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June 29, 2006
Oh hot, oh heat, nice lady, big hot heat hot: the holidaze
There'll be light posting in the next few days: pre-holiday deadlines and such, but several interviews and other good things are in the offing, along with links when we find them...
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
Southland Tales to be released in director's cut in North America
In Cinema Scope 27, publisher-editor Mark Peranson offers an incisive editor's note on the post-Cannes state o' cinema, and reports that since going to press with the print edition, he's heard that Richard Kelly's epic soph feature, Southland Tales, dismissed by many crickets and film scribes at Cannes, will likely released in its original form, at a length about equal to that of Superman Returns... and Returns... and Returns.... 
On the magazine's website, an editorial addendum: "Just as this issue was going to press, word (albeit, still unconfirmed) came that Southland Tales will in fact be distributed in North America without the drastic cutting rumoured to be inevitable... " Slices of Peranson's Note and an interview with Kelly, presented as "a monument to the general stupidity of relying on overblown reactions from the international press corps for assessing both the aesthetic and commercial validity of a challenging American feature film": "As universally reviled as a film can get without being directed by Vincent Gallo, Southland Tales, over the course of a week, took on film maudit status, as its few, ardent supporters became more vocal when faced with a storm of insults from a hoi polloi that, not content to pummel a poor director when he’s down, had to knee him and those who dared defend him in the groin for good measure.... Southland Tales is sprawling, abrasive, loud, vulgar, and something to behold—in its current form, at least... [I]t’s one possible vision of what will happen when the shit hits the fan (after Texas is nuked, when the Apocalypse is triggered by a baby’s fart)... [W]ith its crazy names and cuckoo conspiracies, it strikes me as positively Pynchonian performance art—the entire film an approximation of Tyrone Slothrop’s plunge into the crapper in "Gravity’s Rainbow, "emerging in a semi-fascist, semi-recognizable near-future America. Its obfuscated, noir-tinged narrative style is of the conspiratorial variety beloved of Jacques Rivette (who will surely love this movie: it’s the new Showgirls), with constant double-crosses and shadowy, under-elucidated plots manned by a bevy of oddballs, both government and private. Southland is also a film internet propre, constantly condensing space, zooming about like a hyperactive, 
pre-Ritalined (silver) surfer: it’s a perpetual motion machine. The way the story is told is inseparable from the content, as the conspiratorial narrative style is an integral element to Kelly’s anti-status quo provocation. Will the kids like it—dunno, don’t care—but, irregardless, why does it all need to make sense? ... Oozing over the viewer like a wave of mutilation from the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic, perhaps young Kelly’s folly cuts too close to the bone: Americans can be touchy, especially when it’s pointed out that they’re currently leaning towards a fascist dictatorship... But in this age, where there’s always a director’s edition DVD or two on the horizon, there’s still hope that the full Southland Tales will be seen by more than just an international conspiracy of dunces in a dinky French fishing village." What about big questions? "I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to ask them," Kelly says, "and we’ve been trying to ask them with a great deal of humour, and obviously fantasy. 
It’s a big, epic political cartoon, and the complicated narrative is supposed to be a narrative for, holy shit, someone just detonated a nuke in Texas, what do we do now?... It’s my interpretation of what I think is going to happen. It’s like if someone took mushrooms and read the Book of Revelations and had this crazy pop dream… that’s the film in a nutshell." The Canadian Peranson asks, "Do you think part of the problem with the film’s reception is that critics, especially American ones, aren’t used to American films being ambitious?" "Maybe… and it seems as though corporations would prefer them to be less ambitious because then they could put them onto spreadsheets and test them with market research groups and they can be made to be predictable to ensure profit for the shareholders. And that’s show biz—that’s the business I got into, and you have to figure out how to work within those parameters. For $17 million, we got a lot of production value and marketablility. If it were released in a wide release it could easily turn a profit... To make movies is so difficult. I can see how easy it might be to be defeated by the system, because maybe I’m being defeated by it right now. But at least I got to make two movies the way I wanted to... The original draft [of Southlandwas written just before September 11th and it was just about blackmail and a movie star and a porn star and two cops, and the Hindenburg over downtown Los Angeles, but that never had any context. It was more about just making fun of Hollywood. But now it’s about—I hope—creating a piece of science fiction that is about a really important problem that we’re facing... and the problem is very complicated, and hence the nature of the narrative... [T]he delivery mechanism is subversive humour.... [Y]ou go through all of the trouble to make a movie, and you put five years of your life into it, and you just want it to be about something." [More contumely at the first link; conversation at the second.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 27, 2006
Mourkarbel's 411: responding to his WTC preemptive attack
At the Filmmaker Magazine blog, Scott Macauley cites Chris Mourkarbel's response to the ParStoneViacom lawsuit, with original punctuation: "Firstly, I wont be able to address all aspects of this issue pending litigation. I graduated last month from an MFA program and I made World Trade Center 2006 as part of my final thesis at school. 
I make site-specific video, sculpture and installation, often using found media or objects as my source. My projects explore the idea of memorial, fiction, and the way in which politically driven events are edified. This project was created as commentary on Hollywoods presumed authority to write history. Through their depiction of a historic event, they are ultimately in the postion to influence ideas and effect policy. Using Stone's script was the meaning of the work. I'm not a commercial filmmaker. Offering their story for free online was a statement on their 60 million dollar effort. I explicitly stated on my site that the video was made using their script so I didn't see the need for the side-by-side comparisons in the press. Though I can't speak to 'Fair use for the purpose of political commentary' in copyright law, I can say that I wasn't trying to make a point about appropriation. I was using that strategy to make a statement about power." [Details on the suit here.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)
Tuesday blues day
Screenings (Superman Returns and Returns and Returns, among others) and some really pressing deadlines are keeping Indie blogging at a minimum: here's hoping the DVD column goes up late today.
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2006
Hill and trail: on Walter Hill's Broken Trail
Robert Abele in LA Weekly visits with the undersung, overly talented Walter Hill before the preem of his new pic on... AMC? "Slugfests, chases, standoffs and shootouts in Walter Hill’s 
films are the equivalent of dialogue scenes in other directors’ work. From his street-fighting debut, Hard Times with Charles Bronson, through the megahit 48 HRS. and his myth-cracking Western Wild Bill, the action sequences in a Hill movie tell us all about his testosterone-case protagonists, how they negotiate their environment. But Hill’s fall from favor as a studio director—one too many box-office misses, no matter the flashes of brilliance in his [nineties] films Geronimo, Trespass and Wild Bill—is one of genre moviemaking’s big losses... [T]he 64-year-old filmmaker imbues [the protagonists of Broken Trail's] perilous and transcendent journey with a poetic grasp of beings traversing land that’s as reassuringly steady as a well-tended campfire. There are killings too, and while this isn’t what Hill terms one of his usual “blood and thunder” sagas, there’s no small amount of emotional brutality... As this bearish-looking, graceful conversationalist reminded me during a recent interview at the Polo Lounge, “Wuthering Heights is one of the most violent stories anybody has ever cooked up.” Among the quotables from the rarely interviewed master: "I’m the world’s oldest rookie. I’d done 'Tales From the Crypt' and 'Deadwood' for HBO... Here, I got a chance to do another Western. I’m not ready to quit yet... I tried to shoot it big. You know, TV screens are getting a lot bigger these days... Let’s invent a term here: the decisive moment. We’re gonna make a story and put it on film. Is the decisive moment when I wrote the script, made sketches at my desk? That’s Hitchcock. Or is the decisive moment “We’re going to go out there and work something out on location”? Well, that’s Ford and Hawks and Huston. Or is it “We’ve got this location, we’re going to stage the actors, we’ve got rehearsal, we’ll shoot from over here and over there, and nobody is so smart that they’re going to figure out how everything fits together, but we’ll have lots of choices and put it together as artistically coherent in the editing room”? For a director like Kurosawa or Peckinpah, it was in the editing room. What you learn is, it’s getting comfortable with yourself. The truest thing that’s ever been said about any of this is, the hardest thing to direct is yourself. It’s not the camera, the actors, not even the horses. It’s “What do I want?”... Good, solid work is often not particularly highly valued. John Ford was a director for 15, maybe 20 years before he did anything that is generally perceived to be of huge artistic merit... Raoul Walsh is an example of a great kind of American storytelling principle, where every shot advances the story. I’ve never been able to live up to that. I’m always digressing. 
