Movie City Indie

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July 27, 2007

Indie returns Saturday

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July 26, 2007

Julie Delpy at Apple Chicago tonight

If you're in Chicago, at 7pm tonight at the Apple Store at 679 N. Michigan, I'll be conducting a conversation with Julie Delpy, sponsored by indieWIRE, about her writing-directing debut, Two Days In Paris.

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July 25, 2007

Ulrich Muhe, 1953-2007

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July 24, 2007

[LOOK] Jem Cohen's Little Flags (2000)

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July 23, 2007

Kicking off the 2007 Sundance Composers' Lab

As the 2007 Sundance Composers' Lab is set to begin, the six musicians chosen have been announced; the full press release is at the jump. "Today, Sundance Institute announced the six musicians selected for the 10th Annual Sundance Institute Composers Lab, which runs from July 24 thru August 9 in Sundance, Utah. This year’s Composers Lab Fellows are Jeremy Flower, Derrick Hodge, Shahzad Ali Ismaily, Enis Rotthoff, Gingger Shankar, and Jeff Toyne. During this two-week intensive lab, Fellows participate in workshops and creative exercises under the guidance of the industry’s leading film composers and film music professionals. The Composers Lab Fellows also collaborate with filmmakers from the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and the Sundance Institute Documentary Program to explore the process of writing music for film and to create accompanying scores for scenes shot during the Feature Film Program’s Directors Lab and those workshopped through the Documentary Program’s Edit and Storytelling Lab."

SIX MUSICIANS SELECTED
FOR THE 2007 SUNDANCE INSTITUTE COMPOSERS LAB

10th Annual Composers Lab Features Wide Range of Musical Talent from Jazz and Electronic to Vocalists, Violinists and Banjo Players

Los Angeles, CA and Park City, UT – Today, Sundance Institute announced the six musicians selected for the 10th Annual Sundance Institute Composers Lab, which runs from July 24 thru August 9 in Sundance, Utah. This year’s Composers Lab Fellows are Jeremy Flower, Derrick Hodge, Shahzad Ali Ismaily, Enis Rotthoff, Gingger Shankar, and Jeff Toyne. During this two-week intensive lab, Fellows participate in workshops and creative exercises under the guidance of the industry’s leading film composers and film music professionals. The Composers Lab Fellows also collaborate with filmmakers from the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and the Sundance Institute Documentary Program to explore the process of writing music for film and to create accompanying scores for scenes shot during the Feature Film Program’s Directors Lab and those workshopped through the Documentary Program’s Edit and Storytelling Lab.

The Composers Lab is a major component of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program, dedicated to supporting emerging film composers and to enhancing the role of music in independent film. First offered from 1986-1989, the Composers Lab was re-introduced in the summer of 1998 to provide a collaborative and supportive environment in which composers experiment and expand their musical language.

"Music is a vital part of filmmaking, but young filmmakers don't have many opportunities to learn about film music until they're in the hot seat. This Lab provides a unique opportunity for emerging composers and filmmakers to work together in an atmosphere that encourages experimentation," said Peter Golub, Director, Sundance Institute Film Music Program. "This year's Fellows represent an extraordinary range of musical styles and genres. By choosing composers from widely different musical backgrounds, some of whom have not had a great deal of experience in film, we're hoping to enliven the field of film composition. We're very excited about the work we'll be doing in our 10th Composers Lab and the impact we will have on the Fellows from the Directors Lab and the Documentary Program.”

Over the past 10 years, the Composers Lab has paired emerging and established composers with filmmakers participating in the Sundance Institute Feature Film and Documentary Film Programs. The Lab brings composers and filmmakers together to provide talented composers with first-hand experience composing for film, while simultaneously enhancing the musical understanding of independent filmmakers. Over the past 10 years, Fellows have included Tyler Bates (DAWN OF THE DEAD), Camara Kambon (DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN), Jonathan Bepler (CREMASTER) and Andreas Kapsalis (BLACK GOLD, winner of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary).

In addition to their work with filmmakers from the Feature Film and Documentary Film Programs, Composers Lab Fellows will work under the mentorship of noted Creative Advisors, a distinguished group of film composers, filmmakers, and film industry professionals.

This year, Creative Advisors include film composers Jeff Beal (POLLACK, MONK); George S. Clinton (AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY, JOE SOMEBODY, A DIRTY SHAME); Osvaldo Golijov (ST. MARK PASSION, YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH); James Newton Howard (BLOOD DIAMOND, THE VILLAGE); Graeme Revell (SIN CITY, GRINDHOUSE) and Harry Gregson-Williams (NARNIA, THE NUMBER 23).

Other Creative Advisors include director Lawrence Kasdan (MUMFORD, THE BIG CHILL); Paul Broucek (President, Music at New Line Cinema); music supervisor Tracy McKnight (THE GROOMSMEN, WORDPLAY, FRIENDS WITH MONEY); film music agent Robert Messinger (First Artists); Doreen Ringer Ross (Vice-President, Film/TV Relations at BMI); cellist Maya Beiser, percussionist Steven Schick, and sound artist Shahrokh Yadegari (THE CHILDREN OF HERAKLES).

The Fellows for the 2007 Sundance Institute Composers Lab are:

JEREMY FLOWER
Jeremy is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and an active member of the underground electronic music world in Boston and New York. He has worked with Gustavo Santaolalla, David Krakauer, the Kronos Quartet and others. He collaborated with composer Osvaldo Golijov on his Grammy Award winning score Ayre, featuring Dawn Upshaw and on Golijov's score for the new Francis Ford Coppola film, YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH.

DERRICK HODGE
A noted jazz bassist, Derrick has performed and recorded with Terence Blanchard, Mulgrew Miller, Clark Terry, Mos Def, Sade and others. He has also assisted Terence Blanchard in composing a number of film scores, including She Hate Me, Waist Deep and Inside Man.

SHAHZAD ALI ISMAILY
Shahzad plays guitar, banjo, double bass, accordion, flute and percussion. He has performed and recorded with Laurie Anderson, Booker T, John Haskell, Will Oldham, Marc Ribot, Tom Waits, John Zorn, and others. He composed for dance companies such as Tadashi Endo, The Frankfurt Ballet, and Min Tanaka. Self-taught as a musician, he has a degree in Biochemistry.

ENIS ROTTHOFF
Hailing from Germany, Enis composed music for Digging for Belladonna, Quiet Love, Smiling Monster Fish, and others. He assisted Academy Award-winning composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek on Finding Neverland, Unfaithful and Quo Vadis. He is the recipient of the Scholarship for Young Composers at the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain in Berlin.

