downside of globalization and U.S.-Mexico border economics. Since 1988, Mexican community Maclovio Rojas has been fighting for education, electricity, and water owed them by their government, which would rather force thousands of residents off land that developers are drooling over. Community leaders are arrested, lingering in prison without due process, while their families and friends make every effort to obtain justice. Beth Bird’s heartbreaking and intimate feature debut balances these hardships with glimpses of goodness — an elementary school graduation, holiday celebrations — to remind us what they’re fighting for.”
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Saturday, June 25th, 2005
The folks at Stay Free Magazine have have an informative blog entry up on the music clearance hassles of Mad Hot Ballroom. The film’s producer and writer Amy Sewell talks about the unexpected issues she faced clearing everything musical numbers to a Rocky cellphone ring tone.
Here she recounts one of the more vexing moments:
“When we were down shooting the boys playing foosball, Ronnie yelled out, “Everybody dance now!” Just when I think we’ve finished the film, someone points out that we have to clear that because it’s a “visual vocal cue.” So I went back to the publishers, and the first publisher, Spirit, says they’ll throw it in with the other things we’ve cleared if Warner Chappell throws it in. But Warner Chappell said, “Look, we’ve cut you some nice deals, we can’t give this to you.” They said this three-second bit would cost $5,000. And since they had Most Favored Nation status it would have raised the cost on similar uses, like the Rocky ring-tone. So I went back to lawyer and said we should keep it in because this should be a poster child for fair use. But he didn’t recommend taking on the music industry. Those corporations have too much money for us to play Norma Rae our first time out.”
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Thursday, June 23rd, 2005
… even Elton John music, is so much better than the formulaic trailer cutting that is rampant these days. You know, the fast music, cheesey step-zooms that aren’t in the actual movie, weird whooshing sound effects on the edits, even for dramatic films, switch to slow soulful music half way kind of thing?. This clip for Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, linked to first on Ain’t It Cool News, is a much better promo than what will probably come later… Check it out.… Read the rest
Monday, June 20th, 2005
The guys over at Ain’t It Cool News have been creaming over Michael Davis’s Shoot ‘Em Up, an action pic set up at New Line starring Clive Owen. First the site’s Moriaty posted an interview with Davis in which the writer/director traces the interesting and circuitous route he took to being the town’s new go-to action guy. (Jeffrey Welles has also written about Davis in a fascinating career study that explains how a 44-year-old direct-to-video guy came to helm a big-budget A-list actioner.) And today, Moriaty links to the Latino Review which has a detailed script review and, most importantly, Quicktime files of the 1700-image animatic Davis drew by hand and took in to New Line to get the job. Filmmakers looking for illustrations of how to pitch their projects should check out Davis’s work. (Moriaty also throws some props to New Line exec Jeff Katz, who he credits with reeling in a bunch of exciting new projects for the studio.)… Read the rest
Saturday, June 18th, 2005
On the opening weekend of the IFC’s new IFC Center (which a friend reported was packed out for the opening of Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know), the folks at Gothamist have posted an interview with our friend John Vanco, the chief programmer for the theater. Vanco talks a lot about film and outlines an exciting vision for the theater, and he also reveals a past life as a carpenter when asked about the theater’s construction delays:
“My background as a carpenter is an awfully obscure fact and fading memory — that was a long time ago. But, yes, kind of being handy with tools and having confidence with basic rules of physics and engineering has been useful in participating in some of the problem-solving moments of the renovation. But I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by lots of experienced and talented specialists who have helped conquer all the construction challenges and make this such a beautiful place and such an architecturally successful mixing of the past and the present. I do look forward to the day in the very near future when my previously untapped talent for HVAC [Heating, ventilating and air-conditioning] systems programming and my opinions about the best way to cantilever a 40-year-old neon marquee sign from the ceiling are no longer relevant.”
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Friday, June 17th, 2005
This fall’s Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music will include the U.S. stage debut of actor Isabelle Huppert in a French adaptation of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, directed by Claude Regy.
4.48 Psychosis premiered posthumously at the Royal Court in London in June 2000 sixteen months after Kane’s death by suicide at the age of 28.
4.48 is the time most suicides take place.
“With words as exquisite as they are chilling, Sarah Kane’s heartrending 4.48 Psychosis is a breathtakingly visceral rollercoaster ride through the playwright’s private hell. Infamous at just 23 for Blasted, an explosive depiction of the Bosnian War’s barbarism, and a few years later for the equally controversial Crave and Skin, Kane’s anarchistic and highly literate voice has been favorably compared to those of Beckett, Pinter, and Artaud.”