Pictorial beauty is the devil... I remember having lunch with Jacques Demy once around the time of Heaven’s Gate — wonderful man, sweet and gentle — and he said he thought that Americans were losing contact with one of their greatest artistic discoveries in filmmaking: that the perfect playing time for a motion picture was 90 minutes. It’s the right amount of time you could sit and not get uncomfortable, that you could go without food, drink and going to the bathroom if you were in reasonable health. [Laughs.] I’ve never forgotten that." [An older roundtable interview is here, in which he avers, "I don't much like looking back. I'll talk about these things, but it's just, you know, you only get so much time and I'm much more interested in what I'm going to be doing next year than in something I did ten years ago. Also, I really have this, as soon as you're explaining your intentions...So many movies are reviewed off their intentions, and noble intentions are fine, but I think that's an easy version. think criticism is not without the overtones of what we now call political correctness. But I think in the end that's, it's probably irritating for the moment, but at the same time, I don't think it has any lasting impact. Somebody once said, you have to wait twenty years before you can tell if a movie's any good or not so that's probably true."
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2006
Capturing the improbably voluptuous: Italian set fotog Pierluigi Praturlon
"It was a moment that marked a turning point in postwar Europe: Anita Ekberg wading through the Fontana di Trevi in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita as improbably voluptuous as the fountain itself," writes John Hooper in the Guardian. "[W]hile Ekberg's low-cut, dark evening dress may look back to the formal 50s,
her insouciant transgression points unmistakably ahead, into the subversive 60s. What few cinema-goers realised was that the scene in the film was a reconstruction of a real event. Two years earlier, Ekberg had spent the evening with a set photographer, Pierluigi Praturlon, at the Rancho Grande nightclub in Rome. To ease her aching feet on the way home, she climbed into the fountain. Praturlon, who never went anywhere without his Leica, lit up the scene with the headlights of his car and caught the moment in a photograph that Fellini later saw in a magazine..." An exhibit, "Pierluigi. On Cinema" is at the Galleria Photology, Milan, until September 8. Hooper continues: "Praturlon established himself as Italy's top film set photographer. He worked on many of the great movies... and photographed most of the actors who starred in them. The first major exhibition of his work has opened in Milan... Though he was often described as a paparazzo, "Pierluigi" (as he was known to all) was nothing of the sort for most of his career. The paparazzi were the bane of celebrities. Praturlon, a cultured man who spoke five languages, was their collaborator and, in some cases, confidant. Sophia Loren made him her personal photographer. Frank Sinatra consulted him about which tapestries to hang in his personal jet. Claudia Cardinale describes him as a "gentleman". Having worked earlier in his career as a photo-reporter, Praturlon was able to bring to the film set a journalist's sense of reportage - indeed, he is credited with transforming the craft of the on-set photographer. Before his arrival, in Italy at least, stars merely posed for stills during breaks in the filming. Praturlon roamed the sets, capturing them as they went about their work. During the filming of La Dolce Vita, he shot an unprecedented 13,000 frames and, as he got to know the stars, had unrivalled access." [More at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2006
Day of the Night: ungrateful Manoj Shyamalan dumps on Disney; craps on Manny Farber
Pissing on Disney as well as the great film cricket Manny Farber in one fell swoop? That's our Manoj! Rich, powerful, and with an ego apparently larger than the state of Pennsylvania, Malvern, PA's leading auteur M. Night Shyamalan
lets rip with an authorized, as-told-to, 278-page epic of ingratitude, writes Claudia Eller in LA Times, one "that offers something very rare, indeed: a candid recounting, complete with tears and recriminations, of a messy divorce between a movie studio and one of the world's most famous writer-directors. In "The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale," the 35-year-old filmmaker whose name has become synonymous with spooky suspense thrillers crucifies the top executives at the company he long had considered his artistic home since his 1999 surprise hit The Sixth Sense: Walt Disney Studios." The book, written by Sports Illustrated's Michael Bamberger, is published July 20, the day before Shyamalan latest labor of labor opens, the $70 million dumpy-building-super-meets-sea-nymph fairy tale Lady in the Water. "Disney production President Nina Jacobson... and Shyamalan enjoyed a close, albeit sometimes combative, relationship. Over six years, she shepherded his four Disney films including Unbreakable, Signs and The Village... At a disastrous dinner in Philadelphia last year, Jacobson delivered a frank critique of the [latest] script. When she told him that she and her boss, studio Chairman Dick Cook, didn't "get" the idea, Shyamalan was heartbroken. Things got only worse when she lambasted his inclusion of a mauling of a film critic in the story line and told Shyamalan his decision to cast himself as a visionary writer out to change the world bordered on self-serving... "Sometimes Night would close his eyes and see little oval black and white head shots of Nina Jacobson and Oren Aviv and Dick Cook floating around in his head, unwanted houseguests that would not leave," Bamberger writes. "The Disney people had gotten deep inside his head, interfering with the good work the voices were supposed to do—and it would be hell to get them out."... "Night really let me get inside his head," Bamberger said. "He told me what he was thinking, and I wrote it." ... "You said [Lady in the Water] was funny; I didn't laugh," the book quotes [Jacobson] as saying. "You're going to let a critic get attacked? They'll kill you for that … Your part's too big; you'll get killed again … What's with the names? Scrunt? Narf? Tartutic? Not working … Don't get it … Not buying it. Not getting it. Not working." In an interview for the article, Jacobson is reticent, but allows: "Different people have different ideas about respect. For us, being honest is the greatest show of respect for a filmmaker." An anecdote about Harvey Weinstein and the recutting of the dreadful 1998 Wide Awake is included with the price of the link; Mr. Shyamalan's limited exposure to pre-release interviews includes a fan, erm, phone chat with Harry Knowles, which contains this exchange: "H: ... I’ve heard that you have a film critic-type character that’s living in this apartment complex. Is that true? 
M: Yeah, the movie’s about how we relate to this story that’s being told and there’s a very kind-of cynical person in the building who relates to it on that close-minded level. H: Somebody... told me that he’s somebody who’s always trying to second guess where their story is going, and it just sounded fun to me. The playful poke at some of your critics out there. M: (Japanese school girl-esque laughter) Well, let’s say this, I’m definitely not playing it safe in this movie (more laughing). H: Just out of curiosity, is that who Bob Balaban is playing? M: Haha, yes. H: OK cool... the guy I would have cast as a baffoonishy [sic] sort of critic type. I would have cast Bob Balaban." In a shitty fit of philistinism, Mr. Shyamalan has dubbed the ill-fated cricket Harry Farber, an unfortunate, even unpleasant slam against the influential and gifted painter and film cricket Manny Farber, who turns 89 this year. [Click for an additional definition of the not-neologism "scrunt."]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Boll weasel: Uwe auteur on his crickets
Beatdown for crickets? Zap2It reports that "much maligned schlockmeister Dr. Uwe Boll (the doctorate is in literature, according to his bio) has... 
offered his biggest critics—including directors Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary—the chance to be in his next movie and also to fight him in a 10-round boxing match. "Dr. Uwe Boll has had enough! Uwe Boll's position is 'I am fed up. I'm fed up with people slamming my films on the Internet without see them. Many journalists make value judgments on my films based on the opinions of one or two thousand Internet voices. 
Half of those opinions come from people who've never watched my films. I have been told that BloodRayne has a very bad IMDb rating, but how many of those votes of zero were made before the movie appeared in theatres.' The criticism goes on and on... Towards the end of the filming of the Postal the 5 most outspoken critics will be flown into Vancouver and supplied with hotel rooms... As a guest of Uwe Boll they will be given the chance to be an extra/ stand-in in Postal and have the opportunity to put on boxing gloves and enter a BOXING RING to fight Uwe Boll. Each critic will have the opportunity to bring down Uwe in a 10 bout match. There will be 5 matches planned over the last two days of the movie. Certain scenes from these boxing matches will become part of the 'Postal' movie. All 5 fights will be televised on the 
internet and will be covered by international press." Those interested in participating are invited to send their two favorite anti-Boll reviews or articles to the e-mail address "info@boll-kg.de," which is, indeed, a viable contact address listed on the Boll-KG website... An e-mail sent to the provided address inquiring about the veracity of the contest was swiftly responded to with a reply reading only "the release is true." [The alleged release, rife with typos, appears in the extended entry below.] In the Guardian's recap ends on a sweet note: "Alan Jones, author of The Rough Guide to Horror Movies, says: "He is without doubt the worst director in the world. But don't forget he works in the genre of horror, and these people, myself included, are completists. If a film gets bad reviews, it doesn't mean we won't go and see it. We'll all flock there anyway." Would Jones be prepared to take Boll on in the ring? "I'd happily do so. I've met people I've slagged off in print, and you just end up becoming friends."
Uwe Boll Invites His Top 5 Most Outspoken Critics of 2005
To Appear In His Feature Film “Postal”.
