SPIRIT AWARDS ANNOUNCED

By Jason Guerrasio

2008 Film Independent’s Spirit Awards were announced this morning with I’m Not There, Juno, The Savages and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly leading the way with four nominations including Best Feature. The full list of nominees are below. Awards will be handed out the day before the Oscars, Feb. 23.

BEST FEATURE
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
I’m Not There
Juno
A Mighty Heart
Paranoid Park

BEST DIRECTOR
Todd Haynes, I’m Not There
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park

BEST MALE LEAD
Pedro Castaneda, August Evening
Don Cheadle, Talk To Me
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages
Frank Langella, Starting Out in the Evening
Tony Leung, Lust, Caution

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Sienna Miller, Interview
Ellen Page, Juno
Parker Posey, Broken English
Tang Wei, Lust, Caution

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Talk To Me
Marcus Carl Franklin, I’m Not There
Kene Holliday, Great World of Sound
Irrfan Khan, The Namesake
Steve Zahn, Rescue Dawn

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There
Anna Kendrick, Rocket Science
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Margot at the Wedding
Tamara Podemski, Four Sheets to the Wind
Marisa Tomei, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

BEST SCREENPLAY
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Fred Parnes & Andrew Wagner, Starting Out in the Evening
Adrienne Shelly, Waitress
Mike White, Year of the Dog

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Jeffrey Blitz, Rocket Science
Zoe Cassavetes, Broken English
Diablo Cody, Juno
Kelly Masterson, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
John Orloff, A Mighty Heart

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Crazy Love
Lake of Fire
Manufactured Landscapes
The Monastery
The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Mott Hupfel, The Savages
Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Milton Kam, Vanaja
Mihai Malaimare, Jr., Youth Without Youth
Rodrigo Prieto, Lust, Caution

BEST FOREIGN FILM
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
The Band’s Visit
Lady Chatterley
Once
Persepolis

BEST FIRST FEATURE
2 Days in Paris
Great World of Sound
The Lookout
Rocket Science
Vanaja… Read the rest

CHEAT SHEET

By Scott Macaulay

When I was a kid I remember going to see Apocalypse Now at D.C.’s incredible Uptown theater and being handled a program when I entered. It was a black-and-white book, about sixteen pages, with stills from the film and commentary about it. It was a cool thing to get at a movie and I still have it. So it was interesting to read over at Ray Pride’s Movie City Indie that the Weinstein Company are doing something similar for the release of Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There.

Pride quotes the press release:

The Weinstein Company is pleased to announce that participating movie theaters nationwide will distribute liner notes for the highly anticipated film “I’m Not There.” From acclaimed director Todd Haynes, I’m Not There is an unconventional journey into the life and times of Bob Dylan. Six actors portray Dylan as a series of shifting personae—from the public to the private to the fantastical—weaving together a rich and colorful portrait of this ever-elusive American icon. The film opens in select theaters across the country on Wednesday, November 21, 2007. The announcement was made today by Gary Faber, executive vice president of marketing for The Weinstein Company.

Inspired by Dylan’s famous liner notes for his classic albums, this information will provide audiences with a special introduction to Dylan. The liner notes include carefully selected excerpts of articles that will enhance the audiences’ experience of the man and his music, replicating the experience of listening to one of Dylan’s albums or seeing him in concert for the first time.

… Read the rest

WEEKEND LINK CATCH-UP

By Scott Macaulay

Here’s a collection of links to some things I’ve found interesting in the last week but which, because of the holiday, I wasn’t able to post here as their own separate entries.

Filmmaker AJ Schnack has written an excellent post on the yearly disappointment that is the Academy Award doc shortlist. (For the complete list, click here). Typically, the Academy overlooked the most artistically risk-taking films, movies like Manda Bala and Billy the Kid, and went, mostly, for worthy films dealing with serious subjects that also happened to subscribe to long accepted methods of documentary practice. (Nominees included such strong titles as Taxi to the Dark Side, Sicko, No End in Sight, and Autism: The Musical.) Schnack calls for film lovers and critics to be more aggressive in their support for docs that try to shake up the form’s conventions:

And one must look to a new body, be it the American Film Institute or some consortium of festivals or some brand new organization to stand up for, to recognize filmmaking craft, to support innovation and risk-taking. To say damn what is important, damn the issues, we stand with artists.

And we need film critics to dig down deep within themselves and write about films from the perspective of the filmmaking, not on whether or not a subject is worthy or important. You need to learn to write about the art of making nonfiction as much or more than you write a summary of the events that transpire in the documentary.

(Thanks to Ted Hope for flagging this post for me.)

