« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
November 30, 2007
Harmony Korine makes a commercial
The nicest sixty seconds of the day so far.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2007
Margot at the Wedding (2004, *** 1/2)
"JUST BECAUSE I DON'T AGREE WITH YOU DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT TRUE."That's the memorable way Noah Baumbach responds to a journalist who offered up an interpretation darker than what's on screen in his relentless, tragicomic study of emotional breakdown among the literary class in Margot at the Wedding. As thinking-out-loud that sounds as written as can be, not precisely a put-down, but a musing of precision, discomfiting, just shy of disdain, it captures the tone of his written dialogue as well.
The 38-year-old writer-director's fifth feature, coming after The Squid and the Whale, follows in terse, cutting strokes a short story writer Margot Zeller (Nicole Kidman) with teenage son, Claude (Zane Pais) in tow to the wedding of her estranged sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Baumbach's wife) at the East Coast island home given to Pauline by their mother. The décor of the remote, unspecified locale looks as if mom had deserted the place 30 years ago; Baumbach and cinematographer Harris Savides (Zodiac, American Gangster) also work with less-sharp 1970s-era lenses, giving Margot an additional element out of time. (Pauline's fiancée, Malcolm, is played with self-suffocating wit by Jack Black.)
Margot's in the midst of a breakdown, more terrifying than comic, running from a failed marriage, hiding her affair with an older man (Ciaran Hinds) who's also her writing partner, and she leaps from irritation to cruelty in a blink. How do intelligent people deal with unintelligent behavior in their midst? Badly, for the most part, but Baumbach observes his characters with ruthless economy. Brief scenes are sketched from the perspective of the characters: there's a beguiling subjectivity in how events are shaped, including those involving less-well-off neighbors who see a tree on the shared property line—a bold and blunt metaphor—as a purveyor of rot. The Zellers, old and young alike, are less judgmental than fearful of them, of anything that can be an Other. (There is a shockingly tender moment near the end between two members of that clan that underlines this.) This also suits the motifs of eavesdropping and inappropriate confidences: what is the subjective (mis-)perception at that moment?
This is Jean Eustache (The Mother and the Whore) as farce, treading on the potential for intelligent people to crush one another with the ponderousness of their concerns, thoughts outweighing the concern for actions. Wounds are welts here: they do not heal. Baumbach says he works from scraps of dialogue or images like the opening scene of Margot and Claude on a train. "Things change all the time. What I try to do is remain as open as possible in the early drafts, but it creates a lot of contradictory element, character elements and things I later have to make decisions about."
Leigh, whose mother is a screenwriter, was an invaluable collaborator. "I would ask her, "Help me solve this?" It wasn't vague. I would say, "Help me figure this out." Jennifer is an incredible editor and she's great with character and story, so she was invaluable." Although some influences are obvious—I didn't get a chance to ask about Maurice Pialat (A nos amours)—Baumbach considers his work influenced by everything he's seen. "I was thinking about Eric Rohmer movies, particularly movies where he has people sort of go on vacations. Things like Claire's Knee and Pauline at the Beach. And the movies that Ingmar Bergman made in the '60s that also take place on an island. I like that feeling of isolation, but also there's something about getting people, you're both isolated but there's also a coziness to being separated from 
everyone. I had spent summers on islands as a kid so I sort of connected to that, brought that into Margot, movies like The Passion Of Anna and Shame. I love movies. I watch movies all the time so it's hard to pick, y'know, certain specific directors that have inspired me in the aggregate. Any movie I like seeps in somehow."
And life? "I probably identify more with Margot than Claude. There's certainly things of me in Claude, but it's not a depiction of me as a kid." Why Margot? "I can feel pretty critical of people, and I understand that sort of feeling of when you're going through something that's painful, taking it out on the world and projecting onto other people, finding faults with other people because it's harder to find faults in yourself."
Just to observe Margot's lacerating behavior without judgment is a rare feat of empathy. Like a Gena Rowlands role in a John Cassavetes movie, she's allowed to fall apart. "I think she is complicated and you might not like her, but I have a lot of empathy for her. I never thought of it that way. I don't look at the movie as about, "Well, should I soften this person here or there?" I just try to keep them true to what I see is going on in their lives at that moment. Margot is in crisis and I think people who are having breakdowns aren't always their best selves. I know a lot of people like Margot and to me Margot is a real person. She feels very human to me, and sometimes being human is not being a great person."
