random rambles

New Website

2011-03-02T09:36:00.001-08:00

This blog will live on - complete with "greatest hits" ! Over at

www.johnfinkfilms.com

Best/Worst of 2010 (finally)

2011-01-15T08:32:00.000-08:00

I have kept putting of my annual list of 2010 - it’s difficult to construct a list like this when you live in Buffalo, NY which is not a hot city for film. Toronto is, but it feels weird having to show your passport to go to the movies, but I do it (for TIFF, Bruce McDonald, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul - not to mention Inception in D-Box motion code seating, but that was really to just to have lunch with one of my best friends who was in town).

No list is perfect - but I’ve waited till I’ve seen enough to justify its creation and it took some catching up. But instead of looking forward to Oscar season which I have no doubt will be lame (King’s Speech is probably the front runner, an excellent film but - COME ON!), let me look back at 2010 - and this list of films that deserve to be nominated for an Oscar, and get a wider release than they did (except Toy Story 3 - that one has been seen by anyone who was going to see it). I should also stress how highly subjective this list is, there is a certain type of film I’m a sucker for - this list in years past has always included those types of films.

-----
Top 10

10.- Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich) Pixar delivers again with a wildly emotional and humorous adventure - proving first and foremost to be filmmakers working outside the box that Dreamworks and other animators seem to be stuck in. Delightful and intense - who can forget one of the most disturbing moments of any film this year - in a movie with toys!

9.- Uncle Boome Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) A lucid, poetic, warm and at times silly fable with lush imagery.

8.- 127 Hours (Danny Boyle) Boyle breaks through several restrictions creating an intense and brilliant personal story. Boyle is at the top of his game.

7.-Mother (Joon-Ho bong) A solid thriller/revenge comedy - it walks a fine line with a masterful tone and pitch perfect performances - this is an odd trip.

6.-Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy) Okay - so Thierry Guetta attempts to create a documentary about underground art, and instead underground mystery artist Bansky turns the tables and creates a fun and exciting documentary about Guetta.

5.-Stone (John Curran) A compelling and well crafted morality drama by Angus McLean (Junebug) with top notch performances.

4.- This Movie is Broken (Bruce McDonald) A startlingly lovely film about two guys, a women, and a Broken Social Scene concert, lyrical and poetic, haunting and challenging - it’s everything you’d expect from a Broken Social Scene album, filmed by a master experimental filmmaker.

3.- We Live in Public (Ondi Timoner) We certainly do, while The Social Network got all the buzz this year, this film predates Zuckerberg - Josh Harris and his social experiments simulate the benefits and dangers of Facebook and Google, in the flesh. You won’t be able to turn away.

2.-Another Year (Mike Leigh) Balancing humor and sadness, often in the same scene, Leigh has crafted his best film since Secrets and Lies - following a stable couple through 4 seasons and the misery, joy and uncertainty of their friends and family. Painful but often very funny - and touching, a masterpiece.

1.-Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage (Sam Dunn & Scot McFadyen) Much like Bruce McDonald’s two films (maybe its a Canadian theme) - Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage is more than the music - the personalities are greater, here we get the tale of Rush - three dudes from Toronto making it big, making brilliant music and still together after 30+ years. Part tribute, part travelogue, it’s a wild, emotional, uplifting spiritual journey and the best film made about Rock n Roll since Almost Famous.

----

Runners up (11-50)
11.-Trigger
12.-3 Idiots
13.-The Square
14.-The Social Network
15.-Morning Glory
16.-Carlos
17.-Ajamni
18.-Wild Grass
19.-NEDS
20.-Animal Kingdom
21.-The Secret In Their Eyes
22.-Somewhere
23.-Please Give
24.-Blue Valentine
25.-Alamar
26.-Fair Game
27.-A Prophit
28.-The American
29.-I Am Love
30.-Daddy Longlegs
31.-The Killer Inside Me
32.-Rabbit Hole
33.-Made in Dagenham
34.-The Ghost Writer
35.-Buried
36.-Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
37.-The King’s Speech
38.-Client 9: The Rise & Fall of Elliot Spitzer
39.-The Kids Are All Right
40.-Soul Kitchen
41.-Casino Jack & The United States of Money
42.-Conviction
43.-Black Swan
44.-Inception
45.-Winter’s Bone
46.-Mao's Last Dancer
47.-Heartbreaker
48.-Middle Men
49.-Four Lions
50.-Chloe
-----------
Worst of the Year:

We can’t talk about the good without the bad - this year’s list includes the worst musical I’ve ever seen (and in the same four-weeks as I saw both Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquell and Nine - one of last year’s worst - proving January is a dumping ground even for Bollywood). January gets a bad rap as there were some pretty big 3D misses, Tim Burton continues crank out boring but eccentric visuals disconnected from anything emotionally interesting, Shrek needs to end (the first two worked, the third was a mess, and the last one is unwatchable), and Step Up 3D lacked the guilty pleasures of its British counter part Street Dance 3D, just to name a few. Also #2 was a snuff film that was so bad when it ended the theater had cleared out - it was me and the projectionist - a snuff film in Jackass form, made by a jackass, no doubt, what seemed to be “edgy” and “in your face” was less mature than Knoxville stapling his nuts to his leg. Here’s the bottom 10 - confession, I stayed away from Vampires Suck which surely would have been here had I seen it, but truthfully life is to short to see a bad movie - and here’s about 50 hours - almost 2 days of my life I wish I had back (the only redeeming quality of many of theses are the train wreck - you can’t look away - factor and the fact filmmakers should learn how not to tell a story for many of these):

1.-Veer
2.-Shooting April
3.-Shrek: Forever After 3D
4.-Alice in Wonderland 3D
5.-Last Airbender
6.-Skyline
7.-Little Fockers
8.-The Virginity Hit
9.-Love Ranch
10.-Kites
11.-Nightmare on Elm Street
12.-Valentine’s Day
13.-A Women, A Gun & A Noodle Shop
14.-My Soul to Take 3D
15.-Devil
16.-The Warrior's Way
17.-Legendary
18.-Mermaduke
19.-A-Team
20.-Killers
21.-The Lottery
22.-Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
23.-Sex & The City 2
24.-Clash of the Titans in 3D
25.-Step Up 3D

Statement of Purpose / Reactivation

2011-01-02T14:22:00.001-08:00

So my new years resolution is to write more, I once was good at keeping a blog - then grad school happened. As I write this I’m still not sure what should be said here - I keep “resetting” it - saying I will write more, but I haven’t had time to write let alone read for fun: my main focus of coarse is and will for the foreseeable future be seeing films. In terms of writing reviews I haven’t kept up or drafted much in the way of commentary - I keep my own journal but so much of what I see has me dumbfounded: there’s not much to say about a lot of it if there was no passion. Those I feel passionately about I think you should just go see - take my word for it, these films are worth it.

Then there the films I want to call out for one reason or another, but in the last year on this blog, I’ve only felt the need to call out a public official who should have been cleaning up a corrupt organization in Passaic County instead of participating in a whorish stunt, as if he was Snookie from The Jersey Shore.

Other friends have used blogs to write books or aggregate content (which is what made me stop writing in the first place: someone else has probably said it more brilliantly than I in the online realm - strangely I find it safer to write in an academic context - here I can’t figure out a way to cite with footnotes). With that said - what is the roll of a blog in the age of Zuckerberg where everything is communicated and aggregated - many things I don’t care about, some things I do. It’s always useful to log in and see certain friends (I have curated this to a degree) and what they’re up to, not as a stalker but as a sort of cultural pulse amongst a diverse set of friends from high school, undergrad and grad school. Sadly many of them are interested in The Jersey Shore.

With that said, I don’t know what to use this space for - I will be publishing a top list of movies from 2010 here, perhaps reviewing others from 2011. Several of my film reviews, including my upcoming adventure to South by Southwest will appear at another fine site: www.thefilmstage.com - where I provide reviews and hope to provide more commentary to a very wide audience. That site has an ever growing presence and will continue to grow - reaching eyeballs on another aggregator - IMDB’s Newsdesk, it had a mythological beginning much like Facebook, on a college campus, probably in a dorm room. Although I don’t think a break up, getting shitfaced and coding all night involved (it started on a blog site much like this). It was strange the first time I clicked on an IMDB film page and saw a review that not only I agreed with but thought from the first few lines “hey this guy is good, he gets me” - yeah. (I think that was for the unreleased in the United States, British version of Step Up 3D - Street Dance 3D)

So perhaps I’ll use this as a behind the scenes to what I’m working on - I’ve vowed 2011 will be a productive year and perhaps it should include some reflection - therefore 2011 will be (provided I get my ass in gear) the year when a lot of things I do (not everything) will be chronicled in a web presence. Fantastic - now on to reinvent the awful, dormant and boring www.johnfinkfilms.com - with some new shit.

----
links:
www.johnfinkfilms.com - new stuff coming soon (promise)
http://thefilmstage.com/author/john-fink

An actual blog update....... kind of

2010-09-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

It’s been far too long – what have I been up to? Well nobody asked so what the hell – why not talk.

This summer was crazy, it lead me to far flung places like Pompton Lakes, NJ, the Flaherty Seminar and a few times Toronto for research trips at the NFB and the Cinemateque Ontario.

Beyond that I did make a film I’m very proud of that is taking some form and have been swamped with TIFF 2010 – which is why this time last year I was sort of anti-social: the energy of TIFF could power you straight for 10 days without sleep, who needs sleep when there is that much cinema to catch with the highly receptive audience.

Instead of posing my exploits here, I’ll be covering TIFF for The Film Stage, where my review of Easy A is already posted:

http://thefilmstage.com/2010/09/14/tiff-review-easy-a/

More reviews to come from Toronto – including this weekend when I’ll catch two up my most anticipated film of the fest, Bruce Springsteen in The Promise: The Making of the Darkness on the Edge of Town.

2 MAJOR EVENTS - THIS WEEK / TONIGHT

2010-05-01T09:40:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

It's been a while but I've got two major things coming up this week:

-ARTISTS AND MODELS (2010): STIMULUS - I'll be presenting a new video instillation about failure as a mode of stimulus at Hallwalls' big fund raiser, should be a fun time. It's tonight from 9PM-2AM. More at www.hallwalls.org

-HOLLOW SPACES will have a work in progress screening at the Bergenfield Film Festival, it'll be 10 minutes shorter than previous versions that have played in Buffalo. And hopefully 50% better. That's May 6th from 6PM-10PM at the Clearview Cinemas in Bergenfield, NJ.

If You Must Remake "The Wizard of Oz"....please don't hire Tim Burton to goth it up.

2010-03-13T20:46:00.000-08:00

Growing up The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorite films, I’ve evolved but the fact remains for its time it’s still an excellent looking film that packs an emotional punch. With that said, there is talk of a 3-D remake, one that Warner Brothers is saying will skew darker than the original. Fine, but please, please, please – don’t let Tim Burton get his hands on the remake.

Tim Burton is great craftsmen but his films, or at least the past few films of his don’t engage the mind as much as they engage the eyes. There is nothing for me to do, except sit back and be passive, he’s done it all for me. I don’t like this, and there many world-class filmmakers that I’d much rather see a Wizard of Oz remake from.

My problems with Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Corpse Bride and Big Fish are that they were visually engaging films. Visual engagement is only half the battle: mental engagement, character development, drama, plot, excitement should be the whole thing. I’d rather pay to see a film that looks like it was shot on your handy cam that captures me. One such example is a documentary I just saw on Hollywood screenwriters, Tales from the Script.

Tales from the Script is visually the blandest film you’ll see all year, I don’t mean that as an insult: it’s a series of talking heads with the occasional scene from a film about screenwriting intercut to introduce the next theme. But what it does right (or write!) is that it contains truly interesting characters talking about a profession they love and are frustrated by and are critical of a closed system, not unlike Burton’s created worlds. I’d rather watch Tales from The Script twice more than Alice in Wonderland.

After paying to see Alice in 3-D, a format I’m not still sold on, I felt nothing, numb. The visuals weren’t terribly exciting to me, in fact we’ve seen this all before. 3-D is a format that I think still hasn’t been used to its full capacity (although Avatar in IMAX was a visually amazing experience), digital 3-D anyway (we saw the Dolby Digital process with glasses that we had to return). 3-D doesn’t do much to add to this experience, as there is a loss of light.

Burton also lost all respect from me as a filmmaker when he didn’t speak up over Disney’s shortening of distribution windows, for his own film (not Old Dogs, which probably should have been released direct to video). He makes films that are visually extravagant and expensive when a micro-budget documentary has the ability to be more exciting – you’d think with those visuals he’d inset on having it be seen on a giant screen, such as IMAX. Therefore you’d think he’d push for a full theatrical run, including a second run at a cheap house.

We’ve made the film a hit by seeing it. I will not see it again unless there was the promise of getting laid afterwards. So why is Burton wrong for Wizard of Oz?

I think the dark, dare I say “hot topic Goth” elements of some of his characters including the White Princess in Alice, serve to alienate audiences, it alienates me. Unlike most I like seeing myself on screen, which is why I had such a good time with She’s Out of My League this evening. The “hot topic Goths” and CGI creatures would ruin The Wizard of Oz. The story is about humans, not animals, humans trapped by their conditions and flaws. The idea of a CGI cowardly lion makes me want to puke.

Why not leave a classic alone. Sure there are things to be done, it could be made into a darker story, but why toy with a classic. The Wizard of Oz has been re-released a few times, I saw it ironically enough back in 1998 the same weekend as I saw the Oz-like Velvet Goldmine in theaters. Maybe Todd Haynes is the right person to do a Wizard of Oz 3-D remake; his work is about superstition, image, desire, alienation, and real humans. He gets women. He’d probably get these men with something missing, being a filmmaker from the golden age of “new queer cinema”. His Wizard of Oz would be personal, moving, and memorable with an emphasis on emotion more than visual.

Sony got that when they hired Marc Webb to reboot Spider-Man (why it needs a reboot I’m not sure). He’s only directed one feature before, but it was the fun character driven comedy (500) Days of Summer, boil it down to its elements and its about a boy and a girl, much like Spiderman. Burton has been adapting the work of others creating a hyper reality without engagement or any sort of conflict for us, the audience. It happens, we pay our $13, sit there for 2 hours and that’s it. The thing is, it shouldn’t more than that, we should connect, and when we can’t there is a huge problem. Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t you rather see somebody theoretically inventive take an artist risk and do something bold, then the safe CGI-infused choice that leaves you feeling bored?

Paris Hilton with a Gun and a Badge: PC Sheriff Speziale

2010-03-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

This essay was submitted and has yet to run in The Bergen Record in response to a puff piece the paper ran about Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale’s role in Brooklyn’s Finest (http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/86740172_Sheriff_enjoys_his_star_turn.html) What sickens me most about Speziale is that he’s front and center and often not challenged by the papers that cover him.

Granted the papers cover the facts and reporters should be objective -after you read this, you may have the same reaction I did: if we give this guy enough rope, eventually he’ll hang himself. I have no doubt he'd do something very stupid in the name of self promotion, it might be a stupid YouTube Video. It might be a reality show. Think of him as Paris Hilton with a gun, a badge and an elected position.

Because The Record hasn’t run this essay, nor may they ever especially after running the above linked article which is factual if devoid of real valuable news especially in regards to the film's content (he wasn't asked the important questions as I do below). I think its fair to present it in its entirety for the 3 people that actually read my blog:

----
Letter to the Editor, The Record
RE: Passaic County sheriff celebrates film debut in “Brooklyn’s Finest” at screening in Paterson
------

After attending a screening of Brooklyn’s Finest, a film that features Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale in a supporting role as a Captain of a corrupt Brooklyn police force, I have to wonder if such a thing is good for the Speziale brand. Speziale is a textbook example of effective self-marketing, he has become the front man for a brand of justice, as evidenced by the website for his office and technological outreach. Speziale is a prominent feature on the department’s crime fighting posters including a recent campaign to text in crime and quality of life issues. His face is front and center on all of the department’s materials.

This is why it is not shocking to see he’s now acting in a film – he’s capitalizing on brand equity, however like Ron Paul’s disastrous interview with Sacha Baron Cohen in Bruno, I have to wonder if in advancing his own interests the Sheriff was duped into participating in a narrative heavily coded and perhaps inspired by the Sean Bell shooting in 2006, and the ever changing narrative that immerged from the NYPD as it was uncovered.

The film also mirrors allegations within the Sheriff’s department. Sure there are good cops, bad cops and the unspoken “blue wall of silence” – the film shows many extremes, focusing primarily on three cops. One is pushed to the limit while undercover forcing him to lash out and commit homicide, the other bares similarities to former Passaic County Sheriff officer Alan Soto as he makes an unethical decision for money, while another cop finds redemption after regular visits with a cocaine snorting prostitute whose regular clients are cops.

The film blurs the lines between real life scandals and a shoot first; justify later mentality that haunts police forces. In this respect the film seems to be a direct reaction to the killing of Sean Bell. Following that incident the NYPD practically shook down every black man in Queens trying to find a mysterious shooter to justify some 50 shots fired. Law enforcement as portrayed in Brooklyn’s Finest is systemically corrupt from the top down to the new 20-year-old recruit. The title appears to be an ironic commentary. The corruption becomes viral; those at the bottom of the food chain witness it and are inspired by it. The film offers only one honest cop who is justified in his behavior at all times. Ronnie (played by Brain F. O’Byrne) does not break the law for a vendetta or for personal needs.

As a resident of Passaic County, I find it inappropriate that our front man for law enforcement would participate in a film that, while fiction, has parcels to recent scandals involving Passaic County law enforcement including the previously referenced Soto, who was convicted of selling narcotics from the department’s evidence locker, and other allegations of friendships and business arrangements between cops and drug dealers (such as an incident that involved cops from my town, Pompton Lakes as well as the Sheriff’s department a few years ago)

I suppose the reason Sheriff Speziale agreed to star in the film was to advance his brand as covered extensively in Robert Bieselin’s article of March 7, 2010, which also includes a book on his experiences that has been optioned for film. The Sheriff gives a fine, realistic performance and is featured in two important scenes in the film: he offers Richard Gere’s Eddie a shot at redemption by mentoring a new recruit and in the other he encourages Eddie to embellish a truth.

A push in the film is to justify all actions of police force, including shootings as “drug related” even when they are clearly excessive force. Propelling the myth of the blue wall of silence- that is cops sticking together to craft a version of the truth to protect each other, Speziales’ Captain Geraci confirms our worst suspicions.

Having an active leader in county law enforcement in this role inspires cynicism about his department and his leadership. The Passaic County Sheriff has a duty to the citizens of Passaic County, and it seems impropriate that he is creating a public persona to advance his own interests and not those of Passaic County or law enforcement’s interests, by taking a role in this film. His participation in the film provides a chilling two-dimensional character – and one can only hope it is not true to life.

I find it’s impossible to remove his persona and the film’s themes from scandals and allegations within his department. I would be interested to hear the Sheriff’s take on the themes explored in the film, while many are valid; this is a film that does very little to glorify the honest cops, although one character finds redemption. As Ronnie states “there are good cops and bad cops, we have our good days and our bad days” – this is a string of very bad, dark days that mirrors recent allegations of law enforcement abuse and the burying of truth. Perhaps the filmmakers were attempting to capture the immediacy of classic film movements such as neo-realism, by including non-actors in the cast.

Oscars = Toronto 2008?

2010-03-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

Well I’m glad I did get to watch most of the Oscars after all. Cablevision, led by a recovering drug addict with a temper must be great at pissing off its content providers. Here is a corporation with such little regard for its customers, customers whose bills keep going up, that they let it come to this. Most blame ABC, I can’t say I do – I have little brand loyalty for Cablevision who are pushing customers to switch to digital cable by removing stations that we still pay for. If you want to get E! (and who doesn’t want to watch a documentary about Tara Reid acting like Cablevision CEO James Dolan did in the early 90’s – drunk off his ass on a Tuesday night) – you’ll have to pay extra per month, plus a monthly box rental fee, and to further sodmize you without lube – you have pay a fee to rent the remote from those crooks).

In protest I did buy an HD antenna at Target, which couldn’t pick up ABC 7 (CBS looked way clearer than Cablevision’s signal actually). It will be going back to Target tonight.

