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April 30, 2005

Enron: Did CNBC turn on the wipers?

From the online journal, Television Archiving, a report on a SF Film Festival Q&A after Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: "In the discussion with the director, Alex Gibney, they report it was alleged that "CNBC claims to have erased all of its coverage of Enron. It would be good to verify whether this is the case, but if true, it would seem to put CNBC a little closer to the level of the Texas office of Arthur Andersen, which shredded Enron-related accounting documents."

Posted by at 07:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Closely watched trees

The Observer's Tim Adams a first review of a photo exhibit in London by Abbas Kiarostami: "While scouting for film locations in Iran, Kiarostami returned over a period of 25 years to remote landscapes on foot. He was drawn particularly to alpine stands of trees in winter. His photographs fix an obsession that also found expression in his haiku-like poetry."

Posted by at 06:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This block has already been pissed on: Village neighbors wary of new IFC Center

Manhattan's IFC Center, on the site of the old Waverly, is due to finally open sometime in May, and it's already in the crosshairs of its neighbors: Sharon Sullivan, president of the Central Village Block Association tells local paper The Villager, “We were surprised at how little information they seemed to have"... Sullivan said [the company] wouldn’t admit to having flashing or spinning lights, but they said the lights, shining through a grid, would create patterns on the sidewalk. “We don’t want the effect to be tawdry and we don’t want it flashing into people’s windows... This is not Times Square, this is Greenwich Village.” Marilyn Dorato, secretary of the Greenwich Village Block Associations, also seems to squint as she tells the giveaway, "Like it or not... they do have to have a relationship with the community.”

Posted by at 06:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Dude abides: Desplechin's bigger Lebowski

Hugh Hart hears Arnaud Desplechin on the quirks behind his new, vital masterpiece, Kings and Queen in the SF Chronicle: The movies I was watching three years ago seemed slightly soft, so the bet for me was: Why not do 2 films? In one, you tell a melodrama in an hour and 10 minutes. Then you make the other one... a real slapstick comedy and put one next to the other... The pleasure would be to jump back and forth from love to tears, from tears to love. ... The 2 1/2-hour tragicomedy is split down the middle, Hart writes, with somber heroine Nora dealing with her father's impending death while her former boyfriend Ismael, an eccentric musician, tries to escape from a mental institution with the help of his drug-addled lawyer. Desplechin modeled Nora on heroines from... Hitchcock films... For antihero Ismael, the filmmaker found contrasting inspiration in The Big Lebowski. With the Dude, Jeff Bridges created this amazing character... We all know someone like him, with that attitude, but he'd never been depicted onscreen.

Posted by at 05:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

No looking back: Harvey Keitel's lifetime award

Sheila Johnston sits with the irascible Harvey Keitel after the Istanbul Film Festival tosses the 65-year-old a lifetime achievement trophy. "I meet him again over breakfast... in the Ottoman splendour of the Ciragan Palace on the banks of the Bosporus. Keitel is in a sunny mood and enthuses about his first visit to a hammam. He orders a double decaf espresso with milk on the side, which he slurps appreciatively throughout the interview, and a couple of simit, Istanbul's version of the bagel." But it's not an entirely sunny gathering, she concludes. "Keitel, so eloquent when talking about the Work or Sitting, is less keen to talk about the Family. "I'm not going to discuss that situation," he says with an air of finality, and though he has been thoroughly gracious up to that point, I get a brief glimpse of a man whom it would be best not to cross."

Posted by at 05:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Todd Solondz: I can't choose what I want to remember

In the Telegraph, Todd Solondz puzzles a bit before picking About Schmidt as a favorite pic: "I'm not sure what angle I'm supposed to take," he frets... "That's very limited. I'm sorry about failing you on this simple, simple assignment... I've gone all over the map for you. All over the map." ... Solondz's taste ranges from Peter Greenaway to The Sound of Music. But nothing was a positive inspiration. "Years ago, I saw a series of short student films and they were all dreadful, just terrible. That was a negative incentive, rather than my having the moxie of seeing Nicholas Ray's work and thinking, 'I could do that.' ... I often find the movies I don't like to be more memorable. Unfortunately I can't choose what I want to remember."

Posted by at 05:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Argentina time: talking to el amantes cine

Larry Rohter talks to the diverse directors of a new wave of Argentine cinema, including Lucrecia Martel, Pablo Trapero, Fabian Bielinsky (Nine Queens), Daniel Berman (Lost Embrace), Diego Lerman and Lisandro Alonso (La libertad, Los Muertos): "I believe that Argentine cinema today is defined more by what it isn't than by what it affirms," said Mr. Trapero, 33, whose best-known film is probably El Bonaerense, a drama about police corruption... "What we have in common is that many things are excluded from our films, such as the notion of the omniscient discourse of a director who knows the truth and interprets and illuminates it for the spectator." Surprisingly... in view of Argentina's turbulent history, there is also an aversion to overtly political themes in favor of more intimate and personal ones. "Smaller stories and a smaller focus" is the way Mr. Alonso, 29, puts it."

