Movie City Indie

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May 17, 2005

GreenCannes

The best daily summaries of Cannesblogs high and low are at GreenCine.

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Schickel’s tough love: Agee's desperate and pathetic work

In his customary berth on page 2 of the Sunday Los Angeles Times Book Review (May 15), Richard Schickel disinters a predecessor at Time magazine as a movie reviewer, James Agee, and has a happy-dance on the remains. Upon the publication of a “desperate and pathetic” draft of a film treatment that Agee had written for Charlie Chaplin, the ever-benevolent Schickel writes with what reads like the yield of years of calculated hatred, “Such greatness as Agee achieved—and reviewing movies is a field that recruits clever souls but never noble ones—derives from the purity of his enthusiasms and distastes and the rather sporty style he devised to convey them. Some of this manner he borrowed from a forgotten but more trustworthy reviewer, Otis Ferguson of the New Republic… As Manny Farber observed in a tormented piece about the man who mentored him, Agee had no film esthetic… He praised movies that agreed with his liberal, humanistic and essentially liberal biases… He was like a music critic who attends operas for their plots… This document is as disheveled as Agee himself was. An alcoholic, an insomniac, with teeth rotting in his head and dress so slovenly and odoriferous he was banned from eating in the… Fox commissary, he evidently wrote this… in the deeper watches of drunken and desperate nights…. Agee was lucky mainly in his early death, which permitted people to mourn the works unwritten.” (The book is “Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of the Tramp, the Writer and the Lost Screenplay,” by John Wranovics, Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95.) [The link is subscriber-only.]

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A giggle on the Croisette with Terry Gilliam

Ever-resilient Terry Gilliam waxes optimistic to Andrew Pulver in the Guardian about his Brothers Grimm: "Gilliam has got some powerful help in his corner: the Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, who took on the project in 2003 when, Gilliam says, original producers MGM pulled out their funding at the last minute. It's fair to say that Gilliam, who has a reputation as a wildly expensive cinematic visionary, might not be the best creative fit for the tough-minded, dollars-and-cents Weinsteins—you can't help but visualise two juggernauts crashing head-on... But, if nothing else, Gilliam recognises their ability to get a movie out there. "They're going to sell the shit out of it, and make it a success. They're the best at it," he mutters after the show..."

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May 16, 2005

Mad Hot doubt: teaching Ballroom's teacher

Yomaira Reynoso, one of the dance teachers of PS 115, talks to Lily Oei and Aaron Dobbs at Gothamist about filmmaker Marilyn Agrelo and her crew: "They came in and introduced themselves like six months before, but we didn’t know if our school would be chosen. We didn’t hear from them for a while, and we figured, oh probably not. Then, all of the sudden, there was that phone call. It was exciting, but we never thought—I thought they were going to film a little cable thing. Not that I didn’t have confidence in them, I just didn’t believe – I didn’t think it was going anywhere. I was just thinking, they’re filming the kids. The kids are having a great time and showing off, that’s all I thought of."

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Tear down that wall, Mr. Rosenbaum!

Freelancers for the Chicago Reader have gotten notice that the paper's about to follow the Austin Chronicle PDF download model with a rejiggered payment schedule; the mass email also suggests that the archives will likely become free soon, rather than paid, making the writing of reviewers like Jonathan Rosenbaum viewable and Google-able. (An interesting development after the LA Times pulled its entertainment content from behind a firewall and on a day that the New York Times announced "Times Select," where a chunk of its premium content will follow the Independent (UK) model and only be available for a $49.95 annual fee. Toronto's Globe & Mail has also placed most of its articles behind a subscription-only barrier.)

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Roxie boxed: the slow death of a SF rep house

Another Bay Area arthouse is slipping away, Bill Banning's Roxie: "The little Mission District movie house [280 seats] has always struggled to stay afloat, but now it's sinking in debt. The business will probably go under soon, unless Banning can rustle up the money to pay down some of the $140,000 owed the IRS, the landlord and others... The Roxie has survived, while other single-screen theaters vanished, by finding and distributing films that became arthouse hits. Having a loyal audience has helped, too. The fans came through during the Roxie's back-rent crisis of 2002, contributing cash and packing the house for benefit screenings of The Last Picture Show ...If he doesn't come up with some cash in the next 45 days or so, he expects the IRS to seize the business... "My lawyers suggested bankruptcy at least 10 years ago,'' said Banning, who has lived with his wife and son in an apartment a block away on 16th Street since he started at the Roxie. "I'm of the old school that won't do that. I guess I'm an optimist. I feel as if something will come along. And for all these years, something has always come along.''

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The Passion of the F-bomb: Kevin Smith

Local boy Kevin Smith lights up a few for the Asbury Park Press upon the publication of "Silent Bob Speaks: The Collected Writings of Kevin Smith." "How will screen stud Ben Affleck, a frequent player in Smith's films, react when he reads about Smith's "heterosexual crush" on him...?" He's seen that before... so he's kind of way-familiar with that quote... He's kind of charmed by it. He realizes that I wouldn't have a shot in the world with him, even if he was gay and I was gay." ... What is off-limits for Smith?" "As long as it's my life, then I'm kind of OK with talking about it. The problem that you run into is that sometimes your life is other people's life as well, like (Smith's wife) Jen. But I just don't know how else to go about it." ...There's a section of the Web site called "My Boring-Ass Life,' where I literally do everything that's happened in my day. That tends to get very detail-oriented."

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Yari of the 'It Girl': Financing Edie

One of producer Bob Yari's entities is putting up the cash for a Katie Holmes-starring biopic Rush & Molloy reports. Mayor of Sunset Strip director George Hickenlooper gushes: "Katie is not too different from Edie, who arrived in New York as young, innocent, looking for excitement." Guy Pearce is Hickenlooper's Andy Warhol in Factory Girl, but the director knwon for his compulsive affinity for 1970s "Hollywood Renaissance" filmmakers is manufacturing a distraction from her reputed affairs, such as with Bob Dylan. "Edie definitely knew Dylan, Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger and others... We've decided to create a character who is kind of hybrid of all of them."

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Pauline Kael once said...: Re: The Sith

It's blurbista Peter Travers' turn to exhume the Empress of kiss-kiss-bang-bang in a rare pan, of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith: "The late critic Pauline Kael once dismissed Star Wars as 'an epic without a dream.'"

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Mr. Godard, do you blah blah blah?

Godard lets a little more air out of his recent Notre musique, talking to Tim Witt in the June Sight & Sound. He has no eyes for the fat little 8-year-old girl in Ohio: "What's bad is that students think that because they've got a little camera, they can film something. The manufacturers, even the critics, say: 'It's great! Everyone can make cinema!' No, not everyone can... Everyone can think they're making cinema, or say, 'I make cinema.' But if you give someone a pencil it doesn't mean they're going to draw like Raphael or Rembrandt." The scene in the film is prompted by Godard only half-answering the questions of film students. "If I'd said all that, however, it would have been too long for the scene... Three quarters of the questions would have been stupid. Those are the kinds of questions they're educated to ask. I remember when I was lecturing in the US I'd spot a girl who looked pretty and address myself to her, as I find talking directly to one person rather than to a group helps me speak. Then she'd formulate a long sentence: 'Mr Godard, do you blah blah blah' followed by 'can you elaborate?' ...I'd start to elaborate further only to look up to see she's picked up her file and is leaving. I don't know what your students are like, but I have my suspicions."

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WTF?: UK PhDs K.O. What the Bleep?