GINGGER SHANKAR
A vocalist/violinist/composer from a renowned family of musicians, Gingger plays her own invention, the 1-string stereophonicDouble Violin, and has toured with Peter Gabriel and Frank Zappa. She also composed and performed vocals and violin music on The Passion of the Christ and Born Into Brothels. She is the recipient of the World Peace Music Award.

JEFF TOYNE
Jeff's feature film credits include The Third Eye (2007), a dark psychological thriller; Shadow in the Trees (2007), a sentimental thriller featuring the voices of Canada’s premier women’s choir, Elektra; Midnight is Coming (2002), an urban drama with Ethiopian overtones; and Maxwell’s Demon (1998), a film noir in the crime jazz tradition. Among his other film credits Mr. Toyne counts over thirty short films, including two Academy Award nominees. He was one of eight musicians recently selected from across North America to write new film music for the Victoria Symphony’s Reel Music 2 concert competition (February 2007). His score for the Buster Keaton film clip, Steamboat Bill Jr. won Best Score in the Action-Comedy category.

The Sundance Institute Composers Lab receives major support from BMI and The Baisely Powell Elebash Fund, which helps support New York-based Lab Fellows and Creative Advisors; the 2007 Elebash Composers include Shahzad Ali Ismaily and Tracy McKnight. Additional support for the 2007 Composers Lab is generously provided by Alesis, Apple, Hewlett Packard, H.P. Marketing, JBL Professional, LaCie, Mackie, Mark of the Unicorn, Sony Business and Professional Products Company, Sony Media, Soundcraft, Tascam, Volkswagen and Yamaha.

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
Founded by Robert Redford in 1981 in the mountains of Sundance, Utah, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated year-round to the development of artists of independent vision and to the exhibition of their new work. Since its
inception, the Institute has grown into an internationally recognized resource for thousands of independent artists through
its Film Festival and its artistic development programs for filmmakers, screenwriters, composers, writers, 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 programs of Sundance Institute include the annual Sundance Film Festival which is held in Park City each January and is considered the premier U.S. showcase for American and international independent film. The Institute supports nonfiction filmmakers through the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program by providing year-round support through the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund and a series of programs that encourage the exploration of innovative nonfiction storytelling and promote the exhibition of documentary films to increasingly broader audiences. The Sundance Institute Feature Film Program is a year-round program dedicated to supporting artist development and the advancement of distinctive, singular independent projects. Each year 20-25 emerging filmmakers from the U.S. and abroad participate in the program which includes the Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs, ongoing creative and practical advice, the post-production project, and financial support through fellowship opportunities. The Sundance Institute Theatre Program is committed to invigorating the national theatre movement with original and creative work and to nurturing the diversity of artistic expression among theatre artists. The Sundance Institute Film Music Program is dedicated to supporting the development of emerging film composers, as well as impacting the ways in which independent filmmakers approach music in their films. The Institute also maintains The Sundance Collection at UCLA, a unique archive of independent film.

# # #

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On embargoes, cricketeering and spoilage: a roundup

On the same weekend as the Chicago Tribune's film critic Michael Wilmington tucks it in after 14 years (after a recent demotion or dimunition in duties), there have been other conversations about changes in the reviewing scene, including an overview by Salt Lake Tribune movie cricket Sean P. Means about how embargoes on review dates affect his job; the New York Times' public editor Clark Hoyt finds defenses for that paper's review of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" several days before the publisher's release date, and Village Voice writer Nathan Lee weighs in wittily on spoilers on the Times op-ed page. Means alludes to the recent fracases about why some established writers are offered opportunities younger, or newer rivals do not get. "[A]n embargo is a big sledgehammer being held over my head by a movie studio - and the ever-present threat that it will strike me down," Means writes, while mentioning the Baltimore Sun-New York Times decisions to review "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" before its official pub date. Times public editor writes, "Rick Lyman, the books and theatre editor, said, “Our feeling is that once a book is offered up for sale at any public, retail outlet, and we purchase a copy legally and openly, we are free to review it.”I’ve heard suspicions when The Times has reviewed previous books before their official release dates that the newspaper has some bookstore somewhere wired to slip it copies ahead of time. Lyman said that isn’t the case. He said “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was purchased at a chain store in Manhattan’s Chelsea district by an employee of The New York Times Company who was shopping for something else and saw the book for sale. The Times has purchased other news making books ahead of their release dates at other stores in New York and other cities." Hoyt asserts, "I think it’s important to remember that there was never a contract or an agreement between The Times and Rowling or her publisher. The publisher set the release date unilaterally as part of the brilliant marketing campaign that has propelled the entire Harry Potter phenomenon. Neither The Times nor any other newspaper had an obligation to help enforce the release date. If anything, Kakutani’s favorable review and the controversy around its timing has just created more buzz and anticipation – if more is possible – on the eve of the launch of what is sure to be this year’s best seller." But back to Means and the world of the movie cricket. While there is a gentleman's agreement between most publicists and journalists about what runs where and when, in order to insure future access, Means writes that "movie critics like [himself don't] have a contract with movie studios. But the studios do have the power over what movies they screen, and to whom... The weapon the studios have to keep critics in line is the threat that embargo breakers would not get invited to future screenings... There is a caste system in all this. National critics, like Roger Ebert or anyone at The New York Times, may get to see a major film before a regional critic (like me). On the other hand, I and my counterpart at the Deseret Morning News, Jeff Vice, because of the size of our readership, often get invited to screenings while other Utah critics are shut out. As with so much in modern life, though, the Internet is changing the rules of the game." More Potter byplay follows, in the form of the gun-jumping on the latest Potter movie, but Means concludes, "Some studios are cracking down hard on embargo breakers, particularly those critics who primarily publish online. It's all a power game - both the critics and the studios want to control the flow of information, and each group needs the other to get what it wants." Less insider-baseball is Village Voicer Nathan Lee's revelation of a cricket's inner vandal in a consideration on the Times' op-ed page about a reviewers' responsiblities regarding spoilers: "As the final volume of J. K. Rowling’s series goes on sale and Potter-mania goes through the roof, I wonder what would happen if some budding book critic, one of those lucky few to mistakenly receive an early copy in the mail, entered a bookstore... and spoiled the most anticipated finale in the history of anticipation with a shout: “Harry Potter dies!” My guess is he’d be instantly killed." Lee notes he doesn't know the real ending of the book. "Personally, I couldn’t care less about the fate of the neurotic boy wizard. Professionally — as a film critic who might be assigned to review the movie version someday — I hope he croaks.