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The nonpareils of Pauline

Pauline Kael once said... In the Times, Terrence Rafferty masticates Michael Powell: "It's this exasperating tendency to overwork his assets that makes Powell such a difficult filmmaker to evaluate. He has been accused of "inordinate ambition, bumptiousness and a general unevenness of judgment" (James Agee) and of being a "master purveyor of high kitsch" (Pauline Kael); he has been hailed as "a great director" (Martin Scorsese) and even as "the cinema itself" (Bernardo Bertolucci). And all those assessments are just." Meanwhile, in the Baltimore Sun, reviewing Chrystal, Michael Sragow notes "Famed critic Pauline Kael once noted that no actor can survive a bad toupee." There's little of the zing from beyond in a capsule for Masculin-Feminin in the Hartford Courant: "The late New Yorker critic Pauline Kael called the film "a rare achievement." But, earlier in the week, Variety found space for these comments on Barbarella:Pauline Kael wrote that Fonda's "American-good-girl innocence makes her a marvelously apt heroine for pornographic comedy."

Posted by at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 29, 2005

On the Oscar trail with Eternal Pierre Bismuth

Eternal Sunshine co-screenwriter Pierre Bismuth recounts his Oscar jitters to Frieze magazine: Tom Hanks presented advice to the nominees, Bismuth writes, ‘Make it short! Make it sincere! Make it special!’ However, it’s wasted advice, since our producer, Focus Features, Universal’s speciality film unit, who produced the film, has asked Michel Gondry and me to let Charlie Kaufman do the talking if we win... At the Oscars ceremony... Gondry’s agent in LA, reminds me that it is 7 years since I jotted down an idea I mentioned to Gondry during a chance encounter at a bad Parisian restaurant..." [More at the link.]

Posted by at 08:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A death in the Glass family

Chris Hewitt has a nice survey of book-to-movie translations, even as he kills off a famous writer: "J.D. Salinger was writing "The Catcher in the Rye" when a movie version of his story, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" was released. Called My Foolish Heart, it starred Susan Hayward, and he hated it. Which may be why "Catcher" hero Holden Caulfield is so contemptuous of his brother, who works in Hollywood. The late Salinger decreed that no other movies should be based on his work, and his heirs appear to be resisting what would be a huge payday if they agreed to sell the beloved "Catcher." Or is Holden's daddy truly dead? Hmmm...

Posted by at 08:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 28, 2005

2929 helping to 86 Section 8?

Yes, as if Schizopolis and Criminal had not blazed new indie trails, Steven Soderbergh signs up for six HD movies: "Announced Thursday, the deal through 2929's HDNet production company will see Soderbergh's films released simultaneously across theatrical, TV and home video platforms on the theory that collapsing the traditionally staggered windows gives consumers a choice regarding how and when they want to see a film," The Reporter writes. "Soderbergh will have creative control over all the films' content, with each produced in 1080i high-definition format. The first project, Bubble... a murder mystery in a small town in Ohio, is in production on a 3-week schedule with Soderbergh writing and directing... HDNet Films is financing all the projects with Bubble's budget between $2 million-$3 million."

Posted by at 09:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Godard: That time was missed

Geoffrey Macnab has an audience with Jean-Luc Godard in the Guardian: "Godard may be a famous name, but he seems resigned to the fact that his films are not now widely seen and rarely make much impact at the box-office. His reputation is such that his regular producers... can raise money for his new projects... but his recent career isn't exactly a commercial beanfeast. To illustrate the point, he tells a story of how he recently flew from Montr�eal to New York. When he arrived, the customs officer asked him: "Mr Godard: what are you coming here for? Business or pleasure?" Godard indicated the former. The officer asked [his] business... "Unsuccessful movies," Godard replied. There is something paradoxical about his attitude toward cinema. He now seems despairing of the medium's ability to reinvent itself or to have any kind of social impact. "It's over," he sighs. "There was a time maybe when cinema could have improved society, but that time was missed." [More at the link.]

Posted by at 07:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 26, 2005

Fox Searchlight: Well, the model is, some of their films are really working

Variety reports from a Tuesday Tribeca Fest panel on "specialty" releasing; Fox Searchlight was the patient on the table: "Sony Classics co-prexy Tom Bernard was more dubious... He called midsize pics "a questionable venture," noting, "If a movie like Sideways, which I think cost a lot of money to promote, doesn't work, it's an incredible loss." ... Kinsey, for example, didn't catch on."They cancel each other out," he said of the two pics."Our goal is to have singles and doubles... We'd rather release 22 movies a year, and, you know, spending a little money on each one, and if one happens to pop, then all the better for us." [Bob] Berney replied, "Everyone goes, 'Well, we want to use the Fox Searchlight model,' and you're sort of like, 'What is that model?' and they go, 'Well, the model is, some of their films are really working.'"

Posted by at 07:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Line, please: Sydney Pollack's compulsive repetition

Sydney Pollack's got this ticking in his head, a line he tells Anthony Minghella that's occured in four of his movies. In 3 Days of the Condor, writes the Guardian, "Pollack's line is spoken by an outraged Robert Redford, on discovering that the folks at Langley have a secret plan to invade the Middle East to secure America's oil supplies... "What is it with you people?... You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?" (No, he is informed, "It's simple economics.") The line... is, of course, a variation on the Latin tag favoured by lawyers: Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi. That is to say, the suppression of truth is the suggestion of falsehood. It's less easy to place the other two usages but a good bet would be Tootsie (1982) and The Firm (1993), two Pollack-directed films in which the main characters live a lie."