For those unfamiliar with Kane’s work, check out Iain Fisher’s excellent Web site. You can also download the short film Skin (1995) written by Kane, and starring Ewen Bremner (of Trainspotting fame), from the Channel 4 Web site.
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Friday, June 10th, 2005
For the second year in a row, IFP has teamed up with Tishman Speyer Properties to present free Drive-In Movies at Rockefeller Center, June 14 – 18 at 9 pm.
Viewed outdoors on a 40-foot screen above the ice rink, the summer Drive-In series will feature five independent titles prior to their theatrical release.
June 14: Rize
The opening night film, Rize, directed by famed fashion photographer David Lachapelle, reveals a groundbreaking dance phenomenon exploding on the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Taking advantage of unprecedented access, this documentary film brings to first light a revolutionary form of artistic expression borne from oppression. The aggressive and visually stunning dance modernizes moves indigenous to African tribal rituals and features mind-blowing, athletic movement sped up to impossible speeds. Rize tracks the fascinating evolution of the dance: we meet Tommy Johnson (Tommy the Clown), who first created the style as a response to the 1992 Rodney King riots and named it “Clowning,” as well as the kids who developed the movement into what they now call “Krumping.” The film will be released on June 24 by Lions Gate Films.
June 15: The Baxter
The Baxter, a romantic comedy starring Michael Showalter, Justin Theroux, Paul Rudd, and Michelle Williams, tells the story of Elliot Sherman (Showalter), a conservative, risk-averse guy who is the quintessential “Baxter” — a guy who never actually gets the girl. He is more anxious than ever on the eve of his wedding to Caroline (Elizabeth Banks), and expends an extraordinary amount of energy warding off rival suitors. His anxiety skyrockets with the arrival of Bradley (Theroux), Caroline’s long-lost boyfriend. But this time Elliot meets someone who can help. Cecil (Williams), an eccentric temp at Elliot’s accounting firm, is wild at heart and full of romantic advice. The film is slated to be released August 26 by IFC Films.
June 16: All We Are Saying
Rosanna Arquette’s All We Are Saying is a compelling, personal look at what makes musicians tick. Arquette follows up her critically acclaimed documentary directorial debut, Searching for Debra Winger, with a … Read the rest
Friday, June 10th, 2005
“The domain of architecture has been transformed by developments in interaction research, wearable computing, mobile connectivity, people-centered design, contextual awareness, [Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID] systems and ubiquitous computing,” according to Haque Design + Research.
“These technologies alter our understanding of space and change the way we relate to each other,” writes Usman Haque. “We no longer think of architecture as static and immutable; instead we see it as dynamic, responsive and conversant.
“In the past 10 years we have witnessed a series of projects that explore the relationship between technology and space or technology and the body. Yet few, if any, have attempted to align the two approaches and investigate the technological body in a technological space.”
Haque’s work-in-progress 1000 (little tips of communication), a collaboration with Studio 5050, “synthesizes these two tracks of exploration and develops a system where both the ‘social body’ and ‘space’ [participate] in an interactive dialogue… The overall objective of the project is to develop a working prototype of both a ‘wearable’ device and a spatially-oriented system with which it interacts.”
Among his completed projects are: Bricks, a mobile projection system for creating responsive visual environments in public spaces; and Scents of Space, an interactive smell system that allows for three-dimensional placement of fragrances without dispersion.
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Friday, June 10th, 2005
The latest chapter of Raster, the magazine of the eponymous digital arts and culture collective, is now online.
Chapter 37 features terrific interviews with the staff of the UK-based production company, Shynola; design guru Luziano Testi Paul; MyDeadPony‘s Raphael Vicenzi; along with reports from Vancouver’s Vidfest; and amazing digital art by Raster’s members. Via Eyebeam Reblog.
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Friday, June 10th, 2005
As reported in Greg.org, and in today’s New York Times, The St. Mark’s Street location of Kim’s Video (aka Mondo Kim’s), a drycleaning establishment turned entertainment retail empire, was raided by police officers on Wednesday. Five store employees were charged with trademark counterfeiting. (Kim’s store on Avenue A, where employees routinely terrorized customers with their ornery service, was shuttered last fall.)
According to MTV.com, the raid focused on Kim’s mixtape business — not on its bootleg videos. Police “seized 27 music DVDs, nine DVD burners and several store computers. All of the CD-Rs and DVDs were described by an RIAA spokesperson as ‘urban in nature’ — mixtapes, featuring music by artists such as 50 Cent, Nelly, Alicia Keyes and Jay-Z.”
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