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February 28, 2007
Hotel room portraits: Mira Nair, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Three movies today, four tomorrow: for now, two portraits. Mira Nair after talking about The Namesake and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck after The Lives of Others.
Bonus: Hannah Takes the Stairs director Joe Swanberg.
[photos © 2007 ray pride]
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)
TRAILER: Killer of Sheep
Charles Burnett's little-seen masterpiece will soon be playing around the country. Here's a glimpse.
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2007
Out of the Cave: what follows a Proposition
Proposition screenwriter, murder balladeer and all-round mustache man Nick Cave talks new projects with Bernard Zuel at Sydney Morning Herald upon the release of a new album by a four-piece group drawn from his Bad Seeds that he's calling Grinderman. "The 49-year-old father of four is in a well-fitted brown pinstripe suit with a blue patterned shirt, thin legs stretched out and ending in little black boots... [A]s ever he is dressed 
somewhere between stylish and sharp. That preternaturally black hair is long, swept back off the high forehead in a flourish, though you can see a bald patch at the crown... [A]musement twitches at the corners of his mouth. Well, what you can see of his mouth under an extravagant moustache. Grown for a film role but retained when he saw how much it offended some people, the mo is part bushranger, part '70s porn star. It looks somehow appropriate on the man who [wrote] the starkly brutal Australian western The Proposition. And he has described one of the film scripts he's working on now as a "British sex romp" called Death of a Ladies' Man. Its central character is a sex-addicted man who sells beauty products in Brighton, near Cave's home... "Well, I'm nearly 50 and I'm not doing anything that I don't enjoy any more... just don't involve myself in anything that doesn't look like I am going to enjoy it from the start. I guess the days of deep despair and anxiety in the studio are behind me. And it's been like that for a while, actually. It's not to say that I'm not without that in the writing process or when I'm on my own in the office and have to write songs. But pretty much we have an unspoken agreement that you don't bring your shit into the studio.... A lot of what I write these days I'm writing to entertain myself, and it's not that they're not serious songs any more, but there is a lightness to them I'm really pleased about."
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)
In the male: The Fast and the Curious
Older but new to me: A trailer recasting The Fast and the Furious as an Indie® coming-out picture, with Ben Gibbard crooning a Postal Service tune? (I am finally seeing why I was the one worth leaving.) That would be Robert Ryang, the New York editor who created Shining Redux. [More Ryang-arounds here.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)
[LOOK] Sun, Dance
Transcribing and writing up interviews from Park City to be finally done with all of that in anticipation of the next three festivals to come, I keep thinking of the lonely sound of the empty swimming pool in the condo at Sundance when I would wait for the elevator. The smell of chlorine and a sound, a gently sucking sound.
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
No valium required: reading The Departed
The Departed was one of a pair of Oscar-nommed scripts that studios made officially available for download; the other is Picturehouse's Pan's Labyrinth. Both are PDF downloads; from WB, here's the Oscar-winning stylings of Mr. William Monahan.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)
The Canadian behind The Danish Poet
Norwegian-born Montrealer Torill Kove, winner of the best short animation Oscar for The Danish Poet talks hand-drawn animation with the Globe & Mail. "I thought maybe if I was half my age, I would be tempted to uproot and try to live out here. But I'm rooted in Montreal . . . and I'm happy to continue what I do there, although my husband and 
I did discuss very briefly today the idea of coming here for his next sabbatical. But you never know," she said... The Danish Poet traces a complicated story told as simply as possible about chance encounters in Norway and Denmark leading to love... Given the film's comparatively simple animation and yet complex plot (all narrated by the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann), could Kove's win be viewed just as much as a reaction against the busy computer-generated animation in some of the other nominated films? "The [other] films nominated for the Oscar were not necessarily representative of what is going on in the international animation community, because there is quite a lot of handmade animation going on... It's starting to look to me like there's room for everybody. Of course when any of these big studios are going to put out a film, it's going to have high production values, and in all likelihood computer-animated. But I don't think it's indicative of any trend. Handmade animation is alive and well." [Excerpt here.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
This is the end, my friend: Scorsese's Oscar backstage scrum
As reported by the Oscar pool, here's the last question for Mr. Scorsese upon his Oscar win. "I would like to ask you your opinion about the provision of the results of second world war in Estonia I mean the intent of the Parliament to pass a bill to remove the monuments to liberate a soldier?" I'm sorry, I don't think I'm qualified to answer that. Sorry. I don't think I'm qualified to answer that. I wish I was. "Thank you. And congratulations."
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:01 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2007
Less is Moore: Run, Michael, Run
Junket Whore director Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine are SxSW preeming a dissection of the work on Michael Moore, called Manufacturing Dissent. John Anderson reports for NYTimes. “What he’s done for documentaries is amazing,” said Ms. Melnyk, 48, a native of Toronto and a freelance TV producer, who even now expounds on the good he says Mr. Moore has done. “People go to see documentaries now and, as documentary makers, we’re grateful.” But according to Mr. Caine, 46, an Ohio-born journalist and cameraman, the freewheeling persona cultivated by Mr. Moore [was] not quite what they encountered when they decided to examine his work. “As investigative documentarists we always thought we could look at anything we wanted... But when we turned the cameras on one of the leading figures in our own industry, the people we wanted to talk to were like: ‘What are you doing? Why are you throwing stones at the parade leader?’ ” Ms. Melnyk added, “We were very lonely.” [More at the link about the couple's allegations about Moore's methods.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
King of the movie world: profiling Departed's producer
The Observer's Craig McLean takes the measure of "the biggest Brit in Hollywood" and apparently it's not Sacha Baron Cohen. "I'm a film producer. How do you define a film producer? Wow... my job is to find screenplays, 
books, articles, and develop those into shooting scripts. Hire the actors, the director - sometimes even finance the movies," Graham King says. "He's involved all the way through overseeing the day-to-day running of the shoot of the film, overseeing the post-production, the release of the movie, the marketing campaigns, trailers. 'And trying to get the talent to do publicity, which is never easy. So really my job is, from start to finish - everything.' ... Scorsese says that King is different from other producers, insofar as his presence during filming is less about keeping a fidgety, money man's eye on budgets and schedules. 'I find him a comforting figure on the set,' says the director. 'Unlike some people in the past, who were alarming.'" [Much more at the link, including this promise: "'I would love to make a movie that Marty would star in. He's been in movies, and he did the voice in Shark Tale. But I think he's just a personality all of his own. When you travel with him he gets so much recognition everywhere he goes. He's bigger than the movie stars sometimes!']
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)
And thank you to every American who has not sued me so far
What constitutes a memorable acceptance speech? Sacha Baron Cohen offers pointers with a verbal one-armed push-up, from the Golden Globes.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
Holy guacamole Fatman! Harry inscribes
O'er at ScreenGrab, Bilge Ebiri trawls for Harry Knowles' liveblogging the Oscars: : "Shadow Oscar is fucking Creepy! ...I want an iPhone ...Will Ferrell - A Comedian at the Oscars... heh... THIS FUCKING RULES!!! LOL -- I'm gonna beat you down with my Nick award. Heh. John C Reilly from the audience... The Quadraplegic Hamlet Teacher starring Will Ferrell would be the funniest fucking film ever. This is the sort of musical number that I wanted!!! ... And the Oscar Goes To: MARIE ANTOINETTE. Oh I love this winner - very nervous - very cute. She's married to the owner of the Kuato belly!!! ... And THE WINNER IS.... PAN'S LABYRINTH -- Mexican Flags in the Audience!!!! THat's awesome!!! ... PIZZA ARRIVES!! What a great moment" [This pizza is from Fricano's.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)
Advanced cricketeering: Wolcott on Oscar
James Wolcott's drowsy Oscar live-blogging proffers a few fine, feathered jabs: "Jackie Earle Haley looks as if he's about to star in the Alistair Crowley story and Peter O'Toole's outfit looks as if it has hidden magic compartments, but otherwise everybody's perfect in every facet of perfection... If there's a dominant style in 
movies today (there isn't, but let's pretend there is), it's jagged-edged, impressionistic realism with a smoke trail of the apocalyptic, as best seen in Children of Man, Babel, and that documentary from Iraq that lost out to An Inconvenient Truth. It's the present as a futuristic glimpse of life as a free-fire zone where all of the formal structures have broken down and the only way to survive is to keep moving. Whereas what this year's Academy Awards reflect is the willful believe that hope is on the way, the worst can be averted, and that—oh, maybe I'll finish that thought tomorrow, if I can reconnect the dots."
