Archive for August, 2008
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
On the one year anniversary of Mike Jones’s “The Circuit” column at Variety, former AFI Fest Director Christian Gaines, who is now employed by Withoutabox, contributes a two-part discussion on festivals and our current failing indie film theatrical distribution model. Part one is titled “Do Festivals Matter?” and part two is “Things Gotta Change.”
In part one, Gaines writes that festivals have become, for many films, the premiere exhibition opportunity:
In the pantheon of viable choices for getting your film seen, film festivals continue to thrive (seems there’s a new one born every minute, right?), and that’s because, putting aside economic factors for the moment, film festivals still provide the perfect environment for the cultural, communal celebration of cinema, where films can be presented in context, with optimal picture and sound, and where audiences can yield, uninterrupted, to the original experience created by the artist.
As commercial exhibition prospects for independent filmmakers diminish, the more traditional path – from festival circuit to theatrical run to DVD release to a comfy spot on the Blockbuster shelf, adorned in festival laurels – has sharply changed direction. Only the festival circuit still seems like a constant part of the equation, with thousands of filmmakers steadily submitting their films to thousands of film festivals around the world each year.
In part two, he muses on a solution and proposes that sales agents consider something he calls a “Festival Acquisition” model (and please read his pieces in their entirety to get his full argument):
In the new “Festival Acquisition” model a sales agent or producer might send a film on a six to ten month tour of sixty to eighty North American film festivals. Absent of commercial venues, if film festivals have become the ad hoc distribution infrastructure for these films – and the film in question might see 250 screenings – then a formal business proposition will emerge, one in which rights holders and film festivals each acknowledge the other’s challenges.
On the one hand, what Gaines is proposing is nothing new. Smaller distributors have always been skilled at stitching together nationwide tours … Read the rest
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
I’ve written before about the “uncanny valley,” the term used in discussion of technological attempts to simulate the human visage. It refers to the phenomenon where things intended to look human suddenly seem unrealistic as they closely approach a realistic representation of the human.
There was talk this month at SIGGRAPH about Emily, a completely animated character that promises, in the words of creator David Barton, “new levels of believability in computer animation.”
From the linked piece in the Daily Mail:
To create the footage the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies made a a computer generated replica of Emily.
The actress sat inside a sphere of LED lights while she was photographed making 35 different poses.
The light patterns allowed the shine of her skin to be captured independently from her main skin tone, with hundreds of measurements taken for each millimetre.
‘The CG models provide unprecedented detail of natural facial expressions – down to skin pores and fine wrinkles,’ a spokesman said.
This technique has managed to avoid ‘uncanny valley’ – in which an animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.
You decide…
… Read the rest
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
M. Dot Strange, writer/director, 2007: Since being the only one hiding his face amongst the 25 I posted my animated feature film We Are the Strange on youtube subtitled in 17 languages where combined it has been viewed over 1.1 million times adding to my international audience. I did an animated music video for the NYC band “Mindless Self Indulgence” for the song “Animal” and it was included with the bands new album “IF” I’m currently completing the animatic for my new animated feature film Heart String Marionette. It is scheduled to be completed in January 2010 with production beginning in February 09, and is completely self funded thanks to the DVD sales of We Are the Strange. I’ve also been lucky enough to be flown to 7 different countries for speaking engagements since I was in the magazine, and they keep inviting me.
My advice to the new 25 faces… Do something to stand out from the crowd… don’t just climb the Hollywood ladder and do the things that are “good for your career” as your agents and lawyers might tell you. Do what feels right… If you just want to be another rich director jerkface driving around L.A. in a black BMW banging talking blowup dolls then do that… but if you make films for reasons other than fame and fortune follow your heart… not the people waving the paychecks… Money talks… but it doesn’t mean you have to listen. This is a new time… a new age wherein filmmakers have the opportunity to make their films their way… Will you make something completely new and unique or will you just be another brick in the wall to be forgotten and stepped by bolder filmmakers in the future? Thats the question you need to answer.
Kentucker Audley, writer/director, 2007: Kentucker Audley’s first feature ‘Team Picture’ will be released by Benten Films August 26th 2008. He is currently editing his 2nd feature, untitled at the moment. It’ll raise the question: how much of this was improvised? Attend a film festival for the answer.
Brett Ingram, writer/director, 2003:… Read the rest
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
In a Guardian piece titled “Exit Strategies,” Ronald Bergan writes about a seldom-discussed part of moviegoing: walking out.
