Archive for October, 2007
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
Unless the latest round of dueling press releases between the AMPTP and the WGA represents a last spasm of contentiousness before a final reconciliation, which I really doubt, it looks like the WGA could be striking by the end of the week or Monday. (The WGA agreement expires at midnight tonight, but it originally looked like writers would work while negotiations continued post-expiration.)
On her Deadline Hollywood Daily Nikkie Finke posts a statement issued by AMPTP President Nick Counter. (He’s the guy repping the studios and producers). In it, Counter says not only that the WGA-desired revision of the DVD royalty formula, which was originally devised before home video was a thriving industry, is a non-starter but that, furthermore, for calculation purposes internet downloads must be considered the same as DVDs.
Counter wrote:
We want to make a deal. We think doing so is in your best interests, in your members’ best interests, in the best interests of our companies and in the best interests of the industry. But, as I said, no further movement is possible to close the gap between us so long as your DVD proposal remains on the table. In referring to DVDs, we include not only traditional DVDs, but also electronic sell-through — i.e., permanent downloads. As you know, we believe that electronic sell-through is synonymous with DVD.
“There are pending claims with regard to electronic sell-through that will be resolved through the arbitration process. But to make any new agreement with you, residuals for the DVD market, including electronic sell-through, must be paid under the existing home video formula.
The WGA responded:
“Today, just hours before the expiration of our contract, the AMPTP brought negotiations to a halt. The Companies refused to continue to bargain unless we agree that the hated DVD formula be extended to Internet downloads.
“This morning we presented the AMPTP with a comprehensive package of proposals that included movement on DVDs, new media, and jurisdictional issues. We also took nine proposals off the table. The Companies returned six hours later and said they would not respond to our package until
… Read the rest
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
Now’s your chance. Canadian stalwart Bruce McDonald launched Tracey: Re-Fragmented, a re-editing initiative surrounding the release of his latest award-winning feature film The Tracey Fragments. In a bold move, he has made the entire film and score (by Indie Collective Broken Social Scene) available for download for users to make their own version. Send it back to him and his favorite version will appear on the official DVD and win an Apple Final Cut Pro prize pack. Alas, for Canadians only, although anyone can download and rock it.
from the official press release:
Featuring a stand-out performance from Ellen Page as a 15-year-old girl who has lost her little brother and sets out on a desperate journey to find him, The Tracey Fragments is a daring portrayal of teenage angst, told in a dazzling style. The film, which opens in limited release Friday [in Canada], employs multi-frame editing to breathtaking effect, pushing the boundaries of cinematic language to get inside the heart and mind of Tracey.
Director Bruce McDonald explains the inspiration behind the project: “The Tracey Fragments is a film that fully embraces experimentation and teamwork. I wanted to find out if that experience exists on the Internet and give others the chance to experiment and play with some beautifully shot footage of a world class actress in a free form environment. I hope people make their own feature films, short films, rock videos, trailers, experimental films and personal manifestos out of The Tracey Fragments.”
The Tracey Fragments is distributed in Canada through Alliance Films and will be released in theatres in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal November 2, 2007. The film recently won Best Canadian Feature Film at the Atlantic Film Festival with Ellen Page picking up the Award for Best Actress at the fest. The film premiered at the 57th Berlinale and won the Manfred Salzgeber Prize for innovative filmmaking. It has also screened at festivals around the world including Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and will play at AFI Fest Los Angeles 2007 in November.
Endnote: McDonald … Read the rest
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Late Sunday night the 27th edition of the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival finally wrapped, bringing to an end over 10 days of screenings, panels, and parties.
The festival announced the Audience Awards for Best Feature, Documentary, and Short Film at the closing night party aboard the Hawaii Superferry, a mammoth beast of a ship designed to ferry passengers around the Hawaiian isles but content in this case to hold passengers while they staggered from the vodka bar to the dessert table. Best Feature went to Gwak Gyung Taek‘s A Love, while Julianne and Don King‘s Beautiful Son won Best Documentary, and Kurt Kuenne‘s Validation won Best Short Film.