I’m a sucker for bleak endings... I’m that terrible thing, the film critic armed with spoilers who isn’t afraid to use them... [T]here isn’t a single frame of The Number 23 I wouldn’t mock in great, guiltless detail for the simple reason that I find it extremely silly... I’m confident that my readership does not include humorless scholars of the Joel Schumacher oeuvre. To spoil or not to spoil involves larger questions about the role of the critic, the needs of the reader and the changes to both caused by the scale, speed and outlaw spirit of Web-based commentary... Reviewing a marginal art film in the pages of an alternative weekly presents a specific set of problems, but the same issues arise for the book reviewer of a newspaper or an essayist for Artforum: Who is the audience and what are their expectations? How do I best convey what they need to know? Does the work of other critics modify what I can “safely” discuss? Am I writing for those who already know the work or am I attempting to cultivate a new audience? How long should a work be available to the public before the question of spoilers is irrelevant? ... The critic who says too much isn’t the problem. The problem is that we don’t trust critics to say exactly what we need to know." More lucidity at the link.]

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July 22, 2007

Post-buyout, former ChiTribber Wilmington reclaims old haunts

From the Daily Page, the internet component of Madison's Isthmus alt-weekly, this bulletin in cricket news: "We direct your attention this week to TheDailyPage.com , for the return of the prodigal son. Featured there as of Friday morning is a DVD column by former Isthmus film reviewer Mike Wilmington [left]. Wilmington wrote for us from 1980 until about 11 years ago. He came to us upon the demise of the old Press Connection, and continued to contribute while also writing for High Times magazine, Playgirl, L.A. Weekly and the L.A. Times, among others. We were embargoed from running his material when he joined the Chicago Tribune as staff reviewer over a decade ago. Separated from the Tribune through their recent employee buyout, he is now free to embellish our content again. He does so on The Daily Page in the form of a column covering newly released DVDs. If you remember Wilmington , you will eagerly read his comments on the many new and classic films released on DVD each week. If you've never read him, you will enjoy his encyclopedic and insightful film commentary."

Posted by Ray Pride at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)

Michael Moore on copyright, communal experience and piracy

In a Sunday afternoon barrage of questions and a handful of answers during an online chat at the Crooks & Liars website, Michael Moore again introduces, but does not fully explain his feelings about copyright and piracy. In fact, he only muddies the waters, while some later commenters in the thicket of replies do bring up some of the issues about eternal corporate control of copyright, which in its beginnings, was of much, much smaller duration. "As for downloading, I made this movie to be seen in a movie theater. If i wanted to make TV or internet movies for a small screen to be watched alone, that’s what I’d do. but i want them seen on the big screen. and you should see it with 200 other people in the theater. From all reports, it’s a powerful experience to see Sicko that way. Having said all that, I am in total disagreement with the copyright laws in this country and I believe that people should be able to share information and art.." A later query: "[W]ho do you think is behind placing a digital copy of the film on the net, and was this done to hurt grosses to make your film look like a failure?" Moore replies, "I think the answer to who was behind it is pretty clear. This is the MASTER digital copy that’s out there. Only people who had big bucks to pay someone off to obtain this could make that happen. I’ve read estimates that its been downloaded anywhere between 2 million and 20 million times around the world. Nonetheless, it is now in the top five grossing docs of all time and the Weinstein Company continue to put it in more and more theaters every weekend. I also believe that those who see it online tell others to go see it, and they do, so in the end it probably doesn’t hurt that much. But that was the intent. To try and kill the film. We will find out who paid to have this done."

[Photo © 2007 Ray Pride.]

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David Bordwell on "watching movies very, very slowly"

In an engaging entry, David Bordwell writes about about the history of how scholars view celluloid artifacts: "Before DVD and consumer videotape, how could you study films closely? If you had money, you could buy 8mm or 16mm prints of the few titles available in those formats. If you belonged to a library or ran a film club, you could book 16mm prints and screen them over and over. Or you could ask to view the films at a film archive. I started going to film archives in the late 1960s, when they were generally more concerned with preserving and showing films than with letting researchers have access. Over the 1970s and 1980s this situation changed, partly because several archivists grew hospitable to the growing field of academic film studies. At first archives found it easier to screen films for researchers in projection rooms, but eventually many let visitors watch the films on stand-alone viewers. That way the researcher could stop, go forward and back, and take notes." [More technical stuff with illustrations at the link; a good read, even if the image above (which is bookended in the entry with antoher shot) takes the day.]

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July 21, 2007

Pastor Becky reminds us: Harry Potter is the devil!

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July 20, 2007

Maidstone: the ultimate indie that broke Norman Mailer's bank

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July 19, 2007

Filmmaker summer issue: 25 faces to watch

Several patches of the summer issue of Filmmaker magazine are up, including the annual "25 faces to watch" survey. If you buy the magazine, the full contents include my Q&A with Goran Dukic, director of Wristcutters: A Love Story, but the site offers up conversations about Charles Ferguson's Iraq doc, No End In Sight and Werner Herzog on Rescue Dawn.

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July 17, 2007

Checks Cashed

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July 16, 2007

Director Jem Cohen vs. Billionaire Mayor Mike: Why does NYC want to prevent "amateur" film and video?

Anthony Kaufman blogs filmmaker Jem Cohen's plainitive plaint [ALL CAPS is in THE ORIGINAL] against the onerous restrictions about to be set by the New York Mayor's Office of Theater, Film, and Broadcasting: "Being a street photographer often means standing in a random location and waiting: for the right activity, the right light, the break in the traffic; the countless other unpredictable factors that need to fall into place to make a shot worthwhile... The fact is that we simply CANNOT predict where, when, and how long we are going to film or photograph; we CANNOT afford expensive liability insurance policies; we occasionally NEED to work with other people or to use tripods to support our gear. (The regulations would, for example, effectively rule out a great deal of time-lapse photography which depends on tripods and cannot possibly be done with time limitations of 10 to 30 minutes, as well as the use of large format still cameras and long lenses)... If these regulations go through, it would invite if not require police to harass or shut down both professional artists and amateurs." PAGING the ACLU... PAGING the ACLU.

Posted by Ray Pride at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

From Europudding to organic films auds want to see?