Posted by Ray Pride at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)
Snub city: Errol Morris' Oscar short
Cellist, commercials maker and documentary guy Errol Morris' 4:42 Oscar prelude as he farts around with myriad nominees from behind the camera as they're against a white seamless is up at the Academy's site. Pictured: Morris making a mute moment with Thin Blue Line composer Philip Glass. (The short is preceded by a 30-second commercial for a car.)
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:43 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2007
Blood, gristle, tapestock and Steven: Soderbergh's double agentry
Steven Soderbergh is a double-agent between arthouse and multiplex, argues Ryan Gilbey in the Guardian. The blunt 44-year-old hyphenate had watched The Good German again the night before at the Berlin film festival in front of 2,000 viewers. "I became aware of just how extreme an experiment the film is... We were sitting there watching this ... weird ... movie. 
Not weird in a bad way, hopefully. But this strange process occurs as you watch it and go through different layers of feeling. My hope is that halfway through, the aesthetics fall away and you just deal with the narrative... What if Michael Curtiz had the freedoms in 1945 that I have today? If the Hays [C]ode hadn't existed, what would movies have been like?" Hit and miss, surely, as as Gilbey notes, "[if]f there's one director on the planet who can take bad notices on the chin, it's Soderbergh. When it became clear to him that no one [was going tos ee] The Good German, he was straight on the phone to Warner Bros advising the distributor to scrap the planned wide release, repackage the film for the arthouse, and hit the college towns. "I don't want to spend $15m chasing $2m," he shrugs." He's also "sick" of people talking about how "everything's great." "I like to hear about the blood and gristle of the creative process. I hate these fucking interviews where it's like there's sunshine shooting out of the director's mouth. So I try to be very careful about the syntax I employ. I don't want to suggest, 'We've done an amazing thing here'." Studio and Indie® are much the same to Soderbergh: "The rules are the same. Wherever you are in the industry, no one will encourage you to do anything other than what you've successfully done before." The important thing? "The important thing is not to panic."
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
Raiding Nader: on An Unreasonable Man
AusChron's Shawn Badgley counts votes with An Unreasonable Man directors Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan. Mantel: "Ralph had nothing to do with the movie except for being interviewed and yes, upon my demand, telling me people who might have the guts to be interviewed about opposing him." Skrovan: 
"Hagiography? This isn't Bill Clinton's 'The Man From Hope.' In the first minute of the film, we have people screaming at Ralph that he's "wicked" and should leave the country... If you think Ralph's image is restored, it's not because he sat for a portrait through a soft-focused lens. We hit him over the head with a bag of rocks, and he apparently stood up to it. Based on his comments at recent screenings, Ralph agreed to cooperate because he knew that telling the history of his early years and how a bunch of young people came to Washington with no power and managed to change things might possibly inspire a new generation to do the same." Mantel: "And if you hear anything about his personal life, please let us know: We're still digging."
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)
Forbidden masterpiece: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
It's soooooo illegal to show Todd Haynes' heartbreaking little masterpiece, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, but if you're lucky, the entire 43 minutes of this amazing artifact may still be up at Google Video at the link.
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 22, 2007
Indie returns Friday
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2007
Things we saved from the fire: Cannes' Chacun Son Cinema
Well, that makes more sense. When Cannes 2007 first mooted their super-auteur omnibus, reports were that the two-to-three minute shorts by directors previously honored by Cannes would be destroyed after a single showing. Today's news, per Chris Tilly at Time Out London is that the winsome minis will be shown on French TV simultaneously. 
Can le web be far behind? "A handful of the world's most internationally acclaimed directors have been commissioned... Walter Salles, Ken Loach, Roman Polanski, Nanni Moretti and the like have been asked to shoot three minute shorts which will then be compiled to create Chacun Son Cinema [To each his own cinema], a feature that will be screened simultaneously at the festival and on French television on May 20. The 35 directors: Theo Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Bille August, Jane Campion, Youssef Chahine, Chen Kaige, Michael Cimino, Ethan and Joel Coen, David Cronenberg, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Manoel De Oliveira, Raymond Depardon, Atom Egoyan, Amos Gitai, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, Aki Kaurismaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano, Andrei Konchalovsky, Claude Lelouch, Ken Loach, Nanni Moretti, Roman Polanski, Raoul Ruiz, Walter Salles, Elia Suleiman, Tsai Ming Liang, Gus Van Sant, Lars Trier, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar-Wai and Zhang Yimou. Festival director Gilles Jacob's statement from the Festival de Cannes website is below. "Times change. Then they return to their starting point, enriched by their own metamorphoses. When, more than a year go, we asked ourselves how to celebrate the 60th Festival de Cannes, we were sure at least of one thing: no return to the past, deadly commemoration or blissful self-congratulation, nothing which makes the future even more intimidating.
Anniversaries are beneficial in that they allow reflection and a new burst of energy. The energy to revitalise each of our actions, over and beyond even this symbolic year. The dynamism of our artistic choices as incarnated by our future poster. The tightening of our programming to be able to better highlight works of value. The pleasure of a new theatre. Then, an idea very quickly imposed itself: gather together the artists. Those who have the virtue - all the more critical today - of advancing cinema as an art form. Those who had confidence in Cannes and whom Cannes in turn assisted. Those who were free and wished to give news of themselves by via the cinema. In a word, celebrate 60 years of creation by a creation. In so doing, the festival would not salute simply the past six decades but rather the great filmmakers who come together here once a year to this place where the "spirit blows where it wishes", in the words of Robert Bresson, so often evoked in the film under preparation, a hearth where the artistic spark can once again burst aflame when the lights dim and the film begins...
A film therefore, but what film? The idea of the film composed of sketches does not date from only yesterday, and motion-picture history teems with more or less successful vignettes: The Seven Deadly Sins, Les baisers, The World's Greatest Swindles, Six in Paris, without forgetting the quite recent Paris, I Love You.
In this particular case, it was a matter of reuniting a group of creators - all universally famous - who represent both their countries and a proud conception of cinema, for a stroll around a unique theme, springboard for their inspiration. Hailing from 5 continents and 25 different countries, these 33 directors* will reveal, in 3 minutes each, their current state of mind as inspired by the motion-picture theatre - a second restriction but also, of course, a promise of Paradise! A family stroll back through memories, dreams, bursts of laughter, cries of alarm and emotion. The novelty of the form derives from its extreme division and the pleasant sweetness of its lightness. This writing does not depict a series of repetitions in theatres of astonishingly diverse appearance, but rather a series of improbable encounters - Wenders filmed in the Congo, Tsai Ming Liang in Kuala Lumpur and Cronenberg in the... toilets! No director had knowledge of the other fragments, or even synopses from his colleagues. They all accepted to discover them at the same time as the festival-goers themselves, on May 20th, as well as the general public, as it will be replayed the very same evening on television1.
Do they form a school? No, even if they all revisit the heart of things, they are individuals each expressing his aesthetic orientation, poets who capture a parcel of the world and transfigure it, each in their own way. They are highly industrious, they work hard and are not duped, for they take part in an art, the cinema, which under our very eyes creates its own history. The modesty of the budget allocated to each has stimulated them to be not only particularly creative, unexpected, comic, tender, cynical, contemplative, funny, moving or provocative, but accessible and audacious as well. It was when thinking about this melting-pot of cultures, origins and talents that we conferred on this feature film the title of To Each His Cinema. Let us hope that this great adventure, even if short-lived, will give audiences desire to travel in the company of filmmakers who have never ceased to astonish and renew creation. But is this not one of the very functions of art itself?
Gilles Jacob
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)
Patience of Bob: Altman observes?
While it closed after only one night on Broadway, the Reporter's Gregg Goldstein has a sterling note from the Robert Altman memorial tribute: Nashville writer Joan "Tewkesbury and [Tim] Robbins noted that the homage would have been the perfect Altman project. "It's called 'The Memorial,' and we are making the film as we speak," Robbins said. "There are cameras everywhere with subplots, subterfuge, whispered conversations and backstage preening. He's going to find us out, and God will laugh."
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)
Killer deal: THINK THINKfilm
Variety THINKs Killer, reporting that Manhattan movie mavens THINKFilm and Killer Films are combining their indie cred (and credit lines) "in a bid to stay competitive with their specialty-pic peers." Dade Hayes reports on an announcement that the pact "will effectively give Think a production-development arm and Killer a finance and distribution arm. The pact, which takes effect immediately, is not a merger but a partnership that both sides bill as 
complementary and game-changing. "Since our inception we have aimed to collaborate with people who share our taste and our approach," Killer topper Christine Vachon said in a statement. "We believe that the Think team and the Killer family couldn't be more like-minded and compatible." Mark Urman, Think's theatrical topper added in his statement that Killer has "the most amazing track record and depth of experience, yet have managed to retain the joy and enthusiasm of absolute beginners." (John Wells is expected to continue his Killer overhead deal.)