We saw the major awards anyway and not much of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, which I hear weren’t funny after all. (The last funny Oscar host was Chris Rock, the Oscars should take notes from the Spirit Awards, but then again they are playing to a safe Middle American type of crowd, you know the people that made The Blind Side a hit and didn’t see A Serious Man or A Single Man.)

The Hurt Locker, a film I saw last January at an Independent Spirit Awards screening won big – two major awards (picture and director, as well as 4 other Oscars). Back then it was a little movie with great buzz from Toronto, Jermey Renner and Anthony Mackie took questions at a Q & A session. Toronto 2008 was a great festival: it brought us two best picture and director winners in a row: last year’s Slumdog Millionaire had its Canadian premiere at TIFF, where it won the audience award (Precious won the same award at TIFF in 2009).

Toronto again is confirmed as a predictor, a festival with great taste, brilliant programmers, and amazing audiences who love film. Audiences make a film festival which is why I’m reluctant to participate in Rebecca’s virtual festival this year, but I may have to, I’m not sure I will get their in person with all the work piling up in March and April (I’ve been commissioned to make two pieces for Hallwalls Models and Artists Affair in Buffalo).

The Oscars contained little surprises, my friends were right: Bigelow did beat her husband and genuinely looked surprised, she made a great film, one that I need to see again very soon (hopefully next week the folks at Dip son Theatres will bring it around again in Buffalo).

Jeff Bridges rightfully won for his amazing performance as Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, which also won for song, which was expected and apt. I’m not sure how I feel about Sandra Bullock winning for Best Actress; I wish it had gone to Gabourey Sidibe for her fearless role in Precious. Also robbed was The Messenger, a powerful film that saw no wins at the Oscars. Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor for Inglorious Bustards as expected, Mo’Nique won finally after being shut out for Phat Girlz.

Hurt Locker won screenplay, upsetting The Messenger, a film that was equally as powerful, but hey – it was a Hurt Locker kind of night. Precious of coarse won best adapted screenplay, I assume it would have been too strange to give the In The Loop the award since I suspect much was improvised.

Then the technical awards: White Ribbon should have won for best cinematography (Avatar won, it rightfully won for its digital Art Direction). Hurt Locker was made in its editing, and it rightfully scored that win as well as two wins for sound. Shockingly the mediocre The Young Victoria won best for costume design over Coco Before Chanel. Make Up is a category I care little about, but Il Divo (unseen by me) looked impressive, it lost to Star Trek. Up won music score and animated film, I wish it had won best picture, it’s a wonderful piece of filmmaking.

So how about the docs? The Cove won, but I wished it had been Food, Inc. However I haven’t seen the Daniel Ellsberg doc yet, or Which Way Home. Nor have I seen the winner for Foreign Language Film, El Secreto De Sus Ojos, this category is nearly impossible to predict.

As for the short subjects, I can’t comment on documentary. I did see the nominated short animated and live action films and agree with both wins. Logorama was a bright spot in an otherwise dull year, save for Wallace and Gromit, but that short went on for a bit too long. As for live action, I’m glad to see The New Tenants won, Joachim Back’s dark comedy written and staring This American Life’s David Rakoff. It was very Danish despite taking place in the US of A.

The real tragedy is the way The Hurt Locker was of coarse released. It made $12 million dollars in theaters, perhaps the lowest sum of any Oscar nominated film many years (Slumdog pulled $120M), I’m not blaming Summit Entertainment but it’s a victim of collapsing release date windows between a theatrical release and DVD, had they not done a DVD release they could have opened it wide next weekend and it could have gone on to make over $100M at the box office. DVD sales and rentals, of coarse should be brisk starting today.

Expanding Best Picture to 10 allowed the academy to still pick the best picture of the year, others seemed like filler. Had it only been 5 I suppose we would have been Hurt Locker, Avatar, Precious, A Serious Man and Up as the nominees. This year we also got District 9 (I don’t understand that pick, but okay), The Blind Side (a hugely popular film with middle America, it’s made 250M), An Education (a very well made coming of age story), Inglorious Basterds (a solid film from a brilliant filmmaker), and Up In The Air (fun, but I suppose this is more of a celebration of who was in it and who was making it). Hurt Locker is second lowest grossing of the films (A Serious Man has only pulled in $9M, but its truly an original trip that recalls the strangest of the brothers Coen – reminding me of Lebowski).

With all this said, 10 proved to yield the same result: it wasn’t a popularity contest, or at least a popularity contest of the mainstream. Hollywood is still, by this measure out of touch with the mainstream, if this were the people’s choice awards I bet The Blind Side and Avatar would dominate, but those are the kinds of films they are. The Oscars choose No Country for Old Men a few years ago, a lot of people hate the lack of closure it ends on. This essay will end the same way.

Your Welcome, New Major Hollywood Film I Can't Name

2010-02-20T08:01:00.000-08:00

I will be vague because I signed an agreement not to talk about what I had seen this summer, but as an filmmaker in training it's refreshing to know that the world’s greatest living filmmaker sometimes need help figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I saw a messy, slow rough cut of a film now in theatrical release, that film has arrived, is 20 minutes leaner and it packs an emotional impact.

This is what I learned working on a project for class last December: sometimes its what you strip out that leads to a better, more emotional and coherent experience. I’m not even talking about unnecessary sub-plots, but unnecessary shots, pauses, and words.

The film I saw last night was imperfect, not the director’s best, still, but it was a solid 3-star film, the cut I saw over the summer was half as good: you could see a good film was there but it was very flawed, sometimes it’s that 10 minutes that can change your film, and this one was better. The opening didn’t drag on, the middle section didn’t lose interest and as a result the ending had a larger emotional impact.

I should note the film had a mixed reception: I saw it at Flix, a theater that’s audience is mostly between 12-19 year olds, which laughed at some points. As you can imagine for a campy comedy or a terrible slasher film this could be kind of fun, but for a film like this, or the strange incident I had when I saw Extraordinary Measures there, this was odd. The right mix of good popcorn and a good audience can raise your enjoyment of a film. The test screening process which involves security screenings sets the wrong tone right from the start, it feels more like getting on an air plane with having to go through a metal detector, than a night at the movies. Granted Hollywood has every right to protect their product, but why treat the people you’re asking to help you out like criminals? Most good piracy comes from the studio level anyway - I know, I know, you don’t want any image, still or motion to get out before the studio has properly marketed the film.

The film in question had its release date moved back originally which some speculated was a sign that the studio releasing it had financial problems, they put all their eggs in the basket of another world class director whose film failed to connect to an older audience. They backtracked and marketed it to a teen girl audience where it has made money.

The real reason I think: more time. Making a good film requires time - I think this is why the director, who is a true professional and I don’t think would ever bad mouth a studio head, didn’t. So many films are given a release date, a tent pole and reverse engineered all the way down to the screenplay to make it happen by then. This is the type of guy who you don’t want to rush. I’m glad he didn’t. This is a much better film than what I saw over the summer - and proof that directors should test screen films.

Test screening is a valuable tool, when it’s used against a filmmaker - when it becomes a score and films are changed to raise a score that’s when I have a problem. One studio did that and in the process of trying to make a film that everyone likes they made films nobody liked, watered down to play amongst a homogeneous audience: we are not homogenous. We all like Avatar, sure because its an amazing technical feat, a well told story and doesn’t waste our time - Cameron keeps things moving. Test audiences are good at that, as for the actual content - I look at it this way: like medication, one thing isn’t right for everybody. There are films I’m not ready for, there are films your not ready for. Test screening is an ambush - they hand out fliers, play up a free screening with a snappy one paragraph description of the flick. Once our laughs were even recorded by Dolby sound professionals that had boom mics around the whole theater for what should have been a major comedy (it was a sequel that was unsuccessful).

With this said there’s a madness around test screening, but in this case I felt that my feedback (and I was selected for a panel) was actually used and helped the director make a better film. It’s what I would have done had I been in his shoes. Your welcome.

A "Room" You Shouldn't Rent - The Best Worst Movie since The Apple

2010-01-31T10:07:00.000-08:00

As long as there has been a film industry I think there is mad men running free, directing films. I believe to direct a film requires a bit of madness, at least it’s madness that makes things interesting. With that said, there are great mad filmmakers: Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lars Van Trier, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, and Stanley Kubrick. Then there are the bad ones. Uwe Boll comes to mind first, but I sort of like Uwe Boll, in fact he reminds me a bit of Tommy Wiseau. Boll has figured out a way, within the German tax code to make his films, Wiseau is an independently wealthy importer who put 6 Million Dollars of his own money up to write, direct, producer, executive producer, and star in his very own creation: The Room.

If you’ve never seen or heard of The Room, your in for a treat. I saw the poster, which featured a deadpan Wiseau and thought it was some stupid horror movie, I was unmoved when it originally played in the Buffalo area. Cut to a few weeks later, I’m at the Village East Cinemas in New York with Beth seeing Lovely Bones and I see the poster again: okay, this wasn’t some local Western New York project that I didn’t have time for during finals week, what is it? Oh man.

The reviews on IMDB are hilarious but the best comes from a writer RCarstairs who writes: “You know that foreign exchange student from high school who used to creep our all the girls with his clumsy leering and broken-English pick up lines? Well he’s all grown up and somebody gave him money to make a film”. He goes on to call the film a “two-hour episode of “Red Shoe Diaries” written and directed by Balki from Perfect Strangers”.

It’s so bad it’s good, a terrible send up of the type of movie you’d watch on HBO at 3AM before high speed internet could show you virtually anything you wanted. As a kid going through puberty I’d probably watch it just for the sex scenes, I lived with my mom and didn’t have a dad to hand me down porno mags. The Room was made in 2003 on a budget of $6 million dollars, at least the cast and crew were well compensated for their troubles, the film looks like it should have cost $250,000.

The reason this budget it about 1000X higher than it should have been was that it Wiseau did not know the difference between 35MM and HD video and shot the film using both formats, side by side (I hope that’s an urban legend). The thing about it is where Wiseau wasn’t involved the performances are okay. You get the sense these actors might not be half bad had they had some direction. The camera work is okay but flat (you can tell the whole film was shot on a set).

The plot of the film is flat out weird involving hilarious soft core sex scenes and an awful lot of thrusting - it’s so poorly done you wonder if Wiseau has ever actually had sex before. Of coarse, in attempt to make it romantic Wiseau implores rose petals. His leading lady disturbingly has been described as a fresh off the bus 18 year old from Texas, Juliet Danielle who has only made one other film. The poor girl probably got scared off by creepy Hollywood types and went back home to teach Bible study.

There are some filmmakers you can tell are making films to get laid, luckily I’m not successful enough for that to ever be a factor and if you ask me that type of behavior will truly hurt your film in the long run, as well as your credibility. But it exists, and so it’s there - I don’t know Wiseau got laid, or if it would matter, he wouldn’t show excitement, here is a one note actor if ever there was one.

His performance is so distracting it becomes hilarious, he’s one note. Also the film introduces ideas and characters quickly with no pay off. I don’t mind it so much as it becomes disorienting. For example the mother of Lisa, the future wife of Johnny (Wiseau’s character) tells us she has breast cancer. It’s never mentioned again. In this moment we have to wonder: is she being truthful or is deceptive to build sympathy. These character dimensions don’t bother me, but the film’s lucid character approach with no justification, often characters walk in and out the unlocked front door, becomes like a sitcom.

Yet, I had a good time with The Room. Consider temporality of a different kind: the time of day you see the flick. At 4PM in the afternoon at your local multiplex this thing is shit. At midnight, after you’ve had a drink (more on that coming up next), it’s a fun time with the right audience. It has a cult following.

The theater that showed The Room was the Hamburg Palace, about 10 miles West of Buffalo, a beautifully maintained single screen movie house where they’ve removed rows of seats to provide leg room (something old theaters rarely have, making me wonder if people were smaller back in the day before GMOs invaded our food). Cultivating an audience is important, the right audience can turn any movie into a fun experience, and I’ve gotta hand it to owners and management of the Palace, while it wasn’t a packed house, it did pretty well I’d say and a good time was had by all, from the vintage sci-fi videos on screen before the show.

Had I not been in Buffalo seeing another work by film amateurs, and I say that kindly - amateurs if not competing with Hollywood have the ability to tell important, regional stories well - I would have been able to see The Big Lebowski at the Palace. That showing inspired the town’s local bars including the one at the local 8-lane bowling Alley next to the theater to offer drink specials inspired by the flick. Awesome idea - it’s this type of thinking that’s going to save the theater industry: Regal, AMC, and Cinemark - take notice.

The Room isn’t unlike Henry’s Fortune, the film I saw prior to this one. That film which deserves my silence because even though I paid $15 to see a “preview” screening is very much a work in progress and can and should be cut to 90 minutes from its 2 hour and 10 minute running time. I am also an amateur, but this frees me to move my camera in untraditional ways. The example I’ll give is a shot in Hollow Spaces where my camera is pointed out of the window of a moving car, and I come inside the car to document a screaming match. No professional DP would do this, it’s way too risky first of all, but fuck it - this is balls to the wall filmmaking, baby.

The Room isn’t that. It’s trying to be, as its tag line says “A film with the passion of Tennessee Williams” - it’s title of coarse is nonsense. The film’s most absurd moment is when Wiseau ease drops on his girlfriend telling her mother that she doesn’t love him.

He leaps on screen after there gone and says “I’ll show them, I’ll tape record everything” - and he removes a cassette tape from his pocket and plugs in a recorder - just in cause, you know, he’s prepared. The Room is pure cinema, focusing on what happens when everything goes wrong. I genuinely liked it at first thinking this is a brilliant stripping away at the layers of artificiality, the clearly faked sex scenes that go on for too long and are anything but erotic, in fact you can call them neurotic, to the dialogue.

In plays and cinema realism is hard. In revisiting Elizabethtown, a Cameron Crowe film I realize how mythological it is: it’s a beatiful film in a lot of ways, sentimental, reflective of an America that exists outside of major cities, like say Hamburg, NY which still has an 8-lane bowling alley downtown - how cool is that? That type of thing made me really happy to see, along with people downtown going to bars, sure they were all locals and all knew each other, but that happens even in major cities (especially Buffalo).

The Room never deserves comparison to Cameron Crowe, but it’s reflective of another reality that does exist - how stupid can these people be? Oh do we really want to go there. Wiseau did it all, including writing the checks, I can imagine if anybody said no, or maybe we should replace you with say Aaron Ekart, he would have them fired. Probably threaten them with “you’ll never work in this town again” or some stupid shit like that. “I’m Tommy Wiseau, bitch” he’d say in monotone.

The film’s relationships are so awkwardly drawn, conclusions arrive without feeling needed that one day I hope to teach a course on narrative filmmaking, I’d show this film as an example of what not to do. While simple it’s shows the importance of a strong script, good casting and good direction. While I’m sure good or even great films have been made by bad directors, and absent producers - the actors, are the variables.

Wiseau in the lead is hilarious: everyone in the film has movie star looks in one way or another - Wiseau is an odd ball, the creepy guy trying to get laid at that film festival party by telling you he’s a producer. But he did it, and the film has had a cult life.

Although a waste of time, any serious film fan must make time for a midnight screening of one of the worst films ever made. It’s up there with the Apple, one of the worst musicals ever made, but everyone there at least was coked out of their mind. (Best line from a song in The Apple: “it’s an natural, natural, natural desire - meet an actual, actual, actual Vampire”) Here I don’t know what the issue was - I think everyone was oblivious to reality and cinema. But you aren’t. And that’s where the fun happens.

With that said I will personally join you next time The Room is in town.

Faith Based Cinema In Flux: To Save A Life

2010-01-27T21:37:00.000-08:00

As I get older the less cynical and hardened I become, is this growing up? I ask this because after reading a cynical review of a film that was at times amateurish I came the conclusion that I didn’t hate it, in fact while I can’t recommend it, it is a message film, but it’s not a bad one. Christian cinema has always tried to compete with Hollywood either by making melodrama (Fireproof) or action films (Left Behind, The Omega Code). The flaws of corse in the action films are the special effects and story: per IMDB the Omega code is about a guy who tries to change the world because of some loophole in the Torah or something, and Casper Van Dien is our only hope. This to me doesn’t sound like much fun, nor worth $12.00.

But the problems I had with To Save A Life, a new Catholic themed film are problems I have with most teen films: how artificial they are. If you’ve seen Kevin Smith live he’ll probably go on about Degrassi Junior High - a show that he claims was realistic in its portrayal of youth - no one was perfectly flawless looking. Teen films of coarse offer escape - but the problem I have with To Save A Life is that it confronts real issues while offering escape.

It takes place in California. The two leads in the film are older than me and they’re playing 18 year olds (I’m 26). It provides the high school clique montage where everyone is hanging out before class outdoors, some even playing guitar. This has all been done before and was played out 11 years ago when She’s All That was out. Of coarse the audience for this movie were in Pre-K when that film was out...I know, indulge me.

Of coarse the outcasts wear black, they always do. They always play video games. High school is a polarizing environment which leads to a suicide early on of a young overweight African American kid. Our star, Jake Taylor (that’s a more boring white guy name than John Fink!) tries to save him, after all this kid saved Jake’s life, and Jake dissed him - forgetting the rules: bros. before hoes. Jake looses his virginity (I assume) and has ben with the very beatiful Amy (played by Deja Kreutzberg, I can write she’s very beatiful without feeling weird for looking at an 18 year old girl that way because - she’s 3 years older than I, playing an 18 year old).

She isn’t very supportive of Jake at first, and this led me to thinking about popularity and groups in high school: they actually don’t matter. Like a Bruce Springsteen song when I’m back home I see and talk to everybody, then again I went to a tiny school. It’s like “Glory Days” - then again these may be the glory days, adulthood sounds a little grim, that whole being with one person for the rest of your life and having kids business. Glory Days, yeah, they’ll pass you by.

To Save A Life offers two groups to us: those that find God through the New Song Ministry (who also produced this flick) or those that are popular, play beer pong, do stupid shit and are in general kind of one dimensional. On the other side, getting away from Amy (who doesn’t seem to really have any female friends oddly enough yet she’s the “hottest girl in school”) - we get the “youth group” kids. Some are weird like the funky but cute hipster Andrea Stevens (boring white girl name - played by Kim Hidalgo, no age given on IMDB, she looks about 20), and her BFFs whom are a bit homely and don’t get much screen time. After all, even though this deals with realistic themes, we can’t have real people in it.

To Save A Life dives into religious themes, although it doesn’t alienate all, it just suggests some odd things: granted there is some diversity between races in this school - but where’s the Jewish kid? The Muslim? Do they have to find God to fit in? The more I think of this film the more deceptive a propaganda film I suppose it could be. I will give the film the benefit of the doubt, while coded it doesn’t go to those extremes, although it suggests tensions within the church.

After a character gets another character pregnant the priest leading the parish discusses virtual excommunication from the youth group. What? The flick’s hero, the youth pastor Chris comes to his aid offering good advice, although he does so with the skill of an army recruiter.

Perhaps theoretically directed filmmakers such as Atom Egoyan have made us cynical. When you have a scene in which one character asks another information they already know just to hear from them, in this case to heal the information giver, verses the asker. In Egoyan it’s often the one asking the question that is trying to uncover a mystery through confession and/or a re-imagining of the answer to find a truth buried within.

The problem is To Save A Life isn’t theoretical, it keeps plot points coming, it contains deception, one character is down right evil here. It’s cut and dry, often we don’t know the real reasons people commit suicide. We have all probably thought about suicide at one point - I once wrote a note as a way of clearing my head. I had no intention nor idea of how I would do it, or desire, it was a passing thing. Teenhood isn’t like it is in the cinema, life isn’t that simple, adults think it is and as we grow up we remember the good times and not so much the pain.

I say this because I’ve written and revisited a script called Football Town, which examines these ideas without the artifice of the montage, it contains the pain, suffering and drama, it takes place in a small town. I didn’t go to a large regional high school in California where its sunny all the time.

Yet, with this said, I don’t hate To Save A Life. I hope it does what its title suggests actually, but those that should see it will resist it. Sure its inspiring but its preaching to those that are in church on Sunday. Too often high school movies dream of breaking down class structure: it can’t happen. The lines in this film don’t even really reflect the fault of the kids: the jocks come from wealthy families, including Jake, the nerds, not so much (one lives in a trailer park).

