PAUL ARTHUR, R.I.P.

By Scott Macaulay

Manohla Dargis notes the passing of film historian, critic and filmmaker Paul Arthur in the New York Times.

An excerpt:

He was first published in the early 1970s, and over the next few decades he wrote fluidly and accessibly on a range of topics, notably avant-garde cinema but also film noir and documentary. His work appeared in publications including Artforum, Film Comment, Cineaste, The Village Voice and USA Today magazine. For several years starting in the mid-1980s he served on the board for two venerable avant-garde film institutions in New York: the Collective for Living Cinema, an adventurous screening space, now closed, and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, a nonprofit film-rental library.

Mr. Arthur also ventured behind the camera. In 1970 he began his first short, “Correspondences,” which he shot in 8-millimeter film and finished some five years later. He completed 14 other films, including a 1986 feature-length work called “(Late) of the Primate’s Palace,” which he described in the Film-Makers’ Cooperative catalog as an autobiographical travelogue and which was dedicated to his father.

Update: Arthur’s family has posted a lovely remembrance at the New York Times death notices section, and one of his former students, Ian Hill, posts in the comment section below this link to his own piece on Arthur, a long blog entry that captures the intelligence and passion of his teaching.… Read the rest

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

By Scott Macaulay

Here’s a roundup of some stuff that caught my eye in the blogosphere this weekend.

There’s a lively discussion going on over at Indiewire regarding the Tribeca Film Festival’s “embargo” rule that attempts to prohibit press from writing about pre-screened films until after their Tribeca premiere. Of course, in the world of mainstream journalism, embargos happen all the time; what irks a pretty passionate group of responding posters is the TFF’s attempt to be strict with this rule when it comes to the online journalists who can often positively motivate a fan base leading up to a film’s fest premiere.

Speaking of Tribeca, Twitch has rounded up a bunch of links related to the fest’s various films.

Over at the Spout Blog, Karina Longworth has a very clever post that riffs off of a NY Times review of MTV’s The Hills in which the critic referred to the show as “Antonionesque.” Along with a clip from Red Desert, she comes up with five ways in which that analogy is true.

There has been much writing this week about film critic Nathan Lee’s firing at the Village Voice for economic reasons. The conversation over at The Reeler has wound through waves of attack and even hurt feelings to conclude (for the moment) with a long post by Kent Jones on the cultural authority of Pauline Kael. There’s more at The House Next Door, particularly a series of post that discuss, in various degrees of either dismay or “who cares”-ness, the financial viability of being a film critic.

The liveliest talk-back thread around, however, belongs to Deadline Hollywood Daily and Nikki Finke’s take on the weekend box office. Yep, her trade analysis is up to 700 replies as I write this, and if she approves more comments I’m sure that number will soar even higher. Causing all the ruckus is a link from the Drudge Report, which picked up on her headline that Kimberly Peirce’s Stop Loss was “DOA” at the box office, and filling up the comments section are conservative and largely pro-war posters attacking “liberal Hollywood” … Read the rest

ARTS ENGINE NABS DOCUCLUB

By Jason Guerrasio

Celebrating its tenth year, the organization Arts Engine, which produces, supports and distributes social-issue media, has announced today that it will be expanding its services to include DocuClub, the 14-year-old program dedicated to nurturing documentaries that are works-in-progress.

DocuClub’s first screening of ’08 will be recent “25 New Faces” Kimberly Reed‘s Prodigal Sons, taking place next month in New York City.

Arts Engine is also re-launching its fiscal sponsorship program, which has provided services for films such as My Kid Could Paint That, God Grew Tired of Us, The Story of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, The Trials of Darryl Hunt and Favela Rising, to name the most recent.

To learn more about Arts Engine’s fiscal sponsorship or becoming a DocuClub member, contact Felix Endara — felix@artsengine.net or 646.230.6368 x 221.… Read the rest

TIE ONE ON: GEN ART LAUNCHES IN NYC

By Admin

Generous liquor sponsors + talented filmmakers = very good evening. The Gen Art Film Festival puts this theory to the test next week beginning April 2nd, kicking things off with Steppenwolf vet Terry Kinney‘s film, Diminished Capacity. The other six features, many of which have already gained significant buzz on the festival circuit, include Sundance darlings like Jennifer Phang‘s Half-Life and debuts packed with emerging indie stars like Steve Clark‘s Frost. Tickets to any of the features include a short film and entrance to the subsequent after-party, which, like the films they celebrate, is guaranteed to be stocked with top shelf goodies and very well-attended.… Read the rest

JEFF NICHOLS, “SHOTGUN STORIES”

By Nick Dawson

DOUGLAS LIGON, MICHAEL SHANNON AND BARLOW JACOBS IN WRITER-DIRECTOR JEFF NICHOLS’ SHOTGUN STORIES. COURTESY INTERNATIONAL FILM CIRCUIT AND LIBERATION ENTERTAINMENT.

