CATHERINE BREILLAT, “THE LAST MISTRESS”

By Nick Dawson

ASIA ARGENTO IN DIRECTOR CATHERINE BREILLAT’S THE LAST MISTRESS. COURTESY IFC FILMS.

Hated and loved in equal measure, Catherine Breillat is a filmmaker who could never be accused of being boring. The French writer director seems courting controversy since the beginning of her career: she was a literary sensation at the age of 17 when she published her first novel, L’homme Facile which was sufficiently racy to be forbidden reading for minors and her first cinematic involvement was acting in Bernardo Bertolucci’s sordid classic Last Tango in Paris (1972). She made her directorial debut in 1976 with an adaptation of her own novel Une Vrai Jeune Fille, but her portrait of adolescent female sexuality was considered pornographic and would not be released until 1999. While writing further bestselling novels as well as screenplays for Federico Fellini’s And the Ship Sails On, Maurice Pialat’s Police and even the soft-core porn classic Bilitis, she tried to continue her directing career but struggled until the international success of 36 Fillette (1988), about the sexual awakening of a 14-year-old girl. Charges that her films were more pornography than art were fueled by her casting Euro porn legend Rocco Siffredi in Romance (1999) and Anatomy of Hell (2004), however both those films were critically acclaimed and, along with her 2000 success Fat Girl!, helped further raise her profile.

In 2004, Breillat suffered a stroke and was confined to a hospital bed for five months, but remarkably a year to the day after the stroke, she began shooting her latest film, The Last Mistress. Based on a novel by Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly, the film is a period piece and thus a significant departure for Breillat whose previous work has all been deeply grounded in modernity. The story is nevertheless as erotically charged as ever: aristocratic Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Aït Aattou) marries the rich, devoted Hermangarde (Roxanne Mesquida) but is lured into infidelity by La Vellini (Asia Argento), the earthy courtesan whose primal desires match his own. The Last Mistress has all the trappings of a period piece – lavish … Read the rest

RAY-BAN AD BLOCKERS

By Scott Macaulay

Remember that Phil Dick-ian John Carpenter movie, They Live? In it, a special pair of sunglasses allows you to see the world as it really is, with all of the government’s subliminal messages exposed. I thought of that film while reading this blog post at Seeking Alpha entitled “How Video is Going to Take Over the World.” It summarizes a Forrester research reporter claiming that we are entering an age of “Omnivideo,” in which video playback will occur on multiple surfaces all throughout our daily life.

From the post, quoting Forrester:

“Once video becomes this easy to produce, deliver, store, and share, every agent in society will not only want to participate but will have to participate in order to have a shot at reaching people with its products and services.”

In his view that means:

Consolidation and collaboration will increase even faster than before. But the pick-a-winner approach to integrating content with devices will get blown wide open as companies like Sony (SNE) and Panasonic realize they can’t bet on a single partner but have to o?er access to all major content partners.

Companies will continuously “broadcast” video from inside the enterprise. The Internet has forced marketers to go far beyond a few ads and some brochures in their communications e?orts. The shift to video will be much more taxing because companies have to have a strategy for communicating every message — internal or external — with video.

Every video surface will become a marketing platform. When nearly every surface in your environment can display video, marketers will pay a pretty penny to show up at the bottom of a food bowl or in a bathroom mirror, where their product marketing message will be far more relevant than it is on a TV today. “The only broker of this ad space in your home is you: We envision ad networks one day paying you for the right to aggregate your ad experiences.”

I thought of the Carpenter film when reading this comment by a poster called Big Bear Lake Hostel:

Someone will invent intelligent “media blocker” sunglasses for

… Read the rest

POINTS OF IMPACT

By Scott Macaulay

I’ve posted before about Hammer to Nail, the website launched this year in which Michael Tully, Mike Ryan and others are posting opinionated, passionate and politically informed reviews and commentary on independent films and the indie film scene. Today I received an email from producer Ted Hope, who announces more content at Hammer to Nail, where he, Ryan, Tully and Corbin Day will try to make sense of today’s paradigm-shifting independent business. So, if you haven’t already, add Hammer to Nail to your list of bookmarks. And, below, is the entirety of Hope’s email:

I was on a panel at the Provincetown Film Festival this weekend (which is a great festival – go!). Actually two panels, one on Towelhead (opening 9/12/08) and the other with Greg Araki, Mary Harron, Tom Kalin, John Waters, and Christine Vachon on “filmmaking on the edge”. In these discussions, and in the articles attached below, it’s clear that Business of Indie Film is looking for a new paradigm. We are between things and the old model no longer works and the new one is undefined. But I see some real hope nonetheless.