In an earlier awards ceremony scenically located along the shores of Waikiki (and propped up by several Go-Kino! speeches from Hawaii’s governor, Honolulu’s mayor, and assorted other politicians), Beautiful Son won the Halekulani Golden Orchid Award (the fest’s jury prize) for Best Documentary, while Tony Ayres‘ The Home Song Stories won the Halekulani Golden Orchid for the narrative competition.
The Vietnam-set The Owl and the Sparrow, by Orange County-based Stephane Gaugner, won the prestigious NETPAC Award (designed to promote Asian cinema). The Pacific Panorama Award was given to Lahaina: Waves of Change, while the Honolulu Magazine Short Film Award was plucked by Pretend (Nagpapanggap). Monkeyboy Fever won the Video-on-Demand Viewer’s Choice Award from Time Oceanic Cable, an award voted on by cable tv viewers able to screen several of festival shorts on television.… Read the rest
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Love him or hate him, Eli Roth (Saddam to Nikki Finke‘s Dubya) knows a fair bit about horror movies. The Hostel director has curated a horror marathon over at The Onion‘s A.V. Club where he’s made a suggested schedule for 24 hours of Halloween DVD viewing. Roth’s discussion of the films he chose acts as a great primer on horror and shows that he’s a connoisseur of great cinema as well as, you know, torture porn. He presents a really great selection of movies, putting classics (John Carpenter‘s The Thing, Dario Argento‘s Suspiria) alongside foreign obscurities (Pieces, Who Would Kill A Child?) and cult classics (Cannibal Holocaust, Evil Dead). But what I found most impressive was that Roth also included films that are not horror films in the strictest sense, fantastic movies like David Lynch‘s Eraserhead, Miike Takashi‘s Audition and, best of all, the original Dutch version of The Vanishing.
These three choices in particular bode well for Roth’s future career, and seem to be in sync with comments he made recently about the kinds of films he plans to make from now on:
“As far as violence goes, I think at this point I’ve pushed the boundaries of horror as far as I can, and it’s someone else’s turn to take over spilling blood and guts. I have new challenges and much more ambitious ideas that are not horror related that I’m working on, as well as other artistic endeavors outside of film. I love directors like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, who pushed the boundaries of gore and horror in their early career, and then took that same energy and aesthetic and applied it to other genres. I’ll always love horror and I’m sure I’ll make more horror movies, but once you’ve spilled that much blood, you kind of have it out of your system and look for other ways to make audiences scream and cheer and vomit.”
… Read the rest
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Who killed Laura Palmer? Why is the FBI here? Where can a man find a good cup of coffee? Infamous questions from David Lynch’s cult classic Twin Peaks. This week the complete series became available in a gold box that should have Lynch buffs salivating, for this marks the first time the pilot (arguably the best episode) has been released on DVD.
When Twin Peaks first aired on Easter Sunday 1990 it sparked a sensation throughout TV land. The shows quirky kitsch, combined with the murder-mystery melodrama, provided plenty of fodder for water cooler conversation. Ratings soared throughout the first season, climaxing at finale. Twin Peaks was innovative in bringing a certain cinematic quality to television in an era when three networks ruled prime-time, thus, paving the way for shows such as Northern Exposure, X-Files, Picket Fences and most recently Lost. But the primal sense of wonder and intrigue that Twin Peaks introduced has yet to be replicated to effect. Unfortunately, the second season didn’t enjoy the same success, as many felt the show deviated once the central mystery was – for all intents and purposes – solved.
This is all talked about very candidly on the documentaries available in this edition. Everything from the casting process to the music is covered in supplemental materials which include interviews from the entire cast and key crew. Also on this disc is A Slice of Lynch, an intriguing dialogue between David Lynch, Kyle MacLachlan and Madchen Amick, looking back at their experiences filming the show.
All the episodes have undergone remastering supervised by Lynch, which provides a far superior picture than the original season one DVDs released by Republic Pictures several years ago. Also housed in the gold-plated DVDs are deleted scenes, promotional spots, postcards, an interactive Twin Peaks map and the Saturday Night Live sketch from when Kyle MacLachlan hosted.
