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January 21, 2007
Sundance Day 4 - A: Neigh
I'll take Sundance Documentaries About Sex With Horses for $500, Alex?
And the question is, "Does Zoo successfully make a very controversial subject into a poetic doc?"
Robinson Devor is an interesting young filmmaker and frankly, I think he would have been better off with this film hitting the world without Sundance. If it was meant for a festival it would be Seattle or The New York Film Festival. Sundance has turned this film, which is not really a doc, into a bit of a failure when it is, in and of itself, not. Only as a Sundance competition doc is it a failure.
The film is poetic and it is quite beautiful in many ways, but we have been sold a bill of goods. I don’t think the film advances documentaries or changes the movement at all. It is other than what anyone might expect. And maybe that is the greatest lesson Zoo should teach us all.
Posted by poland at January 21, 2007 03:10 PM
Comments
Sounds like expectations were out of whack. As long as it's not the crassly exploitative thing that so many people were figuring, with the added bonus of 'quite beautiful in many ways' it sounds like a winner.
Posted by: jeffmcm ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 21, 2007 03:52 PM
Is it the same guy who did The Woman Chaser?
I love that movie.
Posted by: anghus at January 21, 2007 04:23 PM
THE WOMAN CHASER is simply a great movie. period. POLICE BEAT is interesting in many ways and showed an emerging filmmaker who is not content to go the cookie cutter route.
Surely Dave if ZOO isn't what people expected - then it's exactly the sort of fare Sundance should be programming. How does Sundance turn a film into anything other than what it was? From a printed synopsis?
The hype is closer to home than you think. Look in the mirror.
Posted by: Jeffrey Boam's Doctor at January 21, 2007 06:45 PM
What bill of goods were you sold, though that it does not deliver on? Are you disappointed that you don't see the actual penetration?
Posted by: Noah at January 22, 2007 01:23 AM
Obviously not, Noah. But the film doesn't really discuss the issue in any real way. It is a meditation on the issue and there is nothing wrong with that... but it is a doc, really? I don't think so.
Posted by: David Poland at January 22, 2007 02:43 AM
What is the difference between a discussion of the issue and a meditation on the issue? It seems like semantics to me, but maybe I'm wrong. But basically, just because it wasn't the film you expected it to be, you think it's a failure?
Posted by: Noah at January 22, 2007 11:35 AM
Are Errol Morris films 'meditations' or docs?
Posted by: jeffmcm at January 22, 2007 12:40 PM
thems fighting words Jeff
Posted by: Lota at January 22, 2007 05:57 PM
They are?
I would have called them both.
Posted by: jeffmcm at January 22, 2007 06:05 PM
How do indies work? I'm a consumer, not in the industry.
Example - the Weinsteins buy a movie for $4Mil which means it cost about $1Mil to make the movie????
They release it / distribute it, and the movie makes $20Mil. Who gets the profits? Do the actors get ANYTHING?
Posted by: Chicago48 at January 23, 2007 04:56 AM
Depends on the given deal the signed when they made the film. There is no one answer. Deals are different from film to film.
Posted by: Szasa at January 23, 2007 05:06 AM
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