There's no neat solution for her, either. "In my experience I don't know when the crisis ends. I don't know that anybody that's gone through a breakdown says, 'Okay! Nervous breakdown over!' The movie approximates that experience. I think there's hope in [several scenes near the end]. But it's also, the movie's about, in a lot of ways, it's about not being able to escape your family and how this stuff keeps happening and keeps going. So to slam an ending on it and say, 'Margot's better now,' I don't know." Baumbach allows himself a big grin.
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Film is 24 francs per second? Godard cops a plea
AFP reports that Jean-Luc Godard had producing in his instincts early on,
>resorting to crime. "French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard has confessed that he stole money to finance his films in an interview with a German newspaper.. ""I had no choice. Or at least it seemed that way to me. I even stole money from my family to give to Rivette for his first film. I pinched money to be able to see films and to make films," he told Die Zeit weekly... Godard, 76, is due to receive a lifetime achievement award from the European Film Academy in Berlin on Saturday... He told Die Zeit he had little time for most contemporary filmmakers... "Most directors, and three-quarters of the people who will receive prizes in Berlin, only pick up the camera to feel alive. They do not use it to see things that you cannot see without a camera."
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
What's a writers' strike without a white-boi rapper anthem?
[Via Firedoglake.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
A little Andy Warhol in the morning
From Jonas Mekas' Anthropological Sketches, Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol. [Bonuses below.]
Andy sells TDK in Japan.
Jørgen Leth observes Andy and a hamburger in 1981.
Andy and Sonny Liston share a moment for Braniff Airlines.
Andy and some Brillo.
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sampling Johnny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood
[H/t Karina Longworth at Spoutblog.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 28, 2007
There Will Be one more trailer...
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 27, 2007
John Malkovich's advice to the young
During a masterclass at the 48th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, John Malkovich offers advice to the young artist, starting with William Faulkner's Nobel speech and working his way to a YouTube parody of Bollywood movies called "Nipple, Nipple." [Apologies in advance for the incorrect exposure which makes Malkovich resemble Colonel Kurtz with impending sunstroke.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
Northern promises: Penguin Canada gets Cronenberg novel
Type, type, type, eh, Mr. Cronenberg? News comes that he can multitask as constructively as any man, beast or bug. Penguin Canada announces a debut novel from the director of Eastern Promises. "Penguin Group Canada has acquired a debut novel from internationally acclaimed film director David Cronenberg in an exciting pre-empt from agent Andrew Wylie of the Wylie Agency. Cronenberg, best known for his work in the body horror genre, is one of the few Canadian directors who can claim an international legion of fans... In 1999, Cronenberg was inducted onto Canada's Walk of Fame. In 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2006, he was awarded the Cannes Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Winstanley says, “I wrote David Cronenberg several months ago to inquire about whether or not he’d consider writing a novel. His films demonstrate a deep understanding of the human condition that could translate into fiction brilliantly so I’m delighted that he has decided to take this challenge on and I’m really looking forward to working with him.” ... The untitled novel is not being described at this time but is partially set in Toronto and scheduled for publication in early 2010. Said Cronenberg last week in Toronto: "I've literally been waiting fifty years to do this. I'm excited." [Complete PR at the jump.]
For Immediate Release – November 25, 2007 – Penguin Canada acquires Cronenberg novel
Nicole Winstanley, Executive Editor at Penguin Group Canada has acquired a debut novel from internationally acclaimed film director David Cronenberg in an exciting pre-empt from agent Andrew Wylie of the Wylie Agency.
Cronenberg, best known for his work in the body horror genre, is one of the few Canadian directors who can claim an international legion of fans. His critically acclaimed films include The Dead Zone (1983), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Naked Lunch (1991), M. Butterfly (1993), Crash (1996), eXistenZ (1999), Spider (2002), A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007). In 1999, Cronenberg was inducted onto Canada's Walk of Fame. In 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2006, he was awarded the Cannes Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Winstanley says, “I wrote David Cronenberg several months ago to inquire about whether or not he’d consider writing a novel. His films demonstrate a deep understanding of the human condition that could translate into fiction brilliantly so I’m delighted that he has decided to take this challenge on and I’m really looking forward to working with him.”