If you’ve bought the two previous sets before, they’re worth holding on to as there are some extras not brought over, such as the commentaries. But all-in-all it’s so comprehensive, the only thing I wished they added was my first
… Read the rest
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Stephen M. Duesner at the always reliable Pitchfork reviews the soundtrack to Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There. (It gets an 8.0.)
Here’s the lede:
I’m Not There is director Todd Haynes’ third music biopic, after Superstar in 1987 and Velvet Goldmine in 1998. In each of those films, the main subject– the celebrity at the center– has been altered or is somehow absent: Superstar recounted Karen Carpenter’s death from anorexia with only Barbie dolls, which continually prevents it from being officially released. Velvet Goldmine traces David Bowie’s rise and fall throughout the 1970s, but the singer threatened to sue and refused to license his songs. So Haynes took even more liberties with the story, which involved aliens, assassins, and an ongoing affair with Iggy Pop. By all accounts, I’m Not There, his new film about Bob Dylan, continues this sort of meaningful absence, casting six actors to play the folk singer in various stages of his life and career (essentially the same thing), and literalizing the mercurial nature of his identity. Likewise, the soundtrack for I’m Not There casts 29 singers to re-create that singular voice in all its permutations and variations, with surprising results.
For Duesner, the standouts are Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Craig Finn (from the Hold Steady) and Stephen Malkmus.… Read the rest
Monday, October 29th, 2007
Steve Buscemi’s Interview, which Filmmaker featured on its cover last issue, opened in London this week and there’s been some U.K. press about the movie and its American shoot. And while I don’t consider myself a reflexive stars-and-stripes-forever rah-rah’er, I found the comments in this Guardian piece entitled “The Final Cut” by the slain Dutch director Theo Van Gogh’s “creative consultant” Doesjka van Hoogdalem about shooting in American both naive and annoying. Much of the piece is devoted to van Hoogdalem’s wide-eyed wonder at the wacky wastefulness of U.S. filmmaking.
From the piece:
However, maintaining the authenticity of the Van Gogh style was only possible because producers Weiss and Van de Westelaken were able to bring Van Gogh’s Dutch crew to the US. “We had a good lawyer who managed to persuade the US authorities that only the Dutch team could make this film,” says Van Hoogdalem.
They had a stiff battle with the unions, who refused to accept the Dutch side’s insistence that only a few people were needed – or desired – on set. Van Hoogdalem herself acted as both director’s assistant and script adviser until the unions protested that she was doing someone out of a job, at which point the role of “creative consultant” was invented for her.
“We had to fight with them constantly about everything, from taking lunch breaks at a specific time, even when we were in the middle of a scene, to the number of people we had on set at any one time,” she says. There were rows over everything from gaffer tape – with the Americans wanting to hire a gaffer-tape lorry when a single piece of tape was required – to the suggestion that a “loop group” from the Screen Actors Guild be hired at a cost of $5,000 a day to produce the background muttering sounds of a restaurant crowd. When Van de Westelaken suggested sticking a microphone in a real restaurant and recording the sound, the Americans on the crew “were amazed, and didn’t believe it could be done,” he says. “We said, ‘We do it
… Read the rest
Monday, October 29th, 2007
The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting today issued proposed new rules for the permitting of film shoots in the city of New York. If you remember back several dozen internet news cycles (like around late July), an outcry arose when the Mayor’s Office issued specific new shooting rules that seemed to many to disregard First Amendment rights, legitimate news gathering needs, the needs of tourists, and the working practices of artisanal street photographers and experimental filmmakers. Protests were had, everyone from no-budget filmmakers to Keith Olbermann chimed in, and a grass roots group, Picture NY, organized the opposition.
The whole thing had a happy ending when the Mayor’s Office announced they were withdrawing the proposed changes and drafting new rules, which have been issued, again in draft form, today. (The document can be read here, and an executive summary has been prepared as well.)
From the press release:
Under the new draft of the proposed rule, a permit would be required if equipment or vehicles are being used by the production or if the filming activity creates an obstruction. “Equipment” is defined as film cameras, videocameras, lights, sets, and other production related materials, but does not include hand-held devices or tripods.
“Obstruction” is defined in the proposed rule as the assertion of exclusive control over a public space resulting in the obstruction of one or more lanes of a street or walkway, or when production activity results in either less than eight feet or one-half the width of the sidewalk or passageway (whichever is greater) being available for unobstructed sidewalk use by pedestrians.