A few learned minds gather in the Guardian to put the correct word after "What the?" in What the Bleep Do We Know?. Simon Singh has a PhD in particle physics from Cambridge University: I have spent my entire working life either doing science or conveying its meaning and beauty to the public. Consequently, I despise What the Bleep Do We Know!?, because it distorts science to fit its own agenda, it is full of half-truths and misleading analogies, and some of its so-called scientific claims are downright lies. (More juicy loveliness at the link.) Dr Joao Migueijo, identified as reader in theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, found the movie "horrendously tedious even before we get to its substance. Its meat, alas, only makes matters worse. It would be unwise to condemn total lunacy; it has an important role in society, that of keeping us human. But to deliberately misquote science to gain credibility sounds desperate and badly backfires... One can also understand why the political status quo has such a vested interest in suppressing quality education for the masses. America has long been the land of misinformation, ignorance and prejudice. This is abundantly confirmed by a film, which against all appearances, is actually very mainstream...Please just give us unadultered old-style underground lunacy - it's so much more entertaining.�"

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May 13, 2005

Uncrossing Jordan: Neil leaves the dole

As his novel "Shade" is issued in paperback, writer-director Neil Jordan recollects his last days on unemployment in the Guardian: "The Sergio Leone films were the ones that first allowed me see there was more going on here than pure entertainment. Then I saw Fellini's La Strada and realised there was something here that didn't only aspire to poetry, that was poetry. But Irish people didn't make films. They wrote books that were banned, whereupon they had to leave the country." Jordan describes at length the circumstances that led to him getting in trouble with the bureaucrats, and considers, "We all need a catalyst and maybe [this man] was mine. I can still remember the feeling of weightlessness, cycling home past the seagulls picking at the mud along the Tolka River."

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Blockbuster bust: no more copycatting Netflix

Blockbuster is getting out of Netflix's biz: "Shares of online DVD rental company Netflix... jumped more than 9% on speculation that rival Blockbuster ... would shut down its fledgling online rental service following Carl Icahn's election to Blockbuster's board of directors, an analyst said."

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Symmetry, Morose and Drunk: Cannes Just Loves This Korean

No way I would try to improve on that headline in Chosun for a frank interview with South Korea's too-little-known Hong Sang-soo, whose sixth movie, Tale of Cinema was a last minute add to Cannes. Of his dovetailing structures, Hong says, "I wanted to break the traditional structure of a drama. Isn't single progression a framework that Hollywood has perfected over several decades? I wanted to avoid that, so one of the things I found was symmetry. I did four films in that style, but I got sick of it, so I tried single progression with Woman is the Future of Man. Having done that, I'm back to symmetry with this film." Stars Kim Sang-kyung, Uhm Ji-won and Lee Ki-woo get pretty drunk... You did the same thing in past films. What's the greatest gift alcohol gives you? "We drank a lot during Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors and Turning Gate. Before, everything was soju, but these days, I drink baekseju (a considerably weaker drink). I quit smoking, too, about two months ago when the two packs a day I used to smoke started hurting my heart. Booze brings people together and allows them to spend time with one another. It's another level of exchange."

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Why are all the movie moms momzers?: Ella Taylor asks

In LA Weekly, Ella Taylor separates the moms from the momzers, as part of a study of Jane Fonda: "Monster-in-Law may be warmed-over camp, but, just in time for Mother’s Day, it does have one thing going for it. Though hardly flattering, it’s the most affectionate and forgiving celluloid portrait of a mom I’ve seen since Albert Brooks’ far superior Mother. Even a cursory rummage through recent American cinema feels like a ride through a maternal hell peopled with timid, neurotic, controlling or critically absent mother figures. Consider the smiling ballbusters played by Ellen Barkin and Debra Monk in Todd Solondz’s Palindromes... or Emily Mortimer’s overprotective single mom in Dear Frankie. Howard Hughes’ mother appears as a 60-second bookend at either end of The Aviator, just long enough to set her up as the cause of all his troubles. Meryl Streep gives a delicious performance as the conniving bitch ruining Liev Schreiber’s life in The Manchurian Candidate. As a vagina with teeth, she is outshone only by that nice Mrs. Goebbels in Downfall, calmly popping cyanide pills into her sleeping children’s mouths so that they can follow the beloved Führer into eternity... Mean Girls has one of those cringe-making mothers who want to dress like their daughters and be their girlfriends. In Tarnation, Jonathan Caouette’s childlike, manic-depressive mom is at once the love and the scourge of his life. And my 7-year-old recently asked me why all the children’s movies we see — Lemony Snicket, Finding Nemo... begin with dead or fled mothers. Not to mention the wicked stepmothers, or godmothers, like the scheming, blue-rinsed fairy in Shrek 2."

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Non-Dogme-atic Van Sant

Gregg Kilday has a nice Q&A with Gus Van Sant in the Reporter: "Some of the rules... do come from Dogme 95, but they're not really rules, they are just adopted aesthetics. In Dogme, they have rules, but we're not as dogmatic. We have aesthetics that we like, but if we need a light, we'll just pull in a light—we don't have a rule to break. But we're not using lights, which is one of the Dogme rules. One of the things Dogme does allow, which we're avoiding, is cutting. We're trying not to cut in a traditional manner. We're trying not to go over people's shoulders or show a point of view. We're trying to do tableaus, I guess you'd call them, which is our own kind of aesthetic. ... in Dogme, you use scripts, we're not using scripts. We're also trying—but sometimes failing—to not use well-known actors. We're trying to get away from the traditional grind, where you have the three recognizable stars and everyone is cast around that. We do have music we put in, which is against... Dogme... but when we put music in, if we start a song, we have to play a whole song... We don't just use a small little music song cue that just picks up... The same with what we're looking at and whatever we're hearing. If we're looking at something, we really want to look at it. We just don't want to cut away to it for a second."

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200 movies in 24 days: Seattle

While many eyes are turned toward Cannes, the Seattle P-I outlines the insanely long Seattle Film Festival, which runs through June 12. "The Seattle International Film Festival has gone through a long process of development in which it has varied wildly in terms of venue, format, emphasis, length and number of films..But by the mid-'90s, it hit upon a satisfying template that founding festival director Darryl Macdonald thought "worked for SIFF," and which it's been repeating, with slight variations, ever since: 200-plus films over 24 days at five basic locations." William Arnold offers an overview of the melee.

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European film capital moves from Cannes to Cluj

A very optimistic headline for a dispatch about the May 27 opening of a film fest in Transilvania: "Outstanding titles, important guests, photo exhibitions and special screenings are about to conquer the town of Cluj-Napoca, the heart of Transilvania... organized by Romanian Film Promotion..." The heartwarming lineup includes Oldboy, Lukas Moodysson appearing with his horror A Hole in My Heart and Todd Solondz with his kindly Palindromes.

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May 12, 2005

Pistol-whip me for the camera: Craving Shane Black

Jason Anderson, in Toronto's eye weekly does the Canadian survey thing but has other, entertaining things on his mind (and belly): "When not sitting in a dark room, I devise ways of eating and drinking in fancy hotel restaurants for free, a pursuit hampered by my lowly status among the global press corps and my inability to introduce people to anybody famous and/or rich. I do my best not to be distracted by the presence of a celebrity, even if the celebrity is Armand Assante. My sole concession to the rampant starfuckery that surrounds me is getting my picture snapped while standing next to someone who is rarely asked to be photographed. Two years ago, it was Sherman's March director Ross McElwee. Last year, anime master Mamoru Oshii. This year I'm gunning for Shane Black, who, as the screenwriter behind Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight, became a hero to potty-mouthed teens everywhere. He comes to Cannes toting his directorial debut, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a blackly comic noir thriller starring Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. Maybe if I ask Shane nicely, he'll pistol-whip me for the camera."

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A Certain Ratiocination: Rosenbaum sees stars

In an otherwise unrelated omnibus review of Crash, Mindhunters and Monster-in-Law, The Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum elucidates an unlikely weighting system for the parceling of stars. "Watching Monster-in-Law, I admired the gutsiness of... Fonda playing an unsympathetic character who's her own age and looks it (3 stars)... But I'm appalled by the strident sitcom overkill that surrounds Fonda on every side (no stars)... [Michael Vartan's] prospective wife, played by Jennifer Lopez, an actress I immoderately adore (3 stars) despite the dumb parts she keeps accepting (no stars) and the excessive press... she gets (immaterial)... is a boring simp... (one star). And I'm only half-amused (1 star) by the mother's black assistant (Wanda Sykes).. This averages out to little more than one star, but less than two. I'll stick to one, since to raise this [film] to "worth seeing" would make me feel like a publicist or simply a dope." [More math at the link.]