The North Carolina School of the Arts film program has, during its relatively short existence, produced a wealth of cinematic talent. Prominent alums includes writer-directors David Gordon Green, Craig Zobel, Michael Tully, Aaron Katz, Jody Hill and Nate Meyer, actors Danny McBride and Paul Schneider (who is also a writer-director), D.P.s Tim Orr and Adam Stone — and to that list one must now add another notable talent, Jeff Nichols. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Nichols graduated from the school in 2001 and has to date written and directed six short films in addition to working on Gary Hawkins’ The Rough South of Larry Brown (2002) and Margaret Brown’s Be Here To Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (2004). He currently lives in Austin.

Shotgun Stories, Nichols’ first feature, is a film with a classical feel that is nevertheless uniquely the vision of its writer-director. Set in Southeast Arkansas, where Nichols spent much of his adolescence, it is a small town tale of three brothers, Son (Michael Shannon), Kid (Barlow Jacobs) and Boy (Douglas Ligon), who are thrust into a feud when the father who abandoned them as children dies suddenly, and Son’s actions at his funeral incur the wrath of their four half brothers. Fusing together elements of classic tragedy, traditional American storytelling and epic cinema, Shotgun Stories is a poetic and powerful film which displays Nichol’s flair for creating vivid, original characters and intense and thoughtful narratives. Shot in 35mm anamorphic, it is a beautiful, expansive vision of America with a grandeur and grace that belies its limited budget.

Filmmaker spoke to Nichols about modern day revenge movies, the influence of Lawrence of Arabia, and his dad taking him to see Pale Rider in the second grade.

JEFF NICHOLS, WRITER-DIRECTOR OF SHOTGUN STORIES. COURTESY INTERNATIONAL FILM CIRCUIT AND LIBERATION ENTERTAINMENT.

Filmmaker: What was the genesis of Shotgun Stories?

Nichols: I come from a family of three brothers and … Read the rest

AUSTIN FLASHBACKS

By Scott Macaulay

With Austin’s SXSW 2008 now a memory, perhaps it’s appropriate that Spencer Parsons’ essay on the changing topography of the city itself has just gone up at the FilmInFocus site. The critic, professor and filmmaker (his feature I’ll Come Running, starring Melonie Diaz, should appear on the festival circuit this year) pens an ode to the places the city has lost since Rick Linklater’s Slacker memorialized a whole stretch of its countercultural topography. And despite the inherent whiff of nostalgia, Parsons finds much to like in Austin today while writing more broadly about the ways artists appropriate and create from within their hometowns.

Here’s a graph:

I would like to be able to tell you in this space to seek out the new equivalent of Les Amis, but there isn’t one. The hole that it left is part of what made it special. So you really did miss it, and so did I, but it’s not the end of the world, and what about now? Speaking only for myself and my own agenda as a filmmaker, I do work with an eye firmly fixed on setting the action in meaningful spots worth promoting or preserving in a film, so consider this a location scout.

… Read the rest

WOULD A FILM IMPROVE YOUR LIFE?

By Scott Macaulay

Sometimes people approach us at Filmmaker who need, simply, a filmmaker — someone to do for-hire work documenting some aspect of their life. For all of these folks and as a public service we pass on the following video, linked to at Boing Boing and which there is an extended discussion about here.

… Read the rest

LOST AND CENTRAL CONFLICT THEORY

By Scott Macaulay

Over at his Esotika Erotica Psychotica blog, Mike explains why he’s been slacking on posting and watching Lost instead. His explanation contains a great passage from Raul Ruiz’s Poetics of Cinema that makes me want to dust off my copy.

But, I do occasionally “watch TV” via DVD rentals, streaming episodes, and online downloads. For some reason, at the beginning of February, something convinced me to start watching Lost. And then, since February 9th, I’ve watched the entire first three seasons, plus the five episodes of season four that have aired so far. This amounts to 76 45 minute episodes. That’s about 3420 minutes. Which, presupposing that a majority of the movies I watch are around 90 minutes, comes out to be 38 movies. Which, in retrospect, is fairly depressing.

