Archive for June, 2007
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
Everyone’s a critic, but when it comes to considering Michael Moore’s Sicko, some critical voices might be a little bit more important than others.
From Roger Ebert’s positive review:
I saw the movie almost a year to the day after a cartoid artery burst after surgery and I came within a breath of death. I spent the next nine months in Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and the Pritikin Longevity Center, and still require the daily care of a nurse. I mention this to indicate I am pretty deeply involved in the health care system. In each and every case, without exception, I have been cared for by doctors who are kind, patient, painstaking and expert, and by nurses who are skilled, wise and tireless. My insurance has covered a small fortune in claims. My wife and I have also paid large sums from our own savings.
So I have only one complaint, and it is this: Every American should be as fortunate as I have been. As Moore makes clear in his film, some 50 million Americans have no insurance and no way to get it.
(Thanks to Movie City News for the link.)… Read the rest
Friday, June 29th, 2007
On the day of Sicko’s expansion to over 400 screens, John Pierson, who repped Roger and Me and namechecked Michael Moore in the title of his Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes, sends an open letter to the director. While citing Sicko as Moore’s best filmmaking to date, he brings up the issues about Moore raised in the doc Manufacturing Dissent and discusses the goals of political filmmaking in general.
Read it over at Indiewire.… Read the rest
Friday, June 29th, 2007
Over at his blog, Scott Kirsner says he wants to avoid getting sucked into the iPhone media vortex but has failed. He links to two articles, , one in Variety, where he discusses Apple’s Fair Play DRM and how the company has created a “closed loop” in which it will be difficult for other content providers to sell media for the iPhone platform.
Still, there’s enough in Kirsner’s article and elsewhere to make me think that the iPhone will be more successful than some think as a movie platform. In his piece Kirsner talks to Jim Flynn, chief exec of the site EZ Takes, which sells non-DRM-encoded films like Super Size Me which can play on the device. And, he ends with a quote from Flynn who says that, just as consumers can rip a DVD and load it into their video iPod, movies can be placed on the iPhone with basic hacking skills. “I could train a money to do it,” he says.
Kirsner also links to this article on GigaOM by Om Malik in which it is reported that there may soon be a way for you to watch videos downloaded from the aggressively positioned movie site Jaman on the similarly guarded Apple TV device:
The folks at Jaman have developed a plug-in of sorts for AppleTV that basically installs on the AppleTV box, and allows your PC/Mac to find and sync content from Jaman’s client to Apple’s box. It still maintains its copyright protected status, and 7-day-rental policy. For legal reasons Gaurav Dhillon refused to talk about how they did the hack, but said Google is your friend… your will find the answer.
Jaman has done a great job of (unofficially) integrating their service with AppleTV, and the experience was as seamless as say YouTube. But more importantly, the visual quality on a big screen plasma screen was stunning… scratch that, breath taking, when compared to Apple’s own video offerings. I think Apple should give this product their blessing and give people a good reason to buy AppleTV, which is still a hobby according to
… Read the rest
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
The trailer for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, debuted on MSN yesterday. The film already looks far more opulent and operatic then it’s predecessor. But I guess I should have expected as much when I saw the Universal logo.
The film examines the tumultuous relationship between Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett) and famed explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). The film also stars Samantha Morton as Mary Queen of Scots who conspires with Philip of Spain to bring an end to Elizabeth’s reign. Shekhar Kapur remains at the helm.… Read the rest
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
2PAC AND HIS SOLDIERS IN ASGER LETH’S GHOSTS OF CITÉ SOLEIL. COURTESY THINKFILM.Asger Leth grew up with film as a way of life. His father, Danish film giant Jørgen Leth, featured him in Life in Denmark (1971) before young Asger could even walk or talk, and he also appeared in two more of his father’s documentaries, Good and Evil (1975) and Moments of Play (1986). Keen to escape his father’s shadow, Leth initially considered a career as a lawyer but ultimately could not resist the lure of filmmaking. He started directing short films in the mid-1990s, while simultaneously working on his father’s projects, most notably the celebrated The Five Obstructions (2003), in which Lars von Trier forced Leth Sr. to remake one of his films five times.