David Cronenberg was born and lives in Toronto, and graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in literature after switching from science. He released his first feature film (Shivers) in 1975 and over the arc of his career has gone beyond the horror genre to explore themes including the paranormal, the intrusion of visual media, biology, technology, identity and the psychology of delusion. The untitled novel is not being described at this time but is partially set in Toronto and scheduled for publication in early 2010.
Said Cronenberg last week in Toronto: "I've literally been waiting fifty years to do this. I'm excited."
Founded in 1974 as a distribution company for Penguin books from all over the world, Penguin Group (Canada) began publishing Canadian and international titles in 1977, and quickly became known as one of Canada's pre-eminent publishers of literary, thought-provoking fiction, and non-fiction. Among its authors, Penguin Canada proudly publishes Canadian fiction writers Joseph Boyden, Alice Munro, Stuart McLean, Donna Morrissey, Michael Winter, Colin McAdam, Jack Todd, Will Ferguson, and Guy Gavriel Kay.
– 30 –
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Portrait: Andrew Dominik and Sam Rockwell of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Of many photos I took at this year's Thessaloniki International Film Festival between movies and other activites, this is among my favorites, of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford's writer-director and co-star Sam Rockwell, at a press conference for the film. What kind of director does Dominik look like here? The kind of director who would try to catch fire with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
[Photo © 2007 Ray Pride.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
What John Sayles looks for in actors
A succinct answer to the question, "What do you look for in an actor?" from honoree John Sayles, at a press conference during his 16-film retrospective and tributes at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in the north of Greece. The festival's uncommonly democratic in access, with the pressers held in a large warehouse on the pier where many events take place, along with four cinemas, the John Cassavetes among them, and that's the reason for the hullabaloo in the background: on the second floor, the Boutari and Fischer are flowing.[More Thessaloniki pictures here.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Diego Luna on Los Angeles Vs. Mexico and politics in Mexican filmmaking
Diego Luna is one of three partners in Canana Films, along with producer Pablo Cruz, seen here. and Gael Garcia Bernal. Their intentions are to make movies that reflect contemporary Mexico, and in the first of two clips from a masterclass at the just-ended 48th Thessaloniki International Film Festival in the north of Greece, Luna describes the amusing differences between taking meetings in Los Angeles and being a director-producer in the country where he was born.
Here, Luna describes the origins of the political bent of their enterprise. (The name of their company refers to the part of a revolutionary's bandolier that holds bullets, he told me later.) "I am a very optimistic man," he says in the clip, "and I do believe I live in an important time in my country. I remember when I was, in '88, there was an election in Mexico, that we all knew was a fraud. And we all knew it was stolen. And nothing happened. Y'know? We stayed six years with that president. And we called him 'President.' That was something that really got me aware and awoke me to the necessity of doing something. I do believe my generation has got that in mind." [More in the video.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
[PR] The Webby Awards suggest 12 internet videos as most influential
With videos embedded in the linked page, the Webby Awards, for their twelfth iteration, cite their "12 MOST INFLUENTIAL ONLINE VIDEOS OF ALL TIME." From the press release: "Although many of the videos on our list are no more than a few minutes long, their impact will be felt for years to come in everything from entertainment to advertising to politics,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “Each video sparked a trend or set a benchmark that changed the craft, business and culture of the moving image." And they are?
1. Jennicam (1996)
2. All Your Base Are Belong to Us (2000)
3. BMW Film Series – “The Hire” (2001)
4. Star Wars Kid (2002)
5. JibJab - “This Land” (2004)
6. Subservient Chicken (2004)
7. Lazy Sunday (Narnia Rap) (2005)
8. Israel-Hezbollah War (2006)
9. “lonelygirl15” (2006)
10. OK Go - “Here We Go Again” (2006)
11. Senator George Allen’s “Macaca” Incident (2006)
12. Zidane Headbutt (2006) [Full PR at the jump.]
THE 12th ANNUAL WEBBY AWARDS NAMES
12 MOST INFLUENTIAL ONLINE VIDEOS OF ALL TIME
“lonelygirl15”, Burger King's “Subservient Chicken” Ad, and SNL’s “Lazy Sunday”
Among Web’s Top Video Milestones
New York (November 27, 2007) – An enigmatic teenager, a deferential rooster, and two cupcake-obsessed rappers rank among the twelve most influential online videos of all time, according to a list unveiled today by The Webby Awards (www.webbyawards.com/top12videos).
Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, online film and video, interactive advertising, and mobile content. The deadline for entering The 12th Annual Webby Awards is December 14, 2007. To enter, visit www.webbyawards.com.
From the groundbreaking “lonelygirl15” series to Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” ad to Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday (Narnia Rap)”, the list encompasses an eclectic mix of memorable Web moments that reshaped everything from popular culture to politics.
Other videos making the list include Senator George Allen’s infamous “Macaca” gaffe, the pioneering “Jennicam.com”, and OK Go’s treadmill-dance sensation “Here We Go”. On a more serious note, The Webby Awards cited personal videos of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict as a milestone in how the world sees and experiences war. (See full list of The Webby Awards’ 12 Most Influential Online Videos below and online at www.webbyawards.com/top12videos.
“Although many of the videos on our list are no more than a few minutes long, their impact will be felt for years to come in everything from entertainment to advertising to politics,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “Each video sparked a trend or set a benchmark that changed the craft, business and culture of the moving image."”
Davies also noted that many of the videos on the list premiered in 2006, a milestone year for online video.
“2006 was a turning point for online video,” said Davies. “The massive popularity of sites like YouTube and the explosive growth of digital video cameras combined to make it a powerful new medium.”
The Webby Awards’ 12 Most Influential Online Videos of All Time:
Jennicam (1996)
Jennifer Ringley redefined privacy and entertainment for the Internet era by posting a few Webcams around her college dorm room and inviting the world to view and debate the most mundane moments of her daily life.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us (2000)
The phrase, from a muddled translation of a Japanese video game, was the ultimate insider reference among gaming geeks; but when a flash animation set to a catchy dance tune hit the pre-iTunes, pre-YouTube Internet, it became the first “mash-up” to take pop culture by storm.
BMW Film Series – “The Hire” (2001)
With a star-studded line-up of actors and directors that included Clive Owen, Madonna, Don Cheadle, Ang Lee, Ridley Scott, and John Woo, The Hire set the standard for branded content and proved that millions of people will tune in online to view original, high-quality films.
Star Wars Kid (2002)
While online video is riddled with aspiring actors and singers, Ghyslain Raza learned unintentionally that it can be a powerful star-making tool. While millions delighted at the golf-stick wielding Jedi – even remixing and reediting the original – Raza’s rise to fame was a reminder for many to “destroy the tape.”
JibJab - “This Land” (2004)
“This Land,” an animation featuring a John Kerry/George W. Bush duet, became the medium's first hugely popular political parody – enjoying three times the combined traffic of the actual candidates’ sites and paving the way for campaign-defining political clips like the "1984" Hillary Clinton ad and the camp "Obama Girl" video.
Subservient Chicken (2004)
The garter-belted chicken that obeyed viewers’ commands racked up a million hits in its first 24 hours, thanks to its pitch-perfect appeal to Burger King’s young male target audience. It paved the way for other Web marketing phenomena from Trevor the Mento’s Intern to Diesel’s Heidies.
Lazy Sunday (Narnia Rap) (2005)
Saturday Night Live was in a ratings funk when this skit originally aired, but by the next morning the white-guy rap was burning through YouTube. NBC, which immediately posted the skit on its own site, became one of the first major entertainment companies to recognize online video’s power.
Israel-Hezbollah War (2006)
From 9/11 to the 2004 tsunami, the Web has become the place where people turn first to share first-hand accounts and follow unfolding news events; but it wasn’t until the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict that personal videos became a powerful witness to war and conflict. Many call it the first “YouTube War.”
“lonelygirl15” (2006)
The wildly popular video diary of a teenaged girl – famously outed by the Financial Times as fictional – made Jessica Rose, its Webby Award-winning star, one of the first actors to gain credibility on the Web, and proved that fans could be as loyal to an online video series as a weekly TV show.
OK Go - “Here We Go Again” (2006)
The band OK Go had been toiling in relative obscurity for eight years when they jumped onto a set of treadmills and danced their way into music video history. The elaborately-choreographed video reeled in millions of new fans, garnered a Grammy award, and helped topple the hegemony of MTV.
Senator George Allen’s “Macaca” Incident (2006)
With the help of a camera and YouTube, Senator George Allen’s political gaffe became a media sensation and is widely credited with helping the Democrats take control of the U.S. Congress in 2006. It proved a powerful cautionary tale for misbehaving politicians and celebrities everywhere.