Of coarse appearance matters: the Asian kid who cuts his wrists doesn’t wear black anymore once he’s “accepted” - he’s rockin’ a yellow polo shirt. Then again he’s trying to get with the cute hipster girl. While one doesn’t have to dress like a preppy moron, why does one have to wear black and be all dark and mysterious. It’s off putting, to say the least. Perhaps their local mall only has Hot Topic and not Urban Outfitters.

As I talk this out, I’m not so sure anymore about To Save A Life. I’m not against this message, but I think as the Futurists, a movement I’m learning about in my Sources of Modern Theater class though: why do something in two yours you can do in 10 minutes. So I’ll point you to the lyrics to the Foo Fighter’s Wheels - we live in cycles, like wheels - when the wheels come down (life is hard), you get another go around. Hold on. I really wanted to end Hollow Spaces with this song, unfortunately I can’t imagine what that would cost. The cords are uplifting while the song isn’t deceptive, it deals with dark themes optimistically - it mourns something that didn’t happen, it creates a nostalgic feeling, as if you were giving this advise to someone in the past, having lived through the cycle.

I write this and think how arrogant I am. I was never going to kill myself - I’m a pussy. And I can’t imagine what it’s like to seriously think about it, and I mean no disrespect to families coping with the loss of a loved one.

As a film: How to Save A Life suffers shortcomings that films of this genre and market are bound to suffer. I believe film and music have the power to save lives, often they are made by artists that attempt to do so, listen to the rage in a Limp Bizkit or Lincoln Park song. How to Save A Life is restricted, I wish it wasn’t. Of coarse the tragic thing is that had it been real it would have gotten an R-rating, something we still need to address. Work that could inspire a 16-year old is kept from them, unless accompanied by a parent or adult guardian, and theater chains should take a stance that offers more flexibility than the MPAA’s black and white guidelines.

When I make Football Town, which on its own is a problem, it’s a film that takes place in a time before kids widely had cell phones and we were still on Web 1.0 (IM-ing which no one does anymore was in, now everyone uses Facebook chat*) - it will have an R, or even NC-17 rating. It’ll be the truth. How To Save A Life doesn’t really need an R rating, we get it, the two leads aren’t practicing abstinence, in fact (SPOILER) there’s a consequence to it.

*Showing the fact the film was made in 2008 the hero reaches out to people on Myspace.

How can the film be more credible? Well it is a sincere film, although its been funded by the Catholic church the only people that wouldn’t agree with its message are suicide bombers and their fucking assholes anyway. I wish it didn’t limit itself to being Catholic. One can be good while not being Catholic, why should God, if there is one not embrace them as a wonderful human being. The film never explores that one can find salvation outside of the church - that we can be good people, give to our communities and make a positive impact while not being religious.

The film pits two closed societies against each other: the inclusive religious youth group which turns into a high school clique and the cool kids who drink, party and play sports. Of coarse the lead changes, even saying like: “I don’t even like that Jake anymore” and Amy only comes around after she learns something life changing, for a time I thought she was like Snookie from MTV’s The Jersey Shore - she wanted Jake as an accessory, like a new Louis Vuitton bag.

Catholic film has come of age, a long way from the Omega Code. It hasn’t crossed into and merged with film to the point where non-catholics will not be alienated by these church funded message films. There are of coarse examples of good Catholic films with generous spirits, one made by a warped filmmaker who in real life seems like a heck of a nice guy, Danny Boyle, his family film - Millions.

In short - the film is actually upfront about what it is, I suppose. It’s a Catholic film, and it’s a decent one if you don’t count its conventions against it, entertaining as it is manipulative but it shows great promise. As soon as independent filmmakers free themselves from the chains of trying to make Hollywood style products and bring an original voice to the table, we’ll be set. This is also a trend in what I call “regional” filmmaking - and its what makes them regional, they feature local casts and try to do what Hollywood does.

Hollow Spaces is trying to do what Egoyan does, it’s an attempt at building emotional energy no through music and over acting, but subtle sound effects and a non-linear narrative. I feel as if a certain type of independent filmmaking is stuck in a matrix, if you don’t have a star in your film, why play by the rules of star driven flicks? The voice of a filmmaker is always more interesting to me, provided the aren’t showing off. Your taking me on a journey, I want you to take my hand and lead me along, I don’t want to be pushed along (Tom Ford’s A Single Man is an example of being pushed, beatiful but overly done). So that’s my challenge - bring it.

The Worst Film of 2010 and its only January...

2010-01-23T11:14:00.000-08:00

Thus far my weekend has been a weird one - starting on Thursday, as all weekends should I stayed up way too late, and at around 3AM was in a bar having a conversation with a friend who was telling me about his girlfriend whom was researching cures for Cancer while we were making films. I justify the arts as this: we’re tasked with preserving, observing and creating culture.

This spun me to later thinking about Hollow Spaces, a film that’s pretty much done. What have I done? I think I have preserved culture in some respects but it’s not a pure ethnographical work. Then I got to thinking, and I’m sure a smarter person that I has said this before: the problem with ethnography is that it assumes an outsiders position, it attempts to be objective and may succeed. The only problem is the first “documentary” that went there wasn’t objective, it was a staged entertainment film, Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922). Hollow Spaces is a film from the inside out, attempting to preserve a long, hot summer in which the country was in a depression. Have I made a film as nobel as say the brilliant The Exiles, which was locked in a vault and only rediscovered a few years ago? No, but I have documented time and problems, emotional tonalities that were sincere at the time, perhaps Hollow Spaces like The Exiles will look better in time, it’s why I made it. New, now and cutting age is nice, but being forgotten about is deadly.

With this said the consequence of documenting culture through an outsiders perspective, particularly through a distorted lens of history is here, in the form of Veer, a new Bollywood film I had the displeasure of seeing last night. I should note, my evening started at the opening of Lectures on the Weather: John Cage in Buffalo, and while I was fascinated by the video instillation in the corner about Cage (I knew very little about him), in practice, particularly some of the tribute pieces - well let’s call them planned chaos. I admit I don’t know the difference between good sound art and bad sound art: bad sound art to me sounds like a moron throwing everything into a blender and annoying me. But then again there are a lot of annoying things that are brilliant, Pee Wee Herman may be a good example.

So, I’m not the best person to judge this, and I can’t review this exhibition, but I walked out hungry and with a headache, which led me to the Regal Cinemas on Elmwood Ave and the worst stomachache ever (do not eat the popcorn, especially as a meal substitute).

Veer is a Bollywood film that starts off with some great special effects, it’s production values are right up there (in the beginning anyway) with the biggest budget of Hollywood and it contains a spectacular opening. Then.....shit starts to go wrong.

The film is vintage Bollywood, not the new hip hop inspired Bollywood. It’s an angry film about British imperialism, but the Brits are fucking brain-dead, which from an ethnographical point of view is where the film looses credibility. This isn’t a film that researches, critiques or examines relationships using the tools of anthropology or sociology, that’s for sure. It’s an entertainment film but the British, speaking very slowly for a Hindu audience speak lines of dialogue that are flat out acquired.
I once proposed that porno has a lot in common with traditional bollywood - they involve a story and a break in the story, in porno it’s for explicit sex, in Bollywood it’s for singing and dancing. The acting here is probably as bad as it is in porno, with music that’s awful. We actually get a song repeated several times throughout the film that opens with “every time I look in your eyes, I see my paradise” - here’s a song that lacks the complexity of Cascada, who I also consider to be unlistenable: “Cause evertime we touch, I get that feeling, and every time we kiss I swear I can fly”. Yes, it’s that bad.

Veer glorifies a serial killer who is like Robin Hood, I suppose, fighting for love and country. Veer isn’t Nelson Mandela, he’s given a love interest, well because he has to. Salman Kham is Veer, who is like Stallone crossed with Javier Bardem, and he’s a one note kind of guy - angry, even bred to be a killer. The film is very violent, surely it would be rated R had it been rated, it passed the Indian censors (I know because all Bollywood films choose to show the actual certification, like Dogma 95). Nudity doesn’t fly but cutting off a guy’s hand does. As does throwing a spike in a guy’s boots, running up and twisting his head around his body (a gruesome image).

Veer doesn’t work, and that seems to be the general conscious, does not every element of Hollywood and Bollywood, a good film make. But back to the British, I hate this movie so much I’m almost on their side: Veer is one dimensional with endless actions scenes that make Peter Jackson look concise. The British are even worse: no discussion of the economics of imperialism are made, this is dumb even by elementary school standards (where they teach that Columbus was a hero).

Anil Sharma, Veer’s director had previously directed another war film about India, Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo (no, spell checker, that’s correct). That film, which I saw at the dearly departed Showcase Cinemas East Hartford, with good popcorn, I recall was a decent film about India and Pakistan, which ended in piece. Veer ends in betrayal and bloodshed, it’s an angry film but like a teenager it’s anger is unfocused, turning Veer in a clumsy mess, and when it gets messy it reverts to a stock song.

Veer is so bad I’ll take five Squeakquels, and as bad as the Chipetts singing Beyonces’ already awful Single Ladies is, I might even take it over the music of Veer. I have a long standing love/hate relationship with Bollywood that’s very unfair to it, I admit: I keep going, keep seeing the new Bollywood film that comes out until one sucks and it turns me off to the genre for many months. Veer, you are that movie and an early candidate for the worst film of the year, if not the 10’s.

Good popcorn can often times save a bad movie experience. So I have to wonder, Regal Elmwood Center is sort of out of the way from where I live, and I’ve seen two films there since living in Buffalo- both were awful, both times I had popcorn. Still, I don’t think National Amusements popcorn could have turned Veer into a good, worth while film.

On the flip side, if 3 Idiots is still playing in a theater near you, it’s worth checking out - a fun contemporary Bollywood flick about friendship and a different kind of imperialism, of the cultural and technological variety, but imperialism none the less. Perhaps there is a good film to be made about these things, certain the most interesting are films of the time confronting deep rooted issues, and thus is the power of film. If Bollywood is importing Hollywood formulas, then Veer is a brainless work like Ninja Assassin with paint by the numbers villains. Just listen to the way the British girls talk in “background noise” in one scene, NO NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER TALKS LIKE THAT. It reaches the level of awkwardness in another barely watchable Bollywood film No Entry, when a song about sexual penetration is sung by the women “no entry” - then the men go “yes entry”. Mother fucking creepiness.

If your going to have cultural villains in scenes taking place in London, why not take the time to actually get it right, when you’ve taken the time to craft an excellent action center piece about 20 minutes in to the film? The answer: this is careless, awful filmmaking at its worst.

Certain Tendencies in the Movie Business as of Today 1/19/2010: A Rant

2010-01-19T20:54:00.000-08:00

From a film business point of view today was a weird day, or maybe I’m shot out from having sat in classes for 7+ hours today. (I have classes from 12:30-3:10 and 6:00-9:40)

First I got a bad piece of information personally, I won’t bore you with the details.

Second: AMC is buying Kerasotes Showplace Theaters LLC, or most of it. The Kerasotes family who have been in film exhibition since 1909 are selling all but 3 theaters to AMC, apparently their partner Providence Equity Partners wants out while film exhibition is on the up and up. The only Kerasotes in NJ, which ironically enough replaced two AMC/Loews sites is staying with the family as is their luxury concept Showplace Icon, which fine by me: they have good popcorn.

This means AMC is now the second largest theater in the nation (they always were by screen count, Cinemark owned one more site then they after buying Century Theaters). Regal Entertainment Group, the most homogenized of the chains will still have 1000+ more screens than AMC.

A brief note: I didn’t see this coming, I knew AMC was hungry to expand and heard roomers for years they were buying this theater or another theater. I think like banks they’ll be national chains (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) and smaller regionals. Regionals will know their own markets better and be more efficient at serving them, and when one gets national ambition and private capital funding to get big, they’ll be next in line to be acquired). I’m not sure this is a bad thing, for one we’re insuring film exhibition continues, and that’s what’s important. Some chains get it, others are slow to adopt new designs and features such as bars and expanded food courts that will save their industry. While they’re not doing anything for indie film they are at least showing films and standing their ground in favor of continuing to show films to a live, gathered audience in single auditoriums......

Which leads me to the third piece of information I found out about exhibition and film: IFC Films has acquired the new Gasper Noe film, Enter the Void, which I was looking forward to. That means good luck seeing it in a theater aside from the one they own. Filmmakers working with IFC have sold their soul if you ask me. Sure you hear the douchebags like Joe Swanberg talk about how the festival run is the theatrical release - fine, nobody wants to see your pussy ass movies Swanberg. But I do want to see the new Gasper Noe film, which will run exclusively at the IFC Center maybe a venue in LA, after it’s on the IFC on demand station.

This pisses me off. Granted IFC Films isn’t the bread and butter of the big chains and in theory I’m all for getting indie films out to a wider audience, but by burying films with a token release at a theater YOU own? IFC has made it impossible for these features to open wider. In a normal scenario a film would be given a run at a theater, let’s say the good old independent Quad Cinema. Full run, one week - it does well, it gets another week and so forth. If it does really well, maybe it’ll come to the suburbs.

You wanted to see that new film that you missed at Cannes and Toronto - sorry it’s only at 2:40 or 9:35PM, one week only. Be grateful we exist, or it’s direct to video for this flick. Often these are films by established, world class filmmakers, not some guy like me. This is why exhibition and distribution must be kept apart for the sake of filmmakers, audiences and the future of cinema. Major studios may own theaters indirectly, (or in the case of National Amusements - it’s a theater chain that owns two studios) but there is a conflict when the same division of a company is engaged in distribution and exhibition. There is a lot of consolidation in the distribution industry with a lot of passionate companies dormant compared to where they were years ago.

Price isn’t really an issue here in that anticompetitive price structures inevitably lead to paying more for less (then again we could talk about theater 5 at IFC Center, 30 seats and a digital projection from a pre-show projector). The quality of the experience as decreased, the films are projected digitally, some are made from poor files (Ricky, Francois Ozon’s latest had noticeable pixillation - the only time I’ve seen this on a digital print, was IFC streaming it from its on demand station?). Sure for a Joe Swanberg/Greta Gerwig collaboration shot on a cell phone camera this is less of an issue, but we’re talking world class directors here, and the consolidation of “indiewood” and the consolidation of the indie film market has screwed us all over.

I’m all for putting things on On Demand, yes, but with a delay so that films that were meant to be seen, discovered and enjoyed on a big screen can be if they do well in larger markets. The model allows one to watch a movie at the same time, neglecting the premium pricing involved in seeing a film over watching it on demand. With that extra price we expect a good quality picture. While IFC has picked up and distributed a lot of good films that may have never seen the light of day in the United States (I’m thinking of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films as well as low budget indies that deserved wider recognition such as Joshua Safdie’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed).

Of coarse the only reason IFC can exist is because studios are playing it too safe these days. Although I’m curious to see what can come out of Paramount’s attempt to moving into Swanberg territory with a micro-budget division, the flaw I see there is as filmmakers we work on a microbudget because we have to. We don’t pay ourselves, we do it as a labor of love. Knowing your labor of love is owned outright by a major corporation are you going to get the actors to work just by feeding them? They may work with you on a passion project but does having a big studio in the picture change that? You bet it will, but I’m hoping for the best. Theoretically a great movie can be made on a cheap and talent like Joshua Safdie and Aaron Katz should be given a wide release. The problem of coarse is Paramount is looking for the next Paranormal Activity, not the next Wes Anderson or even Paul Thomas Anderson. Still I’m hoping for the best and understand that for an indie filmmaker like myself, online distribution is fine. As an audience member and film scholar I hate to see established world class filmmakers given relegated to a fate that’s worse than direct to video, still some IFC Films do break out, Summer Hours had a nice release despite also showing on demand simultaneously.

Last piece of news in Indiewood is that Marc Webber is directing the relaunch of Spiderman. Why does Spiderman need to be rebooted. I also hear they’re rebooting The Fantastic Four as well. I’m not sure what a Spiderman reboot can/will do. Perhaps the objective is to truly serialize the films so that they become individual stand-alone adventures like a comic book and not one narrative told in linear order. Sure we’ve seen prequels, sequels and even one squeakquel: I’m not sure where they’re going with this one but I’m interested.

Webber previously directed the wonderful (500) Days of Summer, an indie film with big stars that was given a wide release by Fox Searchlight. Another movie staring the same leading actor was later released by IFC and relegated to a one week token release at the evil for-profit that might fool you in that it almost functions like a non-for-profit (even selling memberships), IFC Center. Luckily, living closer to Toronto these days than New York, I will hopefully get to see Gasper Noe’s latest on a big screen at the Cineplex Varsity or Cumberland, and not in the extra space IFC Center had when their cafe/bar failed to work out.

As for the reboots and retreads I always hope for something new and different. Webb I know very little about aside from the fact he made a movie that I enjoyed so much I saw it in theaters twice, because after all theaters are where movies should be seen, with an audience, not at home and on demand. Judging by the little I know about his career I’m not sure what type of action movie director he’d made, he certain has a good sense of pacing, mood, and humor, reminding me of another filmmaker who went on to create the hip adaptation of Iron Man.

New Year, New Blog, New Direction: The John/Rachel Project

2010-01-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

So it’s a new year and I’m proud to announce a new direction for my blog. I’ve decided to shy away from film reviews, ramblings and become more focused - and that starts today with the renaming of this blog to the “John/Rachel Project”. Yes, I’ve decided to cook a new meal from Rachel Ray’s 365 Days, No Repeats cook book and blog about it, every night.

The Hows and Wherefores...
For the moment, I will not tackle the existential query, "Why, John? Why Rachel? Why now?" Instead, I shall stick to explicating the rules of engagement.
Initially, I had thought to work through the book front to back. This quickly was declared impracticable. So I decided to work through each chapter, beginning to end. This is advantageous because the ten chapters of recipes conveniently add up to 10 recipes per week, roughly equivalent to the pace I need to set to get through the thing in a year. Also, there is the suspense factor. Because the book is structured like a classic cooking lesson, building up from basic techniques, the going will get gradually tougher as times goes on.
Those who are following far too closely should know that the vegetable chapter is an exception, being organized alphabetically. I will be skipping through from time to time according to availability.
Enough of these technicalities. Let us begin!
*****
Those readers who are staying tuned to snicker at my ignonimous defeat will have to wait another day. Similarly those who plan to drool voyeuristically over my improbable triumphs. The first meal of the John/Rachel Project was:
Balsamic-Glazed Pork Chops with Arugula-Basil Rice Pilaf
And it was okay.
The pork was quite good. Pan-fried, as I said, which was a nice change from the usual stick-the-hunk-of-meat-under-a-broiler routine, especially with a nice buttery jus on top.
Nothing went wrong. It was good, though after one meal we're already feeling the buttery side effects. I cooked Rachel and lived to tell the tale. It was easy.
Too easy.

Top 10 of 2009

2010-01-01T06:12:00.000-08:00

A confession: I didn’t see every film in 2009. I feel bad about this. Particular-ally this list doesn’t include the likes of Werner Herzog’s second 2009 film My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? What have me done? Again I retreat these lists, but it is reassuring when Oscar bait fails: not that I hate Hollywood. I hate that films are financed to win awards and like when they don’t/won’t. These include recent disappointments including: Nine (an incoherent remake of a brilliant yet incoherent film, 8 1/2), A Single Man (great performance by Colin Firth, pretentiously directed in a way that made it look like an ad for designer clothing, hey it was directed by a fashion designer), The Lovely Bones (the mix of realism and fantasy didn’t work on the same emotional level as say Avatar), Invictus (a ruby film that sadly was pretty uninteresting) and Amelia (a paint by the numbers bio-pic). 

So if I were handing out the 10 oscar nominations this year, I’d give a nom to this group - one of which doesn’t qualify because it never got a theatrical run, it may never get one (or more likely it’ll get picked up by IFC and given a token release at their theater and on cable). I know, I know, stop being hard on IFC, after all they are picking up a lot of obscure films you saw at festivals and enjoyed (IFC Center opens A Film With Me In It today, a quirky little Irish picture I saw at Toronto in 2008). I know, but I worry it’s cheapening the experience of seeing a new film by a world master, and also hindering the business model of more traditional distributers that seem dormant lately (I don’t recall seeing much of the Strand Releasing logo lately, for example).

As for the ten - here goes (in reverse, of coarse):

10.-Of Time and City (Terrance Davies) A personal essay film by Davies on growing up in Manchester, haunted by the past he super imposes stock footage over newly shot footage, using his voice over to tell his story of growing up Catholic and gay. A haunting, powerful, personal picture.