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Brainless anti-Bushism? Podhoretz takes a Sith

Former New York Postie and conservative columnist John Podhoretz droops a thumb and cracks a few Sith fingers at the National Review's blog, "The Corner." "I saw [Revenge of the Sith], and here's the thing: It's unbelievably bad... While the movie critics of my long-ago youth were middlebrow snobs suspicious of populist entertainment, today's critics have turned into toadies. They are afraid of being on an audience's bad side, afraid that a movie they will pan might really strike a chord...The movie's plot is so confused that it doesn't really matter. At one point, Natalie Portman complains that 'this war happened because of a failure to listen.'" Podhoretz tries to suss Lucas-logic: "But the war she's talking about was started by the good guys! It was the Jedi who secretly built the Clone army... And, of course, the Rebellion that Luke Skywalker joined... was conducting a war against the Evil Empire which included blowing up Death Stars and arming Teddy Bears [caps sic]. Evidently 25 years into the Star Wars empire, George Lucas decided he just doesn't like war... The whole confusion is reminiscent of the last Matrix movie, which is all about a noble truce between our heroes and the computers that have been using all of humanity as batteries. So that a few people could survive to have orgies in the underground city of Zion, billions of people had to remain in the Matrix. Inadvertently, both Lucas and the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and directed the Matrix movies) reveal with their brainless anti-Bushism the essential cowardly vapidity of pacifism." [If the link doesn't work, search on any bit of contumely quoted above.]

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Son of a badge: Tony Scott reads those who Cannes

In the NY Times Cannesblog, Manohla Dargis awaits WiFi (or "weefee," as she's heard the French call it), and, A. O. Scott deciphers film fest status, ending on an egalitarian note, while only hinting at the color of his or Dargis' i.d.s: "...Hierarchical color-coding turns Cannes into a seething cauldron of class resentment and status anxiety. Wearers of blue and yellow badges must wait for the better part of an hour, herded together behind a cordon, as their pink- and white-badged brethren swan in at the last minute to grab all the good seats. Those privileged folk, flush with a mixture of entitled complacency and liberal guilt, are acutely aware of their (okay, our) own caste distinctions... It is startling how heavily those badges figure in festival lore. There are tales of writers from the same publication given different badges, of a reporter with a better badge than the editor who was her boss, of slow upward mobility and precipitous demotion... We are all prisoners of the screening schedule... that the more compulsive attendees spend the first day entering into their PDAs or plotting out on graph paper. There is, nonetheless, a freedom to be found... rarely enjoyed by critics... which is the freedom to walk out... As reviewers, we are honor-bound watch everything to the end, but here, if something is bad or boring enough... there is always something else to see, or a few moments to be stolen in the Mediterranean sun, which shines on everyone, regardless of badge."

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A lot of unexpected charisma: Gus van Sant & Kurt Cobain

As his Last Days debuts in Cannes, van Sant writes in Liberation about his last encounter with Kurt Cobain: "Kurt sat a couple of places away from me and just stared down the table, in a very odd way. I [guessed] that maybe he had just gotten out of a rehab, because of his short haircut, and his wide-eyed stare, which was particularly open and fresh and innocent, which can happen when people just get out. I remember him sitting there not saying anything, but the presence in the room was tilted all of a sudden, like the big rock star had entered and was sitting at the end of the table not saying anything. The others were perhaps used to it, I wasn't… I pretty much just listened and started to realize that I was really fascinated by Kurt. And at the same time, realizing some of this fascination was probably what drew everyone to him. He had a lot of unexpected charisma. While the piece at that link is in English, Philippe Garnier’s vivid making-of is only in French. Van Sant and cinematographer Harris Savides experimented with video formats, but wound up shooting in 35mm. “You always return there!” Van Sant joked to Garnier. Caravaggio is cited as a visual influence, but also Chantal Akerman’s 1976 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Of that lengthy study of the everyday, Savides noted that only one or two camera positions were used, which led to Last Days having no reverse angles: “Only the result will be seen,” is how he describes the choice. Garnier notes van Sant’s “temporal loops, these Mobius strips he’s used since Elephant, refusing to use the syntax of the simultaneity of action which has dominated the cinema since Griffith.”

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Indie spins: Microsoft and the Thought Thieves

Greg Allen's unearthed some corporado cognitive dissonance with a short film contest sponsored by Microsoft UK, called "Thought Thieves." As minions of The Gates write, "The theme of your film should be about how intellectual property theft affects both individuals and society. Think about it: what would a world look like without protection for intellectual property?" Entrants have until July 1 to make something 30-45 seconds long in a Windows Media Player format. What's the kicker? The entry form's offhand boilerplate: "...Should I be selected as a finalist in this competition, I confirm the following... I will formally license on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so..."

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Breaking the silence: Korean director Ki-duk Kim

The Reporter's Cannes coverage includes several dialogues with non-US directors, and South Korea's Ki-duk Kim offers this telling perspective on his often-wordless work, with many more words than he would allow in one of his films: "I have enjoyed foreign movies at many film festivals even though the movies were in the languages I didn't understand. There I learnt that explanatory dialogue is not necessary in storytelling. But the characters in my films are not dumb. They just don't believe in verbal communication, or else they have deserted it because they are hurt. Sometimes I intend to delete lines to stress the visual images and context of the movie. [Sometimes] I put little dialogue in the movies because I am afraid an incorrect translation might hurt the flow of my work. I often ask viewers after the movie whether there were essential lines [missing], but they all seem to comprehend the movie without many lines. I think that laughter and crying are the best dialogue. But... I want to do a movie full of dialogue some day. The longer you live, the less you believe in the spoken word. Talking is the most convenient thing for humans to do. I wish to show human behavior and human nature rather than show talking. I think actions are a more powerful media to deliver my message. There are no lies in the movements of human beings. They are honest, no matter whether it is good or bad."

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Final cutting father: Telling Wexler father and son apart

In the Reporter, Martin Grove has one of his extended takeouts on the making of Mark Wexler's Tell Them Who You Are and his relationship with his father (and subject), the cinematographic great Haskell Wexler: "I spent like 18 months with my dad. I didn't have to, but I chose to... and I think the camera acted as... a buffer and a shield between us." But, he adds, "It allowed us to be around each other that long and grow closer... I really do think as Jane Fonda says in the movie... someone needs to take the first step before it's too late. I mean, my dad's in his 80s and who knows how long he'll be around and I'm getting up there... but you never know what can happen to people. One of the great things about the movie, I think, is I've showed it... and invariably 2 or 3 people will come up after the movie ends and say, 'I haven't talked to my dad in 10 years and I'm going to call him now because of your movie.' As a filmmaker, it doesn't really get any better than that. [That] makes all the difficulty making this kind of movie well worth it."

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Arnaud Desplechin: Why not use Emily Dickinson?

The Village Voice's Dennis Lim has an extended, thoughtful interview with the French director about his marvelous new film, Kings and Queen: Does he think his work is theatrical, or novelistic? "It's funny, I read an interview with M. Night Shyamalan where he said that with his films he was trying to make novels. And actually, you think about it, Unbreakable is sort of a novel, The Village is sort of a novel. But I think of my job as the opposite—use any form, any tool to build a film. If there's something I like in a novel, just steal it. Something from a play, from a stupid TV show, from classical music or pop music, take it—take all these elements and make a pure film. In Kings and Queen, people are always quoting poems, obscure ones, French ones, American ones. And the point is, why not? Why not use Emily Dickinson? Why not use Apolinaire? As for theater, people forget, almost all of... Lubitsch's films were adaptations...—and To Be or Not to Be is about the theater. When you look at John Ford, the influence of O'Neill is so obvious. And one third of Hitchcock's films are based on plays. In America at least, there is no difference between theater and film, just East and West coast: You had these wonderful writers on the East coast doing experimental stuff on stage and these studios would say let's make a film with that. It's an American tradition, and the cinema that has influenced me the most is American."