This change has been much discussed for the last fifteen years, but the digital revolution is very slow in coming. This slow trickle has, in my opinion, allowed for a withering away of what truly made the indie film world unique, which is the glue that kept it a community and not just a demographic. Digital downloads won’t be anyone’s salvation, but the internet can truly rebuild what has collapsed — but it’s time to look at the infrastructure first.

Time and time again, films emerge that define a community and the community comes out to support in droves. Similarly, it truly feels to me that we are at a cultural crossroads, where we — as a community of filmmakers and film lovers — are in real danger of losing access to a dynamic range of personal cinema, unless the various communities start to take steps to unite and speak up for the world they want. We can’t keep settling for

… Read the rest

DAY OF THE LOCUSTS

By Scott Macaulay

Ted Hope tipped me to this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on this summer’s empty arthouses. Several of the usual suspects are interviewed in a piece that talks about the high cost of marketing, the internet, downloads, the production glut and marketplace churn — the practice of shuffling new titles out of theaters when they don’t immediately click. Again, no magic solutions here, just lots of opinions, like these:

Despite the current doldrums, the market for arthouse cinema seen in the art house remains vibrant. “It’s a cyclical business,” Mundorff says.

Observes Bernard, who has been in specialized distribution since 1981, “The obituary for art films appears every 17 years, like the locust.”… Read the rest

GEORGE CARLIN, R.I.P.

By Scott Macaulay

… Read the rest

UNIQUE CHARACTERS THE NORM AT SILVERDOCS

By Admin

There are always unusual characters at SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, from the eclectic staff and volunteers to diverse filmmakers and film subjects – the people watching is always outstanding. Primarily, the people-watching is in the movie theaters, although this year, Silverdocs was marked by the appearances of Spike Lee, recipient of the annual Guggenheim Award for lifetime excellence in social issue documentary; Music Award jurist, and pro-open source sampling documentarian/musician Paul D. Miller, (aka DJ Spooky); and on the other end of the spectrum, the theraputic robot seal, Paro, of Phie Ambo’s Mechanical Love, which looks at the brainstorming and experimenters leading the progress of android engineering.

Werner Herzog is especially apt to show a person’s most unusual side. His Encounters At The End Of The World, Shows not just the confusing and bizarre terrain of the Antarctic, but the scientists and other wandering thinkers of its McMurdo Station and outlying research camps. Herzog’s documentary techniques are elegantly revealed, showing his drama-eliciting questions and allowing the subjects ample space to answer how they ended up there. More than one interview notes that anyone who isn’t tied down falls to Antarctica, leading to philosophers driving fork lifts and linguists, in a continent with no native language, tending the hydroponic vegetables – this steamy greenhouse an oasis in a film dressed in blue-white landscape and oversized red parkas.

In Herzog’s recent interview with Filmmaker, he talks about falling in love with the world through filmmaking; this idea is behind many of the other films in the program. In Gini Reticker’s Pray The Devil Back To Hell, Leymah Gbowee’s love for her war-torn Liberia leads to a feminist peace movement. She dreams, literally, that the women of Liberia can pray for peace and make it happen. Praying alone isn’t enough, and this group of thousands of Christian and Muslim women take action with sit-ins and sing-ins, and, as in Lysistrada, a sex-strike; doing everything they’re able to stop the war. They persuade war-mongering president Charles Taylor… Read the rest

CLOUDBURSTING

By Scott Macaulay

Film Department CEO Mark Gill spoke yesterday at the L.A. Film Festival’s Financing Conference, and his speech, which Indiewire is running and which is entitled “Yes, the Sky is Really Falling,” is excellent. It’s a must-read summation of the current crisis in the independent film business, complete with a conclusion in which Gill discusses how one can and must survive in this business. Gill hasn’t discovered any sort of magic bullet — his advice can be boiled down to “apply smarts, passion and elbow grease”), but he’s framed it all perfectly, and his lengthy discussion of the importance of quality in our 500-channel word is an important one. Here’s a key paragraph:

The single biggest change should be to only make movies that we absolutely love. Not ones we like. Not ones we need to do as a favor. Not the ones we do because they seem like a good “piece of business.” Not ones we do because we think, hope or wish that “the kids” will like them. Not the knock-offs of the ones that worked at the box office last year. In a word, we should only pick the films we’re passionate about–and that have an audience.