9.-Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Warner Herzog) Along with Whip It, we have the most entertaining film of the year - Herzog and Nick Cage are firing on all cylinders, it goes over the top, then into outer space. A brilliant dark comedy on par with the likes of American Psycho.

8.-Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki) A children’s film directed towards younger children then most Miyazaki, lovely re-dubbed by Disney with the voice talents of Tina Fey. It’s a well imagined story meant to be seen on a big screen.

7.-The Messenger (Oren Moverman) Influenced by the Maysles Brothers Salesmen, Moverman has crafted a raw and emotional story about military life. Ben Foster comes back from the war and is assigned to the causality notification service with Woody Haroldson in a film that’s as humorous as it as painful.

6.-Beaches of Agnes (Agnes Varda) Another personal documentary, Varda reflects on her life and the filmmakers that meant so much to her (Chris Marker is played by an animated cat). A beatiful reflection on filmmaking and life.

5.-A Serious Man (Coen Brothers) The Coens have done it again: a personal journey of Larry Gopnik, a university professor on the verge of a midlife crisis sit early in the era of the Cold War. Darkly funny with a perfect ending.

4.-Vegas: Based on a True Story (Amir Naderi) Taking place barely in Vegas, this official selection from Tribeca (of all festivals!) by master filmmaker Amir Naderi who observes as a family unit destroys itself by destroying its home, in the shadow of the strip.

3.- Adventureland (Greg Mottola) Okay number 3 on my list for enjoyment factor: Mattola has taken us back in time and told us the story of real teenagers - rare but brilliant. It captures the joy of one of those Rush songs.

2.- Up (Peter Docker) Pixar does it again - the formula is simple: tell a good story. They’ve mastered technical, hell they invented computer animation, and as such they are 20-years ahead of what anyone else is doing. Up contains an opening montage that will go down as one of the best in film history, it’s at its core an adventure story, but so much more.

1 - Somerstown (Shane Meadows) A beatiful study of urban London, two boys become friends, gain a crush on a beatiful women and they get drunk after they think they’ve lost her. Why am I sucker for this movie? It’s beautifully shot and powerful, a strong and short film (its running time is just over an hour), but leaves a lasting impression, sure it’s a film where kids hang out (like Adventureland), but there’s something so optimistic in it, especially the film’s closing scenes which had me smiling. Shouldn’t cinema be about joy? (Not if you’re Lars Van Trier)

and....as for the runners-up - it pains me to say this but here goes:

11.-Inglorious Bastards
12.-(500) Days of Summer
13.-Everlasting Moments
14.-Crazy Heart
15.-Anvil: The Story of Anvil!
16.-Public Enemies
17.-Departures
18.-La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet
19.-In The Loop
20.-Avatar
21.-The Garden
22.-Katyn
23.-The Hurt Locker
24.-The Windmill Movie
25.-Broken Embraces
26.-Goodbye Solo
27.-Every Little Step
28.-An Education
29.-Carcasses
30.-Precious
31.-Whip It
32.-Severe Clear
33.-Bandslam
34.-Racing Dreams
35.-Sugar
36.-Treeless Mountain
37.-Bright Star
38.-Fish Tank
39.-The Garden
40.-Memorial Day
41-Watchmen
42.-The Talented Mr. Fox
43.-Carcasses
44.-Serpahane
45.-The Road
46.-The Class
47.-Antoine
48.-Hunger
49.-Coco Before Chanel
50.-Yoo Hoo Mrs. Goldberg

Wondering about the year’s worst? Glad you asked:

1.-The Forth Kind
2.-Obsessed
3.-Push
4.-Fast & Furious
5.-Monsters Vs. Aliens
6.-Sorority Row
7.-Adam
8.-Twilight: New Moon
9.-The Final Destination
10-I Love You, Beth Cooper
11.-Dance Flick
12.-Ninja Assassin
13.-Year One
14.-Revolutionary Road
15.-The Informers

The Top 10 Films of the Decade ("the 00's")

2009-12-29T09:59:00.000-08:00

And so it’s inevitable: the top 10 films of the naughts. The last movie I saw of the 90’s was Gavin O’Conner’s The Tumbleweeds, the last film I’ll see in 2009 I think will be yet another film named Nine (the musical this time). A lot has changed, too much to detail here. The official tally assuming I don’t go to the movies tonight (I have plans for tomorrow and Thursday) will be 2428, or 242 films a year, not bad - just over the average of 4 a week I tell average people I see (the real average is between 4 and 5 and probably growing).

A top ten list is cruel, but if your forcing me here goes (in reverse order to build suspense, of coarse):

10.- Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003, Ming-liang Tsai) - An atmospheric work, a study of color, mood, done with humor and insight, at the end of a decade when film might be dying I couldn’t resist kicking off the list with a film about a theater’s closing night. As a sucker for time and place films, this will be a repeated theme here (proving how subjective such a list is). This is a wonderful architecture study with some incredible compositions, hypnotic and nostalgic.

9.-Almost Famous (2000, Cameron Crowe) - Yet another nostalgia trip, perhaps the most entertaining film of the decade, it comes in two flavors - seek out the “director’s cut”, running 3 hours I still want more.

8.-Somers town (2009, Shane Meadows) - A coming of age story, told in London as a study of time and place - two boys living in a housing project fall for the same women, a beatiful Polish immigrant. A great social comment in the form of a sweet and entertaining film about the joys of childhood, wherever you are.

7.-Three Times (2005, Hou Hsiao-hsien) - The story is the same, the politics aren’t and therefore neither are the emotions. Two lovers, played by the same actors are shown in three time period: 1911, 1966, and 2005. You can call this the Hou Hsiao-hsien “sampler” - each period has its own style, each his own style as seen in his other films.

6.-Talk to Her (2002, Pedro Almodovar) - Every Almodovar film is a mini-masterpiece, this is a perfect blend of dark humor and romance - discover it, I won’t ruin it for you.

5.-Vera Drake (2004, Mike Leigh) - Leigh’s best since his masterpiece, 1996’s Secrets and Lies. A period piece about an abortion provider and mother, Vera Drake.

4.-Touch The Sound (2004, Thomas Riedelsheimer) From the director of Rivers and Ties, this documentary follows Evelyn Glennie, a deaf musician and attempts to put us in her shoes. A powerful soundscape.

3.-Wendy & Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt) An edge of your seat thriller without violence, Michelle Williams is charged with atomic energy in a Pacific Northwest drama about Wendy, a young women running away from something. That thing is not important, we know so little about her but we know so much about her. This is one of the best films of all times.

2.-The Piano Teacher (2001, Michael Haneke) An instant classic - I remember being a 17 year old scared shitless, driving home, not sure what I just saw - it shook me in a way horror films cannot. A few days later I processed it and realized it was one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Since then I’ve been brave enough to revisit this brutal and painful fantasy - much has been written academically about the film, which is easier to watch for upon review, but the film is best experienced cold, of coarse - see it and be prepared.

1.-Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul) A film of the century: two stories, 10 years apart set in a Thailand hospital. Weerasethakul’s films are pure joy, and this is no exception, a light hearted political love story, warm, beatiful and simple.

Runners up:
11.-Beau Travail
12.-Up
13.-Head On
14.-Slumdog Millionaire
15.-The Departed
16.-Since Otar Left
17.-Time to Leave
18.-United 93
19.-ATL
20.-Rocky Balboa
21.-Into the Wild
22.-The Princess and the Worrior
23.-This is England
24.-The Dreamers
25.-In America
26.-Ghostworld
27.-American Psycho
28.-Mysterious Skin
29.-The Circle
30.-Bad Education
31.-Million Dollar Baby
32.-City of God
33.-Nowhere in Africa
34.-Redacted
35.-I’m Not There
36.-Junebug
37.-Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father
38.-Chop Shop
39.-Nobody Knows
40.-Of Time and City
41.-RR
42.-Our Song
43.-A Searious Man
44.-Stevie
45.-Lost in Translation
46.-There Will Be Blood
47.-Paranoid Park
48.-Palindromes
49.-Downfall
50.-Operation Filmmaker

There are sadly many great films that made the short list - some 200. Enjoy these films with this disclaimer: I could spend years on this list, rewatching, evolving and changing my point of view. I like to think the fact I’ve sent two nights and a few hours on it and no more proves I’m going from the gut. All films are not for all people: but they were for John Fink. I regret the fact that there are no true Bollywood films on this list and not many documentaries (my 2009 list contains documentaries such as Beaches of Agnes, Anvil, La Danse, The Windmill Movie, Carcasses, and The Garden, the shortlist contains the likes of Capturing the Freedmans, Jesus Camp, Standard Operating Procedure, After Innocence, Tupac: Resurrection and Street Fight).

If anything I’m going off memory - some films on here I’ve seen only once, others I’ve relived or written about many times. Even as I write I regret this. Hit - Publish Post - No Turning Back - done.

Let’s meet back here in 10 years.

Top 10 Primer (no actual listings here yet, just some rambling)

2009-12-28T21:49:00.001-08:00

The problem with a 10 ten list of the decade is that this is the first whole decade where I was adult, or concious enough to enjoy films although still growing. It’s been a wild ride, “the naughts” - we had the war on terror, the election of the first black president, and a boom and bust economy that I think in retrospect was more of a problem of perception than anything else, but I’m no student of economy, I’ve been a film student. I still am - when does one stop? Certainly the images aren’t going stop.

As for a top 10 I also face enough problem, I have a short list of 200 films, saw roughly about 1500 or so over 10 years (150 a year, light, sure but remember I got a driver’s license towards the end of 2000 and hadn’t gone to my first film festival until 2003). It’s been a wild ride, some films get better with age, others get tainted by reviews I’ve read. Perhaps the gut reaction is the best, but it’s possible to get caught up with a good audience in a movie that might be crap because your in the mood for that sort of thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.

If I were to define the films of the zeitgeist, three easy ones that summarize the aforementioned themes of the naughts would be: Paul Greengrass’ United 93, Chris Rock’s Head of State, and Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. It’s more complicated than that (It’s Complicated won’t be one, I assure you).

We saw films that were escapist, played on our fears, or provided escape in the form of social commentary. Nothing is new, films have always reflected directly or indirectly the spirit of the times, should a top ten list? I suppose no film is divorced for the environment it’s produced in, smarter scholars than I have been providing readings since Cahiers Du Cinema examined John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln.

My reading of a whole century is subjective, how can it not be. I didn’t see everything, there’s a good deal I can’t see. More movies come out now because there are more screens: just look at New York City. IFC Center even added to add two pathetic new theaters (one is a classroom projector sandwiched on a beam above the first row of seats in a theater that sits 35). Now we’re on the subject of IFC we should talk about “day and date” releasing, a strategy I don’t disagree with on principal - show indie films to everyone at the same time national reviewers are buzzing. This worked this summer for Summer Hours, but countless other films are lost at the IFC Center, they come and go, even with 5 screens, and worse when they do play they’re shown on a cheap-o digital projector (I saw noticeable artificating in Ricky, Francis Ozon’s latest family drama which is like the kindler, gentler version of his first feature - Sitcom, don’t worry, it didn’t make the top 10 of year let alone decade, other Ozon film(s) will be there). For $12.50 audiences should demand a pristine, sparkling print (unless the film originated on digital).

It’s been 4 years since digital proved its worth with 3-D. I’m still not a digital convert and I’m young. I like the flexibility but I don’t think multiplexes are harnessing the digital flexibility that is to show a more diverse slate of films. IFC Center does, but a cynic could look at what the theater is doing as Cablevision trying to compete with Film Forum. The newest multiplex to open in New Jersey, Kerasotes Showplace Secacus is 100% digital, while projection is sharp, in focus, some spots looked a little hot to me when we saw Sherlock Holmes on Christmas day. (Fun but a flick that didn’t make the either top ten). Now why can’t IFC team up with Kerasotes and show an indie film a week, one show, say Tuesday nights, 7PM, you show up, pay full price, and you’ll see a new indie film. If it works, great, maybe it can get a booking there or at another art theater, if not, oh well, only one show wasted. They do this with some classics (why anybody would want to see a Classic deserved to be seen on 35MM, projected digitally is beyond me - do they think we’re idiots, that we droll when the letters “HD” are mentioned).

Another flaw of the a top ten list is that I can’t re-watch everything. Were there some movies I wasn’t ready for? You betcha. Were there others that I remember fondly because I saw them on a date, had a great time, was caught up in the energy of the moment, sure. Were there others that age worse? Sure. There were films I remember seeing when younger that I wished would end, some foreign, I admit. These are films that are acquired tastes, tastes acquired through scholarship, repeating viewing and maturity.

I don’t feel bad - Roger Ebert is an idol of mine, the finest critic in the nation but his early reviews reflect the experience of a younger Mr. Ebert and we’re all in flux. This is to say his quality has improved over the years. Same for filmmakers. Atom Egoyan’s earlier work is risky, too ambitious, somewhat lacking focus - then he made two masterpieces back to back: Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter.

Alanis Morissette is right: You Live, You Learn. Film has opened my eyes to the world, permitted me to live 1500+ lives in 10 years. You will have to forgive me when I get defensive of film and critical of theaters that are entrusted to carry on the fine tradition of projecting film. Yes, they are businesses, they sell snacks, ect - but for top dollar ($12.50 in New York) we should demand the best, what the filmmakers intended. Some chains and theaters are better than others: some markets just lost the finest chain in America - National Amusements, half the theaters in its network were acquired by Rave Motion Pictures. In Buffalo, Dipson Theaters is the finest and most reliable theaters for presentation (despite the uncomfortable seats at the North Park - Market Arcade and McKinnely Mall are great mainstream multiplexes). The one AMC in town is also fine, and Regal isn’t bad as well (Dipson has the best popcorn, a deciding factor of coarse). In New Jersey: Clearview is a mixed bag some sites are told notch (SOPAC), others were constructed cheap and major problems never addressed (Kinneleon, Tenafly). AMC is decent, no perfect, neither is Regal. The new Kerasotes and Edgewater Multiplex (one National Amusements sites staying with the company) are both top notch in terms of customer service, seating comfort, projection (although Edgewater has the better snack bar, in fact a full food court, as well as 35MM projection, so they win out).

As for New York City: Film Forum should be declared a national landmark, the premiere art theater in the country (despite small screens and no leg room), IFC Center was pretty good but one senses the standards are slipping with the expansion (avoid theater 5, I think I’ve seen better digital projection with one of those annoying NCM pre-shows), Angelika has its flaws (sound, leg room, high prices), and Landmark Theaters is usually very good.

I fear IFC and Magnolia’s day and date strategy may lead to the end of a traditional theatrical release, further stressing art theaters that are starving for content. I don’t like this idea, an art house in middle america has enough of a hard time surviving, and shouldn’t film be seen in a theater? I know it’s a gamble.

Hopefully the movies will learn from TV: make a better product, people will come. Pixar is a prime example, they tell great stories that create strong emotional connections in viewers. The best commercial films do that, isn’t that “branding 101”. That’s the secret, you make films that good and you’ll have lines around the block - like a soul saving rock concert, good films can change lives. It was film, still images flickering past at 24 frames per second that brought me to this point in my life, had I not gone to Toronto in 2008 and “gotten saved” by Slumdog Millionaire, Adoration, Me and Orson Wells, The Terrance Davies Trilogy (and 20 other films I saw there that week) I might still be in banking instead in an MFA program. Crazy to think about that.

Brief Notes on My 25th Year of Life and First Semester of Grad School

2009-12-24T12:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I completed my 25th go around at a full year of life. A year ago I had been depressed about turning 25, entering my “mid 20’s” feeling beaten, defeated, and mostly bored with life. Now a days, I feel like I’m 19 again, I’m a “freshman” in college in a new city so to speak, except this time around I’m legally allowed to drink and I appreciate it more, the last three years, spent working in banking seem like a distant memory.

This is not to say it was all bad, or even a little bad, a year ago faced with the prospects of an industry that need heavy government support it seemed like a good time to reconsider life: I wasn’t going to get ahead in this storm. Living in New Jersey/the NYC area I feel that it’s either sink or swim, luckily Buffalo has a lot of people floating by, making art and media with the intention of exhibiting it, not to get rich but just to show it and exchange ideas. This sounds ideal but it, like most things is also a bit flawed.

So in my 25th year of life I recall having two lives: well two professional lives that overlapped for a brief period that was the production phase of Hollow Spaces, which was hellish (given how little time we had and other obligations to work around, making a movie would be great if time wasn’t a factor), but then again having a day that the shoot needed to be done by was motivating to say the least, not only was it done but reshoots would be hard to grab living some 350 miles away (Ercan to his credit volunteered to shoot second unit in New Jersey if it didn’t get finished).

25 was a pretty good year in retrospect. I sensed in middle school I was forming an identity that’s still shifting and changing. After the first day of grad school, where I felt maybe a little intimidated I realized something: I had to continue to do what I do, not in a bubble but I had to continue to work on my ideas, techniques, skills, and abilities with the input of like-minded people. The issue I think in the first semester I had was that the DMS MFA program is so diverse, so wide a net of students, some working on projects that I’m not sure I truly understand the value of at all times, others engaging in behavior that scares the shit out of me (legally I’m not sure I can talk about our studio opening).

If anything unlike a traditional film school environment where everyone is competing to be selected to direct a thesis film produced by the school, or to be “the best” or “most well connected” - UB is anything but that. If anything it’s perhaps too academic at times, cynics can chalk film studies up to Grade A B.S. - at times it can be, sure. The work I’ve always been interested in connects the academics and the general audience: I’m interested in getting an emotional reaction out of anybody and everyone - from the guy with the PhD in film to the women with a GED. This isn’t to say that all film or media should do this, play it safe, dumb itself down.

I very much like the philosophy of Participant Media: they make genre films with a social change point of view - studio features with established actors and talent that aren’t Lifetime-style movies or After School Specials, but entertainment films that sneak in a message. Granted one can make heavily experimental work with no entry for non academics to prove a point about structure or form, I’m not dismissing those films. But I’d take a teen comedy over a dry documentary if they’re both asking the same questions and opening my eyes to the same issue (look at ATL, it’s a wonderful film confronts identity, race, and power).

These were nothing new, but at UB I’m learning and am challenged to make work - I needed this even if I feel too old sometimes. I have yet to re-calcuate my “real age” as I had done when I turned 25, but based on my life style I had the body age of a 17 year old. If I’ve aged a year (although I’ve taken the recommended steps of eating less red meat and flossing daily), then I’m really only 18: a college freshman, living the life style of a college freshman. While I’ll avoid the binge drinking, but I’ll gladly partake in the spirt of adventure that comes with the age*.

*Meanwhile everyone else is getting married, having kids, growing up, being adults. Fuck that shit.

D-ball and D-bags: MTV goes returns to Seaside Heights

2009-12-03T22:25:00.000-08:00

“Well at least I’m not from New Jersey where you have douche bags that walk around with spiked hair, fake tans and popped collars” -Josh Parkins, Media Study MFA Candidate (raised in Kansas City, MO)
-----

And it was on this note of random bickering in our the Media Study Graduate Studio that my friend Josh reminded me that MTV’s controversial new series Jersey Shore was bowing tonight. I’ve never been an MTV fan, but the station serves it’s purpose (as Sumner Redstone called it in his book “it has the power to be the voice of a generation”). Ionically enough isn’t really Music Television.

Regarding the new show Jersey Shore - first off, it is awful. It falls into the so bad, it might be good - but good for whom? At a certain point you feel bad, but these people rise to a new level of self centered douche bag, leading to behavior that they write off as being acceptable because they’re young. Sure they are - but I get the sense that the cast members will not be changed by this summer, aside from their new found celebrity. They of coarse will on the final episode cry about leaving and talk about how this summer changed me, then right back into the slutty, high risk patterns you had before you came to Seaside.

While I was never a fan of The Real World, but that show offered up diversity - here the show contains all Italian American cast members, which call each other ‘guido’ and ‘guidette’. This outraged the likes of UNICO - according to New Jersey’s statewide paper The Star Ledger, it’s president “objected to the generous use of the term “guido,” both by MTV’s promotional gurus and the cast members themselves”.

Unlike my pal Josh Parkins, mentioned above - who I don’t think has been to the fine state that brought the world Bruce Springsteen - these stereotypes are all too real. This is a closed society: as one of the girls states Sammi Sweetheart states “if your not a guido then get the fuck out of my face.” She’s like a white girl that only dates black guys.