Posted by at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

$C25 million for Toronto fest: a new deal for Canadian cities

The new HQ for the Toronto International Film Festival, due for 2008 at a cost of $C122 million, got a boost Tuesday as the Canadian government kicked in $C25m, matching a commitment by the Ontario provincial government last monthm, reports the Globe and Mail. "Federal politicians also touted Ottawa's investment as in keeping with the government's commitment to a “new deal” for Canadian cities. Tuesday's $25m federal contribution will be managed under the Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund... The new building – which will also house a gallery and screening rooms – is being billed as a year-round facility that would serve as both the headquarters for the main film festival as well its accompanying programs."

Posted by at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Indie jones: George "No More Star Wars" Lucas can't quit

Don't want to read the rest of this article for sooooo many reasons: "Making his first appearance at a fan convention in 18 years, [George] Lucas told an Indianapolis crowd Saturday that he's making plans for two TV series that would continue the sci-fi epic." [aka Star Wars] ... Yet Variety persists, noting the places Lucas might place opportunistic, branded, no-need-to-be-imaginative television programming, continuing a life's work that he said would end with his upcoming Sith: "Cartoon Network would be the logical home for a 3-D "Star Wars" animated skein, given the net's work with Lucasfilm on the "Clone Wars" series of shorts. However, a cabler like Sci Fi might also be interested given the probably high quality of the animation and the chance to be in business with Lucas."

Posted by at 12:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 25, 2005

Aussie film: As important as the olive oil industry will become

A remodeled, Bazzified movie Palace opens Down Under: The foyer of South Yarra's Cinema Como used to have about as much personality as a railway station waiting room. Not any more. The new-look Como... is unrecognisable—think bordello meets Gilbert and Sullivan..." The Age profiles Antonio Zeccola, head of the Palace Cinema chain, "which includes the Como and 15 other theatres across Australia... Zeccola also runs distributing arm Palace Films and is a keen investor in the Australian film industry... Zeccola laments the worldwide domination of Hollywood and believes the... Government must do more to support the local film industry, not just with funding, but with appropriate tax incentives. I sincerely would love to see a stronger Australian film industry, because I believe that it's as important as the wine industry has become, as the olive oil industry will become... It's an export industry." Zeccola's invested in Ana Kokkinos' The Book of Revelation and Geoffrey Wright's new Macbeth, as part of up to $A10 million in Australian films in the next 18 months or so. The Age quotes Zeccola, I'm extremely confident that the Australian films of the next couple of years will show what wonderful talent we have here. It's a sin that someone like Ana Kokkinos has to wait four to five years before making her next film. It's immoral.

Posted by at 07:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Boredom, not whoredom? Variety protests

In Monday's Variety, the not-precisely-young Derek Elley weighs in on the 2005 Cannes slate: "Do Palme d'Or competitors Michael Haneke, Jim Jarmusch, David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan still represent the cutting edge of artistic achievement, as they did a decade or more ago? An affirmative answer is inevitably clouded by the reality that, outside a small audience constituency in France, their following Stateside and elsewhere is largely driven by middle-aged critical cliques rather than broader arthouse auds."

Posted by at 09:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 24, 2005

What CameraPlanet are you from?: from the Observer & a reply

New York Observer's Jake Brooks untangles one more spatty, bitter, litigious Manhattan indie collapse: "It must feel like déjà vu for Stephen Carlis. His former company, the Shooting Gallery, which he co-founded with Larry Meistrich, met its ignominious—and litigious—demise in the wake of the dot-com bust. Now Mr. Carlis finds himself on the brink of another legal struggle as his former employer, Steven Rosenbaum, the head of CameraPlanet—which closed its doors in December 2004—readies a civil lawsuit against him... Mr. Rosenbaum is also pursuing criminal action through the D.A.’s office. Among other financial improprieties, Mr. Rosenbaum alleges... Mr. Carlis... was using his relationships with filmmakers and producers to divert potential production projections... into third-party companies.. In legal terms, he was a faithless employee who breached his fiduciary duty... To say the least, Mr. Carlis sees matters differently... "This is probably one the sickest things anybody’s ever done. I really did a lot of wonderful things for this man. I befriended him. He told dozens of people that I saved his business after 9/11. Without me, he would have been out of business." [Peter Gilbert, who directed one of the company's visible results, With All Deliberate Speed (with the Discovery Channel’s "Discovery Doc" series), says a thing or two, including that he's not been paid for making that doc.] [Mr. Brooks' article states that "Mr. Gilbert was never paid by CameraPlanet for Speed." In Comments, "steve@cameraplanet.com" offers this in turn: Peter Gilbert was paid his fees, his expenses, and in fact in some cases his expenses were paid twice. This is easily documented [by] cancelled checks. The issue was that Carlis had said—in writing—that Gilbert was 'foregoing his fees' to help cover the production[‘]s enormous overages. And Peter claimed that his emails with Discovery had given him permission to spend these overages. In the end, the only party not paid on With All Deliberate Speed was CameraPlanet (because Discovery paid Gilbert out of fees earned by other on-budget, well managed projects). This is call[ed] cross-collateralizing expenses. If anyone wants to check with Discovery, they'll find that Mr. Gilbert has been paid the entirety of his fees and expenses."]