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May 11, 2005

Sex and coke and Cock and Bull

Michael Winterbottom's in the edit suite with "A Cock and Bull Story, his adaptation of the novel "Tristram Shandy," but he shares a pause with The Age to talk about the rock-'n'-roll, drugs and sex in 9 Songs: "It's not as if actors don't have to do intimate things on film... They might be in bed together they might be kissing they might be stroking each other's bodies they might be naked. There's a whole set of rules, and boundaries, about how to do it. [This makes it] very hard to get any feeling of honesty or feel like you're capturing anything that could be equivalent to the intimacy involved in making love to someone you love... I thought it was interesting to try to capture the intimacy of them really making love, rather than pretending to." And what of the lines of cocaine the actors seem to be snorting? "I think 'No comment' is my response to that," he says with a laugh. "I've got enough problems as it is."

Posted by at 07:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Move along, nothing to see: Lynch's latest

In the grind of Cannes news, a hint of a new David Lynch film, Inland Empire, financed by StudioCanal: "Buyers looking at the project say that details remain hazy, in typical Lynch fashion," reports the Reporter. It's about a film within a film. There's nothing to see, there's no script, one international buyer said."

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Politics no Moore: Cannes prexy's unsubtle hint

The Beeb reports that "Cannes festival head Gilles Jacob has called for this year's top prize to be awarded for film-making, not politics. Last year, the festival brought Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 to global attention when it won the Palme d'Or... "Michael Moore's talent is not in doubt," said director Gilles Jacob, referring to the film-maker's win at Cannes in 2004. "But in this case, it was a question of a satirical tract that was awarded a prize more for political than cinematographic reasons, no matter what the jury said." Jury prez Emir Kusturica said it would be all about "aesthetics" (cue squabbling ducks in the background).

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I wanna be so jaded, nothin' to do and nowhere to go-o-o: the manufacture of Cannes buzz

Cannes or buzz! Handicapping the Croisette and keeping homeless cliches off the sizzling sands, we've got the LA Times' Kenneth Turan leding thusly: "The invitations have been accepted, the guests are arriving, and the only question that remains is whether the 58th Festival de Cannes turns into the heroic Return of the Jedi or a dreaded Night of the Living Dead." That's the only damn question? Unpack right now, Mr. T. In the Herald-T, Joan "Mom of Leos Carax" Dupont does a brisk, entertaining business with several major auteury bits, such as Emir Kusturica's jury duty and soph Dominik Moll opening the show, climaxing with Jean-Luc G: "There are directors who seem to have lifelong contracts, who are known by initials or nicknames, and those who have been dropped along the way into noncompetitive sections... Where is Jean-Luc Godard when we need him? JLG surfs effortlessly above the fray without Palmes. He kept the curtain from rising during the May 1968 strikes, signed a contract for his 1987 King Lear on a tablecloth and runs his own press conferences. While the distinguished guests compete, Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinéma will [air] on Pink TV, the French gay channel. A delicate tribute to the master, and to the festival, which will probably tickle JLG." [Apologies to Joey, Dee Dee and the others for the hed.]

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May 10, 2005

Shanghai expressed: find your own icons

Xinhua suggests Shanghai is melting down: "Critics and some cinemagoers are becoming worried about the growing trend in the film industry of deliberately selecting Shanghai as the backdrop to any movie set in China... �Since the birth of the Chinese film industry a century ago, Shanghai has long been a magnet and a source of inspiration... ����and... seemingly endless fascination with [the] miraculous city." The only evidence cited is the latest by Stanley Kwan, Chang Hen Ge, (Song of Everlasting Sorrow)."

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Niche bitch and rolling breaks: what it costs

Another lengthy Reporter survey charts what it costs to keep the ball in the air, even with itty-bitty pix: "...The more successful a film, the more its distributor must spend. Just keeping a movie in theaters, with all of the attendant marketing costs, pushes its profit margin further away—a phenomenon that those in the industry call a "rolling break." ... "The lifespan of a movie is very tenuous: If you don't get where you want to be in three days, you can't really recover," [Paramount vice chairman] Friedman says. "So it is not something you experiment with. You shave around the edges—you try to be more efficient—but you don't roll the dice."

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Digitizing Peru: Andean microcinema

How to get indigenous production out to indigenous auds? A report on progress south of the equator: "Digital technologies and microcinemas [offer] an alternative for getting noncommercial films distributed and screened more widely in Latin America, while offering lower-cost options for independent filmmakers to produce their works. Hundreds of films made in the past few decades by filmmakers in countries like Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Cuba or Brazil, that have been packed away... could begin to reach a much broader audience thanks to digital technology... The initiative is promoted by Grupo Chaski (which means ”messenger” in the Quechua indigenous language), a film collective from Peru. ”When you radically change technology, everything changes,” Swiss producer Stefan Kaspar, who has lived in Peru since 1978 [says]. ”The way of thinking also changes. All of a sudden, we have the chance to bring films closer to the people.” ... The group began in 2004 to promote the creation of a network of microcinemas in Peru... All that is needed to install a microcinema is a room full of chairs, a video projector, a DVD player, a sound system and a screen, at a total cost [of[ $2,500... The network in Peru so far consists of 25 microcinemas..." [More at the link.]

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Cannes: The system is constantly feeding us

In Anne Thompson's must-read summa of indie on the Riviera, tracking the acquisitions and other action all the mini-majors and mini-minis are up to at Cannes, there's this nubbin from Focus' David Linde: "The system is constantly feeding us information, all the time, all year round... There's much more knowledge-seeking going on at Cannes and less real acquisition."

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Huffington and Puffing: Day Two (Hot Bloggity Blog)

While Arianna Huffington's The Huffington Post goes into its second day online, there's nothing insightful to link to. Quincy Jones is boring, Rob Reiner is boring, Larry Gelbart rakes one-liners off a noontime toothpick. The launch has provided a lot of newspapers one more chance to go hot bloggity-blog! all over themselves, but it's gonna take a while to see if any of these writers do more than putt wads of half-filled Post-Its onto the site.

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Out of rage: Michael Kuhn on UK film's bleak moment

The Independent reports on a lecture by former Polygram majordomo Michael Kuhn and dire warnings about UK production: "British film makers are facing the worst conditions for 20 years, the country's most prominent movie businessman has warned industry leaders... Kuhn, the producer behind recent films including i * huckabees, Stage Beauty and Kinsey, said he was speaking "out of rage" at the situation the British industry was in. "We face the bleakest prospect for indigenous UK production since I started in the film business in the mid-1980s." [More at the link.]

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Googling the dead: Xan C. and Z Channel

At Nerve, Lily Oei talks to Xan Cassavetes about her doc on IFC, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession and the dark current under its celebration of over 50 movie greats (and not-so-greats): Were you astonished that the Z Channel story was never mentioned before? I Googled Z Channel, I Googled Jerry Harvey — there was nothing. I guess people wanted to forget. Even the last owners of Z Channel, who turned it into a sports channel. It wasn't great publicity when the guy in charge of your station kills himself and his wife. I think they were pretty happy not to keep the torch alive.

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Soderbergh: less interesting than interested?

In Libération, under the headline "Soderbergh, the merchant," Olivier Seguret offers a jaundiced, French view of Stephen Soderbergh's 2929 deal to make a half-dozen pictures on HD, noting that the costs of publicity are often half the budgets of U.S. movies. A 1985 gesture by Eric Rohmer, Seguret believes was "prophetic" when he allowed his Rayon vert (released in the U.S. as Summer) to play on pay channel Canal + the day before it premiered in theaters. He finds the American to be more producer than auteur in his piece, concluding: "A certain innocence differentiated this gesture from that of Soderbergh: it was much more interesting than interested."

