ARRIVEDERCI, KIM’S VIDEO

By Scott Macaulay

For a final post of ’08, I’ll note the closing of the Kim’s Video rental store on St. Marks Place, that home of region-free art cinema, scuzzed-out sexploitation VHS, and the occasional bootleg. As noted in Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, the collection is being packed up and shipped… to Salemi, Italy.

From the blog post:

According to the extensive informational poster on display in Mondo Kim’s on St. Marks, “The town of Salemi is planning to launch the Neverending Festival, a non-stop public projection of Kim’s Video Collection DVDs in their new home.”

Wow.

In addition, “For paid-up Kim’s members, access to the collection will always be free of charge. Furthermore, Salemi will provide accommodations to both Kim’s members and students who want to have access to the collection at minimum charge.”

Hear that? Let’s go to Sicily and watch Teenage Devil Dolls and Delinquent Daughters!

I didn’t stop to think tonight whether I had any money left on account.

The Daily News is covering this as well. From Lauren Johnston’s article:

For owner Yongman Kim, losing his video collection marks the end of an era. “I think my passion in loving film to share and introduce to New Yorkers is no longer valid,”he told the Daily News via e-mail.

Kim cited the “so-called Internet revolution”as one cause of the store’s demise. Online rental services like Netflix hurt business, and Kim also blames digital distractions like e-mail and YouTube – activities he says occupy the time people once spent watching movies at home….

“I now do not want to fight against the new stream,”Kim said. “I just want to disappear calmly.”

So, tonight, let’s toast Mr. Kim and the end of a downtown cultural institution. He had a great run, and if I’m ever in Salemi I’ll be sure to stop by.… Read the rest

FACES OF THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL 2008

Faces in Greece: jury president Michael Ondaatje before a reading at the Chamber of Commerce.

David Zellner (Goliath) on the Provlita, or pier, after a Just Talking panel.

Theo Angelopoulos debates a questioner’s premise about his latest, Dust of Time.

At a Just Talking panel, programmer Mimi Brody and director (and priceless actor in Azazel Jacobs’ GoodTimesKid) Gerardo Naranjo.

Latecomer Azazel Jacobs apologies to his panel.

Before a masterclass that included the central Bobby Peru scene from Wild At Heart, Willem Dafoe gets flashed.

Emir Kusturica’s No Smoking Band is a local favorite; the warehouse on the pier was packed with a young, young crowd pleased not to be paying a 20 Euro cover.

… Read the rest

FILMMAKER YEAR IN REVIEW: SCOTT MACAULAY

By Scott Macaulay

Before I say a few words about my favorite films of 2008, let me mention my favorite films of 2007.

Film critics often write about “the movies” or “directors” as if annual changes in quality or taste or choice of material are solely the result of artistic decision – that if the films of a given year aren’t up the ones of the year before it must have something to do with the filmmakers not being sufficiently serious-minded enough. Looking back on 2007, however, from the viewpoint of 2008, favorites like There Will be Blood, Zodiac and I’m Not There seem like pictures enabled by not only creative vision but also the availability of capital and the presence of executives willing to take financial risks in the hopes of making not just a profit but also a mark, a name, or their company a beacon for talent. In other words, these were the pictures of an “up” economy in which spending (and overspending) were seen as shrewd actions.

As 2008 ends, the world is clearly and suddenly in a “down” economy, although independent film got there first. The trades were full of Sundance doom’n’gloom last winter, noting the decline in top-dollar sales from the fest. Shortly thereafter producers were stunned by the bankruptcy of Axium payroll. And then there was the slow-speed crumbling of THINKfilm, a meltdown marked by unpaid advances, litigious filmmakers, and an overleveraged owner who seemed to view his company’s unmet promises as just the normal economic churn of some industry of widget-makers. Through it all was the slow disappearance of producer overhead deals and the vanishing of even more studio specialty divisions and distributors (Picturehouse, Warner Independent, Yari Releasing and Tartan, among them).

The result of all this is an independent economy that is actively disincentivizing investment. Private money is sometimes snarkily called “dumb money” because, presumably, non-industry investors are thought to be unmindful of the business’s economic underpinnings. I’d call such investment “idealistic money.” From my experience, investors know perfectly well the vicissitudes of film investing. They are people with high risk tolerances, but … Read the rest

FILMMAKER YEAR IN REVIEW: JASON GUERRASIO

By Scott Macaulay

Here’s Managing Editor Jason Guerrasio’s take on ’08.