Posted by at 02:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

How the human tribe leads life: watching one of the year's best films

A lovely appreciation in the FT of Finnish director Pirjo Honkasalo's dour, brilliant, hypnotic and magisterial documentary The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, about children and the war in Chechnya, which has played Sundance, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Chicago and Thessaloniki. Writes Peter Aspden: "I would garland it with... superlatives, just so that some courageous independent distributor would plunder a few fruity adjectives to use in a promotional poster, but frankly it is near pointless..." The "On Culture" columnist saw her film a couple of days after viewing The Interpreter: "How absurd to expect us to be moved by [Kidman and Penn] huffing through bomb blasts, phony accents and improbable... twists, when the truth of war can be conveyed so simply... by the face of a child..." Aspden ponders that gulf between the two movies: "Why have we become so disrespectful of an art form, that we choose, en masse, to consume only its most vulgar products?" He concludes with words from Honkasalo: I don't care for truths, but when I'm not asleep or dreaming, I wish to know how the human tribe leads life, shapes history and expresses will. Europe is full of people who need grace to cope with a righteous rage that turns against them. Life is no court of justice; justice does not prevail, life does. [The article is online only for subscribers.]

Posted by at 01:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

House of Worth: Terrence Davies can't get the pounds

The jaw-droppingly gifted Scottish director Terrence Davies, who made Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, The Neon Bible and House of Mirth sees another project detonate for lack of English finance. Scotland on Sunday reports, "It is one of Scottish literature’s great masterpieces, while he is one of Britain’s most acclaimed film directors. 'Sunset Song' and.. Davies looked like a dream combination, but plans for a film of the Lewis Grassic Gibbon classic [of troubled rural life] have collapsed because of a complete lack of interest in England." Scottish and international money was interest, but he was ashcanned by the BBC and Channel 4 as well as the UK Film Council. Of its £7m budget two years ago, Scottish Screen had awarded the project £500,000 of lottery money. Producer Bob Last says that "It was a film that was still very distinctively Terry’s vision, but reached out to bigger audiences both in the UK and globally." ... Celia Stevenson of Scottish Screen said: "I don’t think there’s any difficulty in getting a good Scottish novel made into television. I think there’s possibly more of a difficulty getting one made into a film. But I have absolutely no idea why."

Posted by at 01:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Red Bank, NJ's arthouse bank: how SPE & others help it thrive

The Asbury Park Press celebrates an arthouse with powerful pals: "The Red Bank Art Cinema, 36 White St., opened 10 years ago this month, with a strict policy of only art, independent and foreign film programming.... Many of the movies come from Sony Pictures Classics, whose faith in the Red Bank theater has been almost heroic. Tom Bernard, co-president of the company and a Middletown resident, has made sure his company's films play at the arts cinema, occasionally only a week or two after their New York openings... "Our movies have done tremendous business… the highest in the state," Bernard said. "[It's] part of an elite group nationwide. The outreach marketing that Clearview has done and its commitment to the art policy is the most important element in the theater's success."

Posted by at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brian Grazer on "three names" and Ron F'ing Howard

The indieness of the not-so-idle rich: Newsweek buffs up the rep of Ron Howard, eliciting this comic comment from producer Brian Grazer, It's a bummer that it doesn't compute the way it should... There are many directors who get fussed over a lot more than Ron and who have had significantly less impact. But he's just such a no-fuss guy. He doesn't wear all black clothes. He's not Paul Thomas Anderson—he doesn't have three names. Maybe he should.

Posted by at 05:32 AM | Comments (0)

Ebert on The Marriage of Maria Braun

In "The Great Movies," Roger Ebert rues the loss of Fassbinder: "The Marriage of Maria Braun was made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1979, near the end of a career so short and dazzling that it still seems incredible he did so much and died so young. Fassbinder made at least 30 features, or many more if you count his television productions, including the 15-hour miniseries "Berlin Alexanderplatz," and he did it all between 1969 and his death at age 37 in 1982.... Fassbinder's world was one in which sex, ego and money drove his characters to cruelty, sadism and self-destruction. It is never difficult to discover what they want, or puzzling to see how they go about it." [More at the link.]

Posted by at 01:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 23, 2005

Subverting the censors: Islamic filmmakers

In the Guardian, Tariq Ali has a brisk survey of how Islamic filmmakers have always had to battle the censors, making them better artists: "It is as difficult to define or classify Islamic cinema as it would be a Christian, Jewish or Buddhist one. The language of cinema has always been universal. Interpretations vary. Censors had different priorities: in 1950s Hollywood a married couple could not share a double bed and had to be clothed. In South Asia, the censor's scissors clipped out kisses from western films." {More at the link.]

Posted by at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Time Out for Korine & Bruce Robinson

Time Out London reports on a few cool projects aborning: Harmony Korine is getting finance from designer agnès b to shoot Mr. Lonely in Iceland come June. Withnail & I's nutter, Bruce Robinson, returns to the form of the mighty debauch, prepping Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, to star Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Nick Nolte and Josh Hartnett.