Zidane Headbutt (2006)
Thanks to the Internet, no one missed this infamous World Cup moment that gave rise to countless video parodies, interactive games, and a world-wide hit song that originally premiered online.
About The Webby Awards:
Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Web sites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites. Established in 1996, the 11th Annual Webby Awards received a record 8,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Sponsors and Partners of The Webby Awards include: Adobe; The Creative Group; GettyImages; dotMobi; The Barbarian Group; CondéNast|CondéNet; Level3; Adweek; Fortune; Reuters; Variety; Wired; IDG: Brightcove; PricewaterhouseCoopers; 2advanced.Net; KobeMail and Museum of the Moving Image.
###
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
David Lynch gets a German blitzkrieg: I don't want to have anything to do with Hitler.
There's something fascinating about David Lynch at a podium marked "Urania" with a red curtain behind him, recorded in sloppy-cam, but there's more to this public event than first sight, reports TIME. "David Lynch is no stranger to weird confluences," they write, but he "failed to anticipate the reception his latest project got in Germany this week." Lynch is touring Europe "to help establish a network of so-called "invincible universities" to teach the philosophy of transcendental meditation. The idea is to engender world peace. But at a meeting this week at a culture center in Berlin, Lynch triggered a less than peaceful exchange with German onlookers when Emanuel Schiffgens, his partner for establishing such a "university" in the German capital, suddenly veered into dangerous waters. "We want an invincible Germany!" intoned Schiffgens, the self-styled Raja of Germany... "What do you mean by this concept of invincibility," asked an onlooker from the audience, made up mainly of film students with a smattering of meditation devotees. "An invincible Germany is a Germany that's invincible," replied a Delphic Schiffgens, who was dressed in a long white robe and gold crown. "Adolf Hitler wanted that too!," shouted out one man. "Yes," countered Schiffgens. "But unfortunately he didn't succeed." At that the crowd began shouting epithets at the speaker: "You are a charlatan! This is bad theater!" Lynch, who does not speak German, looked on in incomprehension." More at the link, plus the entire conflagration, in two parts, from YouTube. Lynch's reply in the comments of the video follows as well.
David Lynch here. I don't want to have anything to do with Hitler. We all know he was not a good person who did terrible things. I want to support Invincible Universities to develop the full potential of the student—enlightenment—and to have students meditating together in a group to enliven and radiate the unified field—the field of peace—into the atmosphere, into the collective consciousness of every nation. Invincibility in this case means dynamic peace—a situation where no harm can come from within the country and nothing destructive can come from the outside to harm the country. Sometimes misunderstandings are troublesome. So I want to make perfectly clear that the university for enlightenment and peace will make this a peaceful world — a peaceful world family — where anyone can travel anywhere in the world and meet a friend, not an enemy. Dynamic peace is not just the absence of war—it is the absence of negativity, which is the seeds of war. These universities, established on a permanent basis, will put an end to thousands of years of war and oppression, and prevent a man like Hitler from ever arising again.
Posted by Ray Pride at 09:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Do they whistle Dixie in Japan? Matt Damon observes.
Matt Damon humors the Japanese whistling champion in a near-unfathomable television segment from out east. (It gets more entertaining about four minutes in.) [Via
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2007
Dept. of Ouch: a festival's notice on a filmmaker
On Saturday at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the 48th edition, Diego Luna showed his directorial debut JC Chavez, a documentary about a Mexican boxer, and conducted an acting-directing-producing masterclass. After the departure of he and his producing partner (with Gael Garcia Bernal), Pablo Cruz, the festival issued a notice to journalists and also placed in public areas this notice, with bold red borders:
ANNOUNCEMENT:
CANCELLATION OF SCREENING OF THE FILM JC CHAVEZ, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24TH, 12.00, FRIDA LIAPPA
We regret to inform you that today's (second) screening of the film JC CHAVEZ, directed by Diego Luna, is cancelled.
The responsibility for this regrettable decision lies with the film's producer, Pablo Cruz, who attended this year's Festival as a guest along with Diego Luna.
Mr. Cruz demanded to take the film print with him for a screening in London, despite the fact that he had been notified before the start of the Festival about the 2 screenings.
Despite the production company's assurances that a BETA tape would be forwarded to us instead of the print, in order for the second screening to take place as programmed, the tape has not arrived in Thessaloniki at the moment of going to press. [Photo: Ray Pride.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2007
1966 interview with William Shatner on the set of "Star Trek"
Why is this so goddam charming?