On Facebook I came across a group for Arthur Russell, Matt Wolf’s documentary about the experimental composer and avant-disco pioneer. Russell’s strange and personal take on both twentieth century classical and downtown dance music in the 1970s and ’80s is being rediscovered now through a series of reissues, and Wolf’s doc looks to capture both Russell’s musical importance as well as the unique circumstances involved in making radical art during the AIDS epidemic. For more on the doc or to contribute tax-deductible … Read the rest

THE RULE OF TROIS

By Scott Macaulay

The Financial Times reports on a new anti-piracy and filesharing proposal being endorsed by President Nicholas Sarkozy.

An excerpt from the piece by Ben Hall:

Internet users in France who download music and films without paying for them could find their web access shut down by a government body, under a ground-breaking industry agreement backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The plan, which Mr Sarkozy is to endorse in a speech on Friday, will put France at the forefront of the battle against internet piracy with a three-strikes-and-you-are-out policy against repeat offenders.

The proposed enforcement body would use information collected by internet service providers on their high volume users to detect illegal file-sharing. Persistent offenders would be cautioned but could see their internet accounts suspended or terminated if they ignored as few as two warnings.

The proposals were generated by what is termed an “independent review” headed by the president of FNAC (sort of like France’s Virgin Records stores), Denis Olivennes.

More:

In exchange for the clampdown on illegal downloading, the music industry has agreed to make individual downloads of archive French material available on all types of players by dropping digital rights management protection.

The French film industry has agreed to release DVDs more quickly after a film’s first cinema screening, reducing the delay from 7½ months to 6 months.

However, consumer groups and even some of Mr Sarkozy’s own members of parliament on Thursday attacked the proposal for a new internet policeman as a threat to civil liberties.

One of the arguments used by Olivennes in his lobbying was that piracy hurts French culture by reducing cinema admissions. In France, a percentage of all ticket sales gets fed by into the “French system” to support the production of new French cinema.… Read the rest

CAN SWANBERG AND RUSSO-YOUNG KEEP THE "M" WORD OUT OF THESSALONIKI?

By Admin

At the 48th Thessaloniki International Film Festival in the north of Greece, the moderator for a “DIY” Masterclass with Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes The Stairs) and Ry Russo-Young (Orphans, in competition here) begins precisely with the dread “M” word, which the pair ably dismiss. The clip above starts Dogme 95-ish because of the lighting setup in the John Cassavetes Theater, but the lighting by video cameramen and an intervening volley of flashes yield an unexpected paparazzi effect.

Later in the two-hour program Swanberg shows an eight-minute scene from his unfinished fourth feature, Nights and Weekends, which should be done in early 2008; it’s the first time it’s been shown to “anyone but my producers.” The clip’s badinage between a couple (Swanberg, Greta Gerwig) in a long-distance relationship between Chicago and New York would be eye-opening if only for a deepening and widening of the ineffable Gerwig’s twerptitude of magnitude. It promises to be a major advance for the prolific 26-year old director. Gerwig’s character has a stifled fit in a downpour in front of the most-photographed attraction in Chicago’s half-billion dollar Millennium Park, Anish Kapoor’s huge fat silver polished reflective sculpture, “Sky Gate,” better-known as “The Bean.” (The city claims copyright on every step or breath in the park’s confines, so it’s sweet to see guerilla footage of the wrongly-corraled public space.) Rain mingles with tears as Gerwig battles Swanberg with the lovely, selfish, tantrum-tastic line, “I don’t respond to sarcastic fun!” (Oh, to already recall the highlights of 2008…)

Swanberg brought the beat-up DV camera he used to shoot his first three features and his three-season web series Young American Bodies, along with his mike and boom pole: here’s all you need, folks. (He’d just come from the festival in Stockholm, so this show-and-tell has taken more than the average amount of effort.) “You take the things you don’t like and don’t do them,” he tells the almost-filled 11am masterclass, comprised largely of students. “I don’t like writing scripts, so I don’t. I don’t like working with actors, so I don’t. I work … Read the rest

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

By Scott Macaulay

Everyone here at Filmmaker wishes our readers a happy and safe Thanksgiving. Thanks for reading us this past year and see you after the holiday.… Read the rest

CRISPIN HELLION GLOVER, “IT IS FINE! EVERYTHING IS FINE.”

By Nick Dawson

STEVEN C. STEWART AND CARRIE SZLASA IN DIRECTOR CRISPIN HELLION GLOVER’S IT IS FINE! EVERYTHING IS FINE.

Put simply, Crispin Glover is not from here: there is an otherworldly quality to the actor-turned-director’s appearance, manner and aesthetics that make even his friend and mentor David Lynch seem pretty normal. The son of actors Bruce and Marie Glover, he came to prominence in the mid-1980s with performances in Back to the Future (1985) and River’s Edge (1986). Very much treading his own path, he combined a career playing eccentrics on screen with painting, writing books, like Oak Mot (1991) and Rat Catching (1992), and also releasing an album, The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution, The Solution Equals Let It Be (1989), which he released, like his books, under the name Crispin Hellion Glover. Having worked with Lynch, Oliver Stone, Milos Forman, Gus Van Sant, Jim Jarmusch and Neil LaBute (not to mention McG on both Charlie’s Angels movies!), Glover made his directorial debut in 2005 with What Is It? A wildly bizarre experimental film that he also wrote and starred in, it tackles numerous taboo subjects, features a cast predominantly made up of young people with Down Syndrome, and is described by Glover as “the adventures of a young man whose principle interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home.”