Airfares & Hotel Expenses To Vancouver Will Be Paid
By Uwe Boll’s Production Company For These Critics To Be In Postal.
June 12, 2006 – Vancouver, BC – We are proud to announce that Dr.Uwe Boll’s BLOODRAYNE starring Kristanna Loken, Michael Madsen, Matthew Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Sir Ben Kingsley, Will Sanderson, Udo Kier, Meat Loaf, Michael Pare & Billy Zane had a successful release May 23rd., 2006 on DVD in both Canada & USA.
Iain Taylor of Vivendi Visual Entertainment Canada stated, “BloodRayne ranked in the top 6 best selling DVD titles during the first part week of sales in Canada (Nielsen Videoscan Canada)”. In the USA BloodRayne’s DVD performance was even stronger. Tom O’Malley, GM of Vivendi Visual Entertainment (USA), said “For the first time in this industry, a Theatrical Release and the Complete PC Video Game were released together on DVD. BloodRayne ranked in the top 5 best selling DVD titles during its debut week (Nielsen VideoScan USA)”. In both countries unofficial DVD rental statistics have proven to be even more impressive.
Again the fans have shown that the critics of Uwe Boll are out of touch with want the general movie audience population wants. Dr. Boll has continually been roasted for the films he has directed and produced. His last two films, House of the Dead & Alone in the Dark, cost $20 million but they have grossed over $110 million to-date. The same negative reactions from some of the same press and the internet critics are now being directed at Uwe Boll’s latest film; BloodRayne.
Dr. Uwe Boll has had enough! Uwe Boll’s position is “I am fed up. I’m fed up with people slamming my films on the Internet without see them. Many journalists make value judgments on my films based on the opinions of one or two thousand Internet voices. Half of those opinions come from people who’ve never watched my films. I have been told that “BloodRayne” has a very bad IMDb rating, but how many of those votes of zero were made before the movie appeared in theatres.” The criticism goes on and on.
Uwe is now challenging the critics that failed to watch his films prior to reviewing or commenting, “TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP!”
On July 17th, 2006 Uwe will start filming his next feature film, “Seed”, starring Will Sanderson, Ralf Moeller, Michael Pare & Andrew Jackson. Following that film he will go into production in late September with another feature called “Postal”. Both movies will be shot in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Towards the end of the filming of the “Postal” the 5 most outspoken critics will be flown into Vancouver and supplied with hotel rooms. As a guest of Uwe Boll they will be given the chance to be an extra / stand-in in “Postal” and have the opportunity to put on boxing gloves and enter a BOXING RING to fight Uwe Boll. Each critic will have the opportunity to bring down Uwe in a 10 bout match. There will be 5 matches planned over the last two days of the movie. Certain scenes from these boxing matches will become part of the Postal movie. All 5 fights will be televised on the internet and will be covered by international press.
To be eligible you must be a critic who has posted on the internet or have written in magazines / newspapers at least two extremely negative articles in the year 2005. Critics of 2006 will not be considered. Please submit proof of your negative reviews & comments via e-mail to: info@boll-kg.de
All challengers must be healthy males, weighing between 64 kilograms (140 lbs.) and 86 kilograms (190 lbs.). You will require to be physically examined by a doctor and sign the necessary release forms for liability, etc. You will not be paid or entitled to any residuals
or fees. Your transportation & hotel costs will be covered.
Dr. Uwe Boll’s invitation to fight and / or appear in his film is extended to all his harshest critics. Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino are among the most eligible candidates.
The following posters to the IMDb have earned the right to be placed on the list of the most extreme anti-Boll critics and are therefore eligible to enter the contest. Contestants will be chosen to be an extra and physically box Dr. Uwe Boll.
Headhunter004
Adultswimlover2
Evolution_500_2
Greatnates
thedoomsdaybegins
GunnerySergeantNumbnuts
Murdoc995
AimeeBrookes
ChineseOldMarketMan
GabeLogan9060
Veedragon40
BigSexy77
TylerDurden52
Dan223-1
howdy4641430-1
If critics want to bring Uwe Boll down, here is their chance to physically bring him down and have the entire world watch them do it.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)
My sales agents have been arrested for drug and gun smuggling, Brit producer laments
"The LA-based sales agents for my British feature film, Living in Hope, have just been arrested for drug and gun smuggling. And no, this isn't a pitch for an all-American movie." writes UK producer Guy de Beaujeu in the Guardian. "[I]t appears that... Limelight Films Inc, was a front for laundering drugs money. The DEA busted 
my sales agents and a number of associates after a two-year surveillance operation called—you guessed it—Director's Cut. I'm gratified to see the Limelight guys were as bad at drug-dealing as they were at selling my film. Perhaps I can fool myself that they failed to make any sales of a low-budget indie Brit [pic] not because there was no market for such a thing, but because they were simply concentrating on the potentially more profitable side of their business. But, sadly, as much as I wish it wasn't so, there was never any real chance of Living in Hope, or any other indie Brit [pic], making them any money. Anyone connected to the British film business, with the probable exception of the staff of Working Title, could tell you that." Describing his production as "a British take on American college movies," de Beaujeu proceeds to dissect what's wrong with British film, making things sound as bad as they are in Anglophone Canada: "bad ideas, poor scripts, ill-directed tax and lottery funding, appalling distribution opportunities, and a total inability to grasp the importance of selling to a market... Too many of us don't seem to live in the real world of commerce because our world has been skewed by subsidies, and then by tax breaks that work for the investors whether a film makes money or not. 
Subsidies and tax breaks allow lazy filmmakers to ignore the bottom line, because they can make their money at the production stage rather than through cinemagoers paying to see their films. Which means there is no incentive to make a good film that draws in the audiences." He also takes the advertising industry to taste, as well as the attempt to mimic U.S. movies. "We cannot and will never compete with Hollywood. We lack the stars to open a movie (with the possible exception of Hugh Grant). We lack the budgets for the sheer grand scale, the special effects, the razzmatazz and the marketing spend." Silver lining? "[T]hat could be an advantage. I believe there's a growing disenchantment with formulaic Hollywood blancmange. There's a desire to see more intelligent, better-crafted, better-acted films that surprise and delight, not just factory-produced mush." As a contrary example, he cites Australian product like Lantana, Chopper, The Dish, Muriel's Wedding and Shine. No big stars, just good stories well acted, well made and, crucially, recognisably Australian. We can learn, too, from the likes of New Zealand's 2002 hit Whale Rider. Here's a very small film, simply made, based on a local culture with its own traditions that mesmerised the world (and made a lot of money)." [More trenchant analysis at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)
The banal and the weird hold hands: Errol Morris
Over at the Errol Morris homestead, he's kindly posted his Believer conversation with Adam Curtis, 
director of The Power of Nightmares, "the documentary film which asks the question “Did Johnny Mercer bring down the World Trade Center?” Curtis says, "Last night on television someone who was pro-the Iraq war was saying that the alliance between the insurgents in Iraq and the foreign fighters is the equivalent of the Nazi-Soviet pact and that that's what we’re really fighting against. It’s all so weird. That the men who sit in neon-lit rooms with very nicely done tables and who question you and tell you things, are actually weird." Morris replies, "Yeah. Well, as we all know, the banal and the weird are not incompatible." Curtis: "That's the whole point—that's what's so fascinating about our time. The banal and the weird are one and the same thing." Morris: "Yes. They hold hands." Bonus!: Morris has posted his 2002 Oscar mini-movie here.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2006
Indie's out-of-doors
Coming in the next few days: more Indie including a DVD wrap-up, and a "Pride, Unprejudiced" column containing interviews with Richard E. Grant on Wah-Wah, Patrick Creadon on the roots of Wordplay and Larry Clark on Wassup Rockers, baby pictures, and more. 