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It's the Sith: on Star Wars fanfilms

In the SF Chronicle, Benny Evangelista surveys the alternative universe of post-Lucas repurposing: "Mika Salmi, chief executive officer of AtomShockwave... noted that this year's crop of more than 100 entries for the fourth annual Star Wars Fan Film Awards overall showed a higher level of visual and production quality than in previous years. One measure of how the established movie community is recognizing the fan film genre came last week when AtomFilms announced that... Cannes... has for the first time agreed to present 11 past and present Star Wars contest winners.... Lucasfilm, which is also known for taking a tough stance on fan films used for commercial or obscene purposes, sets the rules for the contest—... spoofs, mockumentaries or documentaries under 15 minutes... "Star Wars fans really have a sense of ownership about Star Wars,'' said Steve Sansweet, Lucasfilm's head of fan relations. "Occasionally, ones get a little carried away. We want to make sure there aren't Star Wars characters and storylines that are salacious or lewd or really crude.'' [I'll say it again, since Sansweet didn't: Star Wars!]

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Anything that hurt India was considered kosher: Pakistan cracks down on pic piracy

"So why didn't the authorities clamp down on the pirated Indian video tapes?" the Beeb asks of entrenched video piracy in Pakistan. "Nighat Said Khan, a leftwing women's activist and social worker, points to... why the government looked away as Indian movies started taking root with the Pakistani audience. "General Ziaul Haq's regime was an extremely oppressive one—a cultural nightmare... One of its key policy objectives was to keep people indoors. In Zia's orthodox outlook, any form of entertainment in a public place—especially where genders could mix—was against Islam." ... The cultural policy that allowed pirated Indian movies to proliferate also had political connotations. "I am sure that.... allowing piracy of Indian films was considered a smart act of industrial sabotage by the Pakistani policy makers," says Ameed Riaz... head of EMI Pakistan. "Basically, anything that hurt India was considered kosher."

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May 09, 2005

Black and white and noir: Dargis' angels of L.A.

The NY Times' Manohla Dargis has a short, sharp take on fear in LA-set movies: "...The men, women and children in Crash all live in Noir-wood, a metropolis that, to judge by the astonishing coincidences that bring its characters together, could be tucked into the Hollywood Bowl. In this dark place, a rich white woman played by Sandra Bullock nervously eyes two black men and gets her comeuppance and her prejudices confirmed when those same men steal her car at gunpoint.... [She mentions two more plot strands.] It's unclear what point Mr. Haggis hopes to make with this particular narrative thread other than to confirm that sometimes your instincts are right and sometimes black men really are thieves, and sometimes they are wrong and tattoos and a shaved head do not a gang member make. Frankly, the more salient moral here is you should never wear socks on polished stairs and always pay the help enough to earn their loyalty. (That and Ms. Bullock may have missed her calling by not playing more shrews.)"

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Huffington and puffing: Day One(a): My So-Called Work

In another art-meets-politics entry on Day One of The Huffington Post, Marshall Herskovitz compares the filibuster gusts to last week's Film Sanitizing Act, picking an odd bedmate: "I must reluctantly admit that in the case of the filibuster lives could actually be at stake, whereas with film sanitizing it's harder to feel sorry for the victims—like me and Joel Silver and every filmmaker in between. But let's remember—I want a little sympathy—that the First Amendment will be a victim as well, since there is no freedom to publish if the right to publish is diluted by those who can change, diminish, or hijack your work with impunity."

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Huffington and puffing: Day One

Arianna Huffington's celeblog launches today, including this masterclass in bromide from Mike "Still The Smart Guy" Nichols: "In directing a play or a movie—whether a farce or a tragedy—the problem to solve is really the same. There are the same questions. First of all why are we doing this? What`s our point? What are we telling? The audience says silently—so, now, why have you called us together? And you have to have an answer. The first thing I think you have to do is make clear that they are in good hands, they mustn't worry, we know what we are doing. The next question the audience asks is: why are you telling me this? And you have to have a good answer for that one. One answer is: because it's funny. Laughs are a good reason—as we know daily from Jon Stewart. If that is not the answer in the theatre there is another: because it is your life." [Martin Luther King and Barack Obama are invoked at the link.]

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Stuck in a room you'd go crazy: Scoring vid games

The Reporter talks to composers about the lucrative new gig of scoring vid games: "Jesper Kyd, a Danish composer who regularly alternates between the two media, eagerly describes [getting] a reputation in the game world. He's done the scores for all four games in Eidos' "Hitman" franchise, as well as for the cinematics in Ubisoft's "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory" and music for 17 other titles. Six of the scores are sold separately on CDs... "I enjoy the challenge of writing music that people need to listen to over and over and over... It's very different from a movie soundtrack in which there may be a big action scene with lots of horns and aggressive sounds. Imagine having to listen to that 5 or 10 times in a row when your video game character is stuck in a room; I think you'd go crazy. And so I focus on creating a style of music that's entertaining, creative, has some meat to it, and hopefully is something you'd want to hear again and again."

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In for a pound (400): Scots short hits Cannes

27-year-old Ben Crowe found out Friday his £400 short is one of 9 in competetion at Cannes: The Man who Met Himself, reports the Scotsman, is the story of a private detective investigating a mysterious suicide. Crowe wrote, directed and shot the film, before editing it on his Mac at home. "His friend, charity worker Preti Taneja, 28, who is now his girlfriend, was co-writer and producer of the 10 minute short. Ms Taneja... said: "This is just a fairytale for us. None of us have ever been to film school and the film was made for £400 of our own money. We just decided to make it when Ben sold his mandolin to raise money to buy his camera." Their problem now? How to raise the cash to get to Cannes this week. The Beeb's on the case of the doppleganger's doppleganger short, too: "A great film comes out of a great idea, and with today's technology, anyone can make a good film for hundreds of pounds."

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May 08, 2005

Hating the George, hating the Wars, hating the Force

The first of what could be several epic rants about hating George Lucas at The Bynk Zone, via Kottke: sarcasm and spoilers galore: "The worst was Yoda. Yeah, I wanted to see Yoda fight. Who hasn't. But I'm also a martial artist, have been for over a decade. What you realize is that as you work with folks who have been doing this for say, over half a century is that they don't waste movement. The better they get, the more economy of motion. There's no grand gestures anymore. Watch videos of the master who founded Aikido. No great movements, but people get laid out. That's a Master... They use their art unconsciously in everything they do, and when they are actively using it, you can barely see some of what they do. So I'm looking for something that shows Yoda as the Master he is, because even at that point, he's been doing it for what, 700 years? ... I am hoping for this economy of motion from someone who is a part of The Force at levels that no other Jedi can comprehend. From someone who has transcended anger and hatred. I'm a complete moron for thinking Lucas could do that." [Much more spunk at the link.]

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Above ground: visiting with Emir Kusturica

In the Sunday Times Magazine, freelancer Dan Helpern has a bite and several soundbites with the unstoppable Emir Kusturica in a lengthy profile: 'What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison,'' Kusturica says. ''Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world. Why don't I see a Frank Capra today? Because people aren't like this anymore? People haven't changed that much in 60 years.'' Like any good Timesman on the road, Halpern talks up the restos: "As we drove to dinner in Belgrade this past December, the noise Kusturica was making mostly took the form of a great and serious indignation with the corporatization of the world. From the passenger seat, he [grew] enraged by the billboards in the city. The Serbian capital is only slowly recovering from the effects of war, international sanctions and [1999's] NATO bombing... but superficially it's well into a headlong rush toward consumer commercialism. ''Here, like in Moscow, even in Petersburg, everywhere,'' he said, gesturing angrily at the advertisements lining the street. ''Everywhere starts to look the same, everything must look the same, everything that was different, it must be covered up by this sameness.'' ... Halpern also demonstrates aptitude for the de rigeur bow to the loveliness of a cultural figure's mate, and also at breaking out into patches of screenplay-style dialogue when profiling a filmmaker: "His wife, Maja, a dark-haired beauty with a particularly graceful knack for letting the air out of the international superstar sitting next to her, gently stopped him short.
EMIR: Everything must be sold! Everything must be for sale! Everyone must buy! Everyone must have a Jeep!
MAJA: Even you.
EMIR: Yes, even me.
MAJA: You have three."

