Archive for November, 2005
Monday, November 14th, 2005
Via the very clever people at Coudal Partners, whose design-oriented website always has lots of film-related stuff, this link to a database of Polish movie posters. At right: Robert Altman’s 3 Women.
Says Tom Kuznar, the site’s proprietor, “Although my goal is to (eventually) provide all available information on all Polish film posters ever printed and every artist who ever designed one, back here on planet Earth my emphasis is on the best period of the mid 50s to early 70s. Since the Polish poster practically ceased to exist at the end of the 80s (and stopped being great long before that), some obscure titles might be missing from the database.”
The site has an email link if anyone is interested in buying, selling or trading these posters.… Read the rest
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
A couple of emails arrived this week announcing new online work from folks who have appeared here or in the print magazine. I wrote about NYU student filmmaker Sam Goetz on this blog when he took to the internet to fundraise for his student short, “Bruno.” “Breaking a record at the school’s production center for most check-outs in one semester, this film was not the easiest to get into the can,” he writes. “Fortunately, everyone put in 110% and bore through the 30+ days of shooting with a champion’s spirit.” He’s got a teaser up on the web now for the film, which he expects to finish in the Spring.
And Matt Goldman, one of our “25 New Faces” from 2003 emailed to announce new work on his website, including a music video for the Matador band The Double, some work for Sesame Street and “Bomb Bay!”, a short doc commissioned by Red Bull about “legendary DJ and kamikaze bicyclist Ted Shred.”… Read the rest
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
This year Filmmaker partnered with the IFP to create a new award to be given out in a few weeks at this year’s Gotham Awards. Titled Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You, the award is designed to highlight worthy films that have fallen beneath the theatrical radar.
We asked 18 festival programmers to each nominate two films from their festival. From this list, our editors — myself, Matt Ross, Peter Bowen, Mary Glucksman and Ray Pride — narrowed it down to five nominees and, eventually one winner. It was an interesting exercise. The films nominated by the programmers weren’t some of the ones that I was expecting, and, after watching all the films, our nominees (which were voted with a pretty remarkable degree of unanimity) weren’t, for the most part, the ones I would have expected from glancing at the list we started out with.
As for the typical festival cry — “The docs were better!” — it was interesting that three of our five nominated films are docs and the two that aren’t have heavy non-fiction elements.
Here are the nominees and we’ll have more on them and the winner upcoming on this blog and in the magazine.
Al Otro Lado (To the Other Side) is Natalia Almada’s documentary about an aspiring corrido composer from the drug capital of Mexico who faces two choices to better his life: to traffic drugs or to cross the border illegally into the United States. The film received its world premiere at the New York International Latino Film Festival in 2005. It will be broadcast on POV in late 2006. The whole committee was struck by the lyrical storytelling style experimental filmmaker Almada brought to this hybrid music-social issue doc.
I Am a Sex Addict is an autobiographical re-enactment of director Caveh Zahedi’s struggle with sex addition. The film received its world premiere at the 2005 Rotterdam Film Festival. Wildly original, disarmingly persona, and very, very smart, Zahedi’s film turns what could have been a conventional “addiction and recovery” movie and turns it into an essay on truth in relationships … Read the rest
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
The clock is ticking on a promotion offered by Netflix and Film Independent (FIND, formerly the IFP Los Angeles) and having to do with this year’s Spirit Awards.
