Archive for February, 2006
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
It’s turned into a yearly tradition that I’ve posted early notice of the Philadelphia Film Festival’s “Danger After Dark” program. Programmed by Filmmaker contributor Travis Crawford, the program is inevitably an excellent primer for the past year’s best in cutting edge genre fare. This year, Crawford’s descriptions are briefer than usual — he promises to send more detailed copy soon — but it is good to hear that his catalog proofreader labelled this the “sickest Danger after Dark ever.”
The Philadelphia Film Festival runs from March 30 until April 11.
A BITTERSWEET LIFE (South Korea): This visually stunning tale of gangland revenge from the director of Tale of Two Sisters has style to burn and shootouts that make vintage John Woo look like romantic comedies by comparison. (East Coast Premiere)
THE DESCENT (U.K., pictured above right: Whether it’s the best horror film of the year (as manyclaim), or simply the scariest, this British chiller about young women fighting monsters in a cave has becomean instant genre classic. (East Coast Premiere)
DISTRICT 13 (France): Action movie as pure, stripped-down adrenaline rush, this Luc Besson-produced futuristic fight-fest has enough acrobatic spills and thrills to make you reel and squeal. (East Coast Premiere)
EVIL (Greece): Greece’s first zombie movie, this apocalyptic bloodbath – a veritable low-budget epic – puts its tremendous energy towards creating a crowd-pleasing “splat-stick” gore comedy. (North American Premiere)
EVIL ALIENS (U.K.): This riotous, comic British science-fiction/horror bloodbath about extraterrestrial visitors with a taste for dismemberment, decapitation, alien impregnation and anal probes, has become a recent international film fest favorite. (East Coast Premiere)
FEED (Australia): The Danger After Dark gross-out film to end them all, this Aussie thriller about a cop hunting a cybercrime cult devoted to force-feeding obese women to death requires you to have a, er, strong stomach. (North American Premiere)
THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF SACHIKO HANAI (Japan): The only Japanese sex film that manages to combine explicit sequences of carnal lust with discourses on existentialism and a satire on the Bush administration, this movie is an absolute riot.
HELL (Thailand): Like a Bosch canvas come to … Read the rest
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
Richard Prince (the Washington Post writer and editor of the Black College Review, not the novelist/screenwriter) reports in his column called “Journal-isms” for the Maynard Institute that former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell has returned to journalism it was reported that he had accepted a development job at Columbia Pictures. Apparently, the Columbia gig, which interested every young indie director he had given a good review to, never fully panned out.
From the piece:
Elvis Mitchell returned to National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition Saturday” this month for the first time in a year, since it was announced that the former New York Times film critic would head the East Coast office of Columbia Pictures with veteran producer Deborah Schindler.
“We have not received the final word that Elvis is taking the job, but if he does in fact take the job with Columbia, he will no longer review movies for Weekend Edition,” Campbell told Journal-isms a year ago.
As it turns out, Campbell said today, “He never actually took the job with Columbia so there is no conflict of interest.”
On Feb. 4, Mitchell discussed how the movies had dealt with race over the years, and on Saturday critiqued “The Pink Panther.” He had been reviewing films for “Weekend Edition Saturday” since the show’s inception in 1985.
Mitchell’s job with Columbia Pictures had been taken as a done deal. “The idea of Mitchell crossing over to the other side had been the stuff of rumors for several years now,” critic Richard Horgan wrote last year on FilmStew.com.
“Over a decade ago, Mr. Mitchell did a brief tour of duty at Paramount Pictures as a director of development,” Jake Brooks wrote then in the New York Observer. “Either unwilling or ignorant of the potential conflict of interest, Mr. Mitchell continued to do film reviews for NPR after being hired at Paramount. His stint as a studio executive lasted six months. Thankfully for Mr. Mitchell, the dynamic at Columbia is a bit different. He has been assigned the welcome task . . . of trolling film festivals for potential
… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
There’s a good feature up at The Guardian by David Rose, the British journalist who was the first person to interview the “Tipton Three” following the release of these British Muslims from Guantanamo Bay. Now he’s writing about the film by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitcross, The Road to Guantanmo and discussing its chances of being released in the U.S:
To date, says producer Andrew Eaton, the film is set to be shown in 18 countries. But as yet, although there have been expressions of interest, there is no distribution deal for the one nation where it most urgently needs to be screened – the United States. One line, barked by guards and interrogators, runs through the film repetitively – ‘Shut the fuck up!’ At present, it serves as an unintentional metaphor. Faced with international criticism not only for Guantanamo but other outrages, such as the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of terrorist suspects for torture by friendly Third World dictatorships, much of America has resolutely closed its ears. In the big East Coast papers, and in publications such as the New York Review of Books, the use of torture in the war on terror has been exposed, debated and condemned. Elsewhere, it barely seems to register: in the 2004 election, John Kerry failed to mention Guantanamo even once. Just possibly, the vivid imagery and warm characterisation of The Road to Guantanamo might begin to pierce the carapace.
At the same time, as I watched this familiar story being given such shocking and authentic new life, I could only shudder at the thought of its effect in the Muslim world. Since it opened in 2002, Guantanamo has become a rallying point, cited time and again on Islamist websites and in the Arab press as a justification for creating more suicide ‘martyrs’. For two-and-a-half years, the Tipton Three’s families lived in a state of anguish, unaware what their boys were supposed to have done, or whether they would ever be free. Replicated across the Muslim world, such experiences have tapped new veins of anti-American rage.