Interviews, transcriptions and screenings are eating up the days, including the beautiful reissue of Victor Erice's masterpiece, Spirit of the Beehive and fresh archival prints of two movies by Frank Tashlin: The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Yipes! [The picture of an ill-fated tree about to be razed for a supermarket comes from this portfolio.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
Oliver's hijacking: Par shuts down WTC art project
The Smoking Gun headlines pages from the public filing of a lawsuit, "Paramount Sues Over Hijacked WTC Film." The filing, in which we find Movie City Indie cited, states "The film... the first theatrical motion picture to deal with the bombing of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the heroic efforts of countless rescue workers and regular citizens... is being directed by renowned director Oliver Stone and will star, among others, Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal." Smoking Gun writes: "Paramount Pictures is suing a... D.C. filmmaker for copyright infringement, claiming that the man used a "bootleg script" to create a knockoff version of director Oliver Stone's upcoming film on the September 11 attacks. The studio contends in a federal lawsuit that Chris Moukarbel, 28... obtained a copy of the screenplay for World Trade Center and used the script as the basis for a 12-minute film that mirrors "a significant portion" of Stone's work.... Paramount's June 16 complaint, a copy of which you'll find [at the link], charges that Moukarbel's film, like Stone's production, centers around a pair of rescue workers trapped in debris following the collapse of the towers. Included... are nine pages from the World Trade Center screenplay that Paramount contends were used by Moukarbel for his unnamed work, which he posted online (but has since removed)... The Paramount complaint... seeks a permanent injunction barring Moukarbel from distributing his film. [Movie City Indie, which has no connection to and has had no contact with Mourkarbel, is cited in evidence, in having linked to the downed site, as having helped "the Infringing Picture" be "distributed to the public." The illustration is from the side-by-side comparisons in the public filing of the lawsuit; the left side is Mourkarbel, the right is StoneParViacom.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sharon Stone: Nigerian blend
in Mwegi, Botswana's only independent daily newspaper, Ofe Motiki reports on how Nigerian movies are conquering Africa's marketplace: "Many people love them and find them irresistible mostly because of their familiar story lines. Nigerian movies are a household name all over the country and Francistowners 
are no exception. Even though the whole cinematography of the movies is not of the best quality, a lot of people are in love with them. The common wrong use of abjectives, nouns and verbs are all ignored and laughed at as in most homes people remain glued to their television sets when these movies are showing. Some say that the reason they love them is because they can easily relate to them. The Chinese and Indian businessmen have realised that they can easily cash in on these movies and a lot of them are sold on the popular three-in-one or five-in-one packages. All the movies that are aired on Mnet Africa can be found in various shops in Francistown and are so in demand that even the street hawkers at the bus ranks are cashing in. The names of the movies are not only appealing but catchy too, names like, the Corridors of Power, Father and Son [and] Sharon Stone... Maniral Islam of Tricon Traders in Francistown 
confirms that many people buy Nigerian movies in his shop. He says he always has the movies in stock though he sometimes runs out of them and has to place emergency orders as they are in demand. "I also watch them and always have their DVDs playing in the shop. It is easy to relate to them maybe because they are African," said Islam... Another Francistown resident Kobamelo Mosheno says that she began watching them last year and has never stopped. "I don't think I will ever stop watching them and I now know the real names of all the actors and actresses. I have quite a collection of Nigerian DVDs at home and when I have enough money to subscribe to Dstv, I always make it a point to watch Channel 102 because of all the channels that Dstv offers that is where action happens," says Mosheno. She explains that what she loves best about the movies is the ending where she gets a thrill from seeing the bad guy being punished. She, however, complains about the music in the movies, which often makes it difficult for her to hear what the characters are saying. She adds that it is important for locals to support fellow Africans as the film industry in Africa can only grow if Africans support each other."
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 20, 2006
Pitchfork's "100 Awesome Music Videos" YouTubeFest
Sloth has its virtues and technology its unintended consequences: Pitchfork Media picks out "100 Awesome Music Videos" with direct YouTube links to every one of them. "We've been spending hours enjoying YouTube, falling in love with... music video all over again... 
[W]e're making use of our video-inspired sloth, sharing 100 of our favorite music videos; simply, dozens of clips that, for various reasons... we enjoy watching and hope you'll enjoy as well." There's nothing from the Director's Label Series; they stuck "to clips roughly from the MTV era. Crucially, they also all had to be on YouTube—we prefer giving you the chance to see a clip to simply talking about one. Best to check these out early and often... it is possible that some record label funcrusher could come around and wrinkle his nose at us pointing you all to a commercial for his company's product." [Via Filmmaker; image from A-ha's "Take On Me." In the Sunday London Times, Tony Allen-Mills dissects the YouTube tale: "The emergence of do-it-yourself video entertainment — in bite-sized packages that are never longer than 10 minutes and sometimes last only a few seconds — has sent shockwaves through the corporate world of American entertainment, which is scrambling to decide whether to sue YouTube for stealing material or to embrace the huge audience that flocks to the website each day."]
Posted by Ray Pride at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)
Is Click Seattle's "Almost Live" 20 years along?
Seattlest reports on a skit that precedes Adam Sandler's Click by 20 years: "The premise of Click is pretty thin which is odd for Sandler who normally goes for "high concept" type stuff (moron goes back to school, moron joins the PGA, moron's the devil). 
This time a moron gets... hold of a remote control that can manipulate the people around him. Fast forward through his wife's ranting, pause his boss so he can punch him in the face a few times - that kind of thing. It has to be a difficult gag to drag out over 90 minutes, especially when you consider that ["Total Control,"] the 'Almost Live' bit it was stolen from barely manged to strangle three minutes of humor from it [for which] Scott Schaefer won a Northwest Emmy for in 1985." In an email to Seattlest, Schaefer said, "At the time, we thought it was pretty cool to do the special effect of [a character] walking forward while everyone in the entire Northgate Mall was "walking backwards." Of course, it was nothing more than shooting Keister walking backwards while holding the remote, then playing the tape backwards. Woo hoo... As an aside, this also highlights the fact that either remote television control technology hasn't advanced an inch since 1985 or this movie was written by really old guys. In the trailer Sandler uses the remote to pause, fast-forward and play in slow motion. And, sadly, that's about all a television remote did in 1985 and that's all it can do today unless you count split-screen/picture-in-picture, menues, pay-per-view purchasing and your basic DVR/Tivo functionality." [The original "Almost Live" skit is on YouTube here; Link courtesy of the Oregonian's "Mad About Movies," collated by Shawn Levy, who notes that "Almost Live" was a wonderful treat—a truly local show that was wedged for 15 minutes between the end of the 11 o'clock news and the start of "Saturday Night Live" on the Seattle NBC affiliate."]
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Never bore anyone!: Schlöndorff remembers Wilder
Volker Schlöndorff has a lengthy and entertaining memoir of Billy Wilder in the LA Times. "It was Wilder's First Commandment: Never bore anyone! 
Neither in front of the camera nor behind it, neither in the screening nor drawing room, not on the phone nor in a restaurant... Rather than acting out a scene himself to indicate what he was looking for, he used ironic exaggeration. It is my hope to someday achieve his seemingly carefree levity. For as different as our personalities and films may be, he has always been my role model... Comedies, he said, are like Swiss clockwork: Just as one gear wheel locks into another, each rejoinder drives the next; the straight line must be delivered clearly before the punch line, then a short pause for laughter, followed by another punch line to redouble the laughter and to keep it going. Nothing is worse than sporadic laughter — 
only roaring, continuous laughter brings down the house... [W]e were friends for 25 years, until his death in 2002. We often discussed films, and he was always full of stories, tricks, rules, answers. He had rules for every situation in life, in a script and on the set: how something should be done, and what should not be done under any circumstances. What shoes you should buy and where. What you should eat. What cut you should never make, and what camera angle you should never use (worm's-eye view or from a chandelier). What an actor cannot express without looking stupid (a sudden realization). What is indecent to show (a close-up of a person who has just learned of a friend's or relative's death)... [H]e took me to Lubitsch's grave to show me that his secretary really had been buried at the master's feet — "in case he needs to dictate something to her." Of three hours of Schlöndorff's assembled footage of Wilder's lessons in life and film, the Berliner retorted: ""What this shows us is that you should never give an interview on a swivel chair. Also, you shouldn't talk so much with your hands if you have a mouth. And above all never use a back-scratcher during an interview! It just does not look dignified." [It's a long piece, worth reading in full.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2006
What would Francis Coppola do?: Ava Lowery on CNN
On CNN's "BlogBuzz," the newsreader adopts a patronizing tone toward 15-year-old Alabaman Ava Lowery, whose short, WWJD?, ties quotations about faith and the singing of "Jesus Loves Me" to images of bloodied and broken Iraqi children. "So why do you think you're getting death threats?" Lowery replies, "Um, I'm giving people the benefit of the doubt, hoping that they don't know I'm a 15 year old, but regardless—" "Well, why should your age matter, Ava," the grown-up interjects sternly, "if you feel that you've studied the issue?" "I do think it's pretty sad that people are sending me these threats. I think that some people are just outraged that I'm out there telling the truth..." 