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2007
When blogs attack: was 300 booed at Berlin?
AJ Schnack has an entertaining, completist survey of the tempest-in-an-HTML surrounding blog-borne talk of alleged booing of 300 at its premiere. How do rumors start in the modern age? "High profile film appears at 
major European film festival, reports soon circulate the film is roundly booed, followed by further reports that question whether the booing was universal or was conducted by a small, yet vocal, minority of members of the press... So here we have Cinematical's Erik Davis filing a somewhat breathless report... that Zack Snyder's upcoming theatrical version of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 [inspired by the] Battle of Thermopylae, between the vast Persian army and a small number of well-trained Spartan warriors) had received a "chorus of boos" in Berlin... The problem? Some pretty big critics and film writers [disagreed]." They liked 300, including Variety's Todd McCarthy, who called it "blustery, bombastic, visually arresting." Anne Thompson at the Reporter calls it a "hugely entertaining, over-the-top action adventure." Schnack cites a raft of reviews, then notes that "Davis' initial post... initially failed to note that the screening in question was a press screening... In response, Davis first dismissed any previous positive reviews... But later, expressed concern and confusion over the vitriolic response: "Wow, never in my life have I received so many hurtful comments after a review... What I said happened at the screening, happened at the screening. Yes, it was my fault for not specficially stating it was a press screening early on—but I did add it in later—frankly, I had a deadline and another movie to catch and was asked to write the story up real fast." Reported GreenCine: "(F)or every cheerer at the press screening there was at least one booer, and the battle was on as the credits rolled." Wait, there was cheering at the screening too? And the cheering press was battling against the booing press during the end credits? Well, where is that in Davis' reporting?" [More entertaining and informative give-and-take at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
Mamet on "Bambi vs. Godzilla"
David Mamet collates his recent screeds apropos of Hollywood in the volume, "Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business"; Bloomberg's movie cricket, Rick Warner, has a kindly chat at Bloomberg HQ. "I don't hate the 
movie business. I'm fascinated by the movie business. It's the only absolutely essential intersection in the history of mankind between art and commerce. You could paint the picture and sell it or not. You can put on plays in your backyard. But you have to have a distribution process for movies." And movies, Mamet insists, should have as little fuckin' dialogue as possible. "If you've got a lot of dialogue in a movie, instead of camera angles and shots, you're doing something wrong because the audience understands the information much quicker when they're watching the shots... It's hard enough to do it for 10 seconds in a commercial, but it's even harder for a two hour film." and of the "Simpsons" salesman who seems based on Glengarry Glen Ross"' Shelley Levine Mamet observes, "Jackie Gleason once said 'The Flintstones' was just 'The Honeymooners' in disguise. He said it was the greatest honor of his life that they thought enough of him to demean his image."
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:57 PM | Comments (0)
John Schneider's Indie® revolution begins in the trunk of my '69 Charger
"Dukes of Hazzard" co-star John Schneider is miffed about the ways of the media, and he wants to change their wicked ways with Collier & Co. Hot Pursuit!, starring Schneider as J.R. Collier, a race car driver who has decided to quit racing and start his own used car sales company. Goes the PR: "Like Bo Duke would do, Schneider is promoting the film "by literally taking the movie theater-to-theater in the 
trunk of my orange '69 Dodge Charger." Twenty-five prints of the movie will be shown at 25 theaters every two weeks, and Schneider hopes to have played 300 screens by mid-September. "I've got to get everyone to see it so we can change Hollywood for the better," says Schneider. "We're taking it across the country because everyone involved believes in it passionately. We want to make more movies like this and this is how we're going to get started. We're distributing this movie ourselves, we don't have a big budget like the big studios," says Schneider, "The big brass told me the family demographic was a waste of time. I don't believe that. I think that the audience who watched 'Dukes of Hazzard' are still there and they are starved for a good, clean adventure comedy that the whole family can watch. I think the audience that watched 'Dukes of Hazzard' is... starved for a good, clean adventure/comedy that the whole family can watch." Schneider says his moviemaking is in reaction to the 2005 WB Dukes of Hazzard. "They totally missed the mark because of the cussing, sex and pot smoking. I'm not a prude," says Schneider, "it's possible to keep the audience entertained without potty humor and hard-core violence. It's just harder to do and not as chic."
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
Cache and carry: Howard remakes Haneke?
While Michael Haneke's American remake of his own Funny Games, starring Tim Roth, Michael Pitt and Naomi Watts (co-producing again after The Painted Veil) for Warner Independent, holds creepy allure, with rumors that he won't hold back on any of what make the earlier film so horrifying, news of Ron Howard's (The Da Vinci Code) expressed desire to have his way with Haneke's Cache is less toothsome. Report Diane Garrett and Steven Zeitchik in Variety, 
Grace is Gone prodco Plum Pictures has pulled Hidden out for the mogul, adding that the "Universal version, to be set in the U.S., is expected to amp up the suspense and consequences." One of the better examinations of the original comes from Robin Wood in Artforum: "Haneke's dominant concern is with the bourgeoisie—its inner tensions, its perpetual uneasiness, its guilt, the despair that underlies and disturbs its complacency... Haneke is perhaps the most pessimistic of all great filmmakers. But insofar as there are positive values embodied in his films they are expressed, albeit tentatively, through the children... This recurring and developing motif receives perhaps its most remarkable enactment in the final shot of Cache (during which, sensing the imminence of the end credits, half the audience typically gets up and leaves, missing the film's ultimate and crucial revelation, registered characteristically in distant long shot)." Wood says something of Haneke hardly ever said of Howard: "Every Haneke film represents a challenge to the spectator; his films demand the closest, most alert attention and repeated viewings (I began to feel confident that I had understood Cache somewhere around the third or fourth)... Many dislike Haneke's films. They are too dark, too depressing, too cruel. Even at their close there is seldom cause for optimism and the future remains uncertain."
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)
Know your Senator: Baltimore requests
Could another one bite the dust? "The recently restored 900-seat Senator Theatre in Baltimore has been foreclosed upon and may be auctioned if they do not come up with $109,000 by February 21. As of tonight (2/19), they're up to $92,500, but they still have $16,500 to go by 1:30 Wednesday afternoon. The Senator is independently run, not part of a chain, and it shows both first-run and classic films. Please consider making a donation to help them meet their goal," they write. Go to the link for the latest, including the possibility of donations via PayPal.
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2007
[TRAILER] Barely legal: Simpsons at 18
A teaser and three full trailers so far: how many in-jokes and cross-references can one movie unearth from 18 years of series episodes? The Simpsons Movie: Homer wept.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)
Idi Amin haha: Last King a hit in Kampala
The Scotsman's Rob Crilly reports on The Last King of Scotland's debut in Kampala: it's a hit. "Memories and tears came for... Ugandans invited to watch the film, which tells the [fictional] story of a young Scottish doctor who finds himself at the centre of the dictator's brutal regime. Some had warned it might open old wounds in a country riven by civil war and tribal rivalry... The film's Scottish star James McAvoy and director Kevin Macdonald said they were delighted at the reaction [as they] flew into Kampala for an emotional first screening in Africa... Macdonald admitted to nerves at returning to the country where the film was shot: "We were waiting with trepidation to see the result at the screening." ... McAvoy, wearing a kilt, described the audience reaction. "There were a lot of tears," he said "The film could always have been viewed as another film about the white man in Africa - although in this case the white man is a bastard. But they seemed to understand this was a multi-faceted portrayal of a complicated man like Amin." [For an eccentric glimpse of what the movie meant in Uganda and the local movie biz, here's an interview with
Sidney Mukasa, a marketing manager for the local Cineplex Cinema.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)
Coma baby lives: New Line's Shaye daze
A few days before the release of Number 23, another New Line release getting surly early reviews, NYTimes' Sharon Waxman's fed an exclusive by New Line, 
with founder-topper Robert Shaye describing the distraction of having been in a medical coma for six weeks in 2005, stricken with a lethal form of pneumonia similar to what killed Jim Henson; directing kiddiepic The Last Mimzy in the past year, and getting into litigious spitball with Lord of Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson. The 67-year-old executive was out for six weeks, "in a coma in a New York City hospital, fending off death from a sudden infection... over many months quietly made his way back to health... Mr. Shaye’s illness, the seriousness of which was not disclosed to the public before now, apparently derailed the studio for a portion of 2005 and affected the slate in 2006. And last year he took time to direct his own movie... “After last year I will take a more considered approach to the green-light process... I will act as more of an adversary, or critic, of the decisions advocated by others.. It’s difficult to explain, but I have a clarity of thought... which was one of the gifts” of his illness... I certainly appreciate the normal functioning of life a lot more.” Waxman points out that Shaye's temper still gets the best of him, especially in the spat over profits with Jackson. "Mr. Shaye said that he made the statement “in a moment of emotion” but did not regret it."