In Variety, Ali Jaafar considers the Euro-auteurs who are finding followings: "The term "Euro pudding" referred to a flood of films from the 1960s and '70s like The Cassandra Crossing... and The Fifth Musketeer, combining a melange of international talents such as a German actress, French actor and Italian director in hopes of luring coin (and audiences) from each country. The result was, more often than not, a mish-mash of competing accents and confused artistic vision." Jafaar says the latest generation is making a more organic kind of pudding. "Filmmakers like the Teuton-Turkish Fatih Akin and French-Algerian Rachid Bouchareb are making films that tackle the growing interconnectivity of European society.Their transborder films are much more personal -- and the result is that the films are both artistically and financially more successsful... These new Europeans are in many ways the future of the European film industry, says Hengameh Panahi, co-topper of Dreamachine, the new international sales company combining Panahi's Celluloid Dreams and Jeremy Thomas' Hanway Films. "Distributors don't care about masterpieces anymore. They want to make a living," says Paneh. "These second-generation and exiled directors, who may have belonged to a different culture but have grown up in Europe, are not elitist. They're telling real stories that appeal to everyone."

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Paste, caution

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Cricketeering 101: Ebert E-nterviews For "Your Movie Sucks"

Scott Butki shoots Roger Ebert an email about the cricketal basix: "How do you decide what to review? Or, put another way, how do you choose what not to review? As you've noted, you may not be the person to review... a story aimed at girls." Ebert: "Before my illness I reviewed more or less as many films as I could, period. There is really no such thing as the 'right person,' since everybody is the right person to write his or her review."

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Block quote: Little Children (2006) by Tom Perrotta and Todd Field

Putting voice into That Voice.

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Ouroboros over easy: It ain't me, babe

Over at Spout, Karina Longworth has a take on a take on a take that's no longer there: "Late last week, a clip from Todd Haynes' experimental Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There appeared on YouTube, and some bloggers spent the weekend debating whether or not to post it on their own sites. It's the first upload for YouTube user adin1978, but the clip, which depicts a run-in between Dylan (played in this scene by Cate Blanchett) and Allen Ginsberg, played by comedian David Cross, bears a timecode stamp at the bottom... [B]eing that this is the first real glimpse of the film we've seen, there's a also a solid chance that the clip was leaked against the filmmakers' wishes. Yesterday, Ray Pride posted on Movie City Indie about his decision not to embed the clip, but linked to a post... at the FILMMAKER blog which allegedly did contain the clip. "For all I know this is an early viral transmission intended to stoke interest in the movie by getting run on sites like this one. So, I'm embedding it below unless I hear otherwise," [the Filmmaker blog entry read]. As of this morning, that blog post no longer exists."

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Wim Wenders dreams of Europe

As part of the "Soul for Europe" initiative, Wim Wenders offered this speech, 3,650 words of which are reprinted at New Statesman. [It's also the twentieth anniversary of Wings of Desire; see the Japanese trailer at the jump.] "For most Europeans, Europe has become an abstract, alien entity," Wenders argues. "They are no longer sure whether they should identify with it or dissociate themselves from it, whether they feel represented or repressed. As such, the image of Europe is a contradictory one. The word "image" is useful; Europe's image is something quite different from the picture we have of our continent. An image is also a make, a brand, the product of a long series of past images, of stories, of tradition, of propaganda, of personal experience and reputation. Our feelings about Europe's soul relate mainly to this image. Europe needs to regain its tarnished self-esteem, in order that it can recover its soul... [W]e know that today Europe is really the opposite: a haven of human rights; a realm of freedom such as history has never seen before. There is no more social entity anywhere else in the world, no more peaceful community of peoples, no more democratic tradition. It is a source of great personal pain to me to see so many young people who have given up on Europe. When I was a boy, the idea of Europe was the thing. The friendship between Germany and France, and the even more utopian vision of a United Europe, set my imagination soaring more than anything else - and yet Europe was still far away on the horizon. I would often cycle from the Ruhr region to Amsterdam to look at the pictures of Vermeer, Rembrandt and Van Gogh. My heart pounded each time I presented my German identity card at the Dutch border. European history in the first half of the 20th century was responsible for one feeling not exactly welcome, as a young German. A few years later, while I was hitchhiking in Brittany, a farmer tried to kill himself and me by crashing his Peugeot into a tree. I was the first German he had met since the war. All that seems as far away in the past as the war itself, during which I was conceived, but which was over by the time I was born. Today, you no longer have to show identity papers when travelling across Europe, and we use the same currency. When I was a boy, that was an absolutely unbelievable prospect. Now, that dream has become a reality, and no one is moved by it any more. It seems Europe is most desirable to those that don't have it. In recent years, as I looked towards Europe from many other countries, especially in Africa, it warmed my heart to see the positively mythical status Europe enjoys there as an earthly paradise. From afar, our con tinent appears marvellous and resplendent, but close up, it is just business as usual, dull and strangely cool - what Berliners call "coffee gone cold". What became of the dream? How did the whole idea disappear down the drain?" [Much more, including comparisons to "the American dream," at the link.]

[Photograph of Wim Wenders and Franz Lustig © 2006 Ray Pride; Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece, November 2006.]

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Block quote: Zodiac, by James Vanderbilt

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July 15, 2007

To post or not to post: the clip from Todd Haynes' I'm Not There

The clip, with timecode, that began to streak across the internet late Thursday, from Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, with Cate Blanchett and David Cross (as Alan Ginsberg!), is exceptionally promising... and of sufficient quality to suspect it could have been intentionally leaked. But does that mean it's all right to post an unauthorized YouTube clip? (A recently YouTubed copy of the trailer for Lust, Caution was pulled after a complaint from Focus Features.) Is it the same as linking to a pirate source? Cool as the clip is, I made the call not to; producer-editor Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker magazine's blog explores why he's embedded it. "[T]he first clip from Todd Haynes's radically conceived Bob Dylan film biography I'm Not There has leaked all over the internet. Now, I'm a big believer in the right of the artist to edit his film in peace and quiet and with dignity. So, normally I wouldn't link to a bootleg scene... but, the scene, which features Cate Blanchett as Dylan, is great and the movie looks incredibly cool, and for all I know this is an early viral transmission intended to stoke interest in the movie by getting run on sites like this one. So, I'm embedding it below unless I hear otherwise." [End of quote from Filmmaker post.] Wonder if we'll be hearing about any Monday morning phone calls....

Posted by Ray Pride at 03:31 PM | Comments (3)

Are you ready for "Off-Bollywood"?