"You know, when you talk about the truth, and I've watched both of the clips that we have, but I want to play some of one in particular, the WWJD? clip..." A small part of Lowery's short plays, and when it's over, the theory-of-montage-unaware newsreader shakes her head with what seems genuine anger. "Ava, taking a Christian hymn and putting it to pictures of suffering Iraqi children, what is it that you're hoping to accomplish? Because, the, the, the, the disparity between the two, almost comes across as flip..." Is the child anti-troops? "But you say you're not anti-troops? You're anti-war, but you're not, you support the troops..." After Lowery says that members of her family are in the military, the grown-up persists, "Have you gotten any reaction from troops who are overseas or family members who have people who are overseas?" She also tries to associate Lowery with adults whom she does not name (DailyKos): "You know, because these bloggers played your clips, y'know, on the jumbo screen at their big annual convention, uh, I mean, in some ways, do you feel that, that you are being used by them?" Lowery drawls, "In a way, I'm also using them, so I guess it's a fair trade." (At least she wasn't asked if she was a friend of George Soros.) 
To me the great hope is that now these little video recorders are around and people who normally wouldn't make movies are going to be making them. And suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camcorder and for once, the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever, and it will really become an art form. (Francis Ford Coppola, 1991) [The QuickTime of the interview is here; more on Lowery here; This is her site, Peace Takes Courage, and her extended run of animations is here.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
Snakes in the house
New Line has launched their Snakes On A Plane website. Some downloads, a little video, a click to the "Fan Site of the Week." (They're taking their sweet time.) An info-heavy "send me updates" is the second cleverest feature; my favorite is the animation of bags on an unseen conveyor belt that all have contraband, swooping through an X-ray machine.
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)
Call for David Lynch... Call for David Lynch... Calling David Lynch...
Mr. David Lynch is offering wallpapers and also ringtones (for $3.99) at his paysite; 
the "Dumbland" theme is aggravating enough that we might just bite. I Like To Kill Deer or the falsetto My Teeth Are Bleeding! might give the wrong impression, tho. They're all web originals, with the media original trying one more medium: for presumable © reasons, we're not getting any archive stuff, so you'll have to channel your own Hopper to get a Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon! 
hello-how-are-you going. Wonder if Lynch has experimented with inventing his own vibrate settings. [Samples at the link; Check out the animated advertisement here.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
There Will Be Livestock: More PTA pix
Paul Thomas Anderson continues to crypto-blog his production snaps from There Will Be Blood at Little Boston News, but the direct link to the dated photographs has changed to this.
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)
Batshit's good shit: Ron Rosenbaum on Tony Scott
I see nothing wrong with (and bits fantastic about) Ron Rosenbaum's daunting appreciation of the art of Tony Scott over at New York Observer: "I was talking to a woman I know about my Tony Scott Disorder Theory. That in his last two films, Man on Fire and the sadly neglected (though profoundly insane) Domino, Tony Scott has done what his brother Ridley Scott had done with Blade Runner: given us the most hallucinatory accurate visual embodiment of the disordered madness of early 21st-century life. The cinematic equivalent of “the pyrotechnic insanitarium” we inhabit... I was going on about the way certain films and certain filmmakers (and their cinematographers) had indelibly changed the way we see the world and ourselves, just through the cumulative effect of the never-before-seen look of their work... Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Peter Brook’s King Lear, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, Blade Runner... Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line and, most recently, David Gordon Green’s George Washington and All the Real Girls. (If you haven’t seen the last two, especially the former, you’ve missed something inexplicably powerful and almost mystically beautiful.)" 
Rosenbaum breaks his further appreciation into two parts, "The Redness of Red" and "The Greenness of Green." ... "[T]he redness of red” is a common buzz-phrase in the philosophy of mind, when the perennial unanswerable question is asked and analyzed: How do you know that what you see as red, your “redness of red,” is the same as my redness of red? Couldn’t my redness of red look like your blueness of blue? How can we know? ... I still love Blade Runner, but it will never have the vision-changing impact it had when I first saw it. Then, it was a sudden glimpse of the implicit future; now that it’s been incorporated into everyone’s vision, it seems more a nostalgic, almost antiquated futurism. Sometimes we’re not even aware of the way films change the way we see things—or, as in the case of Tony Scott’s Domino, 
which practically nobody saw (but which I want everybody to see), the way a film captures, purely with its look, the way we look. Holds a mirror up to our distorted nature... [W]hat Scott has been doing in his last two films—Man on Fire starred Denzel Washington in what I thought was a beautiful, melancholy take on a hired bodyguard in Mexico City, who loses, avenges and then regains the child he’s supposed to protect—just hasn’t gotten the respect it deserves... What is he doing? ... I wouldn’t claim that he’s the only one who does it, or that every technique is his invention, or that it doesn’t partake of techniques pioneered in avant-garde TV commercials or Brazilian cinema (or that he didn’t cop a plot device from Point Break in Domino). But I would say he’s taken it to another level. Synthesized its incoherencies, taken them to the max. He’s made films that—more than just about any mainstream films I’ve seen recently—have embedded violence and violation together in its very molecular matrix." At this point, the absence of a copy editor seems apparent in a giddy fashion: Scott's "films seem not to be made from film stock, celluloid—rather, a creepily cellular green slime-mold emulsion, electro-slime, poison neon green. The green of Love Canal. The colors themselves are a violation, almost an emotion. The motion itself is an act of violence 24 frames a second. All the images are as if from an illuminated manuscript of Satanic verses... Domino may not have been a commercial success, but it will be a cultural referent longer than many movies that make more money. It’s our flyblown, electro-slime “Wasteland.” Our Dreamland Burning." Please read more at the link. Martin A. Grove's marathon banter with Scott about its visual style—"It's funny, my life began as a painter and I still think and function like a painter"—is here.
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:51 AM
The Road to Antonioni and The Passenger
In a long piece at Time Out London, Mark Peploe recalls the production of The Passenger as being "one hell of a ride": "The many journeys that were involved in the writing and filming are so inextricably linked with my past 
and subsequent life that viewing the film again recently after so many years felt like unrolling an antique carpet and discovering a coded diary in its intricate patterns... It was while he was preparing Blow-Up that I first met Michelangelo Antonioni and his screenwriter Tonino Guerra. It was at a party in a basement... I think both my sisters and I and most of the other guests had been gathered up as specimens for their research into '60s London – though my interest was to meet the director of L'Avventura, a road movie that had transformed my view of what the cinema could be about... I felt documentaries were too vulnerable to the vagaries of chance. I was determined to get into feature films, and one way to start was by writing screenplays. Predictably, perhaps, my first attempt was a Western... remained with Zabriskie Point 
to witness the filming of the last spectacular scene, which took days to prepare. Sixteen cameras in concealed concrete bunkers surrounded a large villa in the desert outside Phoenix while it was slowly filled with dynamite and nitro-glycerine. No models for Antonioni – and no room for error. A man came panting down the hill. The high speed cameras were rolling – so fast they only had seconds to run. Antonioni pressed the plunger. The silent moment in which nothing happened made a perfect frame for the incredible eruption that followed, a pyromaniac's dream, which Antonioni later edited into one of his most extraordinary sequences." [Eventually, he does get around to talking about The Passenger, with many names and events dropped along the way.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2006
I am a blog addict: Caveh Zahedi likes this review
Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi cites Steven Shaviro's review of I Am A Sex Addict as one of his favorites, and this paragraph is pretty damn good: "We have a kind of cliche sense that confessional honesty needs to be delivered in a tone of wrenching anguish. One of the most noteworthy things about I Am A Sex Addict is the way that it demolishes this cliche. Has there ever been a film that is so raw in its self-revelations, and at the same time, not only so wry in the telling, but so highly mediated? The point, I think, is that there is no contradiction here, 
no opposition between truth and artifice. We live in a hypermediated world, and the media are part of the reality of that world. Godard said somewhere that film is not an image of reality, but rather the reality of that image. And that's precisely what's happening in Zahedi's film. His relation with the video camera is as much a part of his subjectivity as any of the obsessions that he recounts and reenacts onscreen. The story of how he made the film, and of the divergence between the actresses on screen and the real people they portray, cannot be disentangled from the story of his addiction and how he overcame it."
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)
The nerd and the madman: Chris Doyle on Lady in the Water
Ben Walters of Time Out catches up with Heineken poster boy Chris Doyle on the eve of his new pic with Manoj Shyamalan: "I think what we are doing in Asia is more fun, I think partly because we are finally reaping the rewards of our labours, and secondly because we do live and work like this. When I work in the West I realise how much more valid what we are doing in the East is to me personally – there is something more gut-felt, much more intimate and intense to what we are doing in Asia. 
We are all friends, we do live in a certain way, we do hop on the plane to each others' screenings, and we are used to hearing a number of languages every day. So I think that the films do reflect the more cosmopolitan aspect of the way in which many of us, especially the middle class of Asia, live." Was it a very different dynamic working on Lady in the Water? "There is a lot more money in Philadelphia! There are similarities because it was an exercise in tolerance or patience and trying to step back further than usual to accommodate this new experience, which happened to be Fruit Chan in one case and M Night Shyamalan in another. It is a bigger playpen and there are more expensive toys. We worked well as a team because we are opposites. I won't use the words 'nerd' and 'madman' but if you want to it's up to you…"
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Homage masala: Satyajit Ray lives!