The show is cold to me, I think because it lacks a perspective while not exactly taking the Cinema Verite high road. This is a fantasy setting, no The Real World. Granted, The Real World, was not all that real either: maybe college is remotely like that, but probably not.

The new show replicates this formula: strangers live together, hook up - there is little diversity that leads to conflicts as in the earlier show - nobody here is gay or has HIV (yet anyway). There is hope for real drama in the form of a positive STD or pregnancy test after random drunk post club sexual encounters Skin Cancerous girls or juice heads. A sure fire risk factor is that “Jenny Jwwan” hooks up with (after promising the same day to not cheat on her boyfriend), he apparently has a Prince Albert (thankfully not shown). (Wait, one character ends up with Pink Eye!)

Further evidence this isn’t The Real World is the environment they’re in: Seaside Heights while sleazy isn’t cheap - if memory serves me a concrete-walled flee bag motel in the high of August goes for the same day rate the Ritz Carlton in a civilized city, and they may not even provide you with fresh towels daily. Therefore these kids, most likely rich kids anyway are living an experience that the middle class can afford once in a while (then again isn’t that most TV shows).

Most to be fair to my home state are imports, including the most obnoxious and narcissistic cast member Mike “The Situation” (“The Situation” is the name for his abs). He goes so far over the top it’s amazing anyone could take him seriously, but drunken slutty girls like that I suppose, and he’s in it to have a good time.

The show is anything but a good time, granted if the whole season just showed the fist pumping, techno-throbing club scene it would essentially be a 200 minute vodka commercial. The drama seems rather natural although clearly performed, it’s the type of drama that you’d laugh at if you were also drunk, but pathetic to watch play out sober. MTV has essentially given a series of obnoxious people their own platform - one even confesses she’s starved for attention, Nicole “Snookie”.

As part of the trade off for an amazing house the group is required to work at a T-shirt shop on the boardwalk (the house is on the street, around back), prime, million dollar property even in a shit hole like Seaside Heights. The most sympathetic I think and prone to corruption is Vinny, a 21 year old from Staten Island who until he starts fist pumping seems the relatable.

So who is this show for? Following Facebook a few friends seem to be watching it, or at least seem aware of it (for my friends in Buffalo it seems like a non-event, then again why watch dumb, boring, tan people have fun when you could go out and have fun on a Thursday night). Here in lies the paradox of the show: it’s not very fun, it’s characters are self centered and not terribly amusing unless in satire. Should we feel bad for these morons? Probably not, they seem to be doing something right, even if it’s staged, but I think this culture as I said is a closed culture, I could go on the D-ball, start tanning, get my hair permed, buy an Ed Hardy t-shirt, ect and it probably wouldn’t really matter.

These characters are mostly young (one I learn from the Star Ledger, Mike “The Situation” is 27 - perhaps a little too old for this shit, one hopes he brings home a 15 year old girl from a club who got in with a fake ID and finds himself in jail). A more interesting show would be cops - how do you regulate this environment with people that aren’t terribly bright for starts, high on ecstasy, drunk and full of roid rage?

With characters claiming “I’m hot, I’m natural” and the like, it’s great that they have confidence (some of the girls aren’t in fact that hot, they’re tan beyond any reasonable measure and have beer guts which flop out of their tight Ed Hardy shirts), but it’s off putting. And just when your thinking that you get the argument about “being a hater” - a morons defense for what could be legit criticism.

Am I hater for this show? Yes and no, I watched it as a sociological experiment hoping to learn something, instead I came to the conclusion that this aspect of American Life (one that would make for a boring ass version of This American Life) is a closed, close-knit community. Everyone in it might know Mike “The Situation” (as he claims) but to those outside of this booze, fake fan, and jacked up subculture he’s unknown.

The drama is forced, based on hormonal interactions, girls calling each other slut, fighting over men, ect. The most curious line of the evening was uttered by Angelina, a girl from Staten Island who leaves her boyfriend for the summer to come to Jersey (poor guy for dating such a stupid girl) - I can’t be sure but I think she said “if a girl’s being a slut - she should be abused.”

And there’s the line that should piss people off more than anything else. Granted girls who call other girls sluts are often times sluts themselves, it’s the “takes one to know one” defense, and I don’t feel sorry for anybody. Her comment though has broader and more disturbing implications, like Precious which Lee Daniels is criticized for showing what some call a “poverty porn” - the Jersey Shore shows what happens when dumb people get drunk and don’t pair up with whom they wished they would.

I’d say the drama is unnessisary, a creation of editing, pop music, and bad performances, the cast members are fully aware of the camera and are performing for it, almost shoving it our faces (after all I’m watching this in the middle of winter in Buffalo).

Yes, they have the right to go have fun, party and hook up - people do these things, as a result I’m thinking of opening a Plato’s Retreat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX_YJP0YaGs ) franchise at Seaside, complete with heated swimming pool and that great disco beat*.

(*Plato’s Retreat was an infamous Swingers Club that existed in the late 70’s - just right after AIDS hit, as chronicled in American Swing, a documentary so disturbing it made me want to become a priest, and spawned my idea for a Zac Effron/Ben Affleck road trip comedy called You Were Conceived at Plato’s Retreat)

If I’m cynical about the show it’s because the show itself is cynical about it’s subject. It brings back memories that only exist in Seaside Heights (I haven’t been back since 2003). Perhaps I’m being too rough on it, the show most certainly is crap - where one town becomes like Plato’s Retreat, it tracks a culture of material excess - this is why other countries hate us.

Being a closed society, based sadly mostly in Italian American Communities and areas with night life districts, I don’t think it’ll catch on and these roles will be emulated because these characters are so self-centered they are nearly impossible to identify with or like beyond the surface. Sure they may be attractive, but they speak their own language (I didn’t count the amount of times “vibing out” was spoken) and that creates a disconnect between mainstream viewers and those that fit this stereotype. It’s a stereotype they are glad to live, and live it up they should. If Snookie wants to marry a “tan juice head” as she fantasizes about then she gets what she deserves, and if she’s a slut...well you know what Angelina says she deserves.

(Update: 12/28 - a few weeks after writing this post I received an e-mail from Dave, whose website recalls the memories I had growing up and going to Seaside, with a lot of current information and history, it's the side that MTV isn't showing: http://www.discoverseasideheights.com/about )

In The Company of Men: Homoerotics in Boondock Saints

2009-12-01T21:05:00.000-08:00

Until today I had never seen the Boondock Saints, now I’ve seen not one but both films. Watching the first on Netflix (a distracting environment, in which I folded laundry and cleaned up a bit while it was on), I saw why the film inspired a cult following: it’s a low budget, shoot-em-up with a few funny moments, nothing groundbreaking but it’s Boston location is also I think part of what makes it original and the city was well used. (Predating The Departed, of coarse).

Boondock Saints is a classic good verses evil story and a reluctant super hero story: alone one brother could not pull off the crime or become an iconic vigilante - they need each other. This conclusion was of coarse drawn by Capote in In Cold Blood. Like Capote, (and I base my observations of that of Bennett Miller’s film), he begins to develop a close relationship with the subject he’s investigating, that being one of the suspects, Perry Smith. Now consider Willem Dafoe’s Paul Smecker of the Boondock Saints series - he's a homosexual. While I couldn’t find evidence as to why that was relevant to the first film aside from a few jokes and a cross-dressing stunt, it dawned on me while watching the second film - Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day - which contains an overwhelmingly gay subtext.

Consider it’s leads: Roger Ebert observes they are unmarried, they live in Ireland with their father. They also show no sexual preference. The films don't help with a curious shortage of women in this world. Throughout the film jokes are made involving prison rape, gay sex, “getting fucked up the ass with an elephant dick” and so forth. Consider the gangsters: there are no token “video ho” type of women hanging around in bars and clubs that add nothing but eye candy to the film, in fact the pubs they hang out in are a strictly male domain - from the corner bar to an elegant gay bar Paul Smecker goes to unwind after a day at the office in the first feature.

Another gangster picture that commented on the abserdity of women that added nothing except for eye candy in these back rooms and VIP lounge where gangster transactions occur was the Vin Diesel action film XXX - where after a deal is settled, a Russian mobster exclaims "Now that business if finished, we party - Bitches, come!" (signaling the entrance of several knockouts).

The lack of sexual preference leads to Boondock Saints II oddest, darkest and most confused passage: an musical montage about masculinity - one might think that if such a conversation needs to be had, doubt about one's identity exists, especially if one is actively aware they are performing their identify. The film contains a Mexican side kick trying to find his way in the world, especially in the dark world inhabited by the Saints - whose masculinity is called in to question when he's given an almost ineffectively small gun. Once can consider for the Saints giving death is linked to giving sexual pleasure, or a substitute for it: they rome around looking to start fights after nights of drinking, instead of hoping to go home with a pretty women they picked up in a bar.

However, there is one female, central to the story, an FBI agent. Although she's introduced in a series of slow tilts upwards, showing her legs and "fuck me boots" - the image of desire quickly fades after this brief sexualized moment, which independent of the narrative feels arbitrary. She's played by the normally very sexy Julie Benz. Recently her career, it suggests has gravitated towards material like this: B-grade action and horror flicks such as Saw V, Punisher: War Zone, and Rambo. I remember her as a high school student in Jawbreaker, and as the “crazy white girl”/personal trainer in the African American centered comedy The Brothers. Here she uses her gender to get her way, but it is clearly performance of gender, aside from flirting required at times, she state no sexual preference as well.

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day contains no sexual content: that is there is on screen sexualized images, aside from a curious amount of male nudity which seems a bit unnecessary. The film would suggest that “Boston” is a city of male gangsters who have no wives, mistresses (although one goes to a message parlor) - luckily for Boston, a city that was once shut down by light brights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare) the film was shot in Toronto which explains it’s bland visual cityscapes.

I really hate that Boston, as a character itself in the Boondock Saints films (and the first was filmed in Boston) is replaced by Toronto, normally I say (as I did in Hulk) why not have the fucking movie take place in Toronto, why does New York always have to get destroyed, Toronto is a worthy world class city.

The problem is architecturally: as the character’s sexuality is an autopilot so is its backdrops - it’s generic. Boston is a city of brick, while Toronto has these neighborhoods they are underused. While it’s a well shot film, it lacks a Boston authenticity that the first flick had. Much like the Rock Hudson melodramas made by Douglas Sirk in the 1950-60’s - this film felt like it was shot on a soundstage, in addition to having its characters hide their sexuality.

Most filmmakers would introduce a gay character in the second film, if comments like this were made about their first film. Troy Duffy does it in reverse, spawning this reading, I suppose (that and the aforementioned dialogue relating to gay sex acts). Ebert, again observes Duffy did it in reverse, I had seen the hilarious documentary Overnight about the making of Boondock Saints, showing Duffy as an out of control, alcoholic hell bent on taking over the world from the outside, after Miramax gives him a deal to make Boondock Saints. Things go downhill from there, Duffy is exsactly the most likable character you could have in a film.

As it would turn out Troy Duffy is a skilled director, sure his films have many flaws, but he’s only made two so far, both the same story, in the same comic book style. Boondock Saints II is a purist action flick: it’s just that - gun fights, a bit of plot, character development that arrives just at the right moments. It’s all thrown together - a bit messy but the Saints are in a messy business, and business is booming, even in a down economy.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not bothered by the Saints being gay, or even asexual - I think it adds an interesting demention to the what could be perceived as a lack of character development. If one gets into patterns: gets married, has children, ect - they will chose to fight for the betterment of their communities not with guns but by running for town council or to an officer position in the development/condo development. With this being said, and the fact that (SPOILER) they’re in jail at the end of II (come to think of it, that’s also the ending of the 4th installment of the Fast and the Furious series - the-dumb-as-it’s-name: Fast and Furious). Let’s see what happens in Boondock Saint’s III.

IMAX: The Downfall of a (once) great format

2009-11-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

It’s ironic that Cinemark is now suing IMAX over claims by IMAX that Cinemark stole stealing trade secrets the firm openly reveals in it’s rapid retrofit expansion. IMAX once meant “giant ass screen”, the firm now says they want to be known for providing an “immersive viewing experience”. Okay, okay, sure - IMAX is just that but the new retrofits? Unless it’s in 3-D, which IMAX does better than anyone else (although I haven’t seen a digital IMAX 3-D flick yet, perhaps Aviator), but a 2-D feature? I felt ripped off when I saw Robots at Showcase Cinemas Buckland Hills (Manchester, CT), an early retrofit. Buckland Hills, while a great theater never had giant screens, they took one of their large theaters, shoved in a wall to wall screen, removed two rows of seats, and upgrade the sound - bam, they’re hanging a banner for the grand opening of a new IMAX screen.

AMC and Regal jumped on the retrofit bandwagon and its spawned some outrage online amongst bloggers and twitters, most famously Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari. To be fair - IMAX should have done some research into what people commonly think of as the IMAX experience. Moving a screen closer to an audience doesn’t seem to qualify to me - first and foremost, the IMAX frame has a distinctive shape: the new retrofits, don’t.

As for traditional films “blow up” to IMAX: a letter box effect occurs - shouldn’t film loyalists insist on masking for IMAX? Maybe that negates its intent, but it was fun seeing Batman: The Dark Knight open up to a full IMAX frame, I don’t know if the new digital systems and screen configurations do it.

Further cheapening the IMAX experience, which has been hit over the head, again and again: I thought like 3-D, there could be a new language surrounding IMAX. Thinking of the works of indigenous national cinema that appears from the Middle East, former Soviet nations, Africa, and other far flung corners of the world - you have a lot of new space and no rules. How does one compose a shot for IMAX verses traditional 16:9? Filmmakers were answering these questions, but IMAX like all good things, like film, actually, is now being taken over by Hollywood storytellers.

IMAX’s beginnings mirror that of early cinema. Once upon a time Auguste and Louis Lumiere used the moving image as a spectacle: it was special, photographing mundane activities such as a train arriving at a platform or works leaving a factory. IMAX started with nature documentaries, using it’s large screens as a spectacle, often at museums, amusement parks, World’s Fairs, and other special tourist events. It wasn’t till Sony Theaters opened their Lincoln Square Theatre in 1995 that IMAX started looking towards Hollywood. Lincoln Square opened with 12 screens of Hollywood and indie-wood flicks, and an IMAX that was showing 3-D features, one about fish, and the other was the stunning ethnographic and lyrical documentary The Last Buffalo.

There were filmmakers exploring IMAX, including Greg MacGillivray (a nature and sometimes ethnographical documentarian), Jean-Jacques Annaud (director of Wings of Courage, per IMDB the first “dramatic IMAX feature”), and Steven Low (Low has created commissioned art pieces in the format, as well as directed an early dramatic IMAX narrative, Across the Sea of Time). Stan Brackhage even hand painted an IMAX film, Night Music (although never shown in IMAX sadly, I learn). It’s no wonder Brackhage would have been attracted to IMAX, it was a powerful new medium of cinematic expression.

This is not to say Hollywood ruins everything. IMAX is a public traded company, they have shareholders and they grew their brand while ruining their quality - in fact that’s the key - they are a brand. I heard they wanted to be thought of as a brand worth paying extra for, like Starbucks. Sure you can grab a 75 cent cup of coffee or a sweet-ass $4 latte. But IMAX unlike Starbucks doesn’t insure you’re experience will be identical from Manchester, CT to Manchester, England - and here is lies my objectives to what it’s become - often made clear by other smarter people: it used to mean a giant ass screen, now it means an immersive experience. The films used to be “special” and “educational”, now when you get to your local theater that has an IMAX screen you have the option to see the film projected in a traditional theater or IMAX.

What is worse I think is that new constructions are being retrofitted, IMAX should be a star attraction, it should be a giant theater, larger than the rest of the complex - you should be able to see it from the outside and say “hey - that’s the IMAX screen.” For those reading this in the Buffalo area the Regal Cinemas on Transit Road in Williamsville is just that: it’s a real big screen IMAX.

Because this is a premium brand IMAX gives rights to certain territories to operators. That is AMC, Regal and a few one-off operators have IMAX screens. Apparently Cinemark, pissed that their competitors locked up key markets rebelled and copied the idea, creating XD: Extreme Digital.

Extreme Digital from the photos I’ve seen is a similar format and good for them. IMAX uses two digital projects, a slightly larger screen and better sound. IMAX can only show films that studios make available to them, meanwhile XD, virtually the same thing can show Real D 3-D films and any digital film out there: virtually anything. IMAX at this point looks like a middleman.

They’ve sold out alright, the differences are so subtle I’m not sure untrained audience members will notice the difference (but they’ll shell out an additional $4-5 for the experience). There have always been IMAX imitations out there, iWerks built “extreme screens”, other theater chains have big screen theaters they play up: Harkins Theaters Cine Capri, Marcus Theaters Ultra Screen (in some markets larger than IMAX retrofits), and Crown Theaters Odyssey Screen (one still open at Bow Tie Palace in Hartford, which is larger than the Buckland Hills IMAX 10 miles east).

AMC, IMAX’s number one customer, the first to commit to 100+ new digital IMAX screens even created their own screen. When they couldn’t put an IMAX in their brand new Younge & Dundas 24 in Toronto they created EXT: Enhanced Theatre Experience. I was in this auditorium for the Toronto Film Festival and the experience was unremarkable, especially in digital (might have been the film I saw, a lower budget indie named Passenger Side). The sight lines weren’t great, neither as the sound (then again, this wasn’t an action flick), and the picture didn’t “take up” the whole screen, it seemed picture size equaled that of a non-EXT auditorium.

What Cinemark is doing is pretty brilliant: they’re exposing IMAX as a scam, if they and AMC can do it, then every theater operator can. At this point IMAX ceases to be a premium, and like various wide screen branded formats they will get lost in the fray.

When I first heard about digital IMAX I had to check to see it was April 1. I think the museum IMAX locations will always exist, but retrofitting existing auditoriums and digital 3-D isn’t the answer to get people back out to the movies. “Alternative content” maybe be one route, as the Opera seem to do well, but what about the basics. Creating excitement is something that needs to happen more often, event films are exciting, getting there, lining up - it’s like going to a rock show, they are far and few between.

Status of Stuff: Hollow Spaces/Post Production

2009-11-02T18:25:00.001-08:00

Once in a while a blog is a place not to analyze films you’ve seen recently but to chat about what the hell you’ve been up to. This is one such “update”. Over the summer I stopped updating a blog for fear I had nothing interesting to say out of fear that I was just an aggregator and not an actual content provider, I still don’t know, but this at least will be somewhat original.

What have I been up to lately, then? Glad you asked.

I’ve been working through post-production on Hollow Spaces and found I accidently made a longer film than I intended, it’s still the movie I intended to make, but it’s hard to put it in a box: is a long short or a short feature. I was depressed but it’s for all purposes the film I intended and hoped to make, not 100% of coarse, nothing ever is, but I’m stuck with a challenge. There’s not much to cut, but there’s more that could be fleshed out, there’s also the question of the ending - which I think could be enhanced - without saying much.

There’s the basic technical elements that need correction (sound, fine edits, music score, ect.) so I’m going to finish those over the next month. There’s nothing that needs to be reshot from what I see so far, but there’s a lot of work in melding what’s already shot into a film that has the emotional impact I hoped for when scripting and shooting it. Obviously along the way compromises are made, we shot it quickly, cheaply, but I think what we lacked in money and time is there in passion - there are some scenes that give me goosebumps to watch, they are that raw and well acted.

I suppose it’s important to be proud of what you do - I just want this to be a masterpiece in terms of tone, mood and performance. Technically it’s not 100% because for a good period in the shoot it was me and my HDV camera and the actors, a few lights but a very light crew, I like to think that worked to our advantage in terms of getting natural performances, of coarse I could always use a person or two to keep me in check - but maybe I’m being overly critical.

Of coarse post production is in full swing and I haven’t gotten it to the point where I’m anxious to show it off and run test screenings (I will most likely do that perhaps both in my apartment complex and with UB’s Media Study department). DMS is full of generous and smart people who hopefully tell it like it is.

As for other things going on Mary May’s Suicide Letter is screening in two film festivals: it’s playing before the opening night feature at the Big Apple Film Festival (tomorrow at 6:30PM) and again on Saturday night at the Hartford International Film Festival at 11:30PM. Hopefully this time next year Hollow Spaces will be having it’s film festival life - although I’m not sure what category it’ll be slotted into (short or feature).