Only FIND members are allowed to vote for the Spirit Awards, and, this year, FIND members will receive a free three-month Netflix membership and a special code allowing them to rent all the nominated films. To take advantage of this, you need to join FIND (if you’re not a member) by November 15.… Read the rest
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
Sony/BMG’s debacle over the “rootkit” copy protection on their music CDs has gotten a lot of hilarious press in the last few days. If you haven’t been following the story, the digital rights management software contained on Sony music CDs burrows deep into your operating system where it does Many Bad Things, including act as Trojan horse for a lot of malware and bad viruses. As documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, Sony/BMG has added insult to injury by concocting a draconian end-user license agreement that treats a CD-buyer like some sort of pauper out of a Dickens’ novel. To wit, if you declare bankruptcy — which, it must be said, is a much more difficult thing to do under the Bush administration’s new bankruptcy laws — you have to delete all the music from your computer. Oh, and forget about using music in a home movie or even creating a cool slideshow in iPhoto with some songs and pictures of your daughter or niece — “no derivative works” says the agreement. Check out the EFF article through the link above.… Read the rest
Saturday, November 12th, 2005
Chris Cunningham’s new commercial for the PlayStation Portable can be found here.… Read the rest
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
After months of internet buzz, there’s finally an “internet teaser” up for Darren Aronofsky’s long-awaited The Fountain. Check it out as well as Moriarty’s interview with Aronofsky over at Ain’t It Cool News.… Read the rest
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
Hollywood.com recently reported that Vincent Gallo, the blue-eyed devil of the independent world, has come up with a new way to make waves and money. Sell his sperm. Supposedly at VGmerchandise, Gallo provided his genetic gifts for a mere million (an extra $500,000, if you want him to deliver it in person). [At the time of printing, the ad was gone.] Of course, attractive women could receive a discount. The perfect Christmas gift for those who would like children with a genetic predisposition to self-aggrandizing, arrogance, and narcissism — and with the innate creative chops to make a film like The Brown Bunny.… Read the rest
Sunday, November 6th, 2005
If there really is a film community outside of the premiere/festival cocktail circuit, then today makes me proud to be a part of it. The reason: Tom Gilroy.
A talented actor-writer-director and also a friend and colleague, Tom has written the most impassioned, intelligent, and troubling political essay about U.S. politics I’ve seen in a long time at The Huffington Post. The piece, titled “‘White House in Chaos’ & Other Utter Horseshit,” excoriates the Democratic party for lazily taking credit for the recent “setbacks” within the Bush administration, which Gilroy persuasively argues aren’t really setbacks at all.
A sample: “As long as Democrats and their well-fed punditocracy measure Bush, et al with a yardstick of morality, popularity or ethics, they will never recapture the majority, and here’s why; Bush, et al aren’t driven by morality, popularity, or ethics. They’re driven by money.
“You can almost deduce what Rove will tell them to do next by simply asking yourself what would be best for the rich. But ask yourself what would any normal person do when their egregious gluttony, mendacity and utter scorn for the common man was exposed and you’ll find the Bushies actions baffling. You’ll wait for their humble confession until you’re blue in the face—uninsured at an underfunded emergency room. Judge them by their drive to get at even more of our public resources and money, and suddenly you’ll recognize they’re still a well oiled machine.
“So they don’t ‘Reel With Frustration’ or ‘Rethink Their Message’ or ‘Try to Recapture the Public Mood,’ that’s just delusional journalists waxing poetic over how a decent person would behave. But these people aren’t decent, they’re crooks, and crooks don’t give a shit about you seeing them for what they really are. They don’t care what you see as long as they’re getting you’re money.
“But ‘On the Brink of Collapse?’ ‘A Crack in the Empire?’ ‘Running Scared?’ ‘Drowning in an Ethical Quagmire?’ ‘Crisis of Leadership?’ ‘Humbled by the Damage to Their Legacy?’
“Yeah, sure.
“They’re so humbled they just last week passed landmark changes gutting Florida’s Medicaid and Medicare programs, … Read the rest
Sunday, November 6th, 2005
Artist, filmmaker and production designer Dan Ouellette contributed a thoughtful and in-depth interview with Chris Cunningham to Filmmaker‘s current issue (sorry, it’s only in the print magazine), and today he’s just launched his new website, Neurotica Divine, which has to be one of the best personal artist sites I’ve seen.
At the beginning of his film career Ouellette was known for his production design of Hal Hartley’s early work. More recentlly Ouellette production designed Alice Wu’s Saving Face. But Ouellette has always been a vivid visual artist whose work combines science-fiction and horror imagery with dashes of surrealism and dark sexuality. His website explains it all, from his visual art portfolios to his more recent work in film. Music videos and other footage featuring musicians like Android Lust and The Birthday Massacre are streamed on the site along with synopses and comments on “in development” feature scripts like Ritual and Significant Others.
But what makes the site so good is Ouellette’s interconnected and self-aware approach. The stylishly designed site is a true “portrait of the artist,” featuring honest statements of artistic intent, “studio cams” showing the work being created, and a great “outside world” section in which Ouellette writes thoughtfully on influences ranging from Brian Eno to Gilles Berquet to Carl Theodor Dryer.… Read the rest