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2007
Joe Swanberg talks DIY in Thessaloniki, Greece
[Photo: Ray Pride.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 21, 2007
Todd Haynes' back pages: Weinsteinco launches "liner notes" for I'm Not There
Cool press release of the week: "INSPIRED BY BOB DYLAN’S FAMOUS LINER NOTES, AUDIENCES WILL RECEIVE "I'M NOT THERE: THE OFFICIAL GUIDE TO THE MOVIE" AT PARTICIPATING MOVIE THEATERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY
NEW YORK, NY (November 20, 2007) - The Weinstein Company is pleased to announce that participating movie theaters nationwide will distribute liner notes for the highly anticipated film “I’m Not There.” From acclaimed director Todd Haynes, “I’m Not There” is an unconventional journey into the life and times of Bob Dylan. Six actors portray Dylan as a series of shifting personae—from the public to the private to the fantastical—weaving together a rich and colorful portrait of this ever-elusive American icon. The film opens in select theaters across the country on Wednesday, November 21, 2007. The announcement was made today by Gary Faber, executive vice president of marketing for The Weinstein Company.
Inspired by Dylan’s famous liner notes for his classic albums, this information will provide audiences with a special introduction to Dylan. The liner notes include carefully selected excerpts of articles that will enhance the audiences’ experience of the man and his music, replicating the experience of listening to one of Dylan's albums or seeing him in concert for the first time.
Gary Faber stated, “Preview audiences have enjoyed ‘I’m Not There’ so much that they leave the film eager to learn more about Dylan’s life and art. The articles selected for the notes will help audiences unlock some of the secrets in the film and enable them to enjoy it in a unique and special way.”
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 20, 2007
Indie is at a festival
Maybe some posting from Thessaloniki in a bit... but movies and masterclasses and interviews and the sunshine in northern Greece distract...
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 18, 2007
Serge Gainsbourg sounds like Monday morning to me
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2007
Redacted (2007, ***)
While some reactionary observers who haven't seen Redacted have labeled Brian DePalma's latest film with such calumnies as "arthouse snuff-porn," there is at least the courage of his anger, which brings this rapid-fire, if indifferently written and acted, montage to a consistent boil. There are levels of staging and acting and phoniness and fear that work despite shortcomings. There are esthetic and moral qualms present in almost 
every frame of DePalma's fictional multimedia sketch of crimes committed in the American occupation of Iraq; his fury seethes. (It's hard to believe a 67-year-old man—born on September 11!—who committed the dreary Black Dahlia to celluloid, made this.) The collage of elements in Redacted, like his earliest comic tracts, Greetings and Hi, Mom!, are meant to irritate; it's ready blog-bait for those paid by conservative charities to blow hard. Yet the movie is not anti-American, it's anti-simplification, anti-stupidity, anti-terror, anti-rape, anti-war. When his lumpen characters—admittedly caricatured—are faced with encroaching paranoia around them, their lives turn full metal Jekyll. They're casualties of warmongering. Drawing on all manner of media he'd assembled—video diaries, European television documentaries, American TV coverage, websites, terror videos—DePalma discovered the legalities are too deep on the ground, and that he could only make his own representation of what he'd observed and collected—he couldn't mix and match fact with fiction. This led to the spat with his financier-distributors involving a montage of photographs at the end, in which faces had to be blacked out—redacted, redux. Of course, he was also part of the 1960s generation inspired by faux-vérité like Jim McBride's piss-take, The Diary of David Holzman ("The D.I. of David Holzman"?). There are many cross-references about the nature of representation, including the faux French documentary using slow zooms in and out with Kubrick-style classical accompaniment, a jab at the higher esthetic pretensions of the fictional crew. A character unwittingly paraphrases Godard, "24-7, the camera doesn't lie." (Godard observed, "Film is truth 24 frames a second.") I'm not against some of the blunt elements either: a pacifist character named "Brix" or the most corpulent and corrupt of the characters being named "Rush": DePalma's satirical cards are on the table. This is the kind of fierce, focused fire-and-brimstone cacophony DePalma ought to have spent his late career making instead of the stately smear of Dahlia. Still, I'd be curious to read the reactions to Redacted of filmmakers who sweated bullets to make documentaries like War Tapes, Fragments of Iraq and Gunner Palace. I'm sure they can make their points about DePalma's appropriation and retooling of the vocabulary of their nonfiction work as well, which would be far more telling ones than the pained groans of professional sob sisters like the too-prevalent Bill O'Reillys of the media.