His lede:
Though life is too short, it seems to drag on interminably while one is watching a bad film. The moment during a film when I begin to question my very existence is the moment I decide to head for the exit. It is when I abandon any cool critical assessment. All I know is that my senses and intelligence are being abused by the ugly and stupid sights and sounds on the big screen.
Bergan doesn’t just write about the solitary act of exiting early — he also writes about the journalistic and business implications of such an act:
If it were in my nature, I would pity the poor critics who have been sent to review a film and are obliged to sit through it to the bitter end. Or are they? Are there ethics involved? Is it fair to review a film that one has seen only a part of? Perhaps a critic should be honest and reveal that they walked out half way, which is a defiant act of criticism in itself. Yet, you can bet that a colleague will tell you afterwards that “the second half was a vast improvement on the first”. I reckon that unless it was directed by someone other than the one who directed the first half, there is no way it could have improved much.
Nevertheless, there is a protocol involved in walking out. If one has to leave a film because of a very busy schedule, which happens most often during festivals, or if there are people in the audience involved with the film in some way whom one has even met and doesn’t want to insult, one walks backwards slowly up the aisle looking at the screen all the time, shaking one’s head regretfully and looking at one’s watch.
With Toronto coming up, Bergan’s article struck a chord. I’m more likely to sit through a movie I don’t like just to make it to the end but, as Bergan … Read the rest
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
MATT BOREN, FLO JACOBS AND KEN JACOBS IN DIRECTOR AZAZEL JACOBS’ MOMMA’S MAN. COURTESY KINO INTERNATIONAL.Trying to make it as a director is difficult – and particularly so when your father is one of the most respected filmmakers in his field – however in the last few years Azazel Jacobs has made a name for himself in his own right with a string of individual and resonant films. Jacobs, the son of avant garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and painter Flo Jacobs, grew up in New York City and studied film at Purchase University in upstate New York. His graduation film, Kirk and Kerry, won best short film at Slamdance in 1997, and he began making his first feature, Nobody Needs to Know while studying for his Masters at AFI in Los Angeles. The film, which played the festival circuit in 2003, fused conventional narrative with more experimental elements as Jacobs grappled with the idea of “honest” filmmaking. He followed it up in 2005 with the delightful offbeat comedy drama The GoodTimesKid, which he made for just $10,000 in collaboration with Jacobs’ girlfriend Sara Diaz and Drama/Mex director (and fellow AFI alum) Gerardo Naranjo. (The GoodTimesKid is forthcoming on the Benten Films DVD label.)
Jacobs’ third feature, Momma’s Man, sees him return home with the story of Mikey (Matt Boren), who stays at his parents’ house while on a business trip to New York. Lulled by the security of these familiar surroundings, he starts concocting reasons why he can’t return to his wife and baby daughter in California, pushing the responsibilities of his new life from his mind as he slips back into the world of his adolescence. Inspired by Jacobs’ own feelings of comfort in his childhood home, Momma’s Man draws on much from Jacobs’s life, as Ken and Flo Jacobs play Mikey’s concerned parents and it was shot in their Tribeca loft, Jacobs’ childhood home. As a result of this, the film is particularly resonant and moving, as well as being funny and tender, and Ken and Flo Jacobs both give surprising, strong … Read the rest
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
With the Slamdance Film Festival turning 15 in 2009, the fest has announced they will be having a series of special events to celebrate. The first will be next month as they screen Steven Soderbergh and Christopher Nolan‘s Slamdance-debuted films, Schizopolis and Following.
From the release:
FOLLOWING, a captivating neo-noir drama centering on a writer who follows people to ignite his creativity, originally bowed at Slamdance in 1999. Screening in Los Angeles at LACMA’s Bing Theater (5905 Wilshire) on Friday, September 5 at 8:00pm, $20 tickets through slamdance.com ONLY; no tickets will be available for purchase at the door. Q&A with Mr. Nolan, moderated by Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, and hosted reception for ticket holders to follow screening.
SCHIZOPOLIS, a comedic satire with confused identity, cerebral wordplay and corporate intrigue, showed at Slamdance in 1997. Playing in New York City at the IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue) on Wednesday, September 16 at 8:00pm, SCHIZOPOLIS tickets will be $20 and available through ifccenter.com. Q&A with Mr. Soderbergh, moderated by author Anthony Kaufman, and hosted reception for ticket holders at The Post Factory to follow screening.… Read the rest
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Announced yesterday, filmmakers Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell just released their offbeat doc 10 Yards: Fantasy Football on Ourstage.com and SnagFilms.com. A conventional nationwide DVD release will begin on Sept. 30.