Outlook India defines their terms of Indian indie: "One reason why this creative crop is flourishing is because the space for small films is getting better defined in Bollywood. Not only are multiplexes offering a definite avenue of release, the films themselves, once experimental, often pretentious exercises, are establishing a better connect with the audience without necessarily compromising on their independent spirit. "Opportunities for us are increasing," says Aditya Srivastava, seen recently as Badshah Khan, Tiger Memon's henchman on the run in Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday. "It's the best time we have had in 20 years. The days of B-grade Bollywood are over. Now it's either superstars like the Khans or the alternate stars," says actor-filmmaker Rajat Kapur." [More arcana at the link.]

Posted by Ray Pride at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)

Critic proof: a French take on Tarantino's latest

From the latest Cahiers du Cinema, an appreciation of Death Proof, that may or may not be inexactly translated from the French: "First comes the decision to start over the same movie twice. One could serve as a model for the other, the other as the commentary for the former, as if repetition sufficed to suggest a relationship. Pure hypothesis. Then come the gaps and scratches that impact the 35mm, stemming from a desire to reproduce the poor quality typical of "grindhouse" film prints. We could choose to see only fetishistic nods in them. Preferably, we will recognize a superior truth: Death Proof's race is first and foremost that of film stock. Chatter may abound, tires may crease, but without the stock, the two films would go limp, cut short. Machine law has replaced rhetorical construction. To speak, to drive, to film, it's all the same high-powered bachelor car, thrust blindly on death boulevard. It's the famous tiger's leap into the past: film sets out from scratch, far from the digital, tongue hanging and feet to the ground. In this regard, Tarantino is the worthy continuator of two masters: one of the voice, the other of the road. Jean Eustache, as prodigious as he is when it comes to infinite monologues and who enjoyed saying: "The camera rolls, cinema makes itself." And Monte Hellman who, at the end of Two-Lane Blacktop, set the film stock aflame after one last flying start. A film that unites the two, burning lips at the same time as the asphalt, is devoted to countdown, to combustion. Pure loss expenditure. You will notice that the longest gap happens at the end of a lapdance executed by Arlene/Butterfly for Mike, hence depriving us of its climax: the film stock rolls out pleasure, and a bit of pleasure goes up in smoke each time a photogram is missing. Like an abduction, and like a thorn in one's desire for what will follow. Tarantino makes no secret of it, he runs on this projection. Indeed, in the interview, he does not explain Mike's obsession otherwise: bumping into girls with his death proof car (as per the title) is his own way of reaching orgasm."

Posted by Ray Pride at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

IFC FirstTake's $3.6 million first year

Variety offers up a rare, crisp take on what's behind IFC First Take's releasing strategy. More than "1 million digital cable subscribers throughout the country plunking down $5.95 to call up pay-per-view showings of relatively obscure movies such as Black Sheep, a horror satire from New Zealand, The Boss of It All," from Lars Von Trier, and the Alain Resnais-directed French romantic drama Private Fears in Public Places while they're in limited release theatrically." IFC keeps 60 cents of every dollar, and it's running ahead of the company's business plan. "Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment, says First Take, which launched in March 2006 and schedules two fresh day/date movies a month, now reaches about 40 million homes through various cable operators and DirecTV." The sexually explicit Exterminating Angels notched 60,000 buys. "Sehring makes it clear that First Take is an outlet only for movies that figure to have a hard time drawing people into the theaters." A spokesman for NATO turns on the sneer, the article suggests, but does not offer this assertion in quotation marks: "Theatergoers may say to themselves: If this movie is any good, why is it also on TV? Sehring answers by saying that First Take allows people around the country to see movies that will never get to theaters in their cities."

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Egoyan's internet Adoration

Atom Egoyan returns to fractured frames and shattered consciousness with Adoration, reports Playback. The C$5 million feature is set "in contemporary Toronto and to be shot on film, [an] ensemble piece [examining] how kids redefine themselves through the Internet. The drama centers on a high school student who claims to be a figure from recent history. Egoyan has been doing a lot of his research in schools. "What's interesting is that [the kids] have a different relationship to each other in a classroom than they do in this virtual stage," he says.
"What excites me is that the script... is open enough that I can change and modify based on what we find out as we're shooting it. That, to me, is the ideal kind of structure. That was a tricky thing, to be honest, with Where the Truth Lies. Because it's a murder mystery, it was written in a very specific way. It was the first film I've ever made where the edited version of it is almost exactly the same as what the script is, because of the deployment of the narrative and the plot."

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July 13, 2007

Triad Election (2005, *** 1/2)

STEEPED IN MANY OF THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS OF THE DECADE IN HONG KONG SINCE THE 1997 HANDOVER of the former British colony, a supple parable of the absorption of Hong Kong and Macau into the Chinese dragon, the eyes-wide, visceral, fluent, violent Triad Election is one of director Johnny To’s most accomplished. (Comparisons to the French master Jean-Pierre Melville, a major influence on John Woo, are not misplaced here, either.) Framed by a crooked real estate deal in Guangzhou, across the border from the former colony, that resembles the erection of airport and Disneyland on Lantau Island, To fully exploits the remarkable, diverse, compacted topography of the teeming city-state in a gleaming fashion that requires no special knowledge to appreciate. The plot’s about honor, and the selection of a new gangland boss for a two-year term, and to what violent temptations the half-dozen or so characters will succumb. (Think the dogs of Abu Ghraib, bloodied currency, Pollock-spattered walls, floors, and a meat grinder.) Scenes unfold with quiet alacrity: the coldest of killers glugs from a half-pint in a sack as he circles a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse where inside, the radar of the coolest of killers is tipped as he begins to order food. (There is also a horrific image of a luxury car driving to the horizon as we can still see through the windows three passengers claw-hammering a fourth to certain death.) Once power is consolidated, the victor is ensconced in the back of a luxury vehicle: is it any chance that the newspaper he reads is fronted by a picture of Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (who retired in 2005 as this film was being shot)? The words “I believe in China” resound throughout with tremendous force, and the climactic meeting of the movie is cold and brilliant, almost as bold as the door slammed in Kay Corleone’s face. To is a genre technician of the highest order, and “Triad Election” boasts extremely fine widescreen work. [(Ray Pride.] (Now playing Chicago at the Music Box with Election; opens July 27 at Starz in Denver; August 1 at Austin’s Dobie.)