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Not "The Daily Show" walks the line
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
Another filmmaker who avoids the movies: Roy Andersson
Roy Andersson, director of Songs from the Second Floor and the upcoming We, The Living is another filmmaker who shies away from movies. At CineEuropa: Do you think of the audience when you make a film? "That’s a delicate question, because you always want a large audience. But at the same time, you can’t speculate about what’s the average taste to reach the widest audience possible. I’m not fond of that. I hope that if I make a movie exactly the way I want it, even other people will like it." Do you go to the cinemas?I make movies myself and don’t look at other films because I don’t want to have them in my head. When I was younger, I didn’t mind being inspired by others, but not nowadays. I prefer to be inspired by painting, poetry and music. I do read about other film-makers’ work and watch teasers..." We waited 25 years for Songs for the Second Floor and seven years for You, the Living. How long will we have to wait for your next project? "It will go quicker. I have so many festivals to attend and interviews to make. I will need at least a month to rest."
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:52 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2007
Indie is in transit
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2007
Phil Robinson's 4-minute history of the Writers Guild
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)
Wag gets dogged: brucestrikes.com ceased and desisted
A completely convincing website got taken down today, with the pictured notice left in its stead. The content consisted of a photograph of awards-show gagster Bruce Vilanch holding a picket sign with a succession of strike slogans. (The utterly inappropriate Monica Lewinsky joke is what made the ruse so convincing.) Sample of what you're missing: "Jane! Get me off this thing!"
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
DePalma on the future of now
Over at Greencine, Sean Axmaker has an intriguing interview with Brian De Palma about Redacted. So it was constructed via the way you discovered [source material], through the video footage and video blogs you found in the Internet? "Yes, that presented the form to me. And I'm very technically savvy. I used to build computers when I was a kid and I'm very interested in the whole computer revolution. This'll change in another couple of years. There wasn't YouTube two or three years ago. There's all kinds of new stuff and people are using it to express how they feel about things. They're performers; they're doing all kinds things and it's interesting to see how it's going to evolve. And I also think, certainly with digital storytelling, it's a new way to tell narrative, to create narrative. I've made a lot of movies and most narrative forms have been pretty much exhausted now. They do them on television, they've recycled every plot and character you can imagine, so now there are whole new ways to deal with story forms that are emerging in these bits on the web."
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2007
"Reno 911" on the picket line
Posted by Ray Pride at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2007
[LOOK]: Woody Allen walks with the CBC through Manhattan in 1967
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2007
Indie is traveling
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2007
Bulletin: Amy Taubin, 68, does not like all low-budget American films with mumbling
In the November-December Film Comment, contributing editor Amy Taubin sets her rifle sight on movies by Andrew Bujalski, Aaron Katz, Joe Swanberg, and the Duplass Brothers. "In terms of performance, most of the actors favored by or simply available to these fledgling directors are nonprofessionals, who tend to swallow their words (particularly the ends of their sentences) because they are uncomfortable speaking on camera, whether their dialogue is scripted, improvised, or a combination of the two. In relation to meaning, these non-actors 
are perfect choices for these films because their insecurity and embarrassment about voicing their characters’ ideas, desires, and feelings is not merely symptomatic of their lack of technique, it dovetails with a defining characteristic of the particular cohort (white, middle-class, twenty-something) to which the filmmakers and their quasi-fictional characters belong. The mumblecore films literally speak in the voice of that cohort, and the best of them do so with remarkable and revealing precision. I once described Bujalski as a poet of demurral, hesitation, and noncommitment in whose films there are as many minute variations of meaning implied by the phrases “I don’t know” and “I mean” as there are said to be words for snow in the languages of the Inuit. Is that, however, a sufficient basis for a film movement? Obviously not in the grand sense of the French New Wave or the postwar American avant-garde. At most, one might think of [these movies] as an update of the “New Talkie,” the strand (not quite a genre) of no-budget indies that emerged in the early Nineties with such landmark films as Richard Linklater’s Slacker, Kevin Smith’s Clerks [of which Taubin was a major early and continuing supporter], and Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner’s Go Fish. Within a broader history, one might trace it back to Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls and his related Sixties talkies. So specific was the chatter in all these films that they could have served as illustrations in a course on anthropological linguistics." Several commenters, including SxSW's Matt Dentler, are responding, but for now, here's GreenCine's David Hudson: "she neglects to mention that there are just as many dicks flopping around in [Swanberg's] movies as boobs; that'd be a minor point if it weren't seemingly so important for Taubin." [Further diatribe at the link; pic: Aaron Katz's Dance Party USA.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
As a native Kentuckian...