Glover’s follow-up, and the second part of his It trilogy, is It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE, which was written by the late Steven C. Stewart, an actor with cerebral palsy who appeared in What Is It? Co-directed by David Brothers, the film stars Stewart as his alter-ego Paul, a man who also is confined to a wheelchair and whose speech is almost indecipherable, but who is perfectly understood by women, most of whom want to sleep with him. The film indulges Stewart’s sexual fantasies and fetishes, but more importantly underlines the fact that Paul, despite his disability, is capable of good and bad just like anybody else — a point made all too clear when he strangles every single woman he beds. Shot … Read the rest

TEETH TRAILER

By Jason Guerrasio

Mitchell Lichtenstein‘s wildly entertaining film Teeth will finally get a theatrical release in February after being one of the most talked about films (and scaring the hell out of ever male who saw it) at Sundance this past January. Here’s the trailer, which just surfaced on the net over the weekend. Learn more about the film here.

IN BRUGES ANNOUNCED AS SUNDANCE OPENING NIGHT FILM

By Jason Guerrasio

In a release sent out moments ago, the Sundance Institute has announced Martin McDonagh‘s comedy In Bruges as the Sundance Film Festival‘s 2008 Opening Night Film. The film stars Ralph Fiennes, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

For those who may not be familiar with McDonagh, he’s an award-winning playwright and this film marks his debut feature. More on McDonagh and the film is in the release from Sundance below. The entire 2008 festival line-up will be announced Nov. 28 and 29.

McDonagh’s first foray into filmmaking was with the short film, SIX SHOOTER, also starring Gleeson, which won the Academy Award for best live-action short film in 2006. A winner of two Olivier Awards for the plays The Lieutenant if Inishmore and The Pillowman, he is also a four-time Tony Award-nominated playwright of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome West and The Pillowman. Born in London, McDonagh divides his time between England and Ireland. A creator of scripts for radio plays early in his writing career, McDonagh is now recognized for his sharp dialogue and vivid storytelling that is both provocative and powerful.”I’m stunned and thrilled that IN BRUGES will be opening a festival as prestigious, and as cool, as Sundance, and I simply can’t wait to attend,” McDonagh said.

IN BRUGES tells the story of hit men Ray and Ken, (Farrell and Gleeson, respectively) who, after a badly botched job in London, are ordered by their boss, Harry (Fiennes), to cool their heels in the bucolic city of Bruges, Belgium. Very much out of their comfort zones, the men find themselves drawn into increasingly dangerous entanglements with locals, tourists, and a film shoot. When their stay in Bruges takes a turn for the worst, Ray and Ken realize Harry may have plans for them other than a simple vacation.

“Martin McDonagh’s hilariously sad first feature is seemingly modest; but, in fact, highly original. No filmmaker I know has made the English language, in all its profane – and here, quite Celtic – glory, such a purely, joyously cinematic medium,” said James Schamus, CEO, Focus

… Read the rest

“NEGATIVLAND: OUR FAVORITE THINGS”

By Admin

A compilation of videos/short films for the legendary “band” Negativland, made by themselves with collaborators. One of a few pioneers of culture jamming – attacking the notions of copyright laws and media conglomerates – Negativland has made incredible new songs from existing audio of songs and voice samples, ranging from U2 and irate wanna-be lawyers to the unforgettable bootlegged tape of Casey Kasem freaking out off-air. Their shorts also display their knack for reworking existing media to great detail, combining world terror with religion and Disney. As political as they are humorous, Negativland is more important than most popular bands with original material. As Other Cinema puts it: “What emerges is a darkly cracked look at 21st century America, juxtaposing paranoia, torture, control, power, weapons, fear, suicide, cola wars, mental illness, and intellectual property issues with the lighter side of dopey advertising, cartoon characters, cleaning products and Jesus.”

3 hrs of footage! Their original videos, extras and a music CD – 180 D’Gs To the Future! (covers of Negativland songs done by the Gospel R & B Doo-Wop group, The 180-Gs). The thick extras are “At Home With The Weatherman”, The Long Lost “Visit Howland Island”, the KPIX News Ax Murder Hoax Broadcast and Jon Behren’s “Anomalies Of The Unconscious” – that makes one of the better DVD releases of the year by itself.

available now, released by Other Cinema DVD for $24.95.… Read the rest