It’s not a bad show, it’s fairly entertaining, and, all things considered, it’s relatively smart. But, while reading Raul Ruiz’s Poetics of Cinema this last week I encountered an explanation for why I was finding it so hard to do anything but what a relatively empty show. In the first chapter of Poetics of Cinema, Ruiz discusses Central Conflict Theory, and, in a round about way, his aversion to it. Central Conflict Theory ostensibly posits an A vs. B position, and generally manipulates the audience into siding with one side over the other. This central conflict is the only thing driving not only the show, but the audience’s desire to see the show: the audience wants nothing more than to see how conflicts resolve. Here’s what Ruiz says in his own words:

Let us return to films that are not boring. Films provoked by the noonday demon. Central conflict theory manufactures athletic fiction and offers to take us on a journey. Prisoner of the protagonist’s will, we are subjected to the various stages making up a conflict of which he, the protagonist, is at once guardian and captive. In the end we are released and given back to ourselves, a little sadder than before. There is only one notion in our heads, which is to go [on] another

… Read the rest

ZERO PLUS 20

By Scott Macaulay

Scott Timberg’s L.A. Times profile of Bret Easton Ellis — in a piquantly titled column called “Reassessments” — is worth a read.

It’s got this strong section on contemporary storytelling’s fixation on defined, understandable characters, which includes quotes by A.O. Scott and Jonatham Lethem:

Of all the things the literary world holds against Ellis, his lack of interest in characters with recognizable psychological depth may be the most unforgivable. His players are impassive to the point of opaque. They resemble each other so completely they almost cease to exist. In “Psycho” and “Glamorama” people are often mistaken for each other: It’s as if they’re beyond identity itself.

Ellis, Meghan O’Rourke wrote in a Slate defense of the writer, is “challenging the notion that there’s such a thing as an authentic self equipped with a compelling inner life that somehow matters.”

Said Scott: “From Gatsby to Rabbit to Saul Bellow’s characters, the one thing that’s prized in American fiction is the creation of virtual characters who are ‘more real’ than actual people. But you see the impulse to distrust psychology” in a counter-tradition that includes William Burroughs and Joan Didion, Ellis’ main influences.

“We’re in a culture that congratulates itself on being very surfacey and ironic,” said Lethem. “But it’s really the opposite — we’re really Victorian: Everything has to have a back story; every movie that’s remade has the villain’s previously inexplicable motive explained, usually through child molestation.”

And then there’s this killer closer:

He’s realized he’s not very good at script doctoring, and he’s mostly writing scripts for films that have not been made; the writers strike interrupted four of his projects. Hollywood had seemed like it would be an easy world to navigate. “I found out that it isn’t — much to my surprise because I’d grown up around it. But I didn’t know it was going to be as difficult or stressful as it turned out to be.”

While he hardly seemed depressed — he’s recovered from a long, hard-drinking, itinerant meltdown that followed the death of his boyfriend in 2004 — he offered, half-jokingly, that he’s

… Read the rest

TRIBECA ALL ACCESS CELEBRATES 5TH YEAR

By Jason Guerrasio

The Tribeca Film Institute announced the projects for its 2008 Tribeca All Access program today. The program is designed to “help foster relationships between film industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities,” according the the press release. Tribeca All Access will provide the filmmakers workshops and opportunities to present their works in one-on-one meetings with more than 100 potential investors, development executives, producers and agents. The six-day event will take place during the Tribeca Film Festival in late April.

The 37 narrative and documentary projects selected (the largest showing ever) are listed below.

NARRATIVE

Bardos, Anslem Richardson (Writer)
Two family men are forced to continuously alternate fates after a tragic car accident – while one family lives, the other’s must die – but what happens when one of them is no longer willing to give up his wife and children?

Billy Bones: A Cautionary Tale for Adults, Deborah Chow (Writer/Director)
Left behind at school by her divorced parents, Isabel walks into the path of a stranger who whisks her away to a world where frightening reality and fantasy clash.

The Conqueror, Alka Raghuram (Writer/Director)
When an old feud between two villages brings tragedy to his family, a young boy must decide whether to avenge his loss or try to break the painful cycle of violence.

Creve Couer, MO, Marilyn Agrelo (Director); Stephanie Sanditz (Writer); Mia Riverton (Producer); Blye Faust (Producer)
Sixteen-year-old Alex Lawry struggles to find beauty and romance in small town Missouri, while contending with her dysfunctional family, a clique of mean girls, and a local bad-boy rocker.

Darkland, Phillip Van (Writer/Director)
A thriller set in Vietnam War-era Laos, in which a young US AID worker gets swept up in a dangerous love affair with the head of a government dam building operation, who is secretly funding attacks on the villagers she works to save in order to complete his dam.

Day Dream, Rodney Evans (Writer/Director)
Take a dazzling trip to New Orleans, the home of Buddy Bolden, the forefather of modern jazz, and Billy Strayhorn, the openly gay composer of numerous … Read the rest