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Pre-Cannes Focus

In a neatly timed pre-Cannes piece, Variety helps Rogue Pictures position itself as Focus Features' answer to Miramax's Dimension, answering the rhetorical question, "With Time Warner intro'ing its new niche label and Fox Searchlight scrambling to match last year's triumphs, is Focus Features plotting a move back into the spotlight?"

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Something rockin' in the state of Scotland: Why Danes & Scots mix

The Scotsman profiles Gillian Berrie, who's had a hand in many recent Scottish-Danish collaborations: "The Greenock-born producer and co-founder of Sigma Films, whose credits (as co-producer) include Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, Dogville, Brothers, Dear Wendy and Von Trier’s forthcoming Manderlay, describes a shared sensibility between Scots and Danes as a similar spark in the eye. "You always feel like you’re with a kindred spirit when you’re with a Dane," she says. "It’s something to do with being on the same latitude, or the weather perhaps. There’s a self-deprecating aspect to the Danish personality that’s at home here. The Danes always say it’s the Scots they end up with in the bar in the wee hours of the morning."

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Taking it on the road: indie enchiladas

In the Houston Chronicle, an indie producer-director-etc. takes it on the road: "Damian Chapa has taken his new movie, El Padrino, on the road—literally. The gritty gangster [pic], which stars Jennifer Tilly, Stacy Keach, Faye Dunaway, Gary Busey, Robert Wagner... Brad Dourif, [and] the filmmaker himself, is opening across the state without a major studio behind it. Since there's no money for splashy billboards and TV ads, creative marketing has been a necessity. Chapa has been doing local radio spots, making appearances at nightclubs and distributing fliers at gas stations. And don't forget the Padrino-mobile, a white van plastered with movie posters and equipped with loudspeakers [traveling] up and down Houston streets." Chapa makes the kind of claim that's usually unverifiable: "We had offers from big distributors, like Warner Independent. I'm a bit of a renegade, and I wanted to protect my investors. I wanted to see the value of the hard work... We're getting out there and working hard," says Chapa, chatting over enchiladas at La Mexicana in Montrose."

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May 07, 2005

Z and Xan: Drinks with Cassavetes

The Times has tequila and a smoke and kind of a crush with Xan Cassavetes as her doc Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession awaits its Monday preem on IFC: "Xan Cassavetes is a film geek's dream girl. She shudders with passion at the mere mention of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, pounds her fist on the table as she defends David Lynch's critically lampooned Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and still laments the afternoon that she missed a screening of the four-hour uncut version of Luchino Visconti's Ludwig. Then there's the hallowed lineage: her father, John Cassavetes... is the patron saint of art house cinema, and her mother, Gena Rowlands, was the original "It" girl of independent film. "It's sweet to hear, but anyone who says that they want to be the next John Cassavetes is crazy... He had it so tough. No one would want to walk a step in his shoes. Believe me, I wouldn't." Ms. Cassavetes, 39, was speaking with a throaty laugh over dinner on Monday."

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May 06, 2005

Hobnobbing and confabbing with the National Film Critics (Minus One)

At the Metromix website of the Chicago Tribune, Michael Wilmington introduces a new weekly survey of DVD and movie ratings by the members of the National Film Critics Association through another website (Zap2it.com) that's a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trib conglom. Roger Ebert, a veteran member of the NSFC, appears to be the only nonparticipant in the weekly pileup, presumably because of the conflict between his home, the Sun-Times, and the other Chicago daily. The demure explanation in Wilmington's piece is that "there are exceptions. Some members have conflicts or don't vote by choice," yet Ebert's the only no-show, according to their own member roster. (A number of other members' affiliations as listed seem out-of-date, and other conflicts with the conglomerate are likely to emerge for the writers, especially if the list is syndicated by Tribune Media Services or another wholly-owned offshoot.) Meantime, Wilmington waxes over memories of his induction into the tribe: "In 1988, when I attended my first NSFC meeting, I remember my excitement at suddenly hobnobbing with writers I'd read and admired for years, like Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Dave Kehr, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Richard Schickel." Writes Wilmington, "The NSFC poll, and especially the Web site, will give you a chance to join the confab as well."

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Wong does a Doyle: drinking with Kar-wai

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Wong Kar-wai has a sip and a smoke: "A waiter has brought Wong a beer. He takes a gulp, then another drag," Sacha Molitorisz writes. "So, why do all his characters smoke and drink? ..."Because this is a subject I know very well," Wong says. "And also, it's something that you know is not going to happen for very long. Sooner or later they will say, 'No more cigarettes in film."' And of course the subject of drink and cinematographer Christopher Doyle is around the corner. "He used to be very shy and didn't talk much. [Now] when there are press and people around, I ask Chris to handle it. Then he becomes very, very alcoholic," Wong laughs... On the way out, I comment on the publicist's shoes, which are retro and chic. "Right," says Wong, who obviously noticed them long ago. "Sally," he tells her, "you deserve a beer."

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Angelika in America: viewing displeasure

Writing in Maisonneuve about Palindromes, Ted Gideonse takes a breathless pause to talk about lousy movie Manhattan moviegoing: "Before Landmark Theatres opened the gloriously designed and perfectly managed Sunshine in the Lower East Side, New Yorkers in southern Manhattan had to suffer the Angelika to see any first-run indie film. The Angelika Film Center is on my list, along with Reno, Ankara and Calcutta, of the worst places on earth. The lobby is always chaotic, and, even after 10 years, the staff has yet to figure out how to efficiently herd ticket holders. The tiny, overheated theatres are all in the basement, about 10 feet above the subway, and trains rumble underneath your chair.... The sightlines are terrible: the theatres weren't built on inclines, and there are wide middle aisles where the best seats should be. The bathrooms are often a mess, too. I usually refuse to see movies if they are only playing at the Angelika. I'd rather wait for the video than suffer that den of iniquity, and I never wait for the video." [But Gideonse admires Solondz's movie, and takes as a friend who wrote the pop songs sung by the children in the film as his guest to the Angelika's subterranean boites.]

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I really wanted a Hummer: Paul Schrader on Dominion

The Reporter's Martin Grove talks to Paul Schrader about bringing out the dead: bringing his Exorcist prequel to the screen months after it was shelved and then remade by Renny Harlin. (Any gag orders from the financial settlement must've expired.) "What Morgan Creek apparently was looking for at the time was a conventional horror genre film, but that's not the type film that [original director] Frankenheimer or Schrader were known for making. "I think of (it as) a case of buyer's remorse... We set out to make this film and somewhere toward the end of shooting it started to become apparent to me that this is not the film that Jim Robinson wanted any more. It's almost as if he went out and bought a Lexus and got home and said, 'I really wanted a Hummer.' And then he went out and bought a Hummer and then he had a Lexus and a Hummer. I don't know what was going on in his mind. It is a one man operation there. Something like this could not have happened at a studio with a board and with a layering of executives. This was a company (where) one man writes the checks and one man makes the decisions. And so if he decides to do a film (over) again, then he just does it again."

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Kevin Smith & Spielberg: The geek strikes back

Kevin Smith gives a ton of stuff away in his review of the climax of Star Wars on his site, but he starts as boldly as Lucas starts his new movie: "Revenge of the Sith is, quite simply, fucking awesome," [Spoilers galore at the link.] Plus, per Time Out London, Steven Spielberg's got the fever, too: appearing on a UK radio game show, Spielberg said he'd seen Sith a week and a half ago, and that it was 'absolutely amazing, the best of the last three films... You'll cry at the end.'"