Posted by at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 22, 2005

Pauline Kael once said...

In Slate, taking Sydney Pollack to task for his low-key style, Bryan Curtis breaks out the Paulette nuke: Pollack's later work rarely betrays the notion that his leading men have been given any direction at all. How else to account for Redford's All-American gauziness in 'Out of Africa'—he "looks as if he'd been blow-dried away," quipped Pauline Kael. Meanwhile, in the SF Chronicle, a nice Jeff Selvin prorile of Greil Marcus puts us in the know that "Marcus has established himself as the thinking man's rock critic, the Pauline Kael of pop."

Posted by at 02:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pascal's wager: what's Sony betting on?

Amy Pascal, who's said a few blunt things in the past about the quality of contemporary movies, talks to the FT about the non-formula for making movies at Sony: " will probably live to regret this, but putting together a slate of movies is really an opportunistic thing. As a company we make 20-24 movies a year that we hope will make money. You try to have 4 or 5 in summertime that you think will be big and will be as entertainment-oriented as you can. You have 4 or 5 movies in November and December that are more family friendly. One of them will be more Oscar-oriented and adult, and you fill in the blanks for the rest of the year. That's pretty much the deal. And then smart journalists ask you about the theory. It's all crap. What you do is make movies that will make money..." In spite of her passion for the 21st-century imagery of Spider-Man, she does not rate any film produced after 1975 among her 10 favourites—which include Last Tango In Paris, All About Eve and Shampoo.... “It’s no longer domestic versus international, it’s just the world. You absolutely cannot make money on a movie that only works domestically.. You read a script and say, ‘This could make money.’ You just make movies you like. You think I don’t?”

Posted by at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This little Figgis went to market

Digi-flaneur Mike Figgis brings his 'Coma' doc to the Cannes market, per Variety. "Documentary recounts what happened when Figgis invited 20 aspiring filmmakers to attend a weeklong master class in Slovenia and then challenged them to shoot a feature film from scratch. The movie wasn't finished, but the conflicts and tensions provided rich material for the doc."

Posted by at 12:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Von Manderlay

The Danish coming attractions trailer for Lars Trier's Cannes-bound Manderlay has only half-a-dozen iterations of a certain, specific N-word.

Posted by at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Seamless doc-making: You lie as much as possible

The two-week-old New York Times Thursday Styles section continues to make a name for itself, esteeming the work of director Douglas Keeve ("Unzipped" from 10 years ago), who disingenuously brags on many misrepresentations. "Keeve took some dramatic license in his storytelling. He included scenes in which the designers are being judged for their runway collections, but the scenes come from the fall 2005 season, which was shown in February, 4 months after the competition... [One designer] is depicted reacting with horror... that a fire has gutted her parents' business, although she said that the fire, while serious, occurred in November. As for [Sarah Jessica] Parker, who shows up to order a tuxedo from [another designer]—"after seeing his designs in Vogue," viewers are told—Mr. Keeve acknowledged that the scene was staged at his request to demonstrate the designer at work on a custom order. "When you make a film like this, your responsibility is to the audience, which means you lie as much as possible to make the story clear,' he said."

Posted by at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 21, 2005

Chinese to me: Kung Fu Hustle kicks out

While The Interpreter will be on 2,758 screens this weekend, Variety reports that Kung Fu Hustle will come close... with 2,500 playdates. "Sony Pictures Classics is highly optimistic, noting the release is the widest ever for a Chinese-lingo film. "It's going to do very well," said co-prexy Michael Barker. "It's a film that has a great word-of-mouth." Label's strategy is to get the core aud of young males into theaters this week and then expand the aud over time. "We're the niche marketers," said co-prexy Tom Bernard. "We look at it as a three-month marathon. We've got the 18-25 guys first, then we've got to get the older guys with jobs. The trick will be to get the 25-40 guys to bring their wives and girlfriends." There's a few bucks at stake, Bernard tells Variety. "We spent $20 million to get $127 million on 'Crouching Tiger.' We spent more on this one."

Posted by at 06:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Planting Two Boots in Connecticut

Phil and Jesse Hartman, the brothers behind the Two Boots emporia in Manhattan, including the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, venture a Bijou in Bridgeport, a 1908 edifice reportedly the "oldest cinema house in the nation." "I love old theaters," Phil Hartman explained, "and the oldest theater in America is very sexy to me. I knew it needed a restaurant concept, and saw a performance space as well. And we're already doing something similar in Manhattan." ... "The traditional demographic for art cinemas grew up with the golden age of film, [directors like Frederico] Fellini and [Ingmar] Bergman. Then there's the whole second golden age in the '70s, [Francis Ford] Coppola, [Martin] Scorsese, and that generation is older, too. We're trying to create something exciting for the younger generation, people not used to seeing movies with subtitles."