… Read the rest

FOOL’S PARADISE

By Scott Macaulay

There’s a good conversation going on at the always excellent blog of Jon Taplin. Entitled “Who Will the Next Fool Be,” the short piece, which I’m taking the liberty of quoting in its entirety, critiques the recently announced deal in which India’s Reliance may be financing Dreamworks.

Here’s Taplin’s post:

The movie business reminds me of that old Charlie Rich Tune, “Who will the next fool be?”. The news that a unit of one of India’s largest Conglomerate, Reliance, is contemplating starting a new Dreamworks 2 in what the Times article hints could be horrible terms. OMG! When will the world of finance finally learn? Two kinds of people make money in the movie business:Top Talent and Distribution. Everybody else, including off balance sheet finance, get screwed. First it was Wall Street (Steve Ross Era up to about 1982). Since then it has been British and German Tax Shelters, French (Canal Plus & Warner) TV partners, Japanese and Korean equity,Australian Equity (Village Road Show), Tech Moguls (Paul Allen), Hedge funds (recently badly burned & very under reported). Everyone of them thought they were the coolest kid on the block. But they all quickly retreated from the business.Hollywood is off bounds for most Arab investors, unless they had gone secular like Dodi Fayed of London and Princess Di fame. So all that’s left is the Indians and The Chinese .

Who will the next fool be?

The comments thread is already heating up with posts from people who obviously know something about the film biz. Rachel writes, “I think of it as the dinner party factor. It’s so much more interesting to be able to talk about the film you just financed than it is to talk about the expansion of your infrastructure fund. Well, maybe not more interesting, but of more interest to non-financial people. Plus these guys might get to meet [insert star du jour] at the premiere, or even at Cannes/Sundance/Berlin yada yada.” Another poster, Ken B., writes, “In addition to the ego factor, there are other factors that can bring in the piece-of-the-action investors: for some it’s … Read the rest

SNAGGING IT

By Scott Macaulay

All the industry news seems to break right when we are finishing an issue and don’t have the time to properly parse it. Fortunately, Scott Kirsner is on the case at his CinemaTech blog, beating everyone to the punch with his news of SnagFilms, an interesting new distribution application that will enable filmmakers to receive ad revenue from the internet streaming of their films.

More:

Snag isn’t going to try to create a destination site for film fans, but is building a video “widget” that can be placed on other sites: a filmmaker’s site, a blog run by an advocacy group, a Facebook profile, anywhere. The widget will deliver streaming film clips, trailers, shorts, and in some cases entire features, peppered with advertisements.

Kirsner has a lot more, including what he has heard is the revenue split, at the link. The site is being launched by Ted Leonsis, who I have written about here, and AOL True Stories.

Also this week: news of the just launched YouTube Screening Room, the viral video giant’s platform promising revenue to independent filmmakers.… Read the rest

BLOGGING THE SUNDANCE DOC LAB

By Scott Macaulay

Filmmaker is hosting blogs from several of the participants of the various Sundance Labs this summer. Here’s part one of producer/director Deann Borshay Liem’s (Precious Objects of Desire) from the Sundance Documentary Edit and Storytelling Lab, which runs June 21 – 28.

Sometimes I refer to myself as “she.” This is because I’m a character in my own film and I have to separate who I am in real life with who I am on screen. Fortunately I’m a Gemini so this splitting into two (or more) doesn’t seem that odd. Any other editor might think this was nuts, but my editor, Vivien Hillgrove, has a bit of Gemini in her too, so between the two (or more) of us, we get by fine in the edit room.

Duality has always been a theme in my life. I was particularly fascinated as a kid with stories about babies who were switched at birth and grew up in the wrong families. It turns out I had been switched, too, not as a baby, but at the age of 8 with a girl I had never met. In the film, PRECIOUS OBJECTS OF DESIRE, I go to Korea in search of this “double” in an effort to resolve mysteries about her (and my) identity. The story of this search serves as the narrative spine for an exploration of the history and ethics of international adoptions from Korea, beginning with the Korean War.

I received funding for the film from the Sundance Institute and now have the privilege of attending the Sundance Edit/Story Lab coming up in a couple of days. To establish a kind of baseline, this is where we are. We have 80 minutes of an early assembly. It’s not a full assembly yet, but a series of scenes and character sketches strung together. Vivien and I will be screening this before our fellow filmmakers and advisors this weekend to get their (hopefully merciful) input. I wish we were further along, at the rough cut stage. But we’re not. I may sound calm about this, but deep inside I’m … Read the rest