... and someone always susceptible to electronic music like that of John Carpenter, a son of the Commonwealth himself—Bowling Green, Kentucky—... I'm very attracted to the rubber mallet effectiveness of a 30-second spot like this.... "How do you sleep at night... Senator?"
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 05, 2007
Did you remember the fifth of November?
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)
Indie is at the movies
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 02, 2007
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007, ****)
"At this point in your career, how do you approach something so completely lacking in hope?"
My favorite moment in a Sidney Lumet interview for his latest movie is in a video interview by filmmaker Jamie Stuart, where he's asked about the tone of the movie. Network, surely no one would ever make a film darker than Network, the interlocutor essentially asks: How does it feel to have made something much darker? "Terr-rrific!" Lumet answers, grinning the well-earned grin of a lifetime lived well.
And terrific it is. There have to be at least a half-dozen factors a movie might contain to tempt me into dropping that easy and overused word, "masterpiece," and there are a fistful of them in Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. Among them: a relentless story told with force and assurance, hewing to primal archetypes of family and fate; economy of means; elegance of composition; a sense of time and place that is spatially coherent and memorably observed; a bracing sense of humor; and ultimately, a belief that existence is a sum greater than all the petty crimes and spoiled ambitions most moviegoers harbor beyond the glow of the movie screen. Devil is a fantastically sinister thriller with a twining, fucked-up family plot that would be great even if someone else had directed it.
A lot of swoon-derful prose has been applied to this dark delight, a trim, fierce, modestly budgeted movie, shot on high definition video with multiple cameras, and man, it almost feels wrong to add to it. This is a wowser, a marvel and a gem. When Lumet's fortieth or so feature in a fifty-year career of terrible lows but tremendous highs, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, it was darker than a dark horse, it was a dark horse in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. And yet, at 83, Lumet (working from a script by first-time screenwriter and playwright Kelly Anderson) makes shards of time, charts double-crosses and breaks bones with all the alacrity of a much younger man.
I'd read a little about the story seeing the movie, yet was consistently surprised by the force and glee in every facet of the ever-tightening vise upon the characters. Some of the reversals are immediately apparent; any summary that makes sense will give far too much away. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play are brothers, Andy and Hank. They're both strung out and strung along by their bad habits and dirty secrets, and when Andy proposes the holdup of a simple family-owned jewelry store in Westchester, New York, things are set in motion.
We know within moments that a conflagration of epic proportions has taken place, more myth than mere melodrama. This is a heist-gone-wrong movie that may in fact surpass the substantial achievement of Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon. Leaping vertiginously across the narrative's intricate timeline, the effect offered by Lumet and Masterson functions as a bit of a stutter at each transition, moving slightly backward or slightly forward yet always, we remain in one place: present tension. Film unfolds in a persistent now, however we parse the story's intentions. Flopsweat has seldom been so entrancing.
Marisa Tomei plays Gina, Andy's wife, and the nakedness of these three performers, literally and emotionally, makes for a bravura show throughout. There are other performances to esteem in Tomei's career, such as Unhook the Stars, but anyone who sees Before the Devil… and says this woman is not a fine, forceful actress, is willfully blind or mean. Lumet is also aware of how the eye-poppingly beautiful Tomei provides contrast to the even-more-dowdy-than-usual Hoffman as well as champion scruff-bucket Hawke.
Lumet's name's been dropped a lot this year, even before this film's debut. Directors in conversation keep harking back to Lumet's command of performance and the unfussy, telling frame for his storytelling, and if they all take the lessons learned from Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon and Prince of the City, and now, Devil, we could see some tremendous movies in the next couple years. That is, if there's German financing and a European completion bond and hungry actors and great scripts and avid distributors like small, Canadian-owned thinkFILM… The factors of greatness are balanced against any and all films that go into production, but this savage, gleaming, brilliant little fucker reminds you why it's all worthwhile. [Ray Pride.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 01, 2007
[LOOK]: Chris Ware's poster for The Savages
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)