I always find it difficult to put together a “Best of” list every year because no matter how many films I see I always feel I haven’t seen enough to make an honest list. This year has been even more difficult because so many titles have been pushed to the end of the year. So with that said here’s a collection of titles in no particular order that I enjoyed (most of them really loved), but I feel there are so many more I still need to watch (particularly, Frost/Nixon, Gran Torino and Ballast – yes, still haven’t seen it):

The Class (pictured), Milk, Elegy, Man on Wire, The Dark Knight, The Betrayal, The Wrestler, Wall-E, Momma’s Man, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Che, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Paranoid Park, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

As you’ve already read by many who’ve contributed to our year end posts, it’s been a strange year for many reasons. For films in particular it all depends on who you talk to when you want to find out how this year was. Some critics (both working and no longer) will tell you it wasn’t a strong year, but if you look at box office numbers as a whole it was a pretty strong year. I don’t rate a year from either. For me, it’s the moments in films that I take away with. And there were many of them. Some from this year that continue to stay in my mind: Marina Zenovich masterful intercutting in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired of the judge’s bizarre orchestration of how he will rule on the Polanski unlawful intercourse case with Polanski’s short film The Fat and the Lean; the opening bank heist scene in The Dark Knight; the first 20 minutes of Wall-E; the last scene in The Wrestler; the amazing special effects in Benjamin Button; and the 22-minute 1-take scene in Steve McQueen’s Hunger. For those who’ve seen it that’s all I have to type, for those who haven’t this is a … Read the rest

NOW COMING TO A COMPUTER NEAR YOU

By Scott Macaulay

Matt Dentler of Cinetic Rights Management sent word of two films now online that will be of interest to Filmmaker readers. The first is Randall Sharp’s fascinating indie period film Henry May Long, which Alicia Van Couvering covered here on the site in an interview with the writer/director.

From Van Couvering’s interview:

Filmmaker: How did the film come together?

Sharp: I made up the story on a car ride to Woodstock one day. I thought, what would happen if someone was willing to do anything to get someone else to pay attention to them? What if that decision led to the other person learning to value their life as if every day was their last? I’ve been running an experimental theatre company, Axis, for about twelve years, and I took it to them. We developed the script almost the same way as our plays – writing parts for certain actors in the company, reading it through together, seeing what worked and what didn’t. I was friends with [executive producer] Wren Arthur who was working for Robert Altman at the time, and slowly it all got pulled together. We shot it in 20 days with a little over $1 million dollars.

Filmmaker: Did people laugh you out of the room when you said you wanted to make a low-budget period piece? How did you accomplish it?

Sharp: It all worked out as sort of a miracle. I’m a first time director with zero film experience, and I’m also like a 19th-century period freak. I wanted it to be as perfectly accurate as it could be. As we started crewing up, people started materializing who were just really interested in reproducing that period on a shoestring. Everyone involved, from the producers to the AD to the DP, everybody – was was so excited by this immense challenge and just pulling for the movie. Especially when these [production and costume] designers who I didn’t even know arrived with this flame of passion to recreate this period for me – that was an incredible gift. They became as obsessive as

… Read the rest

DISTRIBUTING SITA SINGS THE BLUES

By Scott Macaulay

Moments after I posted, below, about Roger Ebert’s love for Sita Sings the Blues and a day after we shipped the new issue of Filmmaker to the printer — an issue that contains Karina Longworth’s piece on the movie — Paley has posted on her website a post that updates us all on her plans for distributing the film. Frankly, I found her plan pretty exciting in the way it hybridizes free and for-sale aspects.

When we decided to award her film the Gotham “Best Film at a Theater Near You” Award, the film’s distribution woes were a topic of discussion. Was it right to give an award to an undistributed film that had reasons for being undistributed? Well, we liked the film a lot, and we thought the award could help its distribution situation, but we also hoped that Paley would come up with the kind of outside-the-box plan she seems to have come up with.

If you haven’t been following her story, check out her blog now. An excerpt:

Which brings us to step two: while making one DVD pressing of 4,999 copies, I will place promotional files of the entire film – at all resolutions, including broadcast-quality, HD, and film-quality image sequences – online at archive.org and as many mirror hosts as volunteer to share it. I will license it either as Creative Commons Share-Alike, or some equivalent of the GNU/Linux license. This will prevent it and any derivative works from ever being copyrighted by anyone. Of course this license won’t apply to the songs, which will remain under copyright by their respective corporate overlords. But clearing the licenses first will decriminalize it, and make it safer to screen in theaters (and theaters will be free to screen it and charge for it without obligation to me). The free online copies are promotional copies.

… Read the rest

SCHAMUS AND SCOTT ON THE APARTMENT

By Scott Macaulay

I’m late catching up to some of the things that have been bouncing around the blogosphere, but here the New York Times‘ A.O. Scott has a nice video essay on Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, which is dubbed “a brilliant alternative to classic holiday films” and one that ends on New Year’s Eve. (I wish these great Times video pieces were embeddable — I get that they have to increase traffic, but I’d so love to post them.)

