Archive for October, 2005
Sunday, October 30th, 2005
Cinekink co-founder and director Lisa Vandever emailed a short note with the press release announcing the film festival’s 2005 awards, which were handed out last week at the conclusion of the fest’s week-long run at the Anthology Film Archives. Last year, blogging the awards, I made a bit of fun out of Cinekink’s p.r. bannering of a special tribute award to At Home at the End of the World while the more provocative titles were chronicled well out of the lede. So this year, Vandever, who is profiled here in the New York Press by J.R. Taylor, makes note that this year’s release is focused more clearly on Cinekink’s winners but explains why the festival still retains “some tip of the hat to Hollywood.” She writes, “Figure we need some kind of notice of how they’re representing kink — and if we didn’t reward the positive with an award, we’d just be standing up there every year bitching about Law and Order!
In Taylor’s piece, Vandever elaborates, explaining that the festival is trying to carve out a niche devoted to provocative s/m and fetish-themed that can’t properly be classified as porn. She says that the festival moved away this year from audience screenings of fetish videos to more developed features: “It’s a different experience to watch a fetish video on the big screen for 80 minutes straight. Now we’ve gone back to narrative films — hopefully ones that we can help get noticed by programmers in other festivals…. We don’t have a category for Best Porn,” explains Vandever, “because most porn doesn’t have a narrative. Also, we’ll often see filmmakers in our festival explaining why their films aren’t porn. You can’t easily classify these things.”
This year Cinekink’s Tribute Award went to Bill Condon’s Kinsey with honorable mentions to Desperate Housewives, E!’s Dr. 90210, and Wedding Crashers, but the awards release highlights the festival’s best narrative and doc films. Eric Werthman’s Going Under, which stars Roger Rees, Geno Lechner and Miho Nakaido, won Best Narrative Feature, and Pornology New York (pictured), Michele Capozzi’s “gritty … Read the rest
Sunday, October 30th, 2005
Via GreenCine comes this link to a good new blog by Repo Man director Alex Cox. Click over to it and you’ll find Cox’s commentary on a forthcoming DVD “special edition” of his cult classic, news on possible new projects, and a bunch of interesting observations, from fancy L.A. hotels (“Hotels like this terrify my because they’re so fucking expensive. Even though my generous hosts paid for my bed and breakfast, every time you approach a door, some guy in a top hat opens it for you and you have to tip him ten bucks — whether you want to go through the door or not!”) to film recommendations (“Back on the plane to England I watch on my trusty laptop the DVD of a film called #33X Around the Sun. The director is John Hardwick, it was made last year. It’s the story of a nameless man wandering through the night-time streets of a nameless city. Supposedly it’s been compared to Rivette, but Eraserhead seems closer territory. Doesn’t matter. The thing is, it’s very, very good.”) to discussions of the politics involved in obtaining U.K. funding and re-releasing U.S. studio films on DVD.… Read the rest
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
There’s a breaking story today about the leaking of an internal Wal-Mart memo that reveals the company’s plans to put “unhealthy” workers off the payroll in favor of younger, more jockish types (read: teenagers), as well as reducing 401(k) benefits.
As that develops, I’m curious to see what dirt filmmaker Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed) will turn up in his upcoming documentary about the retail behemoth. The DVD arrives on November 13, the same day that The Disinformation Company will release Greg Spott’s Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, a behind-the-scenes companion book about the making of Greenwald’s film, which the press release describes as “a nine-month journey filled with breakthrough moments and unexpected challenges. Given unlimited access to the filmmakers, Spotts reveals the new tactics and technologies that are revolutionizing political filmmaking, offering inspiration for aspiring filmmakers and activists.”… Read the rest
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent company, has just announced the nominations for the 2005 Gotham Awards, which will be held this year on November 30. They are:
Best Feature:
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – Directed by Ang Lee / Written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana / Produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus
CAPOTE – Directed by Bennett Miller / Written by Dan Futterman / Produced by Caroline Baron, William Vince and Michael Ohoven
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE -Directed by David Cronenberg / Written by Josh Olson / Produced by Chris Bender and JC Spink
KEANE – Written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan / Produced by Andrew Fierberg
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW – Written and directed by Miranda July / Produced by Gina Kwon
Best Documentary
BALLET RUSSES – Directed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller / Written by Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, Gary Weimberg and Celeste Schaefer Snyder / Produced by Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, Robert Hawk and Douglas Blair Turnbaugh
ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM – Written and directed by Alex Gibney / Produced by Alex Gibney, Jason Kliot and Susan Motamed
GRIZZLY MAN – Directed by Werner Herzog / Produced by Erik Nelson
MURDERBALL – Directed by Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro / Produced by Jeffrey Mandel and Dana Adam Shapiro
WILLIAM EGGLESTON IN THE REAL WORLD – Directed by Michael Almereyda / Produced by Michael Almereyda, Jesse Dylan and Anthony Katagas
Breakthrough Director
Miranda July for ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW
Bennett Miller for CAPOTE
Phil Morrison for JUNEBUG
Andrew Wagner for THE TALENT GIVEN US
Alice Wu for SAVING FACE
Breakthrough Actor
Amy Adams as “Ashley” in JUNEBUG
Camilla Belle as “Rose Slavin” in THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as “Neil” in MYSTERIOUS SKIN
Terrence Howard as “DJay” in HUSTLE & FLOW
Damian Lewis as “William Keane” in KEANE
Best Ensemble Cast
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Linda Cardellini, Randy Quaid, Anna Faris
CRASH – Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Dashon Howard, … Read the rest
Monday, October 24th, 2005
Really is there anything sadder than watching the Right Wing eat its young ? The Bradblog announced the production of a documentary The Gospel of Ann which intends to pull apart that warrior of the Right Wing Ann Coulter from her blond roots on down. The organization Citizens for Principled Conservatism (CPC) — that is producing the piece — seeks to expose those who “use the tenets of the true Conservative Movement merely for cynical, opportunistic political gain.” Ann Coulter — Cynical? Opportunistic? Say it ain’t so Ann.… Read the rest
Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
Within the licentious world of popular entertainment, one film that has been hailed by folks of all stripes is March of the Penguins. However. for some the film is more than a dramatically shot nature documentary. The right has hailed the film as a parable of traditional values as well as an argument for “intelligent design,” the anti-evolution theory du jour.
