Friday, June 4th, 2010
I checked out the first two episodes of the Neistat Brothers HBO show on Thursday night at the Rooftop Films premiere party at Kips Bay.
I liked them.
Somehow, the Neistats got HBO to give them an eight-episode series which mostly seems to be about the two brothers making stuff and doing things and then documenting these processes in as rag-tag, homemade and lo-fi manner as possible. What kind of stuff? Stuff like smuggling American maple syrup past TSA to Amsterdam because the waffles are great but the syrup sucks there, or finding one brother’s biological birth father. (The series won me over when this well-worn indie trope was cheerfully dispensed with in about two minutes.)
The Neistat Brothers were two of our “25 New Faces” in 2006, and here’s an excerpt of what Matt Ross wrote about them:
The Neistats began making films in 2000 with the purchase of two iMac DVs, and their early projects involved reworking home movie footage shot in the ’80s and ’90s. The piece that first got them attention was 2003’s iPod’s Dirty Secret, a three-minute video that involved, not surprisingly, sticking it to the man: as we hear a customer service representative from Apple explain to the brothers that the iPod battery will eventually die but will not be replaced by the company, Casey walks around spray-painting a warning on iPod ads that have been plastered all over New York City.
The video went viral, and the brothers kept churning out short films and videos at an astonishing rate — they now have more than 300 no-budget shorts to their credit (which have been shown at 30 film festivals and seven museums worldwide). For a recent project, The Challenge (which aired on Comedy Central), the brothers responded to a friend’s dare to make a film in one day by doing a shot-for-shot remake of the Jurassic Park trailer with items bought in a thrift store. The Neistats have since expanded their repertoire to European TV commercials and have also begun cutting their debut feature, The Show, a comedy about tap dancing and
… Read the rest
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Today the Sundance Institute announced the 13 projects selected for this year’s Director and Screenwriting Labs. Talking place in Park City, Utah June 1-25, the Labs will be filled with many familiar names to Filmmaker readers.
2008 25 New Faces alum Myna Joseph will be attending; as will Ondi Timoner, whose doc We Live In Public won the doc Grand Prize at Sundance in 2009; Ry Russo-Young, who was awarded our Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You award for You Wont Miss Me at last year’s Gothams, will be attending with her latest screenplay; and ’09 25 New Face Steph Green.
Read the full list of projects below.
Director Labs:
40 Days of Silence by Saodat Ismailova (writer/director), Uzbekistan: Four generations of women under one roof in Uzbekistan look to each other for comfort as they try to overcome their destinies.
Bluebird by Lance Edmands (writer/director), USA: In the frozen woods of an isolated Maine logging town, one woman’s tragic mistake leads to unexpected consequences, shattering the delicate balance of her community.
Drunktown’s Finest by Sydney Freeland (writer/director), USA: Three Native Americans – a rebellious father-to-be, a devout Christian, and a promiscuous transsexual – find their self-images challenged, and ultimately strengthened, as they come of age on an Indian reservation.
Martha Marcy May Marlene by Sean Durkin (writer/director), USA: Haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, a damaged woman struggles to reassimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult.
My Favorite Nightmare by Myna Joseph (writer/director), USA: A willful teenager, pregnant with her cousin’s child, travels to New York for an abortion, only to discover that her unpredictable father has followed her.
The Perfect Moment by Ondi Timoner (director) and Bruce Goodrich (writer), USA: A compelling look at the life of notorious New York photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, “The Perfect Moment” chronicles his extraordinary relationship with singer/songwriter Patti Smith, his complex, tortured sexuality, and illuminates the impact his singular art made on our culture.
The Ruined Cast by Dash Shaw (writer/director), USA: Told with hand-drawn animation, a disconnected family is thrown into chaos when … Read the rest
Saturday, May 28th, 2005
Adam Bhala Lough is one of our 25 New Faces alumni, and his feature Bomb the System opened in New York this weekend. Here are quotes from an interview with him in the Gothamist.
On the difficult of making sympathic graffiti artist characters:
“…anyone who’s walked up to their apartment in NY and saw a fresh tag on their door, literally dripping because it just went up, and got pissed off, they’re going to bring that hatred to the movie. A lot of people even asked me, ‘why did you even bother making a movie about graffiti writers? They’re horrible people.’”
On the look of the film:
“I wanted to achieve with the visuals and cinematography what graffiti writers achieve with their spray can: a blend of styles. That in your-face style, yet at the same time raw and gritty, not polished. And I think that’s the most successful aspect of the film to me. I experimented and I tried to do something different.”
His dream cast:
“Mark Webber, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Tera Patrick and Old Dirty Bastard – may he rest in peace. I wrote a part for [ODB] in a movie and then he died. It sucks. It was a really pivotal role.”
What he would bring to a dramatic adaptation of Paris Hilton’s Confessions of an Heiress:
“It would be a tragic porno film. It would be a hardcore porno, but really sad. It would really f*** people up.”… Read the rest
Friday, April 29th, 2005
As we begin putting together our annual “25 New Faces” issue of Filmmaker, in which we identify and profile the filmmakers who we believe will the independent stars of tomorrow, we also check back on the successes of our past selections. So, when a press release from the Tribeca Film Festival arrived in my in-box this morning I noticed that of the three winners of the Tribeca All Access Award, two — Dennis Lee (a member of the company Kulture Machine) and Mario de la Vega (pictured) — were directors spotlighted in last summer’s issue.
From the press release:
“The Tribeca All Access Connects (TAA) program, which fosters relationships between U.S.-based filmmakers of color and the film industry, announced today the winners of the second Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards. At last night’s Tribeca All Access Connects Awards and Closing Party at the Tribeca Grand, sponsored by the Playboy Foundation:
Dennis Lee won the award for the narrative section prize for his current screenplay The Life & Times of H.J. Hermin. Dennis has previously directed a short film entitled Jesus Henry Christ.
Usama Alshaibi won the award for documentary section prize for his documentary proposal Nice Bombs.
Mario de La Vega won the award for the screenplay section prize for his screenplay The Undeniable Charm of Sloppy Unruh.
The winners were selected upon the strength of their vision and filmmaking promise. The TAA Creative Promise Award offers a prize of $10,000 for narrative and documentary and $5,000 for screenplay. All of the filmmakers participating in the program have scripts or documentary proposals for which they are seeking funding.
Narrative winner Dennis Lee is set to direct The Life & Times of H.J. Hermin (which he also wrote) which tells the story of 13-year-old genius and college freshman Henry James Hermin on his quest to solve an unbreakable computer code and find his biological father. Lee previously directed the short film Jesus Henry Christ.
Screenplay winner Mario de Le Vega’s The Undeniable Charm of the Sloppy Unruh tells the dramatic tale of charismatic 1950s con artist Sloppy … Read the rest