According to a release about the online world premiere, Ourstage will offer a free iTunes download of the film for two weeks (as well as offer free music downloads from the soundtrack that features independent artists Luke Brindley, John Haydon, Analog Jetpack, Greenland, Family Jewlers and Santa Clara) while SnagFilms will stream it for free and allow for viral sharing via its “virtual movie theater” widgets.
Weeks and Caldwell’s DIY approach on their previous film 10 MPH was highlighted in our Winter 2008 issue (“Navigating The Digital Divide”).… Read the rest
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Nick Dawson’s Web Exclusive Director’s Interview this week is Azazel Jacobs, whose third feature, Momma’s Man, opens tomorrow. Of the movie, which details a few days in which a young, recent father, Mikey, travels home to his parents (played by Ken and Flo Jacobs, the director’s real-life parents) and is not able to leave, having become entangled in the crosscurrents of nostalgia for his childhood, Dawson wrote:
…the film is particularly resonant and moving, as well as being funny and tender, and Ken and Flo Jacobs both give surprising, strong performances, despite never having acted before. But it is ultimately Jacobs’ inspired writing and deft direction that make this film so remarkable, his keen eye compellingly capturing the deteriorating situation created by Mikey’s inertia.
You can head over there and read Nick’s conversation with Aza, but I just want to personally recommend that you go out and see this lovely movie this weekend. Momma’s Man is funny, affectionate and also highly unique: it limns an emotional state of mind I’ve never seen captured on film before. Summoning up an odd but quite believable fear-of-adulthood, the film captures a kind of “in between” state that we can all relate to and perhaps even fantasize about. The performances are all wonderful, and Jacobs’ casting of his own parents, who include famed experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, gives the film an extra layer of poetry, specificity and subtext. Set not in some suburban sprawl but in a huge yet still impossibly cluttered downtown loft, Momma’s Man becomes not just a particularly idiosyncratic depiction of the 21st century man-boy but also a beautiful commentary on the passing of artistic impulse from generation to generation.
The film opens in New York at the Angelika Film Center tomorrow. Here’s the trailer.
… Read the rest
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
This piece by filmmaker Barbara Schock appeared in our Summer, 2005 issue.
The phenomenal painter, teacher and film critic Manny Farber called his film class “A Hard Look at the Movies.” It was the first upper-division college class I took. I’d transferred from a small college in the Midwest to the University of California at San Diego, and I’d never seen a foreign film, unless you count the Sergio Leone westerns. We watched the following films in a 10-week period, and it turned the way I looked at movies upside down: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de…, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God, Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, Werner Schroeter’s The Death of Maria Malibran, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou and Les Carabiniers, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse, Joseph Losey’s Accident, Robert Aldrich’s The Grissom Gang, Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle, Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Burglar, Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Les Enfants terribles and several Buster Keaton films.
The first class I attended was packed and there was a circusy feeling in the air. It was rumored to be the last film class Manny would ever teach. People said he’d grown increasingly disillusioned with teaching film, that he preferred teaching his smaller painting classes. Manny was cranky — the story was he’d recently quit drinking. Supposedly in the old days he drank scotch up in the projection booth with the student projectionists.
Manny had a somewhat adversarial relationship with his film students. He didn’t want the class to be like basket weaving, something you took to satisfy your visual-arts requirement. Partly to thwart those looking for entertainment, he never showed a film straight through, a practice that annoyed many. Instead he’d screen one or two reels of the films in the weekly class, often … Read the rest
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
In Summer, 2005, the filmmaker Barbara Schock wrote a spirited piece for Filmmaker about studying film with critic and artist Manny Farber, who died on Tuesday. Mirroring Farber’s rapid-fire thinking, Schock makes you feel like you’re in his classroom as she writes about the man, his syllabus, and his teaching style.
We’ve posted it in our Web Exclusives.
Here’s the intro:
The phenomenal painter, teacher and film critic Manny Farber called his film class “A Hard Look at the Movies.” It was the first upper-division college class I took. I’d transferred from a small college in the Midwest to the University of California at San Diego, and I’d never seen a foreign film, unless you count the Sergio Leone westerns. We watched the following films in a 10-week period, and it turned the way I looked at movies upside down: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de…, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God, Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, Werner Schroeter’s The Death of Maria Malibran, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou and Les Carabiniers, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse, Joseph Losey’s Accident, Robert Aldrich’s The Grissom Gang, Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle, Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Burglar, Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Les Enfants terribles and several Buster Keaton films.
… Read the rest