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Joshua (2007, ***)

Documentarian George Ratliff’s fiction debut, Joshua, a variation on any number of bad seed-born-to-good-folk terrors, such as The Good Son and The Omen, does one thing very right in its cruel, clockwork machinations: the hiring of Benoit Debie as cinematographer. Debie’s work on Gaspar Noé's Irreversible (2002), Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Innocence (2004) and especially, Julia Loktev's minimalist Day Night Day Night (currently in release), is stellar. While Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga do the so-simple-I-can’t-fool-a-kid turn to a whimpering T, and Jacob Kogan as the 9-year-old savant-of-slaughter and “weird son” by his own description, who boasts one of the scariest sets of bangs in recent movies and kittens up a lot against his gay, composer uncle (Dallas Roberts), and the pains inflicted on a newborn would never be allowed against a pet in an American movie, Debie’s light-flooded interiors, sly camera moves and inventively chosen focal lengths, convey moneyed Manhattan and privileged Brooklyn in a memorable mood of dread. (The editing is unpredictable as well, not in a jump-out-from-behind-the-door way, but in an unsettling one that's a few frames sudden or elongated.) The ending is one of those rare ones that makes you reevaluate everything come before: when you realize one character’s motivation, the punchline to a song sung by a child (and written by Dave Matthews!), may make you first exclaim in surprise, and then perhaps, in frustration at the grotesquerie of the implications. Ratliff and co-writer David Gilbert have to know that the twist ending is much more than suggestive and will be more than noxious to a large percentage of its potential upscale audience. (Is this the movie’s selling point? The controversial ending you're dying to give away?) Rockwell’s pretty terrific, despite his character’s stupidity, and Celia Weston is dreadfully good as fundamentalist grandma: she’s a fine enough actress not to mind playing a hateful character. (Much of the three-star rating I'll attribute to Rockwell and to the look of the film.) [Ray Pride.]

Posted by Ray Pride at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

I live in LA and talk to my dog all day: Catching up with the art of Mike Mills

"I like LA 'cause it's sort of blank, I'm not super-influenced by eight million cool things happening around me like I would be in New York. It's quieter so I can figure out what I'm thinking. Weirdly, LA helps me do more personal work," Thumbsucker director and graphic artist Mike Mills tells Blankscreenmedia in a brief, comic Q&A. "I love time travel, do it often. I most like going back to just after World War I in Europe, visiting the Dadaists and the beginnings of what would become the Bauhuas scene. I'm not so interested in re-design[ing] anything, but I'd love to see and feel what it was like when those people were making those things, I think the art world really has developed little since all those strategies began. But what do I know about such things, I live in LA after all, and talk to my dog all day."

Posted by Ray Pride at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

There went in two by two unto Steve: iPhone's opening night

WALKING DOWN MICHIGAN AVENUE, THE CROWD AT HURON IS MOTLEY, but up close to the Apple store, lines are roped off to east and south, security guards are parsing 10 customers at a time: who gets to drop five, six hundred dollars in the pursuit of gadget-lust in the half hour to come? The primary line snakes along Huron where horse-drawn carriages stand; as always on this corner, the smell of shit lingers. Amid the flickers of passerby, something stands out: the rails of the planter in front of Apple are lower and brushed silver,

At the top of the stairs, an Apple employee mans a tripod, taping every customer’s entrance. On the sidewalk, a young geek has climbed atop a small box to offer interviews to cable access reporters about how he's keeping the plastic wrap on his iPhone carton, “It's going straight to eBay!” A kibitzer offers “A Chapstick and some lint!” A line security guy sing-songs, almost an auction yodel, “Ap-pullline ends here. Ap-pull line ends here.” Tourists complain about the knot in German and Swedish and a woman exclaims in a Castilian accent, “Un cuadro extremo!” A woman camera tech says the security’s nothing compared to Dick Cheney’s earlier in the day. A cop says they’d planned for 1,500, and estimates 400 people have gone by in the first half hour. A man in khakis and pricey eyewear pauses at the “don’t walk” light. “Yes, and I bought you the eight gig one.” He’s grinning, two compact gleaming totebags at his side as chats on his OldPhone. [A suite of photos after the jump.]

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July 12, 2007

Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (2007, ** 1/2)

A SPOOKY SMALL GIRL WITH WIDE, UNBLINKING, ALMOST PROTUBERANT EYES POINTS A WAND IN SPACE AND CONJURES A SPECTRAL HARE, wild and bounding, that energetically clatters and crashes across a hallowed space: more of this, please. In Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, functional as narrative passageway from the things of youth to the damaging disappointments of adulthood and responsibility for its young charges, there is much motoring of plot for the readers and viewers who find J. K. Rowling’s multi-billion-dollar enterprise worthy of deeper, greater and longer concentration. (An uncommonly obsessed Potterphile accompanied me to the screening, and the blanks she filled in later only reinforced the idea that this movie is not at all intended as a coherent, standalone picture for those who do not read children’s lit.)

The small girl is Evanna Lynch, an Irish nonprofessional, who, as the lore insists, badgered Rowling herself as to how ideal she would be as young “Loony” Luna Lovegood. Here is a performer who has only to lift her chin slightly to suggest not just an old soul, but an old soul that’s been stoned for eons on the finest of fumes and dandelion wine. Bonnie Wright, who has almost nothing to do as Ginny Weasley, is also a striking casting choice, but reportedly has much on her hands in the book-movie-heated conversations to come. And of course, there is the matter of Daniel Radcliiffe’s cheekbones, a weapon in their own right. Lynch’s delivery of the line “You’re just as sane as I am” approaches profundity, while “I hope there’s pudding” gathers both a child’s hope of satiety and a genial otherworldliness. Blissed out, seemingly stoned to highest heaven, her smile is bliss. (Every shot she’s in beats any frame of Helena Bonham’s ineffectual and Carter’s dispatched madwoman murderer, done in wild-maned polecat getup that resembles her husband, Tim Burton, on a day without caffeine.)

There’s a grill-bar on my block that’s more restaurant or local than sports bar, but the TVs are on, and one recent night, the backroom held Brazilian soccer fans; in front someone’s talking “our lineup” and “our pitching depth” while taking in baseball; and a Porky Pig voice is talking about clay courts for tennis. I felt the same way a few nights later watching this Harry Potter entry. There are codes and context and facts and ventures grooved along the runnels of the brains of the sports adepts or the Harry fans, but to an outsider, there is the occasional pretty picture or arresting image. The Order of the Phoenix opens nicely in a grassy patch of suburb and the grainy azure sky goes to gray, black, bleak and beyond like an apocryphal Gregory Crewdson tableau. Later on, nestled in the corner of a frame is the loveliness of a Christmas fir that bears its own personal snowfall. (Harry’s flash-frame visions of terrible things seems drawn largely from Ken Russell’s eye-blink edits in Altered States.)