Posted by at 04:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pushing the merch: plans for Landmark Theatres

Gary Dretzka checks in with the many media plans of the post-broadcast.com Mark Cuban-Todd Wagner 2929 conglom, "the vertically integrated media holding company, which also owns the Landmark Theaters chain, Magnolia Pictures Distribution, a stake in Lions Gate Entertainment" and HDNet Movies. Wagner "emphasized that Landmark would continue to showcase... indie, documentary and foreign titles... and which already fit the digital-projection model. 2929 will, however, endeavor to find new ways to take advantage of the arthouse culture, by experimenting with direct sales of DVDs and soundtrack albums, upgrading concessions and adding bars and restaurants to venues. "We want to maximize the revenue stream that already exists..." Wagner tells Dretzka.

Posted by at 09:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Seeing something and being moved by it: Sydney Pollack

Sydney Pollack talks to LA Weekly's Scott Foundas about how money and independence don't mix: During "the 20 years when I was most productive as a director. you could make more eclectic films... a lot of that was economics. The cost of... movies is out of control, at least for movies with big stars... That’s why I’ve turned to independent films as a producer, and I’m eventually going to find my way [there] as a director. I want very much to make a $15-million to $20-million movie where I don’t have this daunting, and inhibiting, pressure to reach everyone in the world or the picture’s not considered a success... It makes you worry when... you want to have two characters sit down for 7 pages of dialogue—which they do in this movie, frequently.” For his phalanx of screenwriters, Pollack tells Foundas he drew from Tom Stoppard: “It comes from the speech in 'The Real Thing,' where the playwright admonishes this girl because of her faith in a lousy writer, and talks about how the butchering of words by someone who isn’t able to make adequate use of them is a crime. I took that speech and dictated it to every one of the writers on this project. It’s one of my favorite speeches in all of literature, because it speaks to the reason why your hair raises in a certain moment in a film or a piece of theater, or why you laugh, or why you cry. It’s all done with writing, by people who can really write and create that kind of response in you... Seeing something and being moved by it — that’s a powerful weapon.”

Posted by at 09:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Drinkwater on Wellspring and Genius

On the eve of a wider release of Todd Solondz's Palindromes, a deal is sealed: Trevor Drinkwater, CEO of Genius Products, announces finalizing its acquisition of American Vantage Media and Wellspring Films, asserting that the deal "complements the Genius Products Branded Distribution Network." "We see this acquisition as an important means of leveraging the efficient infrastructure Genius Products has built over the past year,...With a broadened base of high quality, diverse, proprietary content," the P.R. sez, "we believe Genius Products isstrategically positioned to work even closer with retailers to develop customized programs that meet their sales, gross margin and targeted demographic objectives..." [Other product partners in the growing combine include The Sundance Channel, IFILM, TV Guide, AMC, Bazooka, Baby Genius and National Lampoon.]

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DVD day-and-date releases? They're heeeeeeeere

The Reporter checks into a marketing conference in BevHills: "The day you have a public performance of a movie anywhere in the world, you can count on the fact there will be a physical product on the streets in Asia, Eastern Europe, Russia within a few days," [Warner Bros. Entertainment chairman and CEO Barry] Meyer said... "Right now... theatrical is the main way we set value in these movies, and video is the first aftermarket. It might well be in the certain territories, it should be exactly the reverse —that theatrical is the added value."

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April 20, 2005

Dining out with Rex Reed: Strange food

Over at Pride, Unprejudiced, there's a survey of Rex Reed's peculiar culinary fixations in the wake of his review of Oldboy, which the veteran snip disdained as "sewage in a cocktail shaker," from "a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs." More tasteless tidbits at the link.

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Buenos Aires by the bay: Argentinian films in SF

On the eve of the San Francisco International, Johnny Ray Huston looks at the fest's strong Argentinian sidebar: "One could easily argue that Argentina is home to the most exciting filmmaking in the world at the moment—and certainly, with the possible exception of South Korea, it is the core site of fresh work by women directors—if the country itself and the new voices emerging from it weren't so disparate, drawing from European and American influences as well as the history of a Latin American country second only to Brazil in terms of film production. This achievement is amazing, considering the country's new wave has risen from — and crashed against — economic ruin."

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Post-Oscar Born into schools

In Lisboa, Born into Brothels co-director Ross Kauffman announces a school in India he and Zana Briski are starting. "Kauffman, who directed the documentary along with fellow New Yorker Briski, said that the two filmmakers hope to have the school up and running by the start of 2007."

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Giving The Interpreter a Hand: Matt Zoller Seitz

New York Press' Matt Zoller Seitz digs the quiet visual assurance of The Interpreter: "Pollack and director of photography Darius Khondji conceive the tale via simple but powerful compositions, symmetrical in appearance but asymmetrical in meaning. Extreme wide shots (lateral and God's-eye) achieve formal balance via implied center lines that cut the CinemaScope frame into perfect halves and transform U.N. and Manhattan architecture into Rorshach blots whose symmetry is gummed up by roving, ant-sized humans. Pollack's regular editor, William Steinkamp, crosscuts between events occurring in different locations so deftly that you may not realize until later that the events were rhymed not just by plot function, but by gesture, emotion and theme. In some close-up conversations, the movie frames shots and reverse-shots so characters experiencing similar emotions appear to be divided by a mirror or joined like puzzle pieces. (This movie's visual intelligence equals Wong Kar-Wai's The Hand. Yeah, I said it.)"