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George Lucas' indie thinking: Extremely naive

Billionaire indie George Lucas tells Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star that modern movies are not his fault: "If the world of film production and PR has changed so unrecognizably in the 28 years between Star Wars and Revenge of the Sith, Lucas believes that his own role in altering that universe has been both overstated and misunderstood. He does not, for example, accept that he was the Darth Vader of the New Hollywood, the guy who brought down the golden era of the director-driven 1970s and ushered in the age of the franchise blockbuster."That theory is extremely naive... That had absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars in terms of how it happened ... When I started in 1970, the corporations didn't exist... After Star Wars in 1980 the studios were all taken over by corporations. And of course they didn't know how to make movies, they didn't know how to run a studio, they didn't care about movies... `We can't think about ideas so we'll just take whatever works and copy it.'"

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May 05, 2005

Kiarostami on digital insensitivity

In the Guardian/National Film Theater interview, Geoff Andrew and audience draw out Abbas Kiarostami, and as always, he's good on several subjects, including DV versus film: "This comes up a lot in discussions about fiction versus documentary, but I believe there's only good cinema and bad cinema. Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can't believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I'm interested in. And it's not so much a question of whether we've shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real.... I believe that a film like Ten could never have been made with a 35mm camera. The first part of the film lasts 17 minutes, and by the end of that part, the kid has totally forgotten the camera. Others would look at the camera, even drivers in neighbouring cars would look at the camera, but the kid himself was not noticing... But I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last four or five years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts. Despite the great advantages of digital video and the great ease of using the medium, still those who use it have first to understand the sensitivities of how to best use the medium."

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Hong gonged: a last minute Cannes invite

Chosun.com reports that the latest by quirky modern master Hong Sang-soo got a last minute ticket to Cannes: Hong's Kuek Jang Jeon (Tale of Cinema) "has garnered a surprise invitation to the competition of the 58th Cannes International Film Festival. The film appeared on a list of additional entries announced Wednesday, bringing the total to 21." His Hong's fourth invitation, following the Un Certain Regard nods for The Power of Kangwon Province and Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, and his second in competition after 2004's Woman is the Future of Man." Someone involved with the production said they were going to submit to Cannes, but after seeing a print, Cannes' artistifc director, Thierry Fremaux asked them to submit the pic.

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Taking frisks: more Crash talk

Paul Haggis bashes his wares some more to F. X. Feeney in LA Weekly: "I want to keep doing things that scare me.... I want to stay uncomfortable. If you see a well-made film that’s wonderful while you’re watching it, but it’s all tied up by the last frame, often you forget it when the lights go up. I prefer an experience like Mulholland Drive, where you come out with your friends and argue over what the hell you just saw and compete to explain it to each other. Now that’s a movie to me!" Feeney adds, "I have the impression that, with Crash, a lot of couples get very argumentative over the ‘frisk’ scene.” This would be the hellish moment when a... hotly abusive cop crosses the line into racist brutality when he runs his hand up the dress of a well-to-do black woman, “looking for weapons” as her husband, a black television director, looks on helplessly... “There is very little way to talk about that scene without risking a quarrel, especially if you’re one of a couple... But the responses are fascinating. One friend even said, ‘That cop did such a favor to that man’" [becuase it led him to change his life]... Adds Haggis, “So often in life we live out a paradox: ‘It’s your enemy who helps you and your friend who drags you down.’ And we are each such bundles of contradictions. Something like racism can be opportune or inopportune. You can conduct your life with decency most of your days, only to be amazed by what will come out of your mouth in the wrong situation... Our contradictions define us."

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Where's Albert?: the globetrotting Mr. Maysles alights in Montreal

Every few days, there's another appearance by or tribute to the prolific, 71-year-old Albert Maysles: this weekend, it's a masterclass at the 10th Montreal Jewish Film Festival. Here's the Beatles story, one more time: "Maysles claims, however, that most of his impeccable timing is due to nothing more than “luck.” To wit: “I’m sitting at my desk in my studio, February 1964, and the phone rings,” he recalls. “It’s Granada TV in England asking me if I’d like to make a film about the Beatles. They’re arriving in America in two hours. So I put my hand over the phone, turned to my brother and asked ‘Who are the Beatles? Are they any good?’ He says, ‘Oh yeah, they’re great.’ So we make the deal, rush to the airport just in time to film the plane coming down.”

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Seeing east: tributes to Wong Kar-wai

There's a new Flickr photo group devoted to pictures inspired by Wong Kar-Wai, such as revisiting locations, like this stairway from In the Mood for Love. Via Greencine.

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May 04, 2005

Miranda July: I am just completely amazed by my hotel room and am having trouble leaving it

Miranda July is keeping a charming journal of words and images of her travels to promote her beautiful movieMe and You and Everyone We Know; this picture and its caption is my favorite entry so far. I am just completely amazed by my hotel room and am having trouble leaving it. You can hear the score on the film's official website.

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May 03, 2005

Pricing 2929: Grove on the Soderbergh deal

In the Reporter, Martin Grove considers the implications of theatrical and DVD day-and-date: "For the low budget pictures that Soderbergh and 2929 are talking about making, such a limited release arrangement may work out well. If they want to open their films in other theaters... they'll almost certainly have some convincing to do because exhibitors aren't likely to feel good about seeing films open day and date with any other distribution channels and, especially, not with DVD. 2929 just ran into that problem with ... Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Because 2929's plan called for the film's simultaneous release in theaters and on the HDNet Movies channel there were circuits that wouldn't play Enron, including Regal..., the country's biggest... Other exhibitors [did] wind up booking the picture, including Laemmle and Mann. It's an indication that exhibition isn't united in its position on day and date releases involving pay TV. How exhibitors would feel if a DVD release had also been involved is at this point unknown, but it seems safe to say it would further complicate matters."

Posted by at 08:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Polley ex-pat? Is being a Canadian actor a mistake?

Sarah Polley, ever hopeful, still worries she may be wasting her career helping forge an indigenous film culture, she tells the Ottawa Citizen's Katherine Monk. "The reason why I stayed in Canada had everything to do with the kind of films we used to make before the commercial mandate came in effect at Telefilm... They were films that asserted an independent vision of the world. They weren't just cheap versions of American genre films ... but movies that spoke to the human condition. Now, I'm beginning to wonder why I stayed and if it was a huge mistake.... If the films don't have a purpose, then what are we still doing here? We're beginning to freak out a little. Why make a commitment with so little reward? The Canadian films out there have been so weak, it's been kind of depressing." [Her upcoming movies include the latest by Wim Wenders, Isabel Coixet, Thom Fitzgerald and Sturla Gunnarsson.] " I just wish the Canadian community would get its act together. People are so afraid to rock the boat."

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

Continental drift: pockets emptied in Park City

A new study "indicates 46,771 people flocked to [Park City] in January, spending nearly $43 million. The study ,conducted by the University of Utah's Bureau of
Economic and Business Research [and] the Sundance Institute... indicates this year's 11-day event generated $42.7 million in economic activity for the state, up 3%... The attendance figure is up 10,115 people... 67% of attendees this year came from out of state; and nearly half were attending for the first time. "It is the equivalent of a big convention—as much of a boost for tourism as it is a film festival," said Bill Malone, executive director of the Park City Chamber Bureau," according to KSL-TV.

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Well, isn't that spec: Paul Haggis

Paul Haggis has another go at explaining his run of luck: "Haggis has enjoyed a long and profitable television career, but pushed himself into film when "I found myself not doing my best work" any more. Tired of TV's...pace—"Your brain is just fried after episode 10 or 12"—he decided "it was time to do something more dangerous." Crash and... Baby were written on spec. "In retrospect, and even at the time, I knew it was a really dumb thing to do... I knew the studios wouldn't want these, and I knew there was a really good chance they'd never be made." [Uh-huh.]