I am encouraged to learn that while I’ve always said content should dictate running time and a film should be only as long as it has to be (advice I wish Michael Bay would follow) - some of my favorite filmmakers have been in the same boat (making 45-60 minute mini-features) including Kelly Reichardt and Francois Ozon. Therefore if anything I should work on making the film better, not worry about classification and accept it. There are festivals that do show “mini-features” so perhaps Hollow Spaces will have a life there, I’d like to think it just might.

A SAW You Can Believe In - or - Jigsaw Has Pre-Existing Condition

2009-10-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: this essay will contain spoilers.

I didn’t like Saw 5 - perhaps because I was tired, had to wait till 10:30PM to see it (all the previous times were sold out), and it required thinking when I wasn’t expecting it and didn’t think thinking was worth it.

That being said I saw Saw 6 because I was expecting to see something that’s pretty rare: an audience at the Market Arcade Theater downtown (still I counted about 50 people, better than the prior show I attended Walt and El Grupo at the North Park, which saw an audience of about 12). Long and uninteresting story short: I am a “season pass” holder for the chain that operates both, which is the perfect gift for someone like me who would probably go anyway at full price if I had to.

Now to the film: the Saw franchise has been cranking out a new film every October for the past 6 years which like South Park allows the team a great deal of power: they can actually be relevant to the zeitgeist. The films of the past dealt with drug users (perhaps an allegory to excess in good times - not only do you own that BMW you don’t need but you also have a coke habit and as Robin Williams said “cocaine is god’s way of telling you that you make too much.”)

The last film dealt with the police - and as I said I don’t remember Saw 5 except for the fact I didn’t really like it. Here Mark Hoffman is back and Jigsaw is more of a conceptual artist - (spoiler) - he’s still not dead. Jigsaw has been dying of cancer and can’t get his insurance company to cover an experimental treatment. He then proceeds to give a speech worthy of Alan Grayson - blasting the whole system. Although bipartisan and even seemingly apolitical this is the first time a Saw film addresses a current issue head-on. (Then again I could have told you the lobbyists, republicans and Obama would drag this on a year ago, it’s a sad fact of life).

Saw 6 takes perhaps can be somewhat cathartic for it’s core audience which seems to be frustrated apolitical people that may have been energized by the promises of Obama, I know I was - and still am for the most part - but please, deliver on that change that was promised.

For the start this is clear: this is a new Saw for a post TARP era - it’s pissed that wall street was bailed out and millions of Americans who were not financially literature were connected with 50-page credit card agreements and tricky predatory lending practices. While banks are never taken to task here (perhaps that’s Saw 7) - two mortgage brokers are pinned against each other in what is an awfully angry Saw film that proves to be more disturbing than others. While certain moments are tame, there is one image concerning the number 6 that is truly frightening and disturbing in the way that seems to throw it back at us: I didn’t get any pleasure out of watching it.

But do we get any pleasure out of watching the Saw films period? I don’t know - this time it seemed more frightening, whereas you might be let down by someone who is a drug addict who you’ve tried to help - the prospect of people with families killing in the name of revenge (not “curing”) seems to tint this entry into the genre a shade darker than the others.

Still, not a lot of films have taken the heath insurance industry to task and here is a film that is oversimplified for a midnight madness and urban crowd that has a certain amount of power. It hates the “hooray for me and fuck you” politics that flourished under George Bush and even earlier under that jerk-off Ronald Reagan (where as corporations got richer and richer because they found ways of screwing and squeezing the middle class).

Unfortunately the health care industry has not been taken to task by anybody who would get credit in a bipartisan fashion, that is it’s just Saw and Michael Moore’s Sicko. Sicko is pretty brilliant on its own terms, but Saw, for the folks that wouldn’t see a documentary has a certain amount of power to make points and I’m glad the series is finally getting political even if it doesn’t name names.

Here is the situation as I understand it: the US leads the development of new drugs, treatments, ect that are not shared for the greater good. I understand the motivation to innovate, invest and develop - maybe it’s not even the researcher’s fault. Profit is a strong motivation - perhaps I’m rare but I just want to live comfortably, I have no desire to be rich (think back to the Robin Williams quote earlier), but at the same time I understand the concept of being paid fairly for the work that you do - why should your CEO get rich on the backs of employees working, producing and delivering?

The fear is if governmental “public option” health care was introduced, of coarse it would cause the quality of health care to decline for everyone else that has it, even if it’s as mediocre as Jigsaw’s. There is too much misinformation on it, the debate, which I’ve been following has become cloudy thanks to the uninformed radical morons who still believe Obama was born in Kenya. What’s wrong with this country?

I’m excited to see what Saw does next, while it’s as oversimplified as the liars who spread roomers about “death panels” - surely Jigsaw is not an example to be followed (although here with Detective Hoffman carrying out Jigsaw’s orders - it appears the film is more brutal, perhaps another point).

I remember reading an interview with Eli Roth who made Hostel, an over the top, almost pornographic film involving torture. As the studio was releasing Hostel II (which I didn’t see) he was discussing his inspirations including videos of beheadings in Iraq. The torture-porn movement was born out of something political itself. Perhaps national embarrassment Lynndie England is partly responsible for these films, although when it comes to torture, she argues in Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure “I didn’t do it, I just took a picture of it”. These films reflect a disturbing American truth, I think - born out of the last few years. I hope the Saw films will become more interesting (and better - Saw 6 is not a terribly good film although I admire what it achieves in its narrative).

(500) Days of Summer - visited and revisited

2009-10-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

This summer I was consumed by Hollow Spaces, a film I’m extremely proud of mostly because of all my films it is the best acted (no offense to people from Hartford, but this time around I hired professionals). In the time spent prepping the film, from pre-production to casting, filming and now I’m coming towards the end of post-production I had taken the time to move from Pompton Lakes to Amherst NY, quitting what was a steady, if somewhat dangerously dead end day job. This still has yet to hit me, and I’m thinking one weekend (perhaps in two weeks when I’m home for the first time in a long time to present Mary May’s Suicide Letter at two festivals - the Big Apple Film Festival and the Hartford International Film Festival) - I will end up in tears.

Unexpected things, perhaps preordained by some higher power happen for better or worse if you choose to look at things that way. (500) Days of Summer, although not reflective of my summer, is a pretty wonderful, life affirming film. Perhaps I’m taking it too far, but to call it a romantic comedy seems to be an over generalization based on a simple way of marketing a film. The film opens with no surprises, we know the ending - or do we. Roger Ebert wisely observes in his review that we never remember things in chronological order. We remember relationships and the moments that comprise these relationships in an emotional hierarchy that exists when we trace back through the remains of what was, filtering out data we deem irrelevant. That is, of coarse until Tom, the hero of the film thinks back on the small moments he didn’t observe when his relationship with Summer starts to run off the tracks.

Much of a relationship can be based on first meetings. If your a jerk, or not in the right frame of mind you might miss that chance. Hell, that girl behind you in line at Starbucks may indeed be the one, but if your having a bad day, she’s having a bad day - then maybe it’s not meant to be. It’s getting past the first meeting that builds a relationship of coarse - but that first meeting is critical. My theory on finding love (which I’ve written about extensively over the years) or even dating is visually displayed beautifully in the video to Seether’s song Fine Again - a pretty girl stands in the middle of a carnival holding a sign “I will change your life” - perhaps, if I’m in the right place, right time and in the right mind frame that might happen - and there begins the maddening complexities of love. Then again (500) Days of Summer doesn’t contain the obligatory meet cute of the romantic comedy - Summer and Tom meet rather boringly at the office, more on that later.

Women have a certain power - often without even knowing the power they have, to drive guys crazy. Tom becomes a stalker, not dangerously so but developing a work place crush. She might like him back - or at least she’s willing to give it a try. I’ve had these, sitting around hoping that a certain someone would call, sure - but never had the opportunity nor did I work in an industry that would have allowed this. Tom studied architecture but is working beneath him, illustrating and writing greeting cards for a firm with the name New Hampshire Greetings (based in LA, the film’s setting). In a creative setting openly dating in the work place may be acceptable, working for an organization in which the HR department has a tendency to overstep ethical and potentially legal boundaries, this is a bad idea.

Manufacturing tools of love is one of many lies Tom points out about this firm, citing the contemporary literature we have on issues of love (mostly popular music - a theory proposed in Whit Stillman’s equally wonderful romantic comedy Barcelona) never tells us that it never works out in the end. Greeting cards are perhaps artifacts of how we are suppose to feel in a perfect world which is sort of why I dislike them. Then again I try to develop special relationships with people that I would give a card to - and thus I’ve had blank cards printed with my name for hand written notes for such an occasion. My theory is my good friends, family and acquaintances are far too important to me to get off-the-rack language.

But so much of our daily life is crafted from Tom’s walk to work (listening to his iPod) that one might suppose we’re programed how to feel in some way. Enter free spirit Summer played by the very lovely Zooey Deschanel - who we learn in voice over is cynical while not believing she has an effect on me. She does find love, Tom doesn’t - and so starts the cycle, this time perhaps with a very lovely women named Autumn (sure it’s a silly joke but why not leave the audience smiling).

(500) Days of Summer (I learn from an interview with the filmmaker that 500 is punctuated in parenthesizes to mimic pop song titles) - is as rich as a great mixed tape. While all the usual markings of narrative cinema exist (plot - check, character - check) - the film functions as a friendly mind-fuck. It is not a mind-bender (it’s coherent because the film provides useful tags labeling the days - an idiots guide to the film - shit hits the fan at about day 275).

So what we have is about a year with Summer and about half the time getting over her. Tom is a victim of his own idealism - falling in love with April and imaging happiness while dancing in an imagined but fun sequence to Hall and Oats. Summer is easy to fall in love with: a strong women, she knows what she wants or so she thinks - the film makes a complex case for love. She doesn’t leave Tom to have a series of trysts with other men - but at the same time one could argue her omission of finding a new lover and her engagement until Tom finds out in public is either cruel and or necessary.

But trauma inspires one to go out, not just to find a beatiful women but to reassess one’s own life: Tom does this. To quote Bill Maher: America we can either die in bed hopped up on drugs like Michael Jackson, or we can be like Brittany - but on our circus outfit and go out there and show the world we still got it.

And there in lies the charm of (500) Days of Summer, a romantic comedy that I think guys will enjoy more than women: haven’t we all been there before? Tom’s own reactions mirror mine - I was young, stupid and optimistic once (optimistic for what - I don’t know, hell in retrospect I wish I could talk to little John Fink and tell him if you end up with THAT girl you’d be bored out of your fucking mind). What I learned is to become more like what Summer is: someone who doesn’t believe in being tied down. Then again if the right women comes along.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt I think walks a fine line in approaching Tom. He’s not pathetic the way that Michael Cera might have played the role (to me he continues to play George Michael, and while it’s funny sometimes, it’s growing old). Gordon-Levitt walks a fine line and nails it: here is a guy who’s a product of his experience, he loves British pop songs. I should note I write this while listening to Pete Yorn’s remake of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle.

Yorn doesn’t contribute to what is a solid soundtrack here, opening with the haunting Regina Spektor track Us - but I thought of his music throughout the film. Obviously Last Summer comes to mind first (“we were great last summer - we were fresh as the ocean”) but, perhaps because of the chronology Crystal Village comes to mind first (“we were good in the beginning”). Yorn like Tom is a fan of British popular music of the same era (the late 80’s), and like his contemporaries is creating work that continues in that vain without really cracking the hip-hop, younger pop music sound of the Top 20 (or iTunes’ top 100 for that matter). We shall the discussion regarding Mily Circus’ Party in the USA at a later date. (a quick look at iTunes shows me Mily’s grip on the top spot has slipped to Fireflies by Owl City - which I’m less impressed with by listening to 30-second sound clip).

But back to the subject at hand: (500) Days of Summer is an example of great cinema in that it hits all the right notes and works as both a comedy, drama and romance. There are some films that perhaps don’t work in execution: here Zooey Deschanel is perfectly cast and its nearly impossible to Summer played by anyone else. One particularly beatiful moment played perfectly is where she cries while at a screening of The Graduate, for reasons we, and she probably cannot fully comprehend. Moments like this are truly rare in romantic comedies - moments of deep self realization. Often in romantic comedy two opposites become attracted to each other quickly and spend the rest of the film sorting the matter out, ultimately to come together in some form, and thus some realization occurs - the characters are changed, often simplistically by the other person. Often this requires both people to change, while both characters change, swapping ideologies on love even (although Tom’s period of cynicism is brief, dark but also pretty funny) - neither changes to accommodate each other. Rare, indeed.

Equally as rare is a picture that hits these notes so well leaving one fulfilled and eager to take the trip again: classic Bollywood attempts this, but the long running times can be off-putting, I think. Pixar also does this time and time again, whereas their works are both technical masterpieces, as well as solid storytelling. Good storytelling offers an emotional experience for all viewers - I may be alone in my love for (500) Days of Summer, but it hits all targets and is funny, tragic, and as fulfilling as one of those British-pop inspired Pete Yorn CDs (that’s high praise from me). It’s also well directed from a technical point of view by Marc Webb although it’s an easy criticism to call it too stylish. Style gets boring fast if substance is lacking (I find the movie to be satisfying on all grounds, notwithstanding there are a few moments that don’t work as well as others). The narration is tricky - who’s story is it? Tom’s remembrance or the narrator who aids us in tracking Tom’s frame of mind - the film is as temporal as it is lucid - in one sequence Tom’s expectations are shown in a split frame from the actual reality of the situation. Not confusing, sure, but slightly disorienting without having it explained. Still the storytelling is strong.

To be fair all great movies have small flaws, don’t let that stop you.

** I originally saw (500) Days of Summer the weekend before I went into production on Hollow Spaces. If you’re in the greater Buffalo area it’s currently at the Moveland 8, where I revisted it. The theater is a pretty good cheapo-plex ($1.50 shows on Tuesdays - but trust me, this one was well worth the $12.50 ticket price I paid at the Empire in New York). It’s also scheduled to come out on video in January, although I wish the studio would make a push for a few Oscars, at least in the screenwriting category.

Mary May's Suicide Letter at the Big Apple Film Festival

2009-10-13T09:31:00.001-07:00

It's a Love Story, Baby Just Say "Yes" - Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-10-04T20:24:00.000-07:00

---

After slacking-off on the blog and a lot of other things that I consider to be important (school work always comes first), I’m actually returning to my occasional series of reviews.

---

Michael Moore is at it again, and when I think the film scholar in me can resist, he doesn’t. This is not to say I disagree with Michael Moore or the sentiments of his latest, Capitalism: A Love Story, to disagree would make me a Glen Beck-sized douche bag. Roger Ebert’s law of film criticism is that a film is not what it’s about but how it is about - in that the construction of a film, skillful or otherwise is what decides if a film is “good” or “not good” - simply put.

Michael Moore is manipulative. I’m a liberal and I admit it, and yet this is the second film of his that had my in tears and strangely simultaneously proud to be an American. Capitalism: A Love Story is a pro-America film, it stands in defiance of profit makers who reap large benefits by cutting costs, overhead and making complex bets and hedges. It feels wrong to see it at Regal Cinemas, the largest theater chain in America (I didn’t, by the way - opting to go to Dipson instead).

I once was a banker, coming from an institution that I don’t believe to be inherently evil and short-sided the way that some where (being a community bank they didn’t make high risk bets the way that WaMu and Countrywide did, they never made a sub-prime loan, however they did take TARP money). This, unnamed bank, of coarse being what it is, is a small fish in a large pond did not garner national attention the way Citi, Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo did. The two former institutions don’t look so good through Michael Moore’s lens, nor does Goldman Sacks. Chase and Wells Fargo are nearly absent from the dialogue, along with a handful of larger corporations. Wells Fargo was targeted - perhaps fairly for lending practices in Baltimore (“reverse redlining”) that lead to the destruction of neighborhoods in the other crisis doc out now, American Casino (more on that later). Foreign owned banks, who did not take TARP funds are left out (unlike in Sicko Moore doesn’t explore how other countries regulate banks - Canada is one such heavily regulated example which has caused its stronger banks to branch out beyond Canada).

I’d be interested to see a narrative film on Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, I can’t wait for his memoirs which will hopefully provide more interesting insight than Bill Clinton’s did. And perhaps a great deal more intelligence than the upcoming Going Rouge...

But back to Moore. He makes propaganda. As a supporter of his, and I enjoy his films (I’ve been there opening weekend for everyone since Bowling for Columbine) - he makes entertaining films that aim to inspire, move, and motivate audiences. If anything they serve as time capsules of emotional energy: his Captain Mike Across America (later Slacker Uprising) which I saw at Toronto in 2007 - is a painful reminder of the Summer of 2004- when we were all so optimistic and John Kerry for lack of a better word, proved to be a pussy. Hey, you went to war, the other guy didn’t and has the balls to start conflicts that essentially lead to massive profits for major corporations, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist here but come the fuck on.

My gripes with Capitalism: A Love Story is in the documentation. He shows memos from Citibank and highlights the key points, I tried to read what else was being said. I’m sure I could find it somewhere, but that requires digging. Moore’s films usually are released in conjunction with a companion reader that will contain such information, I’m not sure if one is out yet. Other gripes I have is with the theatrics of his presentations at times, here it feels like he’s trying to hard, an animation (you’ll know the one) representing a Bush speech is over the top and embarrassing. We’re smart enough to get what’s going on without the computer graphics. That’s like something Morgan Spurlock would have done.

But what he gets right is pulling at the emotional cords. The Republic Windows and Siding folks make me proud to be an American, proud to be middle class and fighting for the betterment of the middle class. Capitalism is fine - we need people to play a role in society but poverty, joblessness - all for short term profits, stock options, yachts - that’s pretty evil. The material addictions.

Granted I own stock, sure I’d like explosive growth but not at the sake of the middle class. I may never be rich, that’s fine by me - I’d sleep better at night doing an honest day’s work and living comfortably, I don’t need five high end cars like the rappers on MTV cribs, I’m fine driving a Passat. But I do see the hardcore capitalists point of view: without incentives we can’t encourage breakthroughs, but what are we encouraging now?

Interestingly enough the film makes a great point about the top students in science and math. Some don’t take jobs improving the lives of others, they go to work on Wall Street building derivatives, credit default swaps and other products that the film tries to make sense of. A lot of these instruments seem ludicrous when explained, sure - additional security. As does the insurance policies which I knew about from my undergraduate minor (I won’t blow all of Mr. Moore’s surprises for you).

The film is worth seeing. I blast the parts of it that seem fluffed up, done for entertainment, even guerrilla theater. The film is so good on its own. Granted, if you wanted to see the bland, boring version of this I could point you to Leslie Cockburn’s American Casino, which I saw at Tribeca last year. As part of the post-screening panel a discussion was moderated by Alex Blumberg from NPR, who’s reporting on This American Life remains the best journalism on the financial (or perceived) crisis of 2008. But we aren’t out of it yet.

Moore remains optimistic on Obama, not so much on Timothy Geithner. Perhaps it’s too early to judge Obama, and I’m still hopeful he’ll deliver what he promised, and what I and the majority of Americans voted for last November: change, accountability and affordable healthcare for all.

I learn Capitalism: A Love Story started as a follow up to Fahrenheit 9/11. Perhaps Sicko II can be made in the event the health care industry continues to reap record profits while millions of American go bankrupt over health care costs. Health care isn’t cheap, and if I could continue to pay what I paid while employed to insure all Americans had the same coverage I had, I’d be glad to. Of coarse there are other issues at hand (i.e.: it shouldn’t cost more to eat poorly that it does to eat well - yes - Whole Foods, why can’t you be as cheap as Burger King).

I think the reason I despise Moore’s theatrical antics are two fold: the content is entertaining enough on its own, his voice is genuine - using crime scene tape to tape-up Wall Street buildings and banks seems unnecessary. Secondly, they make it easier for the people seeking to discredit his films to attack and dismiss him as an entertainer. The film also dives into a strange examination of religion and capitalism, it works, but only as a critique of Bush and his moron followers on the religious right. Moore for the first time in his career tries to win them over, I hope it’ll work, shall we call Samuel Wurzelbacher.

Still, if you want the boring, emotionless, but highly credible flip side to this picture: American Casino may still be playing at Film Forum.