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)
Samouraï rising: Peter Webber's teen dream
Peter Webber remembers exactly where he was when he first saw Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï. He was 17, had bunked off games, and had headed straight for his favourite hang-out, the Electric cinema in Notting Hill. then a squalid fleapit, rather than the chi-chi picture house it is today. "I had managed to sign on for football and rugby, both of which I hated," he says. "The school playing fields were a bus ride away, so I'd just catch a different bus and spend the afternoon at the Electric. The rugby people thought I was playing football, and vice versa. I did get caught.... But by then I'd seen a lot of strange European films from the 1960s and '70s." The movie that made the greatest impact, "like pop music," on the young brain of the director of The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Hannibal Rising was Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 hitman thriller, Le Samouraï. "I'd heard a bit about Melville because, being a very pretentious teenager, I had got into the French New Wave filmmakers and had read that Melville was one of their forebears, as well as being a link between New Wave French cinema and American film noir. And what I loved about Le Samouraï was how abstract it was. Hardly anything happens. It is very still, very pure." [Webber describes the film at the link; it's available on Criterion DVD.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
Ryan Gosling's Oscar nom: All that money and my ass on the line
"We needed to prove to the industry that we're real" after a 2006 cash infusion, ThinkFilm's Mark Urman tells Anne Thompson in the Reporter, "A lot of actors make indie movies for prestige, not just money, to prove their chops. What better way to communicate our efficacy as a desirable home for these films than by landing an Oscar nomination for a low-budget movie about a crack addict?" DVDs were sent out early. Critics in larger cities raved. " Then came Urman's worst fear. No Golden Globe nomination for Gosling, even with slots divided between the Globes' comedy and drama best actor categories. "I took antacids for days," Urman says... "The campaign was not about a crack addict," Urman says, "or a failure of liberal ideals. It was all about an explosive brilliant young talent." Urman's talent for publicity and rep for directness were put to the test when Gosling was nominated on January 23. "It was surreal... It was what we'd been working toward for so long... When it happened, I realized what would have happened if it hadn't happened. All that money and my ass on the line."
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
Viewing: Emmanuel Lubezki's natural light for Children of Men
Emmanuel Lubezki's got the American Society of Cinematographers nod for his inspired work on Children of Men: this promo clip offers several glimpses why.
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
Korine cinema: 'Mr. Lonely' is not going to be a Prozac film
An unofficial Harmony Korine website has posted the writer-director's interview with Screen International's Fionnuala Hannigan about his latest, possible Cannes-bound picture, Mr. Lonely. [PDF download]. Korine talks about how his "dark years" got him to his new, $8.2 million movie, produced by designer-cineaste agnes b. (with costume contributions as well), 
collaborating with DP Marcel Zyskin (a frequent colleague of Michael Winterbottom), rehab, burning down two houses, and becoming a British resident. "Shot in the jungles of Panama (where Korine's parents live), Scotland and Paris, Mr. Lonely is about a Michael Jackson impersonator, played by Diego Luna, who runs into a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton). He winds up in a Scottish-based commune of impersonators, including Marilyn's husband Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant) and their daughter Shirley Temple, [as well as] the Queen of England (Anita Pallenberg), the Pope (James Fox)... and Abraham Lincoln (Richard Strange)." (The Panama portion stars David Blaine and Werner Herzog.) "I'd been making movies since I was virtually a kid," Korine tells Hannigan, "and it had always come very easily. At a certain point after [julien donkey-boy, I started to have this general disconnect from things. I was really miserable with where I was. I began to lose sight of things and people started to become more and more distant. I was burned out, movies were what I always loved in life and I started to not care. I went deeper and deeper into a dark place and to be honest movies were the last thing I was thinking about—I didn't know if I was going to be alive. My dream was to evaporate. I was unhealthy. Whatever happened during that time, and I won't go into details, maybe it was somekthing I need to go through." Of the finished product, the mind behind Gummo assures, "It's not going to be a Prozac film."
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Not another human being has seen this film: Coppola's Youth Without Youth
Francis Ford Coppola put up about $20 million or so of his own dosh to shoot his new Youth Without Youth "with, for once, zero interference from studio executives and other finance types," writes ChiTrib's Marc Caro. "As he spoke on the phone 
Wednesday from his Napa Valley, Calif., home, he was about to view the movie with its sound mix in place for the first time. This week it will become "the totally finished movie." He hasn't shown it to anybody, and subsequently it has no distributor. "Part of the philosophy of this is that a movie is a different thing when it's finished and has all of its elements.. so after the 22nd, we'll start deciding the best people to deal with. But not another human being has seen the film." [The feature's site is here, including photos of Old Bucharest and a crew list consisting almost entirely of Romanians.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)
Viewing: President's day: pre-Zapruder footage
The Sixth Floor Museum of Dallas chooses a tragically inappropriate date to release a newly found 8mm snippet of President John F. Kennedy before he was murdered. (In the MSNBC coverage inside the clip, the network anachronistically refers to the 1963-shot home movie as a "video.") This is the museum's description: "This newly-discovered home movie of the fateful Kennedy motorcade was recently donated to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. The photographer, George Jefferies, filmed President and Mrs. Kennedy on Main Street at Lamar in downtown Dallas less than 90 seconds before the assassination. Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, assigned to protect Jackie Kennedy, can be seen riding on the left rear bumper. The donor, Wayne Graham, is the son-in-law of Mr. Jefferies."
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
Viewing: Robert Wilson's Brad Pitt venture
A blue-hued brick wall and Brad Pitt in a light rainfall bearing only white boxers and a pistol? VOOM HD Networks gave avant-garde imagist Robert Wilson the money and the motive to put several famed figures in motion; the use of movement is consistent with his intriguing body of work. Forthcoming portraits: Willem Dafoe, Marianne Faithfull, Jeanne Moreau, Steve Buscemia, Lucinda Childs, Peter Stormare, Dita von Teese, Mikhail Baryshnikov, "JT Leroy," Juliette Binoche, Robert Downey Jr., Alan Cumming, Isabelle Huppert, Winona Ryder, Sumo world champion Byamba Ulambayar, a horned frog and a South American porcupine. [As seen on the cover of Vanity Fair!]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Viewing: Lukas Moodysson's latest—Snot falls, urine flows
Via Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay, a very odd glimpse of Container, the latest experimental film from Lukas Moodysson, director of Show Me Love; Terrorists: The Ones They Sent Down; and Lilja 4-Ever, narrated by Jena Malone. [A second, equally cruddy and enigmatic clip is below.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)
Pantheon's labyrinth: Adrian Martin on responsiblity and the cricket
"[W]riting about film is always about capturing fugitive sensibilities as they form and die, at a very rapid rate, within the cultural sphere," writes Aussie film cricket Adrian Martin in an email exchange on 
"Responsibility and Criticism" with Spanish magazine Mirades de cine as published by the Italian film mag Cinemascope. In the 14-page email exchange [PDF download], Martin also considers the future of film criticism as practiced on the internet, his own experiences with classical and contemporary cinephilia, musing on Abel Ferrara's Mary, and a tidy but heartbreaking anecdote about seeing Rio Bravo in a movie palace in the suburbs of Melbourne when he was 20, "like a poignant scene from a Victor Erice film." It's the most lucid and bracing exploration I've read in some time about what ought to be going on before and after the lights go down on the professional film cricket. "[N]o film is truly old, or in the past! Every cinephile should have the experience of watching a silent film. I had this experience watching some Jean Epstein films recently—and suddenly feeling confronted with something that is still, today, newer and more modern than we ourselves are as spectators. There is a good, simple reason for this: the cinema is always a laboratory, a field of experimentation: experimentation with image, sound, performance, gesture, light, colour, music, rhythm, storytelling, etc. No experiment is ever exhausted, and no aesthetic or cultural problem is solved for all time. So, when we return to old films, we therefore see that they are completely contemporary to us and our concerns, if we are open to the traces of experimentation in them—there are always new ideas in old films. I do not regard the ‘cinema of the past’ as something neat, clean, classical, canonical. Cinema is always ‘at the crossroads’, at every moment of its existence, and so are we.
