Archive for January, 2007
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
BLACK SNAKE MOAN.
This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage.
In Black Snake Moan Christina Ricci plays Rae, a nymphomaniac wracked by vivid memories and dreams of being sexually abused during her childhood. Also in Craig Brewer’s follow-up to his Sundance-hit Hustle and Flow is Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Lazarus, a God-fearing farmer who picks at his guitar, sings blues songs about sin, and, after a chance encounter, attempts to oversee Rae’s salvation.
Some filmmakers might have taken the success they had with a film like Hustle and Flow and hightailed it straight to the world of the Hollywood mainstream. Not Brewer. Shooting again in Memphis, Tennessee, he’s made a film as provocative in its exploration of sexual politics as his previous was in playing with the racial stereotypes of the gangsta’ rap world. And, furthering his bold combination of realism and Southern melodrama, he’s also continued his collaboration with d.p. Amy Vincent, ASC.
BLACK SNAKE MOAN.
After reading the script, Vincent says she envisioned a story about love, redemption and the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen next. “Part of the electricity is a tactile feeling that Rae could explode at any minute and lunge after people like a dog guarding her home,” Brewer comments.
During early preproduction, Brewer gave Vincent DVDs of Southern gothic films like Bad Georgia Road and Baby Doll to serve as visual references. “We were like a family,” Vincent observes. “Everybody contributed ideas to discussions about the visual style during preproduction. Scott [Bomar] came in one day and put a book from Fat Possum Records on the table. It was a collection of biographies and photos of North Mississippi Blues musicians. Craig got everybody involved in the discussion, including [producer] Stephanie Allain, [production designer] Keith Burns, [editor] Billy Fox and myself. I could see Craig listening and absorbing ideas.”
The production team first scouted juke joints to find an ideal dark bar to serve as the setting for Lazarus’ encounter with Rae. When they found it, Burns suggested spray painting the bottle lights red, a … Read the rest
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
PADRE NUESTRO.
This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage.
Padre Nuestro exemplifies the modern, international face of American independent cinema: the first-time director, Christopher Zalla, was born in Kenya, raised overseas (and is fluent in Spanish), schooled at Columbia, and created a stylish thriller that begins in Mexico and winds up in New York City. A smart film that — one could argue — uses its border-hopping protagonist’s stolen identity as a metaphor for globalization, Padre Nuestro will certainly spark debate at Sundance.
Padre Nuestro screens at Sundance in dramatic competition.
Can you say a little bit about your background? Where you’re from? I was born in Kenya in 1974 and spent much of my youth overseas. My parents separated and moved around for work, and my older brother and I went back and forth between them. Before it was over I had lived in dozens of countries on four continents. I sold tomatoes door-to-door as a five-year old, mowed twenty lawns a week when I was ten, worked as a rough carpenter in high school, and spent nine seasons as a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska.
Age? 32.
Education? BA Oberlin College
MFA Columbia University Film School
Film experience prior to this film? I started off as a PA on sets, but after I few months I realized that wasn’t going to teach me anything craft-wise. I then worked as the assistant to a producer named Cary Woods (Kids, Scream, Swingers, Gummo, Citizen Ruth) and probably read a thousand scripts, which was really helpful in giving me a sense of what kind of material I like. Ultimately, though, I saw producing wasn’t going to teach me how to actually make a movie, so I went to film school.
I’ve been doing writing work since I was in film school, including Marching Powder, for Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, about a British man thrown into a Bolivian Prison. Don Cheadle is attached to that one. As for filmmaking, other than some short exercises, this is my first … Read the rest
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
Mike White’s comedy The Year of the Dog, which premiered in Sundance this week in the Premieres section, shares a premise with the similarly titled Joan Didion memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. That is, when one is grieving, one experiences a kind of insanity, the “magical thinking” of Didion’s title. One’s relationship to the rest of society as well as one’s self is occluded by the memory of the deceased.
Of course, Didion’s departed was her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne. It’s typical of White’s unsettling wit that the protagonist of his film – a retiring and unmarried 40s-ish female office assistant – is grieving not a person but the sudden death of her dog, Pencil. But dog lovers – as well as all those attuned to White’s gently odd sensibility – will understand that her sorrow is real and that it is capable of motivating all that comes after.