At Glamsham.com, Subhash K. Jha reports that Sacred Evil, a new Indian film, is as homage-heavy as anything Quentin T. might make, but the art referenced is weightier. 
"Not too many people have noticed that Abhiyaan Rajhans and Abhigyan Jha's [supernatural thriller] Sacred Evil is strewn with references to and actors from Satyajit Ray's films. Not only do we see the Ray regular Soumitra Chatterjee in a cameo, the lady who escorts the film's protagonist to Soumitra's office is the heroine of Satyajit Ray's Kanchenjunga. "That's right. My affinity to Ray's cinema goes back a long time. My film contains not only homage to Ray but also to my other idol Ismail Merchant," Rajhans says. "I was assisting Ismail in a film called Gaachh (The Tree) which was based on the life of Soumitra when I met Ivan Kozelka, the cinematographer of Sacred Evil. Ismail thought very highly of him. And I decided that the day I make my first film Ivan will shoot it for me... Ismail had shot his first film Householder in English and in Calcutta... I obviously chose to do the same. Householder was a black and white film, there is an entire portion of Sacred Evil in which colours have been washed out, leaving only a single colour bright, a red, a yellow or a green but mostly it looks black and white... Ismail's hero was Ray. And my favourite childhood author was Ray. I read [his novel] 'Sonar Kella' 99 times... I believe Ray was a far better writer than a director. That's not to say he is a lesser director than anyone else. The world is yet to discover the sci-fi and thrillers of Ray. I had the good luck to visit Ray's personal library while shooting Gaachh and I wasn't surprised to find his shelves loaded with Isaac Asimov, Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe and O. Henry...
A lot of real time is slowed down in Sacred Evil, just the way Ray liked to in most of his movies. Soumitra, Ray's favourite actor, appears in a cameo as Dr. Guha. His character in the screenplay is even called Dr. Satyajit Guha. His house and office are situated in a building that was first popularised by Ray's films. Ismail referred to these as Tagorean houses. And as you noticed, Alaknanda Roy, heroine of Ray's Kanchenjunga, appears in another cameo as Mrs. Durham. Even Dr. Guha's maid is a Ray regular... The two opening scenes reveal immediately the subject of the film and the pace in which we will be dealing with it and the mood of the film. This is a decidedly Ray influence." [Also: a remembrance of Ray from what his 85th birthday from actors Waheeda Rehman, Madhabi Mukherjee, Sharmila Tagore, Aloknanda Roy, Kushal Chakraborty and Soumitra Chatterjee: "He had practically no set method for directing. He would give us enormous freedom. But he would restrain veteran actors when they tended to get theatrical."; CalcuttaWeb's bio of Ray has RealPlayer excerpts from over a dozen films, four of which are songs.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2006
Bruce Robinson: We are required to listen to the wrong voices
in the upcoming UK-themed edition of Chicago-based slick StopSmiling, majordomo JC Gabel takes a flight to Blighty to the rural farm of undersung screenwriter, novelist and ranteur Bruce Robinson. The 12-page takeout includes pics of Robinson's 
workspaces, and lots of the same sort of blunt flights of fancy and disfavor as in his scripts for Withnail & I and an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's "Rum Diaries" he's slated to direct (for the first time since 1992's producer-mangled Jennifer 8) with Johnny Depp. The piece is not online, but concludes with greater than a solid page, in 10-point type, of the 59-year-old writer on the world today, of which this is only a modest swatch of articulation: "This war on terror is preposterous and will create ten terrorists for every one it kills. It’s Orwellian in scope, Truly Orwellian, and the preserve of maniacs… Criticize Bush, Rumsfeld, et al, ‘Oh you’re anti-American, are you?’ No, Mr. Bush, I am not anti-American, I am anti-you. It’s an obscene con, a trick, manipulated to try and put dissent on the side of the ‘terrorists.’ Obscene. I’m not on the side of bin fucking Laden, or any other of these peculiar murderers. And I am not anti-American. I adore America… [But not] the American of snatch-squads and secret prison camps. It is the America of the Constitution of the United States. I think the Constitution of the United States ranks among the greatest documents ever written, it stands next to the Magna Cara, which I also have a profound fondness for. What I’m anti is these men, who by their deceit would seem to deny the content of these documents, constituting the best form of government human beings have ever invented—democracy. I am not on the side of the terrorists… Nobody tells us about the tragedy of Iraq. We’re blinded in a blizzard of lies. 
The truth is too shameful to tell. When our greatest living writer, Harold Pinter, won the greatest literary prize on Earth, the Nobel Prize, it didn’t even make BBC TV news. Any British slut who’d come third in the Eurovision song contest would have been all over the news. But not Pinter. Why? Because Pinter tells the truth and they’re terrified of hearing it. From the moment we open our eyes in the morning to closing them at night, we are bludgeoned with propaganda. I beg your pardon, spin. We are required to listen to the wrong voices. To get at their oil, we dehumanize people who invented writing 6,000 years before Shakespeare. Iraq invented language, algebra, astronomy and our propaganda converts them into screeching ragheads in their own streets…
I much admire Bob Geldof et al for the effort—Band Aid, Live Aid, whatever—but they’re piss in the ocean, cynically used as photo-ops for the politicians. Rock stars can’t change Africa. Exxon, Halliburton, BP and Shell can. Cut to the guy in the new car ad, with the blonde in a miniskirt next to him on an empty road—driving into the eternal good life. But beyond the horizon are those starving kids with flies around their eyes.” [More on Mr. B. from his publisher, Bloomsbury.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2006
Wassup Friday?
90 degrees and humid in Chicago; even more advance screenings plus an enjoyable photo shoot and conversation with Larry Clark about Wassup Rockers, baby photography and such. The pistols stayed at home. More on that later, natch. [Image from "Tulsa" © Larry Clark.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 15, 2006
Fires were started: Is POV NSG for docs?
Doing some research before talking to the director of Who Killed The Electric Car?, I discovered that I had been contaminated by "docu-ganda" and was sternly advised to keep my brain open while witnessing such chuff, 
or at least the Christian Science Monitor's staff writer, Daniel B. Wood would caution us to be verrrrry skeptical: "In An Inconvenient Truth... former Vice President Al Gore asserts that global warming may soon eliminate one of the world's great natural vistas: the snows of Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro." In "Who Killed the Electric Car? celebrities such as Mel Gibson and Ed Begley Jr. lament the "murder" of General Motor's EV1 electric car and the loss of California's "most radical smog-fighting mandate since the catalytic converter." (Slanting his case with an understated sneer at "celebrities" by the end of the first graf, Mr. Wood fails to footnote that celebrities were among the few consumers who could lease the cars, as they could yell louder than most if they were denied the chance.) "All deliver on the promise to tell an "untold" story, but is theirs the full story? Or even the true story? Don't count on it, say media experts." Ah! Media Experts! From the carrels of academe and public relations, curry their contributions! "The days when "documentary" reliably meant "inform the audience" - rather than "influence the audience" - are no more. The makers of such films today see their cinematic contributions as an antidote to media consolidation that, they say, restricts topics and voices to the bland and the commercial. 
As such, they feel little or no obligation to heed documentary-film traditions like point-by-point rebuttal or formal reality checks. "We need to clarify that this new wave of 'documentaries' are not, in fact, documentaries," says Christopher Ian Bennett of New School Media, a communications and public-relations firm in Vancouver. "They fail to meet the Oxford Dictionary definition, in that they editorialize, and opine far too much. They are entertaining.... But they can be dangerous if viewers take everything they are saying as the whole truth." [Mr. Bennett is also a principal at Gryphon Television, whose site asserts "An evolving financial world needs new financial media... Gryphon Television is where Main Street and Wall Street connect; "New School Media" apparently lacks a website. An egregious bit of what somewhat resembles bought-and-paid-for pr hagiography makes amusing reading. An excellent timeline of the development of documentary form is here. The essential, complete Oxford English Dictionary does not contain Mr. Bennett's definition for documentary, but rather, "of the nature of or consisting in documents; affording evidence, evidential; relating to teacher or instruction." It's in the same volume with drudgery, "The occupation of a drudge; mean or servile labour; wearismone toil; dull or distasteful work." Hey, somebody's gotta draw a paycheck for condescending to the intelligence of readers (and viewers).]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 14, 2006
Indie no more: AIVF throws it in
The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, a longtime indie voice and publisher of The Independent has sent out a letter announcing they're done as of June 28. 