Well enough in the margins: first-time director David Yates is a practiced BBC hand, whose output includes dramas Sex Traffic and the Richard Curtis agit-rom-weepie The Girl In the Café. There are a few glimpses of the characters in London, such as at Kings Cross and along the waves of the Thames, that open up the cloistered scenes of feigned magic and perfumed sentiment, more the making of pictures than of drama. Plot turns and character traits seem arbitrary and casual rather than rooted in comprehensible mythology or resonance with larger cultural artifacts and tradition.

Still, political metaphor rears its head as the characters await the apparition of the apocalyptic Lord Voldemort. Bureaucratic threats pile on like duck pecks, with standardized tests and talk of how of “disloyalty” will be punished and “security” is preferable to freedom. The boss of it all is relentlessly despicable and terribly unpleasant Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), dressed in dowdy garb of fathomless puce and pink and mauve and rhubarb marmalade. (Radcliffe has referred to Umbridge as "a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Freddy Krueger.") Umbridge invokes the name of the Ministry of Magic to issue picayune edicts the equivalent of students being told that “Bong Hits for Dumbledore” is forbidden speech. (Illegal forms of torture in order to retrieve information from children are also indicated as pro forma in the new world disorder.) The familiar faces from English acting that have littered the early films make modest cameos, with Alan Richman getting the most time to purr, as well as eye-blink glimpses of Ralph Fiennes, Robbie Coltrane, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Warwick Davis, David Thewlis, Fiona Shaw, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, Jason Isaacs, Richard Griffiths (very ill-treated), Brendan Gleeson, and the mutteringly magisterial Michael Gambon.

J. K. Rowling’s own story, it’s worth repeating, from single mother escaping the Glasgow chill to scribble her first book in warm cafes to keeper of her own queendom, generally holds more fascination than this glum thunderation. (The flurry of interviews and thumbsuckers keyed to the final book and to this film that you can find on the web is daunting.) Yates is set to direct the next film, before the violent climax of part seven, the beneficiary of the standing, practiced production, along the lines of the infrastructure the Broccoli family keeps together between the eons of Bond entries. It was a keen surprise to see that Yates chose as his cinematographer Slawomir Idziak, whose work includes Three Colors: Blue, The Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, Gattaca and Black Hawk Down. The darker palette (except for a late conversation where an elder explains a raft of backstory to Harry after several violent battles) does have a pictorial consistency.

Better than perfunctory, but hardly necessary, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix gets Warner Bros.’ bottom line from one fiscal year to the other with practical grace.

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Macbeth (2006, 1/2 *)

Cheesy, flimsy Bardsploitation, Geoffrey Wright’s on-the-cheap Macbeth is a Melbourne-set modernization of the Shakespeare play, is almost laughable at how inaptly his actors render the verse, but there’s enough imagery and outright savagery to elevate this post-Lurhmannist enterprise above Aussie-inflected word salad. (It’s not quite the Scarface-like “Tony Macbeth” Wright seems to be aiming for, lacking time, money or talent to pull it off.) Wright doesn’t attain the energy of earlier work like Romper Stomper, but this Macbeth still splashes and slashes and writhes in lovingly superfluous fuck scenes and shoot-‘em-ups. (A four-minute newsreel from Orson Welles' theatrical "Macbeth"; a minute-long clip of Welles' likely reaction if he'd seen this version of the Scottish play ("Ahhhhhh.... The French champagne!"); and an interview from SBS's "The Movie Show" with Wright at the jump.) [Ray Pride.]

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July 11, 2007

"In that uncertain moment": Talking Nice Bombs with filmmaker Usama Alshaibi

NICE BOMBS IS CHICAGO FILMMAKER USAMA ALSHAIBI’S DIARY-STYLE DOCUMENTARY about the first visit he and his father and his American wife made a journey back to their native Iraq after the American occupation had begun. The last footage was shot for the film in 2004, when the conditions in Baghdad and Iraq at large were not as dangerous. The Siskel Film Center’s Barbara Scharres writes, “After an absence of 24 years, Chicago-based director Alshaibi, now a U.S. citizen, returns to his native Iraq with his father and his wife to make a film. American-occupied Baghdad is in part a time warp (his childhood slide is still in the yard), but the daily fear of bombs and random gunfire casts a chill over the family reunion. This remarkable inside story movingly explicates the confusion, anger, and stoicism of ordinary Iraqi citizens caught in a living hell as hope for freedom from fear rapidly wanes.” While the movie begins in a straightforward fashion, it gradually turns toward the more impressionistic style of his earlier work, culminating in a phone conversation set against a brilliant Chicago sunset with subtitles scattering around the frame. One particularly striking scene, showing a lack of sentimentality involving a dying cat, makes sophisticated critique of misplaced audience empathies. Alshaibi has been a prolific maker of shorts and videos on the Chicago scene, and has made experimental features as well, such as 2002’s Soak. Nice Bombs won a best documentary prize after opening the 2006 Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Disclosure: I've not written critically about Nice Bombs; I offered notes on a late cut of the movie, and I have collaborated, to varying degrees, with both of Alshaibi's editors and two of his producers, Ben Berkowitz and Ben Redgrave, of Chicago's Benzfilm. Nice Bombs opens July 11 at Siskel in Chicago and The Pioneer in New York City. The trailer is here.

PRIDE: I've seen a couple of cuts. Did you make a TV cut and a theatrical version?

ALSHAIBI: There is only one version and that is 76 minutes. It was originally 92 minutes, the one we showed at CUFF last year, but after sitting on it for a while and not being happy with the cut, I decided along with the Benz and my new distributor [Seventh Art Releasing] to cut it down. The stuff I cut out was in the beginning. The interview with my sister, my Mom, all that is gone, and instead-it cuts straight to the journey into Iraq. I think the style of the doc pops out even more with this shorter edit. You talked about that style toward the end of the film-

PRIDE: Yeah. The film, to me, has two distinct parts, as I've said before--the chronology and family recollection and reunion that is more traditionally done, and then the later parts which drift into the more stylized, experimental wont of your earlier work. Is that still pretty much the case with this one? Were the two styles at war with each other during editing? If my memory's clear, you said you discovered the later part, especially the phone call with the Chicago sunset and floating supertitles, toward the end of finishing the film.

ALSHAIBI: Well, that framing and showing stills and cropped movies does connect better on an aesthetic level now with slow talking heads cut out. The backstory leads us into Iraq and we spend the majority of the film there. I cut out other interviews that were too long and did not work.