That is why the art of programming is important: placing the present and past cinema always into a fruitful encounter, or an Eisensteinian dialectical clash... [W]e must get further than just ‘personal tastes and preferences’! I deeply believe that 
taste is a kind of prison for oneself—when a critic finds himself or herself always rigidly repeating the same opinions, the same positions, the same likes and dislikes (that is the kind of bad posture which Pauline Kael bequeathed to criticism). Critics should feel free to bring in their own emotional reactions to films—it is hard to keep them out of writing—but the phenomenon known as the ‘gut feeling’ or gut reaction can become a terrible end in itself: ‘this film makes me angry or it makes me happy, so it's a rotten film or a great film, and I’m not going to discuss it any further.’ The important thing is always argument, analysis, logic. I have an irrational side (critics need it), but my rational side believes in logical demonstration: if you can prove to me that what are saying about a film makes internal sense, if you can. marshal the evidence from the film itself to back up what you say, then I too can be persuaded to disregard my own first gut reaction and explore that film again in a new, more open way." [Soooooo much more at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 18, 2007
Waning Waxman: Bordwell revises writer's 1990s nostalgie
David Bordwell offers some cogent reservations against the "Rebels on the Backlot" author's recent, undernourished assay of several slowed careers. "Why, asks Sharon Waxman in the New York Times, have the much-touted directors of the 1990s slowed their output so drastically? [Many] of their generation have, Waxman points out, “taken long hiatuses before stepping back up to the plate.” Immediately, exceptions spring to mind. Some filmmakers who built their careers in the 90s are pretty prolific. 
Soderbergh is the prime instance; he sometimes releases two movies a year. Christopher Nolan has given us several one-two punches: Memento in 2000 and Insomnia in 2002, Batman Begins in 2005 and The Prestige in 2006. James Mangold is now doing postproduction on 3:10 to Yuma, his seventh movie since 1995. Kent Jones reminds me that Richard Linklater has finished 12 features in under 16 years! ... Waxman’s explanations, culled from interviews with Hollywood cognoscenti, intrigue me. Probably no one explanation will provide the answer, but it’s worth thinking about the many forces at work." Bordwell's analysis is well worth reading in full; he agrees with Waxman that "[f]ilmmakers undergo closer scrutiny and quicker judgments than at earlier times. Critics, audiences, and studios pounce on every failure," citing the fury aimed toward M. Night Shyamalan after Lady in the Water. Of the idea that filmmakers are pressured to go commercial, Bordwell cites "a producer friend [who] commented... that a lot of indie filmmakers whom he meets sincerely want to direct big films. Bryan Singer, who admires Spielberg, hasn’t made a secret of his desire to be a mainstream filmmaker." Of the supposed lack of a shared creative community, he writes, "Oddly enough, James Mottram’s book 'The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood' maintains that just this sort of community exists among several 90s directors. The book opens with a meeting of the Pizza Knights, a cadre of young filmmakers who gather every month to watch 70s classics. The group includes Fincher, Jonze, Anderson, Peirce, and Payne...—the very directors whom Waxman lists as surprisingly unproductive. They may not bond with older directors, but according to Mottram they constitute a pretty tight group." Bordwell also cites a "Gen X' lassitude;
"the possibility of burnout"; and "making just one film takes a long time." Most notable is this point: Hong Kong and Japanese directors can be more prolific because the industry is more small-scale and there isn’t the same demand to promote the film afterward. Johnnie To turns out two films a year, Miike Takeshi [pictured, a Miike-san image] more than that. They get to develop a body of work that, despite its ups and downs, has a texture lacking in one- or two- or three-shot wonders." [More good stuff at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)
[TRAILER] Two times: Hou remakes Red Balloon with Juliette Binoche
All right, this is perverse and it better be perversely beautiful: here's the trailer for Hou Hsiao-hsien's French-language remake for the videogame era, of the classic The Red Balloon, starring Juliette Binoche. Plot: A 7-year-old boy has a new friend, a red balloon that follows him across Paris. The trailer's accompanied by a poppy song, as you'd expect with Hou; the images feel vaguely Kieslowskian; and it looks serenely thrilling. Cannes, peut-être? Link or download here.
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)
Laurel canyon: movie marketers cultivating kudzu
In the WaPo, Rachel Beckman has a consideration of the kudzu-like proliferation of laurels in movie promotions. When she was 16, she writes, "laurels helped me find my way. Those gold, leafy parentheses 
on VHS boxes and advertisements denoted that the film had competed at a festival, Cannes or Sundance, and would be arty, foreign, dark or weird. Just how I liked 'em... Laurel leaves have spread like weeds, growing most heartily during the run-up to the Oscar nominations. And in their ubiquity, laurels seem to have lost all meaning. Browse today's movie ads and they're found stamped on mainstream fare: Miss Potter, The Departed, Happy Feet." Beckman counts 17 sets of laurels on ads for Babel. "The proliferation is pretty out of hand," says Stephen Garrett, co-founder of Kinetic Trailerworks, responsible for tralers for Half Nelson, Maria Full of Grace and Spellbound, but says that he goes for "quantity over quality." Picturehouse's Bob Berney suggests the undergrowth "probably has something to do with Harvey Weinstein, as many innovations in independent film marketing do." The Weinsteinco topper emails Beckman: "The art-house-going and upscale audiences know what the laurels mean... They understand the film festival circuit and know that awards from those festivals signify quality in film." [More shoptalk at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)
Viewing: Thanking the Academy: Vivien Leigh
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cinema holds more than one story: Tykwer on Berlin Alexanderplatz
Tom Tykwer offers an epic appreciation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz upon its restoration by the Fassbinder Foundation, led by Juliane Lorenz, and its first showings ever in 35mm in Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, it's a long piece, and only in German. Tykwer considers the bold masterpiece to be "an experimental narrative," and not a TV movie at all. Among the comparisons the writer-director makes are to the theater work of Christoph Marthalers and Pina Bausch, films of Jacques Doillon and Bruno Dumont's shaggy, savage Twenty-nine Palms. The fifteen-hour opus, released in the US on VHS in the 1980s, is already available in a German DVD edition, without subtitles; a Criterion edition is in the offing.