A permit would not be required if the production uses hand-held devices or tripods, its activity does not present an obstruction, and it is not using equipment or vehicles. An optional permit would be available in these instances, and would not require liability insurance.
The new rules were drawn up in collaboration with the Independent Feature Project (IFP), Fractured Atlas, Creative Capital, The Moving Pictures Collective of NYC, and the International Center of Photography (ICP).
I’ve just read through the executive summary … Read the rest
Monday, October 29th, 2007
Since showing his debut feature We Are The Strange at Sundance last January, M dot Strange has become the poster boy for DIY filmmaking as he’s warded off all main stream avenues for theatrical distribution, concentrating instead on festival screenings, grassroots programs like MobMov (mobile movie drive-ins) and now a comprehensive 2-disc DVD package that is a must have for low-budget animators and filmmakers alike.
It’s hard to describe the film other than to say it’s really experimental. (surprised?) All I know is the two main characters really want ice cream. But what makes this film great is that it is so out there. I like how Variety reviewer John Anderson puts it:
“We Are The Strange… is a Freudian/spiritual/psycho-dramatic and high-tech catalog of visual imagery through the ages, as well as a plummet into the bramble patch of Strange’s soul.”
Only half way through do you really grasp the plot, but from start to finish the stunning images (a mixture of stop-motion animation and 8-bit graphics), video game qualities and score, created by 8bitpeoples, is what keeps you sucked in.
Accompanying the film is a plethora of features that helps us better understand the Str8nime world (Strange+8 bit+Anime). Along with a commentary by M dot and producer/illustrator Sean Boyles, there’s deleted scenes, alternative soundtracks to the film and a director’s cut all on disc one. Then the second disc is where the fun starts. There’s a making of section that gives away all the “secrets” to how the film was made: how M dot created the characters (some of the stories he tells are hilarious), a tour of the stop motion studio (aka, his bedroom), and what I found most interesting, a tour of his desktop, where he shows how he rendered the animation, storyboards, editing and a lot more. Disc two also includes a recap of his festival tour and some of M dot’s animated works pre-WATS.
This is obviously a way for M dot to expand his talents to a wider audience (and make a buck), but he also takes the … Read the rest
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Jan Kounen is a French music video and feature film director who has specialized in bringing the spiritual world to the screen. On locations in Peru and Mexico to film the psychedelic spaghetti western, Renegade (2004, released as Blueberry outside the U.S.), an adaptation of the French comic book by renowned visionary artist Moebius, he discovered Shamanism, fell in love with the indigenous Shipibo-Conibos culture and later spent several months learning the ways of their plant medicine, ayahuasca. He even filmed a documentary about it, Other Worlds, which will be re-released as a DVD box set in October.
His latest feature film, 99 Francs [pictured above], which he adapted from a bestselling French novel, was released overseas in September (currently there is no U.S. distribution behind the film). It’s the story of a jaded advertising executive who becomes an overnight celebrity after rallying against consumer society. Kounen has also created a non-profit organization called Spirit of the Anaconda and filmed a series of one-hour television documentaries titled Another Reality. Here he talks about his work with the shamans of South America, the plant medicine ayahuasca, the difficulties of bringing the other world onto the screen — as well as the altered state of contemporary media itself.
DIRECTOR JAN KOUNEN ON THE SET OF 99 FRANCS. COURTESY BERNARD BENANT/PATHE DISTRIBUTION.Filmmaker: How did you start in the film industry and have you always been interested in spiritual themes?
Kounen: My first feature film was Dobermann – it’s an action-cops-gangster-Spaghetti Western. That came out in 1997. Previously I did a lot of short films and commercials, so there was no design to do the type of films I make now. If you had told me ten years ago that the last movie I’d have done [the documentary bio-pic, Umma] would be about Hindu saint, well…
Filmmaker: So how did you start making films about psychedelic states of mind?
Kounen: I was researching mystical experiences, which was the subject of Renegade, and found out about shamanism. I went to see the Huichol Indians in the Sierra in Mexico, like … Read the rest