The Apartment was also selected by producer, screenwriter and Focus Features CEO James Schamus as part of a series on the FilmInFocus site in which Focus employees pick their top holiday pictures. Here’s what Schamus had to say:

Somewhere between the inevitable It’s a Wonderful Life and the creepily campy Ernest Saves Christmas there is a perfect holiday movie for the whole family – one that will keep both the smirk on your teenager’s face and the tears flowing from your in-laws’ eyes. That movie is Billy Wilder’s 1960 masterpiece, The Apartment. Not a classic Christmas movie, you say? Look again.

The action takes place primarily from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve, with moments that sum up to perfection the Christmas spirit according to Wilder: the despicable Sheldrake (played with greedy zest by Fred MacMurray), handing his downtrodden mistress, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), her present, a crisp $100 bill; the prolonged Christmas Eve-to-Christmas Day sequence, in which Buddy Baxter (Jack Lemmon, above) finds her, overdosed on sleeping pills, at his apartment and, with the help of his next-door neighbor, force-feeds her coffee and slaps her repeatedly to keep her from collapse; and, most memorably, Sheldrake on the phone in his White Plains house, his children playing with their new toys around the Christmas tree in the background as he heartlessly hears the news of his mistress’s suicide attempt. When Fran finally dumps Sheldrake and races back to Buddy’s apartment on New Year’s Eve, she hears, just as she reaches the door, the loud retort of a suicide shot – only to discover that the sound was Buddy, alone, popping

… Read the rest

EBERT SINGS FOR SITA

By Scott Macaulay

Wow — check out Roger Ebert’s love letter to “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham winner Sita Sings the Blues on his blog this week.

Here’s how he begins:

It hardly ever happens this way. I get a DVD in the mail. I’m told it’s an animated film directed by “a girl from Urbana.” That’s my home town. It is titled Sita Sings the Blues. I know nothing about it, and the plot description on IMDb is not exactly a barn-burner: An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920′s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. Uh, huh. I carefully file it with other movies I will watch when they introduce the 8-day week.

I get an e-mail from Betsy, my old pal who worked with me on The News-Gazette. “Did you see the film by the mayor’s daughter?” This intrigues me. The daughter is named Nina Paley. I do a Google run and discover that Hiram Paley was mayor from 1973-1977. I am relieved. This means the “girl” probably didn’t make the film as a high school class project. In fact, by my rapid mathematical calculations, she may have been conceived in City Hall. I used to cover City Hall. Worse things have happened there.

By this point, I’m hooked. I can’t stop now. I put on the DVD and start watching. I am enchanted. I am swept away. I am smiling from one end of the film to the other. It is astonishingly original. It brings together four entirely separate elements and combines them into a great whimsical chord. You might think my attention would flag while watching An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920′s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. Quite the opposite. It quickens. I obtain Nina Paley’s e-mail address and invite the film to my film festival in April 2009 at the University of Illinois, which by perfect synchronicity is in our home town.

There’s a lot more that follows, including a discussion of the film’s music rights blues and … Read the rest

FILMMAKER YEAR IN REVIEW: MARY GLUCKSMAN

By Scott Macaulay

Now that our current issue has shipped to the printer, I’m finishing these blog entries from our writers, editors and contributors on the cinematic year that is coming to a close. Here’s Mary Glucksman, who contributes our “In Focus” column each issue as well as the year-end “Hits and Misses” piece.

Real life intervened and I came up woefully short on exhaustive viewing of both foreign films and docs so can I just say my top ten would surely include two Cannes ’07 foreign titles that got their nominal U.S. theatrical release this year–XXY and Tell No One. Still waiting with great anticipation to catch up with Silent Light and A Christmas Tale.

Best DIY/no-to-low budget titles have to be Ballast and Chris Smith’s The Pool, latter a Sundance ’07 title finally out this year.

For sure my absolute favorite three were Wrestler/Slumdog/Rachel, and Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk two top performances. Can’t understand why Brolin’s getting all the love for Milk and not his tour de force turn in W. Also blown away by juvenile Brandon Walters in Australia.

Best first feature and an all around fave has to be Doubt. Most underrated of the year were Towelhead and Miracle at St. Anna. Latter’s flaws may be undeniable but it still rates among my top viewing memories of the year. Gran Torino didn’t entirely live up to the hype but two hours of Clint the actor still a real joy.… Read the rest

WHERE ARE THE VIEWERS?

By Scott Macaulay

In The New York Times, Michael Cieply reports on our declining box office. No, not this year, but over the last decade. The sobering conclusion of his piece is that less of us are going to see movies in theaters. Breathless box office coverage of records broken, The Dark Knight, and lines stretching around the block at midnight for Twilight are just more noise. Read his piece to discover that, when measured by the arbiter of tickets sold, Twister handily outsold Iron Man and that Sex in the City is no bigger than The First Wive’s Club.

We are no longer a nation of moviegoers.… Read the rest