It’s not a diss to say that midway through The Year of the Dog I had no idea where the film was going. Like Chuck and Buck, which White wrote, The Year of the Dog takes offbeat narrative asides and refuses to be bound by the rules that govern Hollywood-produced romantic comedies. (It’s also a dog movie with surprisingly few “Awwwww!” moments.) But this mostly pleasurable sense of being lost is also due to White’s attitude towards his characters, a point-of-view that drifts between bemusement, detachment and affection. Casting Molly Shannon as his protagonist, White gives us a recognizable actress who, due to her association with the sketch comedy of Saturday Night Live, fails to bring to the picture the instant, empathy-inducing star persona of a Drew Barrymore or Jennifer Aniston. This is a good thing. In White’s world everyone, from the straights to the weirdoes, is just a bit strange.
Before seeing the film I heard some people have a problem with the ending. After seeing it, I couldn’t figure out why. Or, rather, I didn’t get whether they thought it was too happy or too sad. Undeservedly optimistic or condescendingly cynical. I … Read the rest
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
I was saddened to see over at Pitchfork Media that Uwe Nettelbeck, one of the founders of the great German art rock group Faust has died.
Here’s Pitchfork:
Nettelbeck, a producer and one-time music journalist, founded Faust in Wümme, Germany in 1971. The group was one of Virgin Records’ first signings and went on to record several highly-influential albums over the next few years, including the seminal Faust and Faust IV, before disbanding in 1975. Several of the original members have since regrouped under the Faust banner to tour and record.
No further details of Nettelbeck’s death are known at this point. Fellow Faust founding member Rudolf Sosna passed away in 1996.
I’ve been a Faust fan since I was a teenager, and their fantastic blend of Kraut rock, musique concrete, and tape collage has held up and remained inspirational over the years.
And here’s from the Faust website, linked above:
“Besides being a sharp-witted but yet charming and loving husband, father and grandfather, he was an outstanding cook, a writer who always generated deep emotions and interest, and a genius, selfless music producer. Thank you Uwe for all you have done for our music. Faust is your work, no doubt ! Your work will outlast all of us. May your soul rest in peace. My sincere sympathy to his family Petra, Anouchka, Sandra, Elisha and Elsa.”
… Read the rest
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
YEAR OF THE FISH.
This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage.
A veteran of Sundance with his short films — including the cryptic, menacing fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood (starring Christina Ricci and Quentin Crisp!), Little Suck-A-Thumb, and The Frog King — which are regularly shown to film students as examples of exemplary short-form filmmaking, David Kaplan returns to the festival with his first feature, Year of the Fish. At once a singular New York immigrant story, as well as a re-imagining of the fairy tale (Kaplan’s real-world, adult conception of children’s stories can bring to mind Guillermo del Toro’s terrifying, blood-and-vomit work in Pan’s Labyrinth), Year of the Fish was also painstakingly rotoscoped-a process that took years. This eagerly anticipated feature is one of the most unique to ever screen at Sundance.
“Year of the Fish” screens at Sundance in the Spectrum section.
Can you say a little bit about your background? Where you’re from? Age? Education?
I was born and raised in downtown New York City. I went to elementary and high school at Friends Seminary on 16th Street, college at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and graduate school at a film school I wasn’t crazy about so I won’t mention it
here. Prior to Year of the Fish, I had made several short films. The best known one is Little Red Riding Hood starring Christina Ricci and narrated by Quentin Crisp.
Can you briefly describe what inspired your film?
I’ve always been interested in folklore, myths and fairy tales. I find them quite deep, strange, and they seem to lend themselves nicely to visual adaptation into the film medium. “Year of the Fish” is based on a ninth century variant of Cinderella, the oldest known recorded version of the story, but I thought it would be fun to set it in contemporary Chinatown in a massage parlor.
Can you talk about some of the people you collaborated with?
Based on the screenplay and a short animation sample, I was able to
assemble a wonderful cast: Tsai … Read the rest
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
THE SIGNAL.
This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage.
Making a feature film, independent or otherwise, isn’t easy (understatement of the century). The seemingly impossible hurdle of gaining financing — not to mention the tiny details of actually executing the film and then seeking distribution — seem Herculean enough to scare off most would-be filmmakers.