Leth’s experiences as writer and assistant director on The Five Obstructions gave him the confidence to go out and make his feature debut, and he found an ideal subject in Haiti, where Jørgen Leth has lived since the late 1980s. The resulting film is Ghosts of Cité Soleil, an immediate and compelling documentary about the Chimères, the gangs who run Cité Soleil, the dangerous and impoverished slum section of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. It focuses on two of the gang leaders, chalk-and cheese brothers Bily and 2pac: Bily is politically-minded, while all 2pac really wants to do is be a rapper and escape Cité Soleil to make his music. Stylishly shot and edited with all the pace and verve of a thriller, Ghosts of Cité Soleil arguably has just as much genuine drama as the majority of Hollywood movies, and considerably more emotional impact simply because what’s happening on screen is not fiction, but real life.
Filmmaker spoke to Leth about shooting in one of the most dangerous places in the world, the current state of documentaries, and being attacked by Werner Herzog.
GHOSTS OF CITÉ SOLEIL DIRECTOR ASGER LETH. COURTESY JEPPE CARLSEN.Filmmaker: You’ve spent a lot of time in Haiti because of your father. How old were you when he first moved there?
Leth: He moved there … Read the rest
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Last year writer/director So Yong Kim (pictured) was one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2006, and now, her debut feature, In Between Days, is opening in New York. GreenCine rounds up links to the rave reviews, and The Reeler has an interview with Kim in which she discusses her upcoming projects, the current movie’s long march through the festival circuit and into release, and the methods by which she cast her movie.… Read the rest
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Writer Lauren Wissot emailed me after I blogged about the Antidote Films vs. JT Leroy verdict with a link to her own blog, Beyond the Green Door, where she’s posted several pieces about the case. Wissot takes the pro-Laura Albert position in two posts, beginning with:
I guess I’m trying to find the humor in all this because, frankly, Laura Albert’s Kafkaesque nightmare scares the hell out of me. Though the defense lawyers have broached the subject of Albert’s psychiatric history on the stand, Albert’s mental health is irrelevant. (Though as a good friend of mine pointed out, amputees who run marathons are called inspirational for turning disability into creative pursuit, so why isn’t Laura Albert being held up as a hero for turning her emotional “disability” into art?) No, this case is solely about a book – published as fiction, optioned as fiction, end of story. And this is why even the sanest of artists needs to heed the wake-up call, this frightening cautionary tale. As an author who published a 100% nonfiction memoir as fiction (only because my U.K. publisher’s “brand” is erotic fiction so I didn’t have much of a choice), will I one day be sued because my story happened, because I actually exist? Sound crazy? Laura Albert’s being sued right now because she exists and JT Leroy doesn’t. Fact is the only hoax, the only fraud perpetrated, is by a judicial system that could allow a baseless case like this to even come to trial.
And, in a post-verdict piece entitled Judgement Day,, she offers:
This case was not about Laura Albert masquerading as a teenage, truck stop prostitute, but about getting revenge for the shame caused when one feels they’ve been suckered. Not too long ago this same level of intense mob hatred was directed at author James Frey after his supposed memoir was revealed to be fiction. But James Frey is not another one of Laura Albert’s alter egos. Mr. Frey published fantasy as hard fact. Laura Albert published JT Leroy’s “memoir” as fiction….
Instinctively I knew Albert’s defense had miscalculated
… Read the rest
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Today I attended an unveiling of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists list of top 100 films. The press release claimed this list would act as a “counter” to last weeks AFI top 100 list, which they felt slighted films directed by women.