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Pulitzer-prize winning attention spans

Post-Pulitzer, the Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern shares a few words with the paper at his alma mater (Lehigh University, '53): "I am an essayist... I try to write interesting pieces that challenge the reader. If newspapers are going to survive, they can't dumb down their writing to the level of people who have the attention span of a firefly."

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April 19, 2005

Working Title: It's all in the cats

The Guardian catches up with the duo behind Working Title Films, the producers Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan. Fellner: Making movies is like herding cats. Just when you've got 19 or 20 in a room— Bevan: —Suddenly you turn round and the whole lot of them is gone!

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Talking the "urban": Damon Dash

Damon Dash allows there's a difference, to the Reporter: When I watch an urban movie, I'm not satisfied with it, and I think it's degrading and offensive. I feel like the urban experience has to be shown so people can understand the repercussions and understand my culture a little better, instead of just exploiting it. I think just because we're urban doesn't mean that the urban experience should just be for urban people. On the other hand, I think that an urban individual can affiliate themselves with quality and recognizing art. I think I have an eye for recognizing art, and that's what I wanted to do in the movie business—and make money, too.

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Montana: more filmmaker tax incentives

Film industry tax credits near final approval, the Billings Gazette reports, but they're not universally beloved (or understood). "This is an example of special interests legislation," Sen. Joe Balyeat, R-Bozeman, said. "The taxpayers of Montana will be paying for a group of people who are not even Montana residents."

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Online: Errol in the Booth

Follow Errol Morris into the photobooth for PBS.

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Protecting the cuttters: "The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act"

With "The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act" headed for a presidential signature, will its provisions also allow someone who trimmed anything from a movie to claim protection for their derivative work? Or does the bill neatly define "sex, violence and foul language"? "Fledgling technology that helps parents prevent children from watching movie scenes depicting sex, violence or foul language won new legal protections Tuesday under a bill Congress is sending to President Bush. "The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act "would assure manufacturers of DVD players and other devices using such technology they would not be violating copyrights of the Hollywood producers of movies... Critics of the bill have argued it was aimed at helping one company, Utah-based ClearPlay Inc, whose technology is used in some DVD players to help parents filter inappropriate material by muting dialogue or skipping scenes. ClearPlay sells filters for hundreds of movies that can be added to such DVD players for $4.95 each month."

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Chris Doyle sings the Blue

The Telegraph continues their series of Filmmakers on Film with dependable Du Ke Feng, or cinematographer Chris Doyle: "Without hesitation, Doyle picks Blue. I assume he means the first of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy. "Of course not," he says. "Kieslowski represents a more intellectual aspect of filmmaking. Derek Jarman's Blue is one of the most intimate films I've ever seen." Jarman made Blue as he was going blind in the terminal stages of AIDS.... A diary, it muses on his illness, the aesthetics of colour, the state of the nation in 1993 and more. Visually, it consists of an 80-minute shot of a blank, bright-blue screen. A weird choice, then, for a DoP. "It's the obvious choice," counters Doyle, who shares Jarman's fascination with colour and now treats me to a crash course on the topic which takes in the I Ching, Goethe, Simon Garfield's book on the invention of mauve and the economics of fashion and Jarman's own book, 'Chroma.' ...But surely the computer generation Doyle spoke of would... call it boring? "I think those kids would take Ecstasy and really enjoy it. How much MTV can you watch? Don't shove it down their throats but let them know it's there. That's why I'm talking about it now."

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Danny Boyle answers: "You made a religious film?"

Danny Boyle on belief and "realism": "Often the imaginative process isn't dependent on realism, on making things look like they could really exist. The imagination, and what we go to cinema for, is often about something other than that. That's why I always keep hold of that. The idea of [Millions], in the end, is about what his mom says to [Damian]: you have to keep faith in people. I link faith directly to the imagination because it involves having "leapings" of things. There aren't steps... all the time. Some of it is trust; there's a gap that you have to go over. People say, "How come you made a religious film?" For me it's not religious. I can understand for some people it would be religious, but to me it's about the imagination, about faith and belief in a wider context."

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Microindie: Wes Malvini has a vision

Candace Baltz-Smylie of the Twin Falls Times-News catches up with a local filmmaker on his third $3,000 production: "Wes Malvini has a vision, and it's just a little disturbing. "Sarcastic, sardonic, sadistic and morally satiating," reads his website... "Romantic angst," he says. "Traditional values versus current values that torment a person." That is where the Twin Falls 20-year-old draws inspiration... But he doesn't like being part of the independent scene. No, Malvini says his films are independent of mainstream filmmaking, but also independent of indie film. Independent squared... But Malvini has no dreams of stardom or wealth. He got a check for about $100 from Lamphouse Theatre owner Dave Woodhead when his first film was shown [there]… "Even with star power, independent movies are lucky to make $250,000 countrywide… And this happens over and over again... It's like an assembly line... Independent film brings it down strictly to the heart. Making a movie for $3,000—you definitely have to be creative." Malvini also says he doesn't want to attend film school because it would dilute his talent.... Malvini works for a title loan shop and part time at The Lamphouse, which is where he keeps coming back, probably because The Lamphouse deals in offbeat films."