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)
Los Olvidados' lost boys: DBC Pierre considers
As a print of Los Olvidados (aka The Forgotten Ones; The Young and the Damned) opens in London for a month's run in the National Film Theatre's Buñuel retrospective, Booker Prize-winning novelist DBC Pierre, who grew up in Mexico City, considers its impact in the Observer: "I was raised behind walls in Mexico City, but still ran the streets like a rat part-time, a beady-eyed troll among big-eyed statuettes glazed in snot. Coming from an affluent place, it doesn't take many street beggars to thrust you into a moral crisis trying to rationalise wealth. If a mother begging with a dead baby in her arms doesn't do it, the knowledge that her kin might also borrow the body for begging will... Surrealist director Luis 
Buñuel was the instrument it took to publicly articulate the truth about poverty in that city, that absence of love. When he came to live in Mexico City in the late 1940s, it was nearly 20 years since he had filmed his scathing Land Without Bread, amid what he saw as the peasantry's filth and stupidity in his native Spain. It was as if the energy behind his art, already frustrated by years in exile, even after an extravagant start alongside Salvador Dalí, took the collision with Mexico's Federal District as a challenge to his very ethos. The result was an explosion captured in a masterpiece of cinema... Los Olvidados took barely three weeks to make in 1950 on a shoestring budget, but hit the world screen like a fist through plate glass. Mexican officials of the day were rabid, critics stunned, and the work won Buñuel the prize for best director at Cannes the following year." A key insight: "Despite not being one of Buñuel's surreal works, its framework provided a vehicle for some of his most striking visual effects. After all, where does a surrealist turn when the cruelty he wishes to depict has itself reached surreal depths? Realism. He simply screamed a truth." [A closer reading at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)
Miramax's fit Brit: Battsek's biz
Daniel Battsek's Miramax gets the Brit brag in the Observer. The "refocusing" of the runamok previous incarnation is described by James Robinson. "For an ambitious studio executive, the prospect of stepping into Harvey Weinstein's shoes must be a daunting one... But Daniel Battsek, the 
48-year-old Briton who runs Miramax, the Hollywood studio Weinstein founded, bears his newfound status as one of the most powerful Brits in the film industry with ease. Battsek, an industry executive for 20 years, is no novice, but he is everything the gregarious Weinstein isn't: modest, polite and business-like. But, like Weinstein, he can be ruthless... which is why Disney, which bought Miramax in 1993, entrusted him with the studio after Weinstein and his brother Bob left under a cloud in 2005... Battsek reports to Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook but, as president of Miramax, he exercises considerable autonomy [and is] a purveyor of pictures on a smaller scale; films with an independent quality, if not an arthouse sensibility." [More on Battsek's background, a Miramax timeline, and the regal marketing of The Queen and other successes at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2007
Viewing: Straub-Huillet's Europa 2005–27 Octobre
The final film by the difficult-to-see Straub-Huillet, an unsigned 12-minute short by Jean-Marie Straub and the late Danielle Huillet. In Cinema Scope 29, publisher-editor Mark Peranson noted Huillet's passing: "As the year ends, we are already seeing an increase in the number of cinema “celebrity” deaths, by dint of the fact that as the 20th century progressed, the number of celebrities increased exponentially. Danièle Huillet stands above them all. Her death must be considered the most significant film event of 2006. And I say this having only seen four of Huillet and Straub’s films—the latest, on a German-subtitled print with which I had to follow along using an English dialogue list." [More at that link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
Canadian animator Ryan Larkin dead at 63
Canadian film animator Ryan Larkin, subject of Chris Landreth's Oscar-winning 2004 short Ryan, is dead at 63, writes Lee-Anne Goodman of Canadian
Press. "Larkin, who was himself nominated for an Academy Award in 1969 for his psychedelic animated short Walking died on Wednesday in St-Hyacinthe, Quebec. "He was not only an artistic inspiration but he was very charming—he captivated a room; he was always the centre of attention," Laurie Gordon, his friend and manager, said... "He just had that magnetism. He really had something; he had the 'it' factor. He could have been a rock 'n' roll singer." Larkin was a celebrated animator and filmmaker [at] 19 when he started working for the National Film Board of Canada in 1963. His work during his 14 years with the film board earned him dozens of awards... But Larkin later succumbed to a combination of creative block and alcohol and cocaine problems, taking to the streets of Montreal as a panhandler." I hope a Canadian colleague who commented thusly does not mind so much: "He was a talented artist, a mean drunk, a dirty pervert, and a tragic loss." [Details on Larkin's recent efforts, persisting after his diagnosis of lung cancer, at the link; you can read more about his shorts for MTV and his unfinished final film in this December 2006 dispatch from CBC.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)
Seven true Lives of Others
Real-life stories of how the East German Stasi, or secret police, recruited informers, amplifying the story in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, is the subject 
of a lengthy piece by Hannah Booth in the Guardian. "It's more than 17 years since the Berlin Wall fell, that chilly night on November 9 1989. To the sound of car horns and cheers, East Germans fled to the west in their thousands. Those skinny teens in stonewashed jeans and leather jackets dancing on the wall will now be approaching their 40s; those boxy Trabants streaming through the Brandenburg Gate, now Audis and BMWs. But the past hasn't been entirely forgotten. In fact, Germany is currently experiencing a resurgence of interest in what life was really like in the German Democratic Republic. After years of silence followed by sugary nostalgia ("ostalgie") for kitsch food brands and clothes, former East Germans are taking a harder, more critical look at life under the constant gaze of the Stasi... Both East German citizens and West German politicians were spied upon by the Stasi, who recruited an extraordinary one in five of the civilian population to act as unofficial informers. Little surprise, then, that even with the archives open, a national paranoia remains over who was victim and who collaborator." [Seven victims of the former communist state tell their stories at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
Glimpsing the divine: Is Anna Faris God?
Reid Rosefelt at Zoom-In shares that fair delusion and a big Smiley Face, and he thinks Gregg Araki's newest is the Citizen Kane of stoner pics. He compares his reaction to Borat: "I had a wonderful time, but watching that film for me was like encountering Will Ferrell's bare butt—always a welcome sight, but you've seen it before. Cohen I knew; Faris stoned was new. And that girl had me at first toke. I don't think I'm giving away too much to 
say that Smiley Face is 84 minutes of Anna Faris walking around LA completely baked... There are some moments of high drama--whether she should eat her nerd roommate's cannabis-laced cupcakes, and at a certain point in the plot she comes into possession of a first edition of the Communist Manifesto... Faris takes this thin-as-a-Matzoh premise and with nothing more than her gaping Lucille Ball rubber-mouth, her glassy-eyed stare, her wacked-out inventiveness, and her complete absence of vanity, spins something awe-inspiring out of what would have been a really stupid movie... I can easily imagine her slapping John Cleese with a fish. We can never have enough funny people."
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)
Eschewing creative pride: how Peter Morgan types
Last King of Scotland co-writer and The Queen screenwriter Peter Morgan talks toolbox with with the Reporter's Martin Grove. "Morgan told me he's "an early morning man (and writes on) a computer. I use Final Draft.
In this instance, I did a bit of research and then I worked only from my imagination. I wrote the film how I wanted it to be and then I did the research to fact[-]check my imagining. I didn't really do all the research to find out which way to go because I find that way I can lose the wood for the trees, as it were. I actually need to have a view beforehand. I write what I'm hoping it is or how I'm imagining it is and then I go and fact check that. And if it's wrong, then I'll change it. If it's right and in sequence, great. But it allows me to keep the broad sweep of my own imagining." Does he structure his screenplays using note cards on a board? "No, I don't do that at all... But I do work from an outline and I just constantly revise the outline. The reason I work from an outline is that it's somehow less heartbreaking to tear an outline up than it is to throw a screenplay away. I can cope with any amount of structural failures on an outline. They don't dent me or prick my confidence whereas if I was to hand in a screenplay that had profound structural problems that would become exposed and that would become clear. That would be devastating and it would be hard to go back whereas I have no creative pride invested in an outline."
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)
Penn's station: Arthur's available
Vet director Arthur Penn talks to the Reporter uponan honor at the Berlinale: "Did you consider yourself part of the counter-culture? I did. I was. I knew all these people. But I also could see their dream would not be fulfilled. What do you think of cinema today? The British are making some good films. "The Queen." "Venus." What directors working today impress you? Jim Jarmusch. Stephen Frears. Wes Anderson. Still available for hire as a director yourself? Sure.
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)
Tortuously entertaining: the mind behind 24
New Yorker's Jane Mayer has an epic 8-page profile of Fox's 24 majordomo Joel Surnow and the depiction of torture, edging into the tale in the magazine's fashion. "Surnow is 52, and has the gangly, coiled energy of an athlete; his hair is close-cropped, and he has a “soul patch”—a smidgen of beard beneath his lower lip... Surnow’s production company, 
Real Time Entertainment, is in the San Fernando Valley, and occupies a former pencil factory: a bland, two-story industrial building on an abject strip of parking lots and fast-food restaurants. Surnow, a cigar enthusiast, has converted a room down the hall from his office into a salon with burled-wood humidors and a full bar; his friend Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host, sometimes joins him there for a smoke. (Not long ago, Surnow threw Limbaugh a party and presented him with a custom-made “24” smoking jacket.) ... In 24, "[f]requently, the dilemma is stark: a resistant suspect can either be accorded due process—allowing a terrorist plot to proceed—or be tortured in pursuit of a lead. Bauer invariably chooses coercion. With unnerving efficiency, suspects are beaten, suffocated, electrocuted, drugged, assaulted with knives, or more exotically abused; almost without fail, these suspects divulge critical secrets [unlike in the real world]... Surnow, who has jokingly called himself a “right-wing nut job,” shares his show’s hard-line perspective. Speaking of torture... “Isn’t it obvious that if there was a nuke in New York City that was about to blow—or any other city in this country—that, even if you were going to go to jail, it would be the right thing to do?” ... "In many episodes... heroic American officials act as tormentors, even though torture is illegal under U.S. law." Mayer makes a thorough catalog of the style of torture in the series and its implications. "Howard Gordon, who is the series’ “show runner,” or lead writer, told me that he concocts many of the torture scenes himself. “Honest to God, I’d call them improvisations in sadism,” he said. Several copies of the C.I.A.’s 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual can be found at the “24” offices, but Gordon said that, “for the most part, our imaginations are the source. Sometimes these ideas are inspired by a scene’s location or come from props—what’s on the set.” Gordon worries when “critics say that we’ve enabled and reflected the public’s appetite for torture. Nobody wants to be the handmaid to a relaxed policy that accepts torture as a legitimate means of interrogation... But the premise of ‘24’ is the ticking time bomb. It takes an unusual situation and turns it into the meat and potatoes of the show.” He paused. “I think people can differentiate between a television show and reality.” [Much compelling reading at the link, including complaints by the miliary about the licensing of torture in the series, as well as Surnow's new Fox News Channel satire series, "The Half Hour News Hour," positioned as a conservative riposte to Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
Manny in Manhattan: Farber's painting
Retired film cricket Manny Farber is a reknowned painter as well, and he's included in the show "High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975," as reviewed in NYTimes by Roberta Smith. The curator, she writes, "has done her best with the academy’s galleries, carefully sorting artists who stuck to canvas on stretchers and those who set out for points unknown, including the floor and the video monitor. Yet the show demonstrates that certain techniques endured. Important among them was the propensity to get very physical with paint and to take into new terrain the pours and drips of Jackson Pollock and the staining technique of Color Field painting. In one large gallery stain painting is rebelliously pushed off the stretched canvas in vibrantly colored and variously two-sided, sewn, beaded and torn works by Manny Farber, Alan Shields and Alvin Loving." [More about the exhibitions at the link as well as here; the show ends April 22. National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street. 212.369.4880.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2007
Into the Breach with the Oscar speech: Billy Ray
"I think about Oscars all the time. Academy Awards mean the world to me," Breach director Billy Ray confesses to St. Paul Pioneer Press' Chris Hewitt. 