A press release:
The Tenth Anniversary of AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies List got us to thinking, especially when we noticed that of 400 films nominated for AFI’s list, only 4.5 were directed by women. Without knowing who’d been on AFI’s nominating committee nor what instructions they were given, we thought it would be interesting and fun to see whether AWFJ members– a diverse group of strongly opinionated and outspoken professional women film journalists who care passionately about the movies and industry they cover– would develop a list substantially different AFI‘s. Without issuing directives nor suggesting that only films made by and/or about women be eligible, we asked members to suggest titles they’d like to see on AWFJ’s Top 100 Films List. All titles submitted were placed on the ballot, members voted, votes were tallied. The result, presented in alphabetical order, is an eclectic, perhaps somewhat surprising collection of titles. It’s neither politically nor academically correct, and it’s far from definitive. But it can be said to reflect our women’s perspective, and we’ve annotated each title, indicating why it’s favored. We had so much fun compiling our list, we’ll probably do it again. Meanwhile, we hope you’ll enjoy reading our list as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
Many people at the event (including myself) were taken aback when the list was released and included only 16 films directed by women. Attendees claimed this list was no better then the AFI list and even though it was compiled by female film journalists, it still boasted the same level of discrimination.
At the end of the day the list may not say what certain feminists and promoters of the women’s film movement want it to say, however, it exists as an important cultural document none-the-less. It raises questions such as: What does this mean concerning female film directors? … Read the rest
Monday, June 25th, 2007
[ Filmmaker concludes its exclusive look inside the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs (which wraps up at the end of the week) with a final entry from Filmmaker Braden King [pictured above], who’s been posting weekly stories on his experience at the Labs.
His project is titled Here, co-written by himself and Dani Valent, and follows an American mapmaker charting the Armenian countryside who’s traveling with an adventurous landscape photographer revisiting her homeland.
King has directed music videos and short films for Sonic Youth, Will Oldham and Yo La Tengo. He co-directed the film Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back.]
Sunday, June 24, 2007 – 12:10 A.M.
I am sitting on the floor of the bathroom with my laptop as my wife and kids sleep in the other room. They’ve been visiting for the weekend that divides the production side of the Directors Lab from its final week — the Screenwriters Lab. It seems hard to believe that I’ll have to be leaving here soon. I wonder if anyone’s ever just refused to go.
The actors and crews have left; it’s all quieting down. A separate Documentary Lab has kicked in but we don’t have a ton of interaction with those folks. The vibe has changed. It’s not better or worse, but it’s different, more reflective, slower. The Institute folks keep telling us that this is a week of recovery. I’m still deciding whether or not I want to recover.
My co-writer, Dani Valent has arrived from Melbourne, Australia. We had a couple of great one-on-one meetings on our script today – one with Howard Rodman this morning, the other with Atom Egoyan this afternoon. After dinner tonight, Atom screened a print of The Sweet Hereafter for a small group in the screening room and discussed the film and its production afterward. Dani and I walked up the mountain trying not to let our chatter about the day distract us from the landscape. We collaborated on our script long distance; this is the first time we’ve been in the same place in almost six years. It … Read the rest
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Over at The Guardian, Mark Ravenhill – best known for his play, Shopping and Fucking – writes a typically incendiary, rabble-rousing piece on “a sinister conspiracy no one’s talking about …spreading through movies, television drama, fiction writing for adults and children. It’s beginning to creep into the theatre. It’s a cult with thousands of glassy-eyed members. It’s poisoning more and more of our culture. It’s called Story. And I want you to help me put an end to it.”
Ravenshill does not mince his words on Robert McKee‘s seminal screenwriting book, and continues:
“Story could only have come out of America, birthplace of Fordism. By assembling cars on a production line, a cheap, reliable product was made available to millions of consumers. A few decades later, the same principles were applied to McDonald’s. Individuality was sacrificed, but in exchange the customer got a cheap meal and a brand that was recognisable and reliable anywhere in the world.
It was only a matter of time before the same principles were applied to Hollywood films. By the 1980s, the studios had created a blueprint for the perfect film, a tool by which any script could be analysed and “improved”. The aim was to produce a product that was as reliable as a McDonald’s burger.”
Ravenshill’s solution? A mass book-burning. Read the whole piece over here.… Read the rest