PRIDE: Is all the stuff with the dying cat still there? Do people react to that in an instinctive way or do they take something more from its inclusion?

ALSHAIBI: The stuff with the cat is all there. People react differently to it. I keep hearing about the cat. Even after a year I have some people asking me about the cat.

PRIDE. What's the most surprising reaction you've gotten from an audience at large or an audience member?

ALSHAIBI: The most surprising reaction? I don't know if it was any specific reaction but I am always interested when people react in this very emotional way to the film and draw their own conclusions about the war, Iraq and my family. I think the most surprising is that people ask me about my cousin Tareef and my Dad and seem genuinely concerned and affected. That has been a touching experience.

PRIDE: Can you talk about Studs Terkel's connection? He was frail but bold at 94 when he introduced it at CUFF last year.

ALSHAIBI: Studs and I are buddies, in a way. I worked under a grant to archive his audio recordings for many years at the Chicago History Museum. He interviewed me for [one of his books] and I told him about my desire to return to Iraq and make this film. He pushed me to do it and gave me some cash. So I had to go! He signed on as executive producer to help with exposure. Christie Hefner and Studs are friends and so it was a nice way to get Playboy Foundation and Studs together to present the film. Playboy Foundation gave Nice Bombs a grant.

PRIDE: This film seems to be your leap from out of the so-called "underground," but CUFF was good to you in 2006-

ALSHAIBI: CUFF was good to me in 2006 and Playboy, Benzfilm and the Music Box all helped with that premiere. I will probably always be playing my shorts at various underground or experimental film fests but I do want to make work like Nice Bombs that is accessible to everyone and anyone. This has become important to me.

PRIDE: Do the interviews you edited out make the film less personal to you? More political? More streamlined, is what you seem to suggest.

ALSHAIBI: No, not less personal, even more so. It keeps the narration going without so many interruptions. More streamlined and I was also able to tweak some parts to make the scenes more clear. It is definitely a more coherent documentary that is closer to the soul of the experience.

PRIDE: So finally it's locked, loaded and out there: I'm sure there's something to be gained from the stock question of, what have you learned?

ALSHAIBI: To trust my instincts but to also balance that was patience and observation. I've learned to listen.

PRIDE: How do you see it fitting into the context of the uncertain moment we're all in?

ALSHAIBI: I think it stays there, in that uncertain moment, hanging out to make sure Iraq is not ignored for the sake of American impatience.

PRIDE: How long ago was the last visit to Iraq in the film?

ALSHAIBI: February 2004.

PRIDE: Is there news of your relatives?

ALSHAIBI: My uncle Kamil, the older academic, died from old age. My cousin Tareef has fled to Malaysia to protect his family and to complete his Ph. D. Malaysia is one the few countries that accept Iraqis. Some have fled to Syria. The American couple had to leave and are now in Europe. The Swedish-Iraqi woman and her husband moved to UAE. Many people had to leave. My other uncle Abdullah had to sell my grandfather's house and moved to Jordan. I'm losing all my relatives over there. But there are still many Iraqis that do not wish to leave. In fact, my Dad has been going back to Iraq for some work.

PRIDE: You're also developing more things with your audio experience?

ALSHAIBI: Oh yeah, I work now as a host and producer for a new radio/web station called Vocalo. It's the product of Chicago Public Radio but we don't sound anything like public radio. We have music, audio pieces and listener-created content. It's still in the early phases, but I left the [Chicago History] Museum to go work there full-time. I like it. It's a creative job and I work with some really talented people. It keeps me excited. I'm still creating these mini-docs, but within the realm of audio. It's helping me get better at creating short audio modules on all sorts of subjects. They can be simple or complex and I keep moving and discovering people and the city. It keeps me fresh and gets me out on the streets.

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July 09, 2007

Sesame Streets (2006, NSFW)

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

July 06, 2007

Godard's trailer for Une femme est une femme (1961)

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Indie returns shortly

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July 05, 2007

The EU makes a movie: Let's Come Together [NSFW]

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July 04, 2007

Rallying 'round Sicko with Michael Moore and Studs Terkel

THE FIRST SOFT DUSK OF SUMMER AND A HELICOPTER HANGS STILL above Richard J. Daley Bicentennial Plaza, just east of the Gehry bandshell and the Bean. Television crew or city surveillance? A rally for healthcare reform, tied to Michael Moore’s new movie, Sicko, starts soon, with speeches set for healthcare professionals who’ve been storming the country since the movie’s premiere in Sacramento before a rally on the steps of the California State Capitol in a sea of activist nurses in red scrubs, as well as Moore, who is to be introduced by 95-year-old oral historian and lifelong progressive voice Studs Terkel. Cops are scattered in twos and threes. The entrance is ringed with hawkers Murmuring “socialist newspaper” like “loose joints” at a concert. A terrible jam band from Flint, Michigan, has a clutch of scruffies loose-limbing Deadhead moves. Six orange t-shirts walk astride, each with a letter “I – M – P – E - A - C – H,” like lotto balls out of a shabby commercial on local cable. Bins of placards on long sticks await. A park district worker in a yellow t-shirt busies himself sweeping the clover blossoms underfoot.

In front of porta-potties from “Oui Oui Enterprises,” a greyhair in a Hyde Park baseball cap drones about “the modern agnostic.” The scene is readily caricatured, but by 5:30, the area teems, and the frail yet resolute Terkel is as inspiring as the pungent, impassioned polemic from medical professionals about how a single-payer system might cut greed from the medical industry and how Sicko could be activist equal to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” (Studs’ socks, as always, are a brighter red than the scattering of crimson scrubs.) Terkel has brought a brick with him, given to him years ago by Moore, the last brick from a union hall. “One heavy mother!” he repeats, and says Moore can justly proclaim, “I don’t wear Italian shoes!” Moore, in shorts and t-shirt, squints in the sun, and works like a pol on the stump: “Money should not be part of the equation! There’s no room for it when we’re talking about people’s lives! You cannot allow the Halliburtons of the health care industry into this equation. The first word in our founding document is We. Not me the people. We the people.” The crowd cheers. “If you can find the money to kill people, you can find the money to help people. Let’s do this, America!” Turning my head from the stage as Moore exits, it seems most of the assembly of a few hundred are wiping their eyes.

WAS IT ALL JUST A DREAM? A colleague who saw the Chicago sneak preview of Sicko (2007, ***) on the Saturday night before the film's June 29 opening said he or she felt privileged to be among a crowd so electric, so as one massed as one in righteous anger. (Me, I saw it with a bunch of critics.)