Now imagine directing a feature film with two other directors.
Suicidal, right?
Well, that’s exactly what three of Atlanta’s finest — Dan Bush, David Bruckner, and Jacob Gentry — did. The ballsy trio arrives at Sundance with their terrifying horror film, The Signal, which tells a story in three sections, or “transmissions,” of a mysterious white-noise — appearing from TV’s, radios, and cell phones — that compels ordinary citizens to become bloodthirsty killers. The film has a deeper agenda (perhaps commenting on the media…?) than simply scaring the hell out of its audience, but you can be certain of one thing: the crowds that see this world-premiere at Sundance will be sure to turn off their cell phones in the theater.
“The Signal” screens at Sundance in the Midnight section, and for this piece, we have comments from all three of the directors.
DAN BUSH
Can you say a little bit about your background?
I have been making movies since I was a kid. In junior high school in 1986 I used to edit with two VCRs. Studied filmmaking at USC — Columbia, South Carolina. I took a class with Dan Berman called “Previsualization.” It changed my life. I realized then that the key to great movies begins with a vision — a fully engaged imagination. In Berman’s class, we dissected movies and looked at each and every shot in sequences from movies that were just coming out. We spent most of our time that semester dissecting Goodfellas, which had just come out.
I realized later that all of the film theory and language was counterintuitive when writing and designing a movie. It is important to understand how the language works, but I tried afterwards to not let … Read the rest
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
If you’re only checking out this blog, make sure to click over to James Ponsoldt’s interviews with the three directors of the American indie horror pic The Signal, which was bought here at Sundance by Magnolia Pictures.… Read the rest
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
Ann Thompson at her Risky Business blog has been detailing what she calls “an unexpectedly insane feeding frenzy” at the Sundance Film Festival. Midway through the first weekend people were saying that this seemed to be a weak year at Sundance and that sales would be slow. Then, all of a sudden, a number of unexpected titles caught the fancy of audiences and distributors. There has been one big sale (Son of Rambow to Paramount Vantage for $7 million), several medium sized ones (Grace is Gone and Dedication, both to the Weinstein’s for $4 million or so), and heartening pickups of low-budget indies like The Signal (to Magnolia for $2 million) and Weapons (to After Dark Releasing for $1 million). Add to that strong showings by films like The Savages and The Year of the Dog, both of which entered the fest with distribution but looking for critical and audience support, and it seems like a pretty good year…… Read the rest
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
Now that both public and the politicians are denouncing the war in Iraq, documentaries like Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight, premiering in Sundance’s Documentary Competition, are simply essential. The inevitable withdrawal of U.S. troops is sure to prompt attacks by the real “bitter enders” –- administration officials and neo-cons who will pin the war’s failures on an American lack of resolve – and Ferguson’s sober and straightforward documentary is the necessary rebuttal. Recalling that old piece of screenplay advice, “There are no third act problems,” Ferguson takes us back to the run-up to the war and the months following the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s government to reveal how a breakdown in rational U.S. foreign policy planning allowed the violence that now plagues Iraq to take root and grow.
To anyone who keeps up with the news, much of Ferguson’s argument will seem familiar. Too few troops were dedicated to the country’s peacekeeping after the end of combat operations; CPA Head Paul Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army and embarked on a policy of “De-Bathification,” ensuring large numbers of angry and jobless Iraqis to fuel the insurgency. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps were not given orders to prevent the looting of the country’s infrastructure and cultural landmarks, thus allowing a demoralized atmosphere of lawlessness and despair to take root. And while No End in Sight contains plenty of new (at least to me) details about the execution of the war and occupation (a tale of a just-graduated Georgetown University student with no experience in municipal planning who is assigned the job of designing the traffic grid for all of Baghdad would be hilarious if it wasn’t also deeply depressing), its strength is its meticulous documenting of the way in which politics and neo-conservative ideology trumped the government’s established foreign policy decision-making apparatus.
No End in Sight is Ferguson’s first feature. (Check out Ann Thompson’s article on Ferguson and the making of the movie.) With a Ph.D in Political Science from MIT, Ferguson is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign … Read the rest