So, here’s director Luc Jacquet throwing some cold water on the Michael Medveds of the world in the Times Online:
“‘If you want an example of monogamy, penguins are not a good choice,’ Luc Jacquet told The Times. ‘The divorce rate in emperor penguins is 80 to 90 per cent each year,’ he said. ‘After they see the chick is OK, most of them divorce. They change every year.’… ‘For me there is no doubt about evolution. I am a scientist. The intelligent design theory is a step back to the thinking of 300 years ago. My film is not supposed to be interpreted in this way. Some scientists I know find the film interesting because it can be a good argument against intelligent design. People should not jump on these bandwagons.’”… Read the rest
Monday, October 17th, 2005
I was reading GreenCine Daily and I noticed this link to a column at Kirkus reviews entitled “Adapt This,” which highlights hot film potential material from the month’s releases. Clicking to the column, I was happy to see that among this month’s four selections is Under the Bridge, the second book from former Filmmaker alumni Rebecca Godfrey. Here’s what Kirkus’s Chris Barsanti had to say about the book:
“Although it initially has the feel of a story normally captured on film for, at best, a 15-minute piece in one of the weekly newsmagazine shows, Rebecca Godfrey’s haunting, true-life murder story Under the Bridge (Simon & Schuster, $24) is phenomenal cinematic raw material. The setting couldn’t be more idyllic — the quiet British Columbia suburb of View Royal — and the crime hardly more horrific, a teenage girl murdered by a group of her peers after a series of inexorably escalating misunderstandings culminates in a shocking confrontation and stranger-than–iction cover-up. The rainy, lo-fi setting could work as a corrective to the standard high-octane views of transgressing adolescents, and there’s an organic, fly-on-the-wall quality to the material that recalls Larry Clark’s Kids but without the exploitation. But finally, it’s the cast of characters that makes this story as vivid as it is, ranging from copycatting social outcasts to gentle-seeming yet ultimately vicious gangster wannabes and coddled borderline sociopaths. These are normal-appearing kids, for the most part, yet morally crippled by their inability or refusal to imagine consequences or even a day after tomorrow.”
Godfrey’s film smarts were proved long ago on the Filmmaker staff, and her power as a writer was proven by her debut novel, The Torn Skirt. The new book sounds great, and I hope that Barsanti’s prediction proves correct and we’ll see if in the theaters as well as the bookstores.… Read the rest
Saturday, October 15th, 2005
Whether you’re on the left or the right, the most suspenseful narrative playing out right now is the Fitzgerald investigation into the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson case. And one of the most passionate (and righteously sarcastic) bloggers covering this issue is movie producer Jane Hamsher, best known for her partnership with Don Murphy and producing of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Now based in Oregon and a contributer to the firedoglake blog, Hamsher brings the same punk sensibility to her political reporting as she did to her movie producing.… Read the rest
Friday, October 14th, 2005
Billy Friedkin’s Sorcerer is probably best known — thanks to Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls — as one of the movies whose production excesses helped put the nail in the coffin of the last great Golden Age in American filmmaking. I happen to love the film, especially Tangerine Dream’s haunting original score. Then I came across this post on Subterranean Cinema. Apparently, jazz keyboardist Keith Jarret recorded some music for the movie on an 18th century organ that was never included on the film’s original soundtrack. Thankfully, the folks at Subterranean uploaded an MP3. Enjoy.
Incidentally, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Wages of Fear — the French classic on which Sorcerer was based — was just released on DVD by Criterion. Essential viewing.
For more Tangerine Dream action: Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, currently in theaters, pays clever homage to the ’80s with its lifting of the Risky Business theme.
(Thanks Paul.)… Read the rest
Thursday, October 13th, 2005
Just below I linked to The Hollywood Reporter about the movie industry’s slow awakening to the impact on the Justice Department’s 2257 regulations on both studio and independent production. There’s a bunch of articles on the web this morning about H.R. 3132, the Children’s Safety Act, which passed the House and, if it gets through the Judiciary Committee and passes the Senate, will expand the onerous recordkeeping requirements of the 2257 in alarming ways. A number of the articles are on legal and cyber blogs. Here’s a piece on BoingBoing that details the consequences, and it includes PDF links to the relevant Pence Amendment.… Read the rest