"In February AIVF launched an emergency fundraising appeal with an announcement to members that the organization faced an uncertain future. We are sorry to report that we have not reached the fundraising targets necessary for a turnaround and continuation of operations. However, long-term supporters in the independent community are organizing later this month to assess whether a core group of champions can take over hands-on management of the Independent while also reinventing and relaunching AIVF as a membership organization. We are also actively exploring other options for continuing publication of the Independent through other like-minded organizations." [More of the release is below; here's the website.]
Read on for important information about AIVF member benefits and updates on future prospects: Health insurance continues through 12-31-2006: For those currently covered by health insurance based on your AIVF membership, your coverage will continue through the end of this year (Dec. 31, 2006) no matter what your renewal date.... Also, we are in conversation with other independent media organizations to see if they will be able to extend health insurance coverage for AIVF members beyond 2006... Operations will close 6-28-2006: AIVF will close operations and vacate its office space by June 28. We are in conversation with like-minded organizations that may be able to provide alternatives for AIVF members, such as specific benefits or a complimentary membership....
Future Prospects: Whether or not AIVF is ultimately able to continue as an organization, we are hopeful that the Independent will continue as an information resource and voice for the independent community. While supporters are regrouping to assess whether the magazine can be taken on under AIVF auspices, AIVF’s transitional board has also been exploring the option of having a like-minded successor organization take over publication of the Independent. With the assistance of a consultant with expertise in small press magazine publishing, we have created financial models and initiated conversations with a handful of interested independent media groups. Chief among our concerns with any potential successor organization is a commitment to the Independent’s core values: advocacy to promote and protect diverse independent voices, information exchange and community support for independents, and excellence in the art and craft of independent media making.
Special legacy issue of the Independent: Look for a special issue of the Independent in July highlighting some of the important stories, voices and moments in independent filmmaking since AIVF was founded in 1973. While no single issue of the Independent can totally represent the many layers of our rich history over more than 30 years, this issue offers a glimpse of what has been accomplished due to the creativity and hard work of so many.
-- AIVF Board of Directors
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)
Truffaut/Hitchcock from beyond the grave
The links began in March, and Anne Thompson points to Andrew R. Horbal pointing to the online posting of tapes from the classic Hitchcock-Truffaut interviews: "From now until I run out, [blog] If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . will [bring] our visitors the interview recordings that made up the bulk of... "Hitchcock/Truffaut." In Part One... 
Hitchcock speaks with palpable fatigue about his childhood, his early interest in theater, his work as a commercial artist and his gradual involvement in the medium upon which he would soon make an everlasting impact. Truffaut valiantly attempts to understand his answers (even in translation), while he and Helen Scott laugh way too hard at Hitchcock's half-hearted jokes.While the general atmosphere is never what anyone with a pulse would call electric, these recordings are nonetheless engrossing..." Seven selections are up; the provenance was undisclosed, but proprietor Ron Sutpen illuminates: "The excerpts I'm posting come from a series broadcast over Radio France in 2004 (though I obtained them from another source). They amount to about 12 of the 50+ hours of interview material, and the only work I do on them (apart from writing the introductory remarks on the blog) is editing out the recorded introductions, which are in French and (by way of guess) probably don't illuminate all that much."
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:52 AM | Comments (1)
Scope-ophilia: Sydney Pollack on widescreen
There's a few thousand words of interview with Sydney Pollack over at Pride, Unprejudiced on the occasion of Sketches of Frank Gehry; including reflections on the widescreen format from a career-long practitioner. "For me, the beauty comes out of practicality. I’ve spent my life making movies that have at their center, a relationship between a man and a woman. Every single movie. And so the heart of the movies are two-shots. And sometimes I like to be quite close. You can’t work in a close, tight two-shot and have any room for where you are or any sets and environment in a less wide frame. You just can’t. You can’t. A tight two-shot in 1.85 can be in limbo. You can just put up a piece of cardboard and shoot the tight two-shot. You might as well. And if you’re using the environment to tell story—if you take a picture like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? or Jeremiah Johnson or any of these pictures where where the people are is essential, I mean, the studio kept fighting me with They Shoot Horses, saying, “You’re in one set, for godssake! Why are you using widescreen? It’s not the Grand Canyon. 
It’s the opposite of the Grand Canyon!” But that was precisely the point. I could shoot Michael Sarazin and Jane Fonda dancing or Bruce Dern and Bonnie Bedelia, whoever, the pairs, and still see this sea of people dancing, or the bleachers, and the people staring at them. So there’s more redolence to each frame. It has a different impact. If I cut the edges off of those frames, and you just have those center people, without a context, I don’t think would be nearly as meaningful. I mean, on an absolutely practical, technical level, I can transmit more information per frame than I can with 1.85. I don’t say it’s more beautiful. I adore those old movies that were 1.33. They’re great. It’s not a question of beauty, it’s a question of… of what is the movie? The one movie I wish I’d done it in, this is when I stopped using ‘Scope, which was Out of Africa. Because I got so sick of it being butchered, y’know, DVDs weren’t in then, they were still doing VHS and they were always panning-and-scanning, chopping the edges off. And I just said, I can’t do this any more. More people see it in the aftermarket now, so they remember it that way. I didn’t frame it that way. I’ve had people come up now, who occasionally have seen a screening of Jeremiah Johnson or a screening of They Shoot Horses and it’s a different movie than what they ever saw. It’s a completely different movie."
Posted by Ray Pride at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2006
Not in my name: Christopher Doyle and the Cockman Trial
Cinematographic whiz Chris Doyle also gives some of the boldest chat of any major filmmaker, so why wouldn't I think the "Cockman trial" had something to do with him? 
Sometimes you look for information about someone and it turns out they have the same name: there are a heckuva lot of Christopher Doyles banging around the internet, including the one in this item from from Fox Carolina: "Jury selection is scheduled to start Monday morning in the death penalty trial of a couple accused of kidnapping and killing upstate businessman, Jim Cockman... Jennifer Holloway told [investigators] she and her common law husband, David Edens wanted to steal a GMC Suburban Cockman had for sale. When the couple met with Cockman to look at the car, Investigators say they forced him into the back, put duct tape on his mouth and drove to their place in Tennessee. When they got home, they discovered Cockman was dead. Christopher Doyle, a friend of Cockman's, told Fox Carolina's Lidia St. Mark, "It was a tragedy for the Greenville community...volunteered for numerous hours. He was a person you can count on in hard times and good times."...[I.nvestigators say Holloway told them where she and Edens put Cockman's body. Nine days after his disappearance, authorities found Cockman's body in a freezer in Sevierville, Tennessee. Doyle says, "It was a heinous crime..no doubt about..certainly punishment should be coming."
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2006
Indie returns tomorrow
More links and new stuff after I make it through a couple of days of screenings and DVDs; please look for a long Sydney Pollack interview on the front page of Movie City News in the meantime.
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2006
CNN Headline host on Gore: "It's like Hitler"
An employee of Time Warner's CNN joins the media commentators taking issue with the climate crisis presentation, An Inconvenient Truth by comparing Al Gore to Adolf Hitler. CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck on June 7 asserted on his syndicated radio program, 
"When you take a little bit of truth and then you mix it with untruth, or your theory, that's where you get people to believe. ... It's like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in 'and it's the Jews' fault.' " Media Matters transcribes Mr. Beck's extrapolations: "So, if you look at this chart, you will see the CO2, and it mirrors the temperature. Now, what I find interesting about this chart is CO2 seems to naturally go up by itself. Hmmm, I don't remember those 200,000-year-old cars; I think Henry Ford wasn't around yet. I don't know if Fred Flintstone actually did have a car, but apparently, according to this chart, somebody was driving around in a car or an airplane. Maybe it was Al Gore giving the frickin speech at Stone Age colleges. I'm not sure, but it definitely correlates. Now, what happened where this thing falls apart—and it won't for most people who go to this movie—is he then projects what's coming. Again, it's the projection that's the problem. See, when you take a little bit of truth and then you mix it with untruth, or your theory, that's where you get people to believe. You know? It's like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in "and it's the Jews' fault." That's where things get a little troublesome, and that's exactly what's happening.
Now, if Al Gore's projection is right about the CO2 level going as high as he says it will, then the temperature here on planet Earth will be about 400,000 degrees. We'll be the sun; we'll be the frickin sun. But that's a huge "if."" [Other voices here.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2006
Screening sickness: this is Thursday
No time for foraging, winnowing and posting today; instead, it's all business: the press screening schedule runs from 10am-915pm, in this rotation: The Road to Guantanamo, Larry Clark's Wassup Rockers, Guy Maddin and Isabella Rossellini's My Dad is 100 Years Old, Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis, Luis Bunuel's Belle de jour and The Devil Wears Prada. Coming: DVD 5-4-3-2-1 and a long interview with Sydney Pollack about art, narcissism and 2.35 widescreen.