(Note: Capitalism, I saw in the end credits was was co-produced by Carl Deal whom I met at a Q & A at IFC Center a few years ago and I remember he was kind of a dick)

In the words of Stained: "It's Been a While"

2009-09-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

This is the longest I’ve gone without blogging and I’ve finally decided to break the silence. The silence hasn’t been by choice, there’s lot of things I wish I could do but as Darris Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish says “Time you ain’t no friend of mine”.

But a lot’s happened. I left off blabbing about pre-production on Hollow Spaces and rambling on about the flick The Ugly Truth. Now two whole months later (almost to the day) - an actual update on stuff.

In short: I quit my job, went to grad school, finished Hollow Spaces (we wrapped at 9PM on a Wednesday night, the next morning at 9AM I was on the road and in route to Buffalo to start an MFA program at UB). Editing has been going slow thanks to a few other projects, school work, the move, and the Toronto International Film Festival. I couldn’t be happier actually.

I have much to blog about and this time I promise to keep up the pace I had back in the day when I had my Live Journal. So consider this a reactivation of sorts. An actual set of updates in graphic, explicit, full details to come.

The Ugly Truth about The Ugly Truth

2009-07-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I caught a screening of The Ugly Truth and this morning I’m going to spoil it. You may want to revisit this essay after you’ve had a chance to see it (it opens wide on Friday). I’m not sure I can totally recommend it, but will say that it has its moments - I think most people will actually kind of enjoy it - so make of that what you will.

The Ugly Truth starts with some hard hitting observations - I liked it. It was more like Neil Strauss’ The Game than He’s Just Not That In To You - then (spoiler, but you knew it) it goes soft. Granted it make some excellent points, that would negate the value of The Game, here is a self help guy that dismisses all other self help guys - with a point. No offense to anybody, but there is a multimillion dollar industry with these self help books and dating websites out there. Some work, perhaps - others seem like a waste.

Now for a full on disclosure: I am single. It is by choice, soon there will be a life circumstance change I will have that will allow me to look for something more serious but until then I like my life style. What men want, as the film would agree I think, is freedom with the ability to have sex any time you want. Of coarse the reality, and (I don’t disagree, it only seems fair) is that real relationships require investment, some times sacrifice to make sure it works. It may be small things, like going to see The Proposal with your girl - or going to some party thing that you really don’t want to go to. I spoke to a friend the other day who was on vacation with his girl, he sounded miserable. The things we do for beatiful women.

Of coarse there are women that put up with a lot of shit from guys. Too much. They are are looking for that perfect guy and end up staying in a relationship they are ultimately unhappy with because they don’t want to risk the social implications of walking away from this person. Or they have a kid with him. The Ugly Truth assumes everyone is 30, good looking and single. Most people I know are pretty average looking, but the film’s softness towards the end negates its message in the beginning.

I often know being burned by love can lead one to dismiss it, often for years at a time. After all in Neil Strauss’ The Game, the whole “pick up artist” culture was born out of rejection: the men weren’t traditionally handsome or athletic, never dated the hot girls, now they’re out to bang as many as they can, at first by rejecting them. Gerard Butler’s Billy Mays look alike Mike isn’t a terrible guy- he claims the rejection advise isn’t for girls in puberty, but “hot 25-year olds that can get any guy they wanted”. Still does it work, it assumes using the technique will get you attention, but perhaps of the wrong kind. I would illustrate an example I once observed out, some times harsh techniques like being a jerk will lead the girl to hook up with a guy who isn’t a jerk, say someone like yours truly.

As far as I’m concerned I’m not taking these things too seriously. After all movies, books, television, music effect how our culture behaves. Some reflect really dark places (ie: Lil’ Wayne and Young Money who are the rap game’s equivalent to R. Crumb: they go places that are too clinical for the average person, but then again Lil’ Wayne has his own women probables, he’s knocked up 3 so far. Then again why would any self respecting women sleep with a guy who sings “I wish I could fuck every girl in the world”? I’ll let somebody out there answer that - and trust me there some girls I wouldn’t go near).

The Ugly Truth has the power to make some hard hitting social observations, it seems fresh for the first 20-minutes, I had thought I got a more upbeat, less mean spirited version of In The Company of Men. Neil Labute’s In The Company of Men is brilliant but harsh, it’s the ugly truth - we know more men like Aaron Eckhart’s Chad in that film than like Gerard Butler’s Mike or even Eric Winter’s Colin, the young/handsome doctor from next door in Ugly Truth.

Then again one of the things I deal with, especially with my producer is the fact you don’t go to the movies to see people you know on screen, you go to see an escapist fantasy. You want the guy to get there girl at the end, even if its not the point of the film. I remember when the virtually unwatchable The Break Up came out, everyone hated it. I hated it because it was boring and a lot like a sitcom. Everyone else hated it because the couple didn’t get together - those dumb bastards: it’s called The Break Up. Right?

So why was I pissed when opposites attracted at the end of The Ugly Truth. I agree - Katherine Heigl is a lovely women, but the control freak aspect of her is off putting. For example she’s goes out on a dates prepared with talking points and the guy’s background check. Scary stuff.

But think about this: eHarmony, JDate, Plenty of Fish, Match.com - and so on - are good in that you wouldn’t have to settle for the luck of the draw you get in real life- there are plenty of fish out there, all presumably single. You can filter out the guy that watches NASCAR obsessively - unless you like that sort of thing.

But doesn’t it take some of the fun out of the searching? Maybe I’m young and optimistic but I try to find women when I’m out, interesting. I’m not looking for a random hook-up that night, I’m looking for somebody who I could potentially hang out with again. The sites take the fun out of asking the right questions by listing essentially what their favorite music, movies and TV shows are. If I were to go out on a date with someone from a site like that I would have this preconceived notion of the person knowing they love the show Hells Kitchen and their favorite song is awful one where they sing ‘shush girl, do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips”. That doesn’t sound like somebody I’d ever be interested in, but if I’m out talking to her and this doesn’t come up, it’ll help me to build a good impression.

My friend Ercan Bas gave me some advise: you should always appear to be mysterious. Same for a women, The Ugly Truth builds an ideal women out of the modest Katherine Heigl who is beatiful but dresses for comfort and efficiency. One of the film’s best exchanges goes like this:

“What’s wrong with comfort and efficiency?”

“Nothing, but who wants to fuck it?”

This was the movie that He’s Just Not That In To You should have been - that film, was desperate while only flirting with observing normal human behavior. The main character really felt creepy without really having to be: as I said I would have enjoyed having dinner with her, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed the 15 follow up calls that would have come along with it. The Ugly Truth starts off with a theory: men are programed a certain way, then it reverts to being a formula romantic comedy. Yes, I should have known it’s a slightly more edgy date movie from the trailers and it’s going to work out, but the R-rating gave me hope. If your restricting admission to those under 17 why shader a bubble or two. Why can’t she choose someone all together different and Mike go on as a motivational speaker. Is romance the real end to the hunt? I suppose, after all a film needs a conclusion (except Matrix: Reloaded).

The film, rancher than most ends in orgasm which is a subtle nod to a women taking back the power. The power shifts all of the place here and that’s interest to watch as a tennis match of sorts. The pursuit I suppose ends with fulfillment, but why should it? Chasing Amy ended in heartbreak and it was brilliant, smart and sharply observed, while presenting all sorts of impossibilities (like a beatiful lesbian falling in love with Ben Affleck).

The first half of The Ugly Truth is useful, more so than the self help books. I like Billy Bob Thoroton’s quote in the otherwise unmemorable School for Scoundrels “How can you help yourself, when yourself sucks”. Good point. Most of the modern literature we have about love comes in the form of pop songs, most give us templates for how to live, love or get over love. Just look at the iTunes top 10:

I Got A Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas - this sounds like it could be an ad for alcohol, I keep expecting to hear a bland announcer come on towards the end of the song and say “Hennessy - 40% alcohol by volume, drink responsibly”.

Fire Burning by Sean Kingston - not about the Station night club fire in West Warwick, RI but about a crazy night at a club - I had one of those at the Borgata last fall while out in AC on business.

You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift - a vivid, well told story about small town life and telling yourself: soon you’ll see... you belong with me.

Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas - more of the same, damn The Black Eyed Peas are loosing their edge and getting too commercial sounding. Not commercial as in selling a lot of records, but commercial as in they sound like they’re making radio jingles, I keep thinking an announcer is going to tell me about Verizon’s latest service break through at some during the song.

Good Girls Go Bad by Cobra Starship - need I say more - “I make them good girls go bad”. Fantasy, sure.

Here We Go Again by Demi Lovato - don’t know it as well as the rest but it sounds like from the sample a women is dealing with the same shit from her “unforgettable” and “addictive” man. Hopefully he doesn’t beat her.

Best I Ever Had by Drake - a template for telling a girl who wonderful she is, even if gross he claims he can make her vagina whistle like the Andy Griffith Theme Song. I’m not making this up, I feel dirty for observing that. See isn’t Lil Wayne and his Young Money crew just a tad too clinical for the mainstream. Am I the only one that thinks being made uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean its good - and I’m no prude.

LoveGame by Lady Gaga - She’s the new Michael Jackson, this one is pure fun. Deal with it.

He Could Be The One by Hannah Montana - need i say more.

Use Somebody by Kings of Leon - I can explain their sudden popularity - look at the rest of the top 10, here we have a band that’s still pretty young (their mean age is 27) that appeal to everyone who feels alienated by the rest of the top 10. I feel most of it is for “kids” - where as Kings of Leon are dealing with things the same way that a real human being does, not some character on the Disney channel. I can’t say the same for Jordin Sparks, Kristinia DeBarge, Soulja Boy, and Beyonce. That and their music is good, I’ve been a fan since the McFearless days, nice to see you’re finally on board.

As for films that offer templates for how to live, there are many in the top 10 (none of which last weekend were I Love You Beth Cooper, speaking of Disney channel charactures) but they’re hard to really talk about since can be more complex then music, you can think of a film like reviewing a whole album. This was my review of The Ugly Truth, so for all the women looking for guys out there - don’t just like what in the top 10, we’ve been there and done that.

Meeting someone is often destiny. I still contend and you can find it fully explored in the Fink archives that meeting someone you like is best explained by the music video Fine Again. A pretty girl in the middle of a crowded carnival holds a sign reading “I Will Change Your Life” - but if you don’t notice her, don’t strike up a conversation, don’t find her interesting, had a bad day and be a dick to her - she may not change your life. Everyone has potential, it’s just unlocking that potential. Isn’t that part of the fun along the way? Why rush it?

Now I’m off to write my self help book.

Hollow Spaces - Casting / Pre-production + other crap

2009-07-01T19:38:00.000-07:00

So I figure its time for a few updates about stuff - the first is my summer project Hollow Spaces, which is moving at full speed now, and I’m involved in post-production stuff (budgets, casting, ect), it’s coming together, all thanks to my producer Ercan Bas, who I bother at least 5 times a day with stupid random questions and concerns. Those that know me, now I freak out before hand - which I guess isn’t a horrible thing, as long as I don’t freak out with the actors.

I’m in this stage of my life right now where everything feels pretty good - it’s pretty exciting to be me, and I’ve decided as a result of seeing The Windmill Movie last night to step backwards. I will blog about reading my own journals, a record for every day since October 2003 that I’ve kept. Now as I’ve told you before, these journals are pretty boring as a read for anyone that isn’t me, but as evidence of certain things - they’re bleeping golden.

How so? Remember the time when your roommate got drunk and did something really stupid - if it amused me it’s probably there. Now most of it is pretty boring (i.e.: my Friday night - “Today I went to work, then the gym. I had dinner with mom at CPK and saw My Sister’s Keeper at GSP”. Totally unexciting. Well there are more exciting days, I assure you. I hope to blog month by month as I read these memories, of coarse names will be changed to protect certain people.

I still have other blogs and ideas floating around, including an idea for a feature film that I want to shoot in like East Bumble fuck Upstate New York. More on that when the time comes.

For now, Hollow Spaces, a film that’ll be shot in and around the fine town of Pompton Lakes, NJ is my focus, and locations are probably my biggest concern right now. Any help would be amazing.

(Headshots for a chance to audition are also great too over at hollowspacescasting@gmail.com)

Status of Stuff: Hollow Spaces

2009-06-25T04:28:00.001-07:00

So where I stand on Hollow Spaces is that I’m still hoping that it comes together this summer. The screenplay is on the fifth draft, I was hoping to bang out 10 drafts before rolling so its entirely posable, now that leaves us with everything else (the script, while not easy, only requires me - now we’re got to assemble the rest of the crew).

So I’m looking for people - friends I trust to review the script and provide feedback, who knows - maybe I’m way off and I’m blinded here and this thing really sucks and would be a waste of time. (if you feel up to reviewing it hit me up at johnjfink@gmail.com or on facebook).

As for the next phase - we’re looking for cast and crew and are starting that process, feel free to use the above methods of contact if your interested in that. I’m also looking for bands, I’m not sure what I’m going to do about music yet - my hope is that we can find a good local band that’ll donate a song or two in exchange for credit and perks of having a song in a short film that will hopefully make the festival rounds. Again - know anybody, or your interested hit me up.

This is sort of the in between phase where things can go either way - hopefully they’ll all come together nicely. That’s really it for now.

10 in 2010

2009-06-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

A surprising move came today as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscar folks will now nominate 10 films for Best Picture, up from five. The New York Times reports this reason: The Dark Knight. It was the most popular film of the year, well reviewed - whereas a majority of the Best Picture nominees (including The Reader) weren’t nearly as popular. Then again they all didn’t have Batman.

The Dark Knight is a fine picture representing the very best of Hollywood storytelling ripe with emotion, it was a strong work. Slumdog Millionaire rightfully won, it was an energetic, vibrant and amazing film, also a crowd pleaser. I saw it at Toronto last September and knew it was going to be huge. On the eve of its Best Picture win I saw it again in Paramus at Garden State Plaza, with a sold out audience, it received an equally enthusiastic reception, it was no fluke.

The fact that The Dark Knight wasn’t nominated, some proposed, meant that the Academy was out of touch the public. I would propose that the Oscars are not the people’s choice awards, however they are Hollywood’s awards. Film snobs like me have the annual listings in Film Comment, which I am in synch with it appears, they also gave the top honor to Wendy & Lucy, whereas two years ago the magazine and the academy agreed on The Departed.

10 has its benefits. For starts Pixar has been overlooked time and again in the Best Picture category - it would be shocking if Up, a masterpiece is overlooked. For me, I’m hoping the Academy will dive into the truly overlooked films that come close to vanishing into obscurity. Sadly IFC Films, who releases some great films and Magnolia disqualify themselves with VOD releases prior to theatrical.

VOD to its credit has introduced audiences to new filmmakers and IFC to its credit did give Hunger an Oscar Qualifying run, it wasn’t successful which is a shame since it was a powerful film. Then again there are only so many movies and so little time, choosing 10 seems hard, I have a problem doing my top 10 list and I see a great deal of films throughout the year.

This year could also see some other films, but it feels, knowing of the criticisms of AMPAS that the move is meant to include more popular films. Paul Blart: Mall Cop may be the most popular film of the year, and it was pleasant enough - but we’ll have to wait and see what sort of diversity is in this set of 10. Hopefully, if anything, those films will all be well deserving, critically acclaimed, and released throughout the year. If anything Paul Blart has the January opening working against it.

What does deserve a nom, thus far? Glad you asked:

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Treeless Mountain

Goodbye Solo

Adventureland

Knowing

Watchmen

Coraline

Memorial Day

The Hurt Locker

Medicine for Melancholy

Of Time and the City

*Out of those UP is the only one, that stands a chance.

Indie-Wired: The Death of the Studio Indie and the Rise of something perhaps unustainable

2009-06-17T20:59:00.003-07:00

Is indie dead or is the term somewhat meaningless. Warner Brothers I think thought so when they decided to close Warner Independent and Picturehouse, citing that some films from WIP could have been distributed by Warner Brothers and vice versa, in fact a few were picked up by major Warner Brothers, some more successful than others.

There are a few upstarts that have come to town recently, I think being well capitalized and smart in that you don’t over extend yourself is a good strategy. I think the best example is Summit Entertainment, which I think is being overly cautious with The Brothers Bloom (although I see there point - after all, it’s better to have a slow build up for a film thats quirky than a bam - big release that lasts a week). After P-1, their first release seemed like a loss leader they’ve been released films that didn’t feel independent in the least, they felt like they came from the big studios: Twilight, Knowing and Push.

They seem to have a formula that works - they set realistic expectations and for the most part (aside from Push) make pretty good films. Indie film, or small budget films can be successful, I think with realistic expectations. An example at Summit is Next Day Air, it cost 3 Million to make, and grossed 9 Million, modest but considering that its marketing budget was probably reasonable it seems profitable.

A tiny example of this, right off of IMDB is Kelly Reichardt’s first feature Old Joy - it cost $64,000 to transfer the film from 16 to 35 and cover prints, $6,500 on trailers and the studio spent $7,000 advertising the film. The film itself cost $30,000 - therefore it was modestly profitable at $107,500, all together. It grossed $255,352 in theaters.

These spreads are tiny compared to the fuck you money a big blockbuster flick that a Warner Brothers blockbuster does - but then again some of those films loose money. Old Joy, to me seemed like a success, modest, sure but better than loosing money, and it played in theaters.

Reichardt’s next film, Wendy and Lucy made just shy of 1 million dollars and played in mostly every major art house in the country from a new upstart distributer that really has great taste in film - Oscilloscope Pictures. I respect their view that you have to do some theatrical - that you should just do video on demand stuff.

I also think with digital projection (sure it doesn’t match the beauty of 16MM or 35MM) content can be delivered to theaters the same way that theaters show the Metropolitan Opera - designated an indie film night. You show up at 7:30 on Wednesday for example and we’re going digitally project a new indie film that’s currently only in New York City (not a big deal for me in Northern NJ, although I might use it as a way of getting out of paying a toll, waiting in traffic and dealing with parking).

The death of indie film is a little scary - there was always two tiers of indie and now with cheap HD technology there is an even wider gap, like America, the middle class is disappearing. This isn’t such a bad thing, but studios, aside from Fox Searchlight and maybe Lionsgate are getting out trying to sell a film on it’s “indie” appeal.

The IFP/Film Independent Spirt Awards award films based on their “independent spirit” - I have tired to figure this out many times, even their years seem off. This year I saw Sugar and The Hurt Locker before you all did, yet The Visitor, which premiered last year (2007) at Toronto (where Hurt Locker did in 2008) was also considered. Slumdog Millionaire, a film so indie Warners didn’t know how to release it wasn’t considered, but Election won big a few years ago despite coming from Paramount and MTV Films. And I’m a member of this great organization? I don’t really get it.

This rant comes on the heals of two news stories recently reported in indiewire: the creation of one company and the shutdown of another. Let’s deal with the shutdown first.

Senator Entertainment is shutting down its film distribution business after one awful film that made no sense graced some 482 screens across the country and made 300,000.00. The Informers had a budget of 18,000,000 per IMDB. Call that a monumental fuck up - hopefully they made some money on the foreign rights (probably not so much). It was an awful film with some big name talent. Directed by the talented Gregor Jordan and staring Billy Bob Thorton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Jon Foster and Amber Heard - while watching it’s nonsense I thought to myself “hey this is one of those movies that I’d see in the basement of the Village East 7 on a rainy Saturday afternoon, be alone, and the film would never be heard of again”. I was right, except I saw it on a Sunday night at the Headquarters Plaza in Morristown, and was in the theater with exsactly two other people.

Senator’s departure leaves behind a few unreleased titles including the God-awful All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (can’t say I’m unhappy about that not seeing the light of day after it was dropped by the Weinstein Company after a disastrous test screening I saw two years ago), Brooklyn’s Finest (Antoine Fuqua’s latest, which I do want to see), and Gregor Jordan’s next film, Unthinkable.

It’s not easy, The Weinstein Company is having cash flow problems, some think because they’ve stretched themselves too thinly. I think the films are the problem, like at Miramax, they’ve released too many in too small releases, they need a hit. I think they still have it, but I suspect they rely too much on test audiences, I contend, while a test screening is a good thing for determining a film’s playability, you cannot please all of the people all of the time, if you try, you make a film nobody likes. However, I’m sure with foreign sales they manage to break even, they invented the commercial indie film and were great at turning small flicks into hits at Miramax - an example is Chasing Amy, it cost 250,000, it made 12 million dollars.