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There is such a thing as truth: Errol Morris

Errol Morris tells his tale of truth for NPR's "All Things Considered"; words and sound at the link. There is such a thing as truth, but we often have a vested interest in ignoring it or outright denying it. Also, it's not just thinking something that makes it true. Truth is not relative. It's not subjective. It may be elusive or hidden. People may wish to disregard it. But there is such a thing as truth and the pursuit of truth: trying to figure out what has really happened, trying to figure out how things really are.

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

What of Disney? Epstein 5-and-dimes F9/11 dollars

At Slate, Edward Jay Epstein assembles a version of where the money went on Fahrenheit 9/11: "What of Disney? After repaying itself $11 million for acquisition costs, it booked a $46 million net profit, which Eisner split between two subsidiaries, the Disney Foundation and Miramax. While it was far less than Disney made on children's fare... it was not a bad outcome. The Weinstein[s] also made a multimillion-dollar profit. They had a deal with Disney that contractually entitled them to a bonus of between 30% and 40% of the net profits on any film that they produced—in this case, that came out to about $8 million per brother. [But] Moore had perhaps the happiest ending of all. Not only had he made $21 million, he already had a sequel in preproduction—Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2."

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Bubble wraps: Soderbergh's HDNet preem

Dispatches from WV's Parkersburg as Soderbergh (Steven) wraps his first HDNet production, from WTAP, "the most-watched NBC affiliate in America": "During the Parkersburg Rotary luncheon Monday, members of the film crew Bubble said goodbye" after Friday's wrap. "The writer and location manager told Rotary members how thrilled they were to be able to make the film here... The Belpre/Parkersburg location was chosen for its beautiful scenery and of course the doll factory, which fit in great with the story line. "Immediately when we landed, we knew this was the place, and we've been right ever since. It's like a box that just magically opened up to us," says writer Coleman Hough [whose Full Frontal was directed by Soderbergh]... "Chicken wings, pool, bowling, just a really interesting and relaxed lifestyle."

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

Video heaviosity with Weerasethakul, Tsukamoto and Song

South Korean filmmaker Song Il-gon collaborates on a digital project with Thailand's Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul and Iron Fist Shinya Tsukamoto as part of Short Digital Films by Three Filmmakers, commisioned for the opening night of the Sixth Jeonju International Film Festival. Song sings? An unbroken 40-minute take. "With one long tracking shot, Song lets the actors play their characters naturally without feeling the presence of the camera... "A DV camera also allowed me to try many different things with fewer crew members and a smaller budget...'' Song tells the Korea Times. "Simply, it's impossible for you to carry an ordinary film camera freely all the way while you're filming as we did for this movie because they are a lot heavier." Six years ago, he discovered video while making a one minute short: "When I filmed a scene of a girl having a stillborn baby in a toilet with a digital video camera, I was able to learn that the new medium could be a strong tool, not just a cheap way to film something because it can capture more detailed expressions in freer ways."

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

May 02, 2005

Raspberry ripple, Roger Ebert and small people

An impassioned exchange about the use of certain words in public, between Roger Ebert and actor Daniel Woodburn: "Dear Mr. Ebert, I am an actor that you have reviewed nether favorably nor unfavorably in two different movies: one was Death to Smoochy, the other Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her. I have absolutely no objection to you trashing a film or lauding it. I do object to the use of the word "midgets" in your review of Death to Smoochy.” As a writer you are aware of the power of words. The use of the word midget is, for Little People, equated with any other hate word someone might use to describe a minority group. I simply ask you: if you were to see Little People children would you take away their humanity in the same way with the use of such a hate word? I can respect a yes answer but I cannot respect the person who answers yes." [Several rounds of correspondence follow at the link, including a smattering of Cockney.]

Posted by at 01:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Paul Weitz: You can't have a funny rich person

"Rich people are taboo in entertainment now," said writer and director Paul Weitz, two hours before the first preview of 'Privilege,' his new play about a pair of rich New York kid brothers. “You can’t have a funny alcoholic anymore and you can’t have a human rich person, unless they become a heroin addict or if they’re Michael Jackson.” [In this week's New York.]

Posted by at 01:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thandie Newton: How hard is it to see a film?

New York's Logan Hill has words with Thandie Newton before a Crash: I used to think—maybe 10 years ago—that I should be on the covers of magazines. I genuinely thought what you put in is what you should get out. I thought Beloved would change the fucking world—and I hit the floor with such a smack afterwards. The number of people in this industry who didn’t even see it—I mean, how fucking hard is it to see the film when videotapes are slipped through your door?

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

Maslin: critics are liked best when they either love or savage films and entirely abandon the middle ground

Rockcritics.com asks NY Times book reviewer and recovering music and movie critic Janet Maslin about how her perspective on movies has changed off the beat: "Do I find myself as critical as I used to be? ... What I used to be, by some people's lights, was not critical enough; critics are liked best when they either love or savage films and entirely abandon the middle ground. As a critic, I often saw good work in the midst of bad films and made sure I said so... as a civilian... I am more critical. I don't like my time wasted and I have less patience with things that don't work or just aren't very interesting... Criticism helps in these decisions, but there's just too much of it. The business of being a film critic has a popularity that it didn't have when I started out; really, back then, there weren't very many of us... The means of being a film critic is available to anyone who can attract attention to a website. People used to ask me what qualified anyone to be a film critic. Nowadays, I think, it gets harder and harder to have a good answer."

Posted by at 01:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

None of us go to the movies anymore: John Sloss' Cinetic Media

A snapshot of Slossco and their doings from Tim Arango in the Monday NY Post: "For a group of film buffs who make a living selling and financing movies, Cinetic Media's [execs] see very little of the inside of a theater. "None of us go to the movies anymore," said John Sloss, founder and partner in Cinetic, the New York-based firm that [has become] a powerhouse in the independent film world... Instead, Sloss and... colleagues spend their days watching movies—upwards of a thousand a year—in their offices, hoping to find the next hit before the rest of the movie industry gets wind of it."

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May 01, 2005

Blair pitch

After 6 years, a new Haxan project: "The Blair Witch folks sealed a deal with Rogue Pictures, so all systems are go for its newly named project: Altered. The Florida-set $5-8 million alien abduction tale has a bonus for affiliating with Universal/Focus' genre arm: "We're very happy about being with Rogue," says [Eduardo] Sanchez, who co-directed 1999's The Blair Witch Project. "We're happy with the cast. We're happy to be making a movie in 35mm... happy to be able to shoot on [Universal's] soundstages."

Posted by at 03:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lukas 4ever: Moodysson's UK DVD tussle

Brit DVD distrib Metrodome offers a technical-economic lesson in DVD distribbing to the readers of DVDAnswers.com, as they prepare a 4-film Region 2 Lukas Moodysson box-set: "While the sentiments of those who have emailed us are understandable, it is an all too familiar chorus from consumers who, quite frankly, are not at all familiar with the processes of independent distribution, an arena which [isn't] blessed with the unlimited ancillary funds of a major studio... Due to [it being] a smaller arthouse release, it was not cost-effective to pay a substantial amount upfront to convert this in a 16x9 transfer [or to make a new] widescreen transfer via telecine from the original negative... As an independent distributor we can only work with what we've been supplied... [The producers] and Lukas Moodysson themselves are quite happy that we will have the best possible version of the film, from the materials supplied to us, available for the UK market... substantially smaller than the market for, say, Criterion..."

Posted by at 01:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Getting into Jodie's skull

Posterwire has another knowing, illustrated deconstruction of the one-sheet game, this time the skulls in the posters for Silence of the Lambs: "As some of you may know, there is nothing we love more than discussing hidden imagery in movie poster one-sheets. It's like Hollywood's version of a hidden 3D poster you saw at the mall as a kid: stare at it long enough, and you are bound to find something... This idea brings us to the U.S. domestic one-sheet for the Oscar-winning... Silence of the Lambs."

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