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 07, 2006
The Omen: 6/6/06=$12,633,6-6-6 (and a review)
Sometimes shameless grandstanding makes for fine entertainment: While few movies open wide on a Tuesday, Fox tub-thumps a 6/6/06 opening day gross of $12,633,666... An amusingly absurd tall tale and and eye-rolling turn for all those who have for any number of reasons over the decades through of NewsCorp's Rupert Murdoch as surely a Friend of the Beast. The press release is at the jump: here's a short review: "The third movie this season to exploit a gob of intrigue at the Vatican (after Mission Impossible III and The Da Vinci Code), Irish director John Moore’s remake of The Omen (*** 1/2 for design; ** 1/2 for thrills) (which contains a prominent thank-you to Richard Donner, the director of the 1976 edition, surely for entrusting them with a loan of his storyboards) is opulent bunkum, despite a mid-film sag that suffers from focusing on the least interesting characters in the concoction. The busy, witty production design includes an Escher-patterned parquet floor seen from a story up that would have caused Douglas Sirk to purse his mouth with insatiable envy. When lightning and rain aren’t swaddling the characters, the design consists largely of contrasts between bone white and rose red. Early glimpses of 9/11 and Katrina as being part of the signs in the Book of Revelation are among the handful of updates to the script, still solo-credited to original scribe David Seltzer. There’s a lot of fuss going on in the margins, rewarding the eye with a magpie’s nest of allusions, such as a sustained parallel to little Danny's Big Wheel cruises from The Shining; a madman’s atelier is part Ed Kienholz, part Cornelia Parker, like a Bible-paper-lined installation piece; and as the devil spawn, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick is a little scowler-monkey with digitally-enhanced azure orbs that he narrows in caricatures of child-spite, his black bowl haircut making him resemble figures in Maurizio Cattelan’s provocative sculptures. There is always one extra bit of flair: a black dog in distance will drool, and the gleaming, digitally enhanced drop will leave a glassy ping on the soundtrack. Liev Schreiber takes on the serioso Gregory Peck role as an American diplomat into whose arms the antichrist is urged; Julia Stiles has less fortune as the stressed-out mom. David Thewlis manages to be the most disheveled photographer in a pricey stripy jumper in a movie this year, and other notable actors like Michael Gambon and Pete Postlethwaite get to shout and fret. But we must love Mia Farrow for her shameless turn, more black Pollyanna than lurid camp, as the nanny who watches over li’l Damien: “For me, caring for children has been the joy of my life.” Moore’s most decadent satisfaction may be the shot of the nanny feeding Damien huge, red, red strawberries by hand, fruit that matches her bee-stung lip stain. 110m."
HIS DAY HAS COME – THE OMEN’S 6/6/06
OPENING DAY NUMBER IS $12, 633, 666 –
THE BIGGEST TUESDAY OPENING IN MOTION PICTURE HISTORY
LOS ANGELES …The signs were all around them – and U.S. moviegoers responded in staggering numbers to the 6/6/06 opening of the THE OMEN, with the thriller taking in $12, 633, 666 -- the largest Tuesday opening in motion picture history.
Twentieth Century Fox long-planned the unusual Tuesday opening to capitalize on the date – 6/6/06 – a sequence of numbers indicating the Mark of the Beast (Satan). The record opening day figure, ending in 666, also reflects the story’s Satan/Anti-Christ themes.
THE OMEN, a contemporary thriller based on the 1976 classic film, centers around a young boy named Damien, the son of an American diplomat and his wife. Damien’s family is unaware he is destined to become the Anti-Christ – until shattering events reveal the terrifying truth.
THE OMEN stars Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber Mia Farrow, and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick. John Moore directed from a screenplay by David Seltzer. Moore and Glenn Williamson are the producers.
One of the world’s largest producers and distributors of motion pictures, Fox Filmed Entertainment produces, acquires and distributes motion pictures throughout the world. These motion pictures are produced or acquired by the following units of FFE: Twentieth Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox Atomic, and Twentieth Century Fox Animation.
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2006
An Inconvenient Truth: an interview with Al Gore
My lengthy interview with Al Gore about An Inconvenient Truth, Net Neutrality, the legacy of investigative journalism; "the democracy crisis"; television news "metanarratives" and "information ecosystems" is at here at SharkForum. Despite what may seem like big-sounding neologisms, it was kinda fun.
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:40 PM | Comments (1)
Two Chicago photo exhibits: you are cordially invited
Chicago readers: you're invited to receptions for two shows of my photography this week; Esta Noche, with 33 of my photos, opens Wednesday from 6-9pm at the Rainbo Club, 1150 North Damen (at Division); I'm one of the artists in "Chicago Car Culture," which opens at the Cultural Center, Washington at Michigan, Friday from 6-8pm. [A preview of three images is below.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2006
Manny show: recollecting Farber and art
On the occasion of an art show in La Jolla and "Roads and Tracks," an upcoming collection of uncollected criticism, Duncan Shepherd at San Diego Reader offers personal reminiscence about near-90-year-old critic and painter Manny Farber. "The eventual meeting would occur in the last half of my senior year at Columbia University, a school chosen solely for the number of proximate movie theaters in New York City, 
my primary yardstick for Quality of Life. By this time Farber—I was still on last-name terms with him—had moved his column to Artforum, readily available in the college library, and in some ways his most hospitable venue ever, where his observations on movies could share space with views of Frank Stella, Robert Motherwell, and Andy Warhol... I got wind of a writing workshop run by Farber at the School of Visual Arts, ninety-some blocks southward in Manhattan... I would follow along on that trail come Spring... And then there he was, sitting six feet away from me, his prominent brow and forehead suggesting superhuman braininess, starting off fearlessly reading aloud from a recent piece he had penned on Luis Buñuel: "His glee in life is a movie of raped virgins and fallen saints...." "Manny... was a red-blooded American sports fan as happy to talk, in after-class adjournments to the coffee shop, about the Knicks as about the new Hitchcock or new Bresson. Too, he was preparing a show of his recent paintings in SoHo or thereabouts, a side to him I had known nothing about. Film buffs as a breed have a dangerous tendency to put on blinders to anything outside a movie screen, and the broadening of my horizons to the world of art studios, galleries, openings, and the bohemian digs he shared with his fellow painter and future wife, Patricia Patterson, was a healthy thing. Most fortunate of all, he was then putting together his own collection of film criticism, and I was flabbergasted and flattered to be called upon to help sift through the file box of clippings that dated back to the Forties, The New Republic, The Nation, The New Leader..." But what Shepherd appreciates about the Man is that "It was always about looking and seeing." [There's much more at the link, and it's as sweet a song of well-rounded, well-founded cinephilia as you'd want; Farber's paintings are at La Jolla's Quint Gallery, and there are reproductions of new paintings and drawings at the link. An appreciative, informed review of the show by Neil Kendricks, film curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, from the Union-Tribune, is here. Via GreenCine.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2006
World Trade Center: a prequel
At Filmmaker, Scott Macauley points up twelve minutes of mischief by 28-year-old Yalie artist Chris Moukarbel that's been making the Euro gallery circuit: a 12-minute film adapted from a bootleg script of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and its post-collapse setting, made with student actors. Over to you, Ollie; Sumner. [The entire project is at the link.] [UPDATE 21 JUNE 2006: The site is down. Paramount has filed a lawsuit.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Pulling the rug: on being Shatnered upon
It's fun to deadpan over fluff puffed by random publicistas, but then sometimes you get misconscrewed without the courtesy of a reacharound, such as The Case of "The Official William Shatner DVD Club." I quoted from their press release back in December and now find their nubby prose being boldly cited on their site and merch as if the lingua were Movie City Indie's (and Movie City News') very own seed pearls. The blog Heart On A Stick, as linked above, digs deep into the soul of the 75-year-old Canadian idol and writes, "Not only did Shatner's club quote one of its own press releases and attribute it to someone else, the quote they pulled from the release was one supposedly from Shatner himself.No one loves William Shatner like William Shatner does." Gentlemen: a hairpiece can be comical, but a lie is no joke.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2006
Crickets: We cannot allow a status quo gap!
While batting a fistful of interesting notions and bold assertions about what's happening to those who've made a career out of being a movie cricket in the evolving print-and-online battle, Anne Thompson's two most interesting insights are: writers shouldn't ex