"The writers and directors I measure myself against—Francis Ford Coppola, Spielberg, Bob Fosse—all won Oscars, and I want to be on that list. Those awards are hugely important to me, and anyone who knows me will tell you I talk about them all the time.... I don't think I've ever been without an Oscar acceptance speech... Whatever I'm working on, I'm always fantasizing I'll get to do it. That's why you work so hard in this business—to get to make that speech."
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)
Cut from the gut: contra rapid edits
Should film editing slow down? Todd Longwell surveys in the Reporter. "[W]hat was once daring is now commonplace. Today, aided by the speed and ease of nonlinear computer editing systems... editors routinely have films jumping back and forth through time and scrolling swiftly through multiple plots without visual or narrative signposts to indicate where they are in the story. And viewers raised on the dramatic juxtapositions of music videos, video games and other high-impact visual media barely blink an eye." Says Blood Diamond editor Steven Rosenblum, "I cut from the gut, essentially... Whatever interests me is how I go... [T]here's the scene where we see the boys indoctrinated into the (Revolutionary United Front). It's a musical sequence with African rap music playing, but if you look at the montage itself, it is nonlinear. It goes back and forth in time and in structure, but the emotional tone of the piece is consistent, and therefore, audiences just accept it completely." Thelma Schoonmaker: "We use it where we need it, but we're not for it all of the time. Scorsese's always saying, 'Whatever happened to the shot, the beautiful shot like Kubrick makes? It can last for a long time, and you can watch it for a long time."' Great directing, she says of a specific set of choices in The Departed, is "knowing when to a use a close-up and when not to." [A neat example from Children of Men is also cited.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)
Cremater: Matthew Barney ship ablaze
BBC reports that Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 co-star, whaling ship Nisshin Maru, burst into flames in the Ross Sea at dawn Thursday. "About 120 crew members were taken off the vessel but 30 stayed behind to tackle the fire while one is still unaccounted for... There are fears the vessel could cause some environmental damage.... New Zealand maritime officials - whose country is responsible for search and rescue operations in the area - said the blaze had nothing to do with whaling protesters [two to three days' sailing distance away] but was possibly caused by a mechanical fault... New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter said that while the safety of the whaling ship's crew was the top priority, "we are also gravely concerned about the environmental risk to Antarctica's pristine environment, if the ship is sufficiently damaged to begin leaking oil".
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:52 PM | Comments (1)
Lord of Dogtown: Hickenlooper slangs Zimmerman in St. L.
Factory Girl's George Hickenlooper talks to hometown cricket Joe Williams at St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 
"George Hickenlooper wants to set the record straight. He never had to reshoot any footage...The sex scene between Sienna Miller and Hayden Christensen was not real. [And] Bob Dylan is an arrogant jerk. "You can quote me on that," says Hickenlooper... "He had his family threaten to hurt me," Hickenlooper says. "But I don't give a damn about Bob Dylan. I never even liked his music, except when his songs were covered by the Byrds." ...Hickenlooper says he did re-edit the film, but only to accommodate some budget changes and the looming Oscar deadline. And he is adamant that the controversial sex scene was just an example of some very good acting... [h]e also confirms that certain members of cast and crew dabbled in hallucinogens to reproduce the vibe of the psychedelic '60s. But Hickenlooper says he wasn't one of them. "Making a movie looks glamorous when you're growing up in St. Louis," he says. "But making a good one is a lot of work."
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)
Sundance's globomobo: bitty pics on the mobile
Sundance is big, it's the pictures that got small: The Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project debuts five short films made for cell phone users. Per the PR, "Sundance Institute & GSMA unveil ‘made 
for mobile’ short films at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. “I believe mobile viewers will be surprised and delighted by the diversity of these films,” said Bill Gajda, Chief Marketing Officer at the GSMA. “Ranging from the comic to exquisite, the radically different creative styles of storytelling play extraordinarily well to the unique, viral nature of the mobile medium.” The filmmakers are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris; Jody Hill; Justin Lin; Maria Maggenti and Cory McAbee. The full release is below; access to the shorts is explained here.
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL GLOBAL SHORT FILM PROJECT
PRESENTS WORLD PREMIERE OF 5 SHORT FILMS FOR MOBILE
12 February 2007. Barcelona, Spain: Today, at a press conference at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Sundance Institute and GSM Association (GSMA) unveiled the five original ‘made for mobile’ short films commissioned as part of the Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project. In one of the first collaborations of its kind, six new and established independent filmmakers created short films designed to be viewed in a mobile environment.
Announced in November, 2006 by Robert Redford, Founder and President of Sundance Institute, the Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project was created to showcase and extend the reach of the independent short film genre to mobile users worldwide.
The five films are being shown exclusively at the GSMA's Congress this week with wide distribution to mobile audiences beginning February 15. Visit www.sundance.org/globalshortfilms for info on how to access these five original shorts for your mobile phone, and share them with your friends.
“We hope that the Global Short Film project inspires filmmakers and artists to think outside of the realm of traditional venues for cinema, and experiment with mobile as an intimate new avenue – with global potential - for their work,” said John Cooper, Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival and Creative Director for Sundance Institute.
“I believe mobile viewers will be surprised and delighted by the diversity of these films,” said Bill Gajda, Chief Marketing Officer at the GSMA. “Ranging from the comic to exquisite, the radically different creative styles of storytelling play extraordinarily well to the unique, viral nature of the mobile medium.”
The Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project films are:
A SLIP IN TIME (Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris)–A motion study of slapstick comedy.
LEARNING TO SKATEBOARD (Directed by Jody Hill)–A corporate worker calls in sick. In his quest to liberate himself from the daily grind he embarks on a quest for freedom by learning how to skateboard.
¡LA REVOLUCION DE IGUODALA! (Directed by Justin Lin)–¡La Revolucion de Iguodala! tracks one man’s passionate message as it travels through various forms and agendas.
LOS VIAJES DE KING TINY (Directed by Maria Maggenti)–LOS VIAJES DE KING TINY is about a small dog who takes off by himself while his owner is at work. Set in Los Angeles, King Tiny travels the city but is confronted by his own personal demons in the process.
RENO (Directed by Cory McAbee) –A singing cowboy brags about his travels through Nevada on a Honda 50 to a store security camera.
All the directors behind these shorts have previously screened films at the annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Among the films premiered today is A SLIP IN TIME, the first film from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris since LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, which is nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.
While mobile phones have previously been used for distribution of franchised cinematic, ‘mobisode’ or user generated content, the Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project is the first time that the highest calibre of independent filmmaking talent has directed specifically for the mobile phone.
The Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project is sponsored by Roamware and NXP Semiconductors, the newly independent semiconductor company founded by Philips.
FILMMAKER BIOS AND STATEMENTS
A SLIP IN TIME (Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris)
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris made their feature film directorial debut with Little Miss Sunshine at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Over the years, they have built an impressive body of work by seeking innovative projects in a variety of mediums. After introducing bands like REM and the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their groundbreaking MTV show, The Cutting Edge, Dayton and Faris continued to direct music videos and documentaries, earning two Grammy Awards, nine MTV Music Video Awards, and a Billboard Music Director of the Year Award in the process. They have also directed episodes of Mr. Show with Bob and David on television and produced two feature films.