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Indie billions: Waxman on eager new producers

The Times' Sharon Waxman surveys Hollywood's new indie moguls, the latest rich outsiders drawn to the reflected light: "A light rain fell on the actors Aaron Eckhart and Cameron Bright as they strolled along the oceanside pier here, shooting a scene from "Thank You for Smoking," a dark comedy about lobbying for the tobacco industry. David Sacks, 32, an Internet entrepreneur who has co-financed the movie with his own money... made no effort to conceal his enthusiasm... Mr. Sacks, an inventor of... PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, is [not] the only young tycoon to come to Hollywood lately with a bagful of cash and a hankering to make movies. Jeff Skoll, a co-founder of eBay; Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, the founders of Broadcast.com; and Bob Yari, a real estate developer, are among the... internet magnates, trust-fund entrepreneurs and sports-team owners changing Hollywood's landscape with their ambitious slates of pictures and vast stores of personal wealth to finance them." Ah, the golden fleecing...

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April 18, 2005

The 7 Basic Insults: Why We Review Books: Kakutani

The Times' Michiko Kakutani sets Christopher Booker's "The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories" down for a talking-to: "The problem is that most of Booker's theories are highly familiar, lifted in part or whole from a range of influential, even canonical works by writers and thinkers as varied as Jung, Freud, Joseph Campbell and the folklore experts Peter and Iona Opie... What does Steven Spielberg's shark-fest Jaws have in common with the Old English epic "Beowulf"? ... What could Peter Rabbit, Scarlett O'Hara and Alice from Wonderland possibly have in common? Or Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Silas Marner and Scrooge? ... These are questions that lie at the heart of [this] gargantuan, sometimes absorbing and often blockheaded new book."

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Taxes and Texas hold'em: more state incentives

Austin Chronicle reports on the latest in tax breaks for filmmakers (sure beats building baseball stadiums): "Senate Bill 1142, which sets up $20 million in incentives to lure Hollywood to Texas, has passed unanimously through subcommittee on to the committee on Business and Commerce [where it's] expected to move on to the full Senate. ... Proof the incentives are needed? New Mexico just upped its hand by increasing the cap on film loans from $7.5 million to $15 million and allowing projects to receive 80% of their expected tax rebates up front. A $4 million interest-free loan allowed New Mexico to nab the Lions Gate series 'Wildfire.'"

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Rubber Johnny: Chris Cunningham

Chris Cunningham has a dark new short film, Rubber Johnny, made in collaboration with Aphex Twin. Trailer and details at the link.

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French stickler? Projecting Araki digitally in Paris

Gregg Araki’s latest, Mysterious Skin, is being released in Parisian theaters only in digital projection, according to Liberation. But, it seems, Marin Karmitz, owner of theaters and distributor MK2 did not tell Araki, international rep Fortissimo, or the public. Despite potential repercussions, Karmitz, who has produced films by Chabrol, Kiarostami and Kieslowski, asserts that economics are forbidding for “small films,” with his costs increasing 52% between 2002-2003. Justifying Mysterious Skin in this format, Karmitz cites falling profit margins, and believes that current technical standards are “sufficiently good,” current lab standards are lousy, and journalists are willing to review movies on VHS or DVD. [The original article is in French.]

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An auteur's signature: Albert Maysles

Albert Maysles is moving from his longtime home in Manhattan's Dakota apartments to Harlem and he makes a few confessions to the Times magazine: A thing that is a little strange about myself is that I personally sew name tags into every article of clothing I have, from underwear to socks to jackets and shirts. I use a sewing machine. When I was a kid, I was envious of other kids who went to camp, but my family couldn't afford it, and what I liked best about camp was you had labels sewn into all your clothes.

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Walter Murch on the merch

A short QuickTime movie of editing great Walter Murch talking about what he's up to with the new Final Cut editing tools [via Greencine]. Until now the border between sound and picture has been this crisis point. By making the interaction between the two transparent, the integration of Soundtrack Pro with Final Cut Pro is going to fantastically change the nature of what we do, he says.

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Amy chasing: Joey Lauren Adams directs

After 5 years trying, Joey Lauren Adams returns to central Arkansas to write and direct a movie set in her home state. "Adams spoke Monday at a news conference at the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce... Adams said that shooting the film in Arkansas instead of in a state that offers better incentives cost her nearly 25% of the movie's $2.5 million budget. "If I had shot this film in Louisiana I would've saved about $700,000. Which, on a budget of about $2-$3 million, you can see how big of a difference that would've made." More on the state of movie finance in Arkansas here.

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Control: Control Room's Josh Rushing speaks

A dispatch from Lt. Josh Rushing, the U.S. Marine Corps' liasion to Middle Eastern news outlets in the 2003 start of Iraq war, at one of his post=Control Room speaking engagements, to an audience in Oregon: "What's the difference between propaganda and propaganda, between good propaganda and bad propaganda?" asked one man in the audience. Sitting at the stage's edge, Rushing quickly replied the U.S. had set aside 5% of the money for the Marshall Plan—almost universally admired for reviving the economies of shattered Europe after World War II—to opinion-shaping newsreels titled "Me and Mr. Marshall" and "Let U