‘The guy with the crewcut, the club and the
… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
Over at Movie City Indie, Ray Pride notes this Reel Chicago piece reporting that Chicago-based avant-gardist James Fotopoulos is about to embark on his first “commercial production,” a $2 million adaptation of Jay Bonansinga’s police novel The Sleep Police. Ray links to his own profile of Fotopolous, but two can play at that game — here’s Travis Crawford’s interview with Fotopolous appearing in Filmmaker.… Read the rest
Monday, February 27th, 2006
The Guerrilla Girls for years have brought attention to sexism in the art world by simply calculating the discrepency in the percentages of men to women artists represented in galleries and museums. In recent years, this anonymous activist collective has turned their gaze towards Hollywood. This year they are vying for representation at the Oscars with a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. But their numbers always are more dangerous then their images. As they note:
Only 7% of 2005’s 200 top-grossing films were directed by women.
Only 3 women have ever been nominated for an Oscar for Direction (Lina Wertmuller (1976), Jane Campion (1982,) and Sofia Coppola (2003). None has won.… Read the rest
Sunday, February 26th, 2006
In the current issue of Filmmaker we’ve got a piece on the non-theatrical release strategy of 2005 Sundance entry Love, Ludlow. I’ve met the film’s writer and executive producer David Paterson on a couple of occasions, and he’s one of the more colorful and shameless (I meant that only in a good way) self promoters around. So I wasn’t surprised to get another email from David updating me on the DVD release his film.
At the 2005 Gotham Awards, Caveh Zahedi urged indie filmmakers to consider the release of their film as just another phase in the film’s creation. Paterson, given the sales numbers he mentions, seems to have taken Zahedi’s advice and succeeded admirably.
This email was sent out to a number of prominent film journalists. (Paterson has since been hired to write the Disney/Walden film Bridge to Terabithia.)
________
Okay guys,
Ya gotta toss me a bone now.
In it’s first week of release, my little no nothing film was Number 1 on the straight to dvd release.
It gets better. Blockbuster, which has about 45% of the distribution Market, DOESNT carry my film.
That means I beat all the titles carried by blockbuster in the first week.
It gets better. Amazon.com has just RAISED the price of my DVD three dollars.
Unheard of for a unknown arthouse indie release.
So I’m beggin ya, pleading with you, if you haven’t written about me yet, PLEASE do it now!!
I don’t know how long I can break these records and create phenomonal sales without you guys.
I mean I will if I have to, but my arms are gettin tired.
My 20 million Disney film comes out next year, but I’m not worried about press on that one.
I NEED YOUR HELP NOW!
Respectfully,
David L. Paterson
“The hardest working Man on the periphery of Show Business.”
________… Read the rest
Sunday, February 26th, 2006
The folks who comprise Human Giant have come up with a very funny short, below, that takes a Clerks-style approach to the indie music scene and which sets its story at my favorite music store, Other Music. My only quibble with the short is that its take on the Other Music clerks is fairly off — they’re actually pretty nice guys. On the other hand, I guess I’ve never asked for the Garden State soundtrack.
… Read the rest
Saturday, February 25th, 2006
Mary Glucksman covered Jason Rosette’s Susan Hero in her “In Focus” column back in 2004, and now Rosette emails to say he is finishing his Santa Fe-shot film… in Cambodia. Rosette moved to Cambodia where he teaches video production at the Royal University in Phnom Penh. He’s got his film on 500 gigs of hard drive space, an occasionally updated blog up detailing his adventures in both Cambodia and in the trenches of film festival submissions, and a website where he aggregates all his filmmaking activities, including info on his previous film, Book Wars.… Read the rest
Saturday, February 25th, 2006
Via Filmmaker‘s MySpace page comes word from the folks at the Studio City-based Starway Pictures, who have created a new blog devoted to their films and also technical developments in indie filmmaking. Starway’s Robert Sanders writes, “We’ll try to post our thoughts and feelings about ‘the process’ of filmmaking and the industry. For the hard-core gear heads and geeks, we’ll also discuss digital filmmaking technology and our philosophies about digital cinema. And maybe a rant or two.”
Already up are some evocative L.A. location photos for their upcoming shoot, The 23rd Letter, fundraising trailers for their horror pic Shadow Falls, and great discussions about selecting and buying HD cameras.… Read the rest
Friday, February 24th, 2006
Brokeback Mountain continues to illustrate the strange ways in which cultural artifacts defy traditional notions of authorship and propriety. The two shirts from the film sold on an Ebay auction for $100,000. The Guardian reports the new owner, actor and gay activist Tom Gregory, sees them as “the ruby slippers of our time.” The poster and video parodies reached a level of legitimacy with Mark Ulriksen’s “Watch Your Back Mountain” cover for The New Yorker, in which a gun-happy Dick Cheney and George W. Bush take up the parts of Ennis and Jack. But the strangest twist of all must be the use of the film for internatioanl diplomacy. As reported in Wonkette, The Tapei News writes:
“President Chen Shui-bian yesterday used the Oscar nominated movie Brokeback Mountain as an analogy to describe relations between the US and Taiwan, stressing the importance of both sides seeking ways to reconcile and cooperate with one another to reach the common pursuit of a “great new world.”
So a “great new world” is what people are calling it now?… Read the rest