There are some indies still in the game - Sony Classics still stays true to its core, stretching once in a while to a wide release that some how doesn’t seem to work quite as well. They also, I think, botched the release of Atom Egoyan’s masterpiece Adoration which should have been given a slow build and then bam - a big 400-print release. Egoyan has never had a cross-over hit despite churning out masterpieces time and again. I just re-watched The Sweet Hereafter and it still is a powerful and amazing film. The Weisntein’s I think gave Egoyan his greatest box office success with Exotica, the title is an easy sell, so much so it ended up in the “mature” section of my local video store once along with soft core sex titles that weren’t raunchy enough for the back room. It is anything but that.

Oscilloscope is probably the most exciting new company around, run by a Adam Yaunch of the Beastie Boys is releasing some groundbreaking titles, I think the fact most of their films have recently debuted at the Film Forum proves their artistic success. They don’t have the money to go crazy and make Treeless Mountain the family film hit that say a Sony Classics might have tried to do, but they know their audience. They opened Treeless Mountain simultaneously at the Film Forum and at an AMC Theater in a Korean neighborhood in New Jersey.

The other announcement that spawned this rant is the launch of DF Indie Studios, run and advised by several indie film figures. It seems like a hedge fund approach to creating 8-Million Dollar studio films. Not all will be Little Miss Sunshine or Sunshine Cleaning, but the hope is they can be. In that range you can attract stars, it’s a lot of money, hell it could do Informers’ numbers if it’s not well reviewed or the studio botches the release.

Informers, of coarse is a complex case of having a film that should be driven by positive reviews and word of mouth be, simply unwatchable. It wouldn’t do well in New York and LA because they’re review driven cities, they would never stand a chance to expand to 300 screens if they failed in New York and LA, but who knows maybe they were contractually obligated to do a release of that size.

I will take a wait and see approach of DF Indie Studios. I wish they’d make films for under a million dollars, like In/Dig/Ent set out to do years ago before giving up. Is indie film a profitable business to be in. I’d like to think if it was more studios would do it. Sure we now have major studio films with the swagger of indie

The game has changed so much. Tonight I saw Downloading Nancy, a film that a few years ago might have come out under the Miramax banner - now it’s being released in theaters by tiny Strand Releasing and on demand by IFC Films. Video on demand seems like the future, it’s a good way of getting small films out there to places where they wouldn’t play, but I like the idea of “Indie Film Night” more, use those digital projectors for the reason they were intended - bringing in new, exciting and diverse content to a theater on a night when people would rather stay home on the couch with their snuggy. If it’s poorly attended then you’ve only given up one showtime on an unpopular night in a small auditorium.

This won’t save indie film. Indie film ranges from garage band filmmakers to fully funded $20 million dollar films - some more risky than those garage band films. Defining what is undefinable won’t save it either. Start up firms come and go, none really last - hell even Lionsgate is on the verge of being taken over, and they took over Artisan, the firm that was considered so brilliant a few years ago when they released the massive hit The Blair Witch Project. Summit may have its rough patches, Oscilloscope I think will stick around and not fall into the traps of the small upstarts like Think Film, which ventured into larger releases and budgets.

The way I see these two upstarts is this: Oscilloscope is like Strand Releasing in terms of the scope of their releases, they pick up films based on their artistic merit, in a way they have picked up where New Yorker Films left off after being sold to another company with grand indie ambitions - Madstone.

Madstone proposed running theaters, converting low performing sites abandoned by General Cinema, Mann, and other chains to high end art theaters. It didn’t go so well and the theaters lasted only a few years, after all some markets cannot sustain an art house with several screens. Sadly Norther New Jersey (i.e. Montclair) streamlined years ago - the town had 3 theaters, combined with 11 screens of art films, we’re now down to 6 at the Clairidge.

Perhaps indie is as meaningless and as broad as “IMAX” has become. I hate to see it as a brand in the way that I hate that people say they like “indie films because they are different”. I really hate hearing people say that on an elevator ride up to the car in the Montclair parking garage. New York City of coarse is the greatest city for film lovers - where else will a Turkish art film sell out at 9:40 on a Tuesday night at the Film Forum? Not in Ann Arbor.

Die a Virgin: the Virgin Megastore in its Last Days

2009-06-09T19:10:00.000-07:00

The other day I witnessed the demise of an old retail friend - the venerable Virgin Megastore. Virgin and Sir Richard Branson did it better than any other store achieving what all good brands do: create an emotional connection with their buyers. This is what sets Target with its catchy ascetics apart from the bland Wal Mart. Virgin is the hip, urban version of Barns & Nobles, where instead of classical music they have an actual on site DJ booth spinning jams.

Going to Virgin Megastore was for some strange reason an exciting experience - especially the imports section, where for $30 you could buy a rare version of - say - the new Avril Lavigne album from Japan with 3 extra tracks on it. And that’s why you felt cool shopping there - instead of having to run around between little record shops looking for something, or hoping they’d have it at the mall or Best Buy - Virgin always had it.

Then a little thing called the internet came around. Virgin Megastores I learned actually were still profitable - why are they shutting down? Well the holding companies that run them - Related Properties and Vornado Realty Trust are real estate companies - they think the space is worth more leased out. They may be right with Virgin Megastores sitting mostly in prime real estate - Times Square and Union Square in New York, Downtown Disney is Orlando, and the Sunset Strip in LA. Other locations in malls I learn were shut down even sooner.

The last holdout to my knowledge is Union Square in New York City - the whole South East corner of the square will be a row of broken retail dreams. While I doubt Union Square will reach the apocalyptic-like images found over at deadmalls.com - with Circuit City and Virgin gone - Barns and Nobles across the park will be the only game in town (save for a few Best Buys not that far and Strand Books).

The scene at Union Square was depressing - and strange - inside Virgin Megastore it was as crowded as it has ever been, everything is 50% the already higher than Best Buy sticker price (MSRP), the books are all gone - and its strange actually buying a CD. I haven’t done so thanks to iTunes. Instant gratification takes the fun out of delayed gratification I guess - there was a time when you’d have to get in the car and drive to a store on Tuesday to buy a new CD. Now you can download it that morning from iTunes at a lower price.

Virgin still had a great selection of DVDs and some books, the books were more limited, you felt that Virgin handpicked what was cool and fresh to sell. That’s what I liked it was like getting a recommendation - here’s the new Sarah Vowel book - because we’re the anti-Barns and Nobel, we’re younger, fresher, we’re not your parents record store.

But then a funny thing happened - our parents still go to record stores. Virgin and others (like FYE) sell MP 3 players and video games. The company that was built on Rock and Roll now cannot sell it in a retail format. There are already iTunes only releases, and other digital, online platforms. The next frontier is filmed entertainment and sites, applications and delivery methods are improving.

Perhaps the thing I’m most sad over when considering the death of the Virgin Megastore is the death of an era before iTunes and the iPod. I love these tools, in fact one can explore - you can pick and choose, even buy more guilty pleasure music. Shopping became a personal experience in that you were almost concerned that upon check out the clerk would make fun of your music tastes, I always had that fear - so I stopped buying CDs that would prompt that, as a result my taste in music got better.

Then college and iTunes happened it all went out the window. Virgin sold everything, it was a vibe, a scene - it was everything other entertainment retailers weren’t - it was kind of a tourist destination just by the simple fact most were located in major tourist hubs (aside from Union Square which survived as the hipster alternative to Times Square). And so is the end of an era.

Some retails are good at creating energy that leads to an emotional connection with one’s brand. I think Urban Outfitters is good at doing that with indie rock music, the rough brick and wood finish of their stores that look industrial, almost like something you’d find in your garage or your school’s art studio, and other branding features.

It’s my hope a theater chain will some day do this - I think if say, AMC took the Virgin Megastore approach, in that they channeled some of the energy of a good rock station into retailing - they’d have success. The example would be that the theater chain would have to transfer the energy of a film festival - the lines, the buzz, the programers and their wackiness. It wouldn’t take much to make going to the movies fun, but there are examples to be learned here in the wake of greats that came before. Good branding can convince you to purchase anything just for the experience.

** The Virgin Megastore at Union Square will close for business on Sunday

A Film Festival...everyday?

2009-06-06T06:47:00.001-07:00

As a filmmaker I always appreciate a heads up as to what festivals are good and what really aren’t for whatever film I have to show at that time. With that said, I don’t know what to make of Without A Box and the e-mails I get from the company daily. On one hand it’s an ass-kicker - it says to me “you lazy ass make some movies, there are so many festivals out there” - but every day, usually around 5-5:30 I get an e-mail from them about another film festival or another screenwriting contest. Yes it’s great there are resources, but every day a new film festival or contest?

Granted some are regional or even local, which can a good place to show your film. (I had my largest audience ever for Mary May’s Suicide Letter at Bergenfield thanks to the feature that was playing after it, the theater was packed). But still, every day? Maybe I need to log on to my profile there and adjust my profile.

Designer Labels - with a designer price

2009-05-20T04:10:00.000-07:00

I know I’m joining the fray late but I just saw Star Trek in a digital IMAX venue and I have to say – digital IMAX is nothing special. It’s 2K digital, nothing more, nothing less – on a larger screen than some. The picture actually didn’t fill up the entire screen either, but that’s probably a problem with the construction of the theater. Digital IMAX combined with smaller, retrofitted screens, while offering good sound, will be the death of IMAX unless more 3-D features are produced in the format. 3-D is a justification to spend more money, sure, but the IMAX part, not so much.

Digital 3-D of coarse has been done well in certain cases, but it’s not the greatest thing ever, there is still a loss of light. The best use of it I think was in an awfully sub-par (and would have been bad in 2-D flick My Bloody Valentine where a packed house jumped at the horror/slasher images – and had a great time). However, some films don’t work no matter how they’re shown (Monsters Vs. Aliens would have been awful in any format). Star Trek is an engaging film, but I have a feeling I could have the same experience seeing it in a non-IMAX theater.

And here’s where I add something new to the conversation: at one point I thought IMAX at one point was going to change cinematic storytelling. The large screen could allow you to do much more and some filmmakers were using 3-D to create experimental works, documentaries and short narratives. Stan Brakhage even made a film on the IMAX format (I would love to see it on a real IMAX screen, but haven’t had the chance).

I knew it was only a matter of time before a feature film was made in that format, and one that would play with the confines of what you could do on a much larger canvas. We did get that – Fantasia 2000, which combined live action, animation and restored classic animation into a visual tapestry that created an emotional and visceral experience.

The next one we got was The Matrix Reloaded, a good movie, but a movie-movie. The IMAX presentation was an afterthought. It would continue to be as such in the entertainment film arena, save for a few large format documentaries but no new visual ground in the format has really been broken since MacGillvray Freeman pioneered the large format documentary. A few experiments have come from major studios, including Warner Brothers who made short subject documentaries on a variety of subjects including space, underwater and NASCAR, but these were fillers until the studio product dominated the weekend. These films because they are special to see in IMAX and are intended to be exhibited in the format, have a much longer shelf-life than the studio features.

This is not to say studio product is bad, but the fake IMAX digital set-ups are basically to push only studio product. The Omimax domes at the science museums will probably continue to show the science documentaries and specialty programs; perhaps with the studio films at night once the museum closes (perhaps the new Night at the Museum can play there).

There is so much product now on the IMAX screens that the traditional focus on the new cheapo-fake IMAX retrofitted sites is a second screen for its regular product. Now with digital IMAX it’ll become more accessible to any major studio film, even independent film – which would be nice for certain documentaries (think how cool it would be to see a Matthew Barney film in IMAX), but I doubt they’ll get to play on the multiplex screens. The real issue is how small the screens are and how poor quality the digital experience is. I can tell digital apart from film most times, here it was a dead give away from frame one. The image lacked the depth and grain of film, you might not like film grain – but then again you’re an idiot. The image, like early digital lacks life.

I don’t mind seeing a documentary produced on a shoe-string budget on video at the Quad Cinema, I understand that (most of the time those films are shot in DV anyway), but this is IMAX, come on. IMAX is the gold standard for presentation and digital isn’t ready for prime time yet. 4K digital is an improvement over 2K digital IMAX, why not wait until the technology is ready and you can do amazing things in digital, you could see details and clarity you could never see in film. Instead they’ve chose the cheap option, they’re charging you more for a sub-par experience, I doubt, however there will be wide spread outrage over this practice.

What I really think is a horrible practice is new theaters opening retrofitted IMAX auditoriums, this is a terrible way to build credibility when a major attraction to your complex is an afterthought. I’d be curious to see if an “original” sized, large IMAX screen could be digital, even on a retrofitted screen like the one at City Center in White Plains, the image wasn’t that great. It’s a shame, when I saw The Dark Knight here, on film, it was nearly perfect. Now a days, it’s just a bigger than average screen with a digital picture.

It’s a shame AMC and Regal have really committed to this new format, and hopefully it’ll be a regrettable one. IMAX hasn’t addressed the issue of small screen size, citing numbers. They are a brand now more than an experience. They’ve compared themselves to Starbucks, which offers both an experience and a high quality product. The junior IMAX, in 2D is just offering a brand, no experience and product that’s comparable to any screen in a large auditorium, it barely caries the excitement of seeing a film at a major film festival. Theaters would be better equip to figure out how to bottle the energy and excitement of a film festival – get em’ hooked by giving them a great experience instead of selling them a brand name that means virtually nothing, like THX.

Chains departed from THX because people don’t care about a certification, in fact most auditoriums are probably well designed anyway in that they qualify for certification, why pay George Lucus for nothing but a brand with minimal value? Same thing with IMAX – retrofit a theater with giant screen and digital projection and call it something else – oh wait, Cinemark and AMC have started doing that too, already. (And charging more for the “experience”) If they get away with it, I blame all of you, John Q Public.

Summer Projects

2009-05-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

So I’m announcing officially the start of two new projects - really, this time no bull shit - I’ve been writing quite a bit lately, most scripts I can’t green light myself but these two I can. More details to follow.

The first: a documentary that I expect to be shot, over the next few summers about a very strange and rather dangerous water park we had here in Northern New Jersey - I’m looking to recruit a DP and someone to work the sound. Anybody interested.

The second: a narrative short film I’ve been writing that will be filmed in the Pompton Lakes area - it’s on par with my film Dwell in terms of scope/production time, in that it’ll be about 25 minutes long. The film is a drama with some comic moments, but a meditation on small town life that goes hand in hand with this Districts cycle I’ve been conceiving.

Districts - as told in the experimental film struggles to make sense of the identify one forms from their surroundings and how where you grow up can influence who you become. The second film in the cycle was P L A N S. This new flick - Hollow Spaces confronts a mother/son relationship when the son, after breaking up with his finance moves back home from Columbus, OH.

And for this I’m seeking a lot of actors - some to function as extras, others to star in lead roles. This one I want to make quickly on the weekends (probably two full weekends) with a small crew and natural lighting (a lot of it takes place in well lit rooms, not like that dark Blood Sweat and Brando picture), it’ll be shot on HD. I feel good about this one, I think it’s a step in the right direction for me in that while it still retains some experimental threads in that it’s a study of time, space and dimension and will be carefully framed, ect - that it moves me towards more professional and I think more story-based filmmaking. Story is everything, I forgot that for a while, even experimental films have stories, so now I’m going to try to make a real film that captures the emotional intensity that I’ve strived for, while containing an actual plot. See, Ercan Bas - when you yell at me enough about plot, I respond - now you owe me.

Going Green in THE GARDEN

2009-05-14T20:31:00.001-07:00

Last night I saw the compelling Oscar nominated documentary The Garden by Scott Hamilton Kennedy (who previously directed the doc about Our Town being performed in a South Central Los Angeles High School). The Garden, also taking place in South Central is about a 14-acre community garden that was bulldozed by the land owners. The story of the garden is an interesting one.

The plot of land, in an industrial neighborhood, was taken by the city in the 80’s by imminent domain, in the mean time the project for which it was intended was derailed by a powerful community group. After the Rodney King riots, which sparked a rather understandable outrage after the police acted like criminals, even though King deserved an ass beating, aren’t cops support to comply with the law and act professional? - the Garden was born as a way of healing the neighborhood.

I should back up and say The Garden catered mostly to the Hispanics. Kennedy, a white documentarian does slightly get into the racial dynamics, but the film doesn’t dwell there. The land is sold through a back room deal back to its original owner, who I sympathized with up to a certain point, until the bulldozers came into the picture. (Spoiler warning)

The film, along the way is a compelling documentary about a neighborhood and the political dynamics of this location. I agree up to a certain extent with the developer that the farmers felt they had a sense of entitlement, in that I sometimes disagree with imminent domain laws. In fact if you want to get enraged there, like everything - is a blog for that (emdo.blogspot.com). I found this blog in trying to research a story I remember in Hartford, where the city had taken over someone’s home with the intention of building an on-ramp to either 84 or 91, and when that didn’t happen the owners wanted to purchase there home back. The courts, if I recall said “no” and the city continues to rent out the house - I remember that. I’m trying to find proof of that, but that is one example of how eminent domain can work at its worse.

At it’s best? Glad you asked - you know that crack house? Yeah. The city can that over. Sadly with the amount of foreclosures in certain areas you may see vacant homes being used to cook crystal meth, it’s bad, but I’m not making that one up, for that I’ll point you to the Tribeca Film Festival selection American Casino.

The city did what I think was a back room deal in The Garden, and they sold the property back to its original developer, Ralph Horwitz. Of coarse Mr. Horwitz declined to appear in the film, the filmmakers didn’t even feel the need to disclose this fact, but they get him on a deposition tape and later in an awful interview. Horwitz, which got 5 million for the land, bought it back for 5 million and tells the farmers they can purchase it back for 16 million. Amazingly through grants, pledges and donations the farmers and the mayor of LA who supported the farmers were able to meet Horwitz’s offer, which he didn’t take.

Here’s where things get out of control - the filmmakers obtained a radio interview with Horwitz who makes some decent points, but ultimately comes off as a shady bastard (most landlords probably are). He is made into the villain here, whereas the filmmakers did I think try to keep the story balanced up to a certain point, perhaps a true balance would have included an interview with the man himself, it’s clear he probably wouldn’t want to participate in this project.

As a post script to the story the field sits empty and the farmers have moved on. Horowtiz, I learn is working with Forever 21 to build a distribution center on the land, which has led to an internet boycott against Forever 21 in the event the deal goes through. Interesting, the land has been salted, so to speak.

Perhaps it’s Horowtiz’s character that is the problem - he proposed a purchase price, not thinking the group would obtain it, and when he did he decided to hold out for more money, citing he was personally offended because he believe the group made anti-Semitic comments about him. The film doesn’t document it, it spends more time with the farmers and in the court room. Watching this bizarre conflict play out, reminds me of an Avi Mograbi flick, although this one doesn’t quite have the bite and its not really about land conflicts.

Perhaps, as part of the eco movement, more community gardens should be developed. This all occurred in the “Hooray for me and fuck you” era of George W. Bush, but now we’re in a new territory - the green movement is in so is local produce. Michael Polan proposed the idea of the first family planting a garden, I’m unsure if they listened to him, but they have and its rather inspiring. This is not to say that things would be different today, but the farm and Polan’s book The Omnivore's Dilemma (which calls out Whole Foods) highlights the importance of going local and going fresh. I almost want to plant a garden my back yard again as well, I haven’t done so since my grandfather was alive (he inspired me to do it when I saw his backyard, not the green movement).

The Garden is essential, not as a film about the green movement, it is, but it’s wrapped in the foil of a compelling legal and social realist drama.

Rent it with someone you've rented....

2009-05-12T19:15:00.000-07:00

I agree with Bill Maher - Elliot Spitzer wasn’t lashing out - he just wanted to get laid.

I believe this even after seeing Steven Solderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience which stars actual “adult film” star Sasha Grey. The film is pretty good, and if you’re feeling cheap you can watch it at home through Amazon.com and Tivo - which is where I had the experience, while I can go into a separate rant on video on demand two factors came into play: 1.- it was cheaper than paying $12.50 a ticket plus the $8 toll to see the flick at the Sunshine Theater in New York City, and 2.-I could watch it now, and I was bored.

I just watched Spitzer on Rachel Maddow who wasn’t all that aggressive on the one time New York governor and now journalist on Slate.com. Spitzer had some interesting points of view on the crisis and I agree - Wall