“When we heard that this was for a true international audience we really looked back to a time when film was more international, said Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris “In the silent era, you were a film star not in America or in Europe, but worldwide. It was truly language-free. We thought it would be interesting to go back to that time when film was more purely visual.”
LEARNING TO SKATEBOARD (Directed by Jody Hill)
Jody Hill grew up in North Carolina and attended the film school at the North Carolina School of the Arts. After working several jobs in television in Los Angeles, Hill moved back to North Carolina to make a film that he had been working on for several years with the support of his friends and local community. The Foot Fist Way, which he wrote, directed, produced, and acted in, premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
“The coolest thing about this project for me... is the opportunity to make a film for the love of it and for no other reason than that, said Jody Hill. “You can do whatever you want. With the cell phone and the small
screen, the feel of something like LEARNING TO SKATEBOARD is going to be spontaneous and slapdash and intentionally so.”
¡LA REVOLUCION DE IGUODALA! (Directed by Justin Lin)
Justin Lin’s solo directorial debut, the critically acclaimed BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Lin’s ANNAPOLIS and THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT were both released in 2006. Lin’s most recent work, FINISHING THE GAME, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
“I was really excited because of the new format,” said Justin Lin. “The natural reaction is, ‘Oh, you have to shoot everything close-up, you can't do wides.’ Then I started experimenting, started seeing it, and for me [that] was completely false: you can go wide. It's amazing how much you can focus no matter if the screen is 500 feet or just two inches!”
LOS VIAJES DE KING TINY (Directed by Maria Maggenti)
Maria Maggenti began her career as the writer/director of THE INCREDIBLY TRUE ADVENTURE OF TWO GIRLS IN LOVE, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995. Her screenwriting credits include THE LOVE LETTER and HE’S A WOMAN, SHE’S A MAN and she spent three seasons as a writer for TV’s Without a Trace. Her latest feature PUCCINI FOR BEGINNERS premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
“The thing that's interesting about this format—about using this technology—is that there's still a really strong impulse that people have to share,” said Maria Maggenti. “The same way you do when you go to the cinema. I hope that people say: ‘Oh! Let me send you this little movie,’ or ‘Come over here and watch this movie that's on my cell phone!‘ That's what I want people to get out of it: Sharing it.”
RENO (Directed by Cory McAbee)
Cory McAbee’s feature film The American Astronaut premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and went on to receive international acclaim. His short films include the award-winning Billy Nayer, the Pixelvision short The Man on the Moon, and The Ketchup and Mustard Man. McAbee is currently in pre-production on his next feature film, Werewolf Hunters of the Midwest. As a visual artist, his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the U.S. As a musician he is the singer/songwriter for The Billy Nayer Show.
“I think it's nice that people who promote independent work are getting involved on this level when something like this is just beginning,” expressed Cory McAbee. “For them to be involved—to be there at the starting gate—and produce independent work for that format is wonderful.”
Notes for Editors:
How to see the films at the 3GSM World Congress:
Visitors to the 3GSM World Congress: visit The Sundance Institute stand (C42 Hall 7) in the Mobile Entertainment Hall, the Roamware stand (D47 Hall 7) and NXP Semiconductors (B110 Hall 8).
All six filmmakers will be available for interviews at the Sundance stand at set times throughout the Congress. To request interviews, please contact Patrick_hubley@sundance.org
At the close of the 3GSM World Congress: The five films are being shown exclusively at the GSMA's Congress this week with wide distribution to mobile audiences beginning February 15. Visit www.sundance.org/globalshortfilms for info on how to access these five original shorts for your mobile phone, and share them with your friends.
About the Sundance Institute:
Dedicated year-round to the development of artists of independent vision and to the exhibition of their new work, Sundance Institute celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2006. Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, the Institute has grown into an internationally recognized resource for thousands of independent artists through its Film Festival and artistic development programs for filmmakers, screenwriters, composers, playwrights and theatre artists. The original values of independence, creative risk-taking, and discovery continue to define and guide the work of Sundance Institute, both with US artists and, increasingly, with artists from other regions of the world. The Sundance Film Festival has introduced American audiences to some of the most innovative films and film makers of the past two decades. It is the premier showcase for American and international independent film, held annually in Park City, Utah, USA.
About the GSM Association:
The GSM Association (GSMA) is the global trade association representing 700 GSM mobile phone operators across 217 countries of the world. In addition, more than 180 manufacturers and suppliers support the Association's initiatives as key partners. The primary goals of the GSMA are to ensure mobile phones and wireless services work globally and are easily accessible, enhancing their value to individual customers and national economies, while creating new business opportunities for operators and their suppliers. The Association's members serve more than two billion customers - 82% of the world's mobile phone users. See: www.gsmworld.com & www.3gsmworldcongress.com
Mark Smith Richard Fogg:
MSmith@gsm.org RFogg@gsm.org
+44.7850. 229 724 +44 .7877).845236
# # #
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)
H'wd feels Canuck'd by les pirates Canadienne
Globe and Mail reports that a coalition of US bigs cites Canada as one of the Axis of Pirates, along with China, Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine and Belize. Writes Barrie McKenna, "Canada's chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video
-game users to bypass copyright protections, the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government... “The disturbing thing is that the Canadian government doesn't seem to take this very seriously.” ... Officials at Industry Canada, which oversees copyright laws, would not directly address the U.S. industry's concerns yesterday, nor would they say when new legislation might be ready... “The problem of unauthorized camcording of films in Canadian theatres is now nearing crisis levels,” the group complained. It estimates that in 2006 as many as a quarter of all bootlegged films sold worldwide were made in Canada. Unlike in the United States and most other developed countries, videotaping movies in theatres is not illegal in Canada. Likewise, there is no law in Canada that specifically bans mod chips and other piracy tools, as there is in the United States." [More at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
Word and Image: Hoberman on Whitehead
Peter Whitehead's a key filmmaking observer of the 1960s, and J. Hoberman describes his Anthology Archives retro in the VOICE: [T]he High Sixties are the historical moment on which no one has any perspective—least of all those who lived through it... As much scene-maker as filmmaker, Whitehead personified the late-'60s breakdown of boundaries in postwar Britain. This working-class 
Cambridge grad was the original rock'n'roll documentarian; with reckless camerawork matched by tumultuous editing, he plunged into London's sex-drugs-and-protest counterculture with a frenzied there-ness." Hoberman surveys the near-complete survey, including a Led Zeppelin concert film. "Made in collaboration with artist Niki de Saint Phalle, Daddy... is an elaborate psychodrama in which the elegant, imperious de Saint Phalle revisits the moldering gothic site of her childhood. The artless style suggests early John Waters and so does the material, which—genteel but shocking—restages de Saint Phalle's childhood abuse before careening into an elaborate s/m fantasy that involves setting up Mummy as a whore and humiliating "Duddee" as a dog. Payback reaches its uncomfortable climax when Niki tantalizes her nemesis with schoolgirl jailbait (Mia Martin, a teenage model-cum-heiress who was Whitehead's current inamorata). Spanking and masturbation verge on the pornographic until Niki decides that Daddy, already killed off a dozen times, is "just a girl in disguise." Face painted, he gives birth to some broken dolls. This unforgettably unpleasant movie—more cathartic for de Saint Phalle than the viewer—was Whitehead's last to receive any American notice... A few years later, Whitehead would reinvent himself as a falconer, employed at one point by the House of Saud."
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2007
Where credit is due: I Think I Love My Wife
Which of these things is not like the other things? The trailer for Chris Rock's next directorial venture is up, and the source material might not be what you expect from Mr. Rock and the mind behind Pootie Tang.
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
Porteños in a storm: Argentina has to compete with stories, emotions
The nascent auteurist renaissance in Argentina's has hit a few obstacles, writes 
Variety's Charles Newbery from down south: "Five years ago, Argentina's film industry could have collapsed... Instead, film production doubled to an average of 60 features a year, [spurred] by an increase in financing from the state, international festivals, film funds and co-producers. The country offered low production costs, technical talent and fresh stories, visuals and performances as directors came to terms with economic and social chaos...Holy Girl, El Bonaerense, Lost Embrace, Minimal Stories, Red Bear and others won applause." But today? "Foreign interest in Argentine films is drying up," says Juan Jose Campanella, director of El hijo de la novia (Son of the Bride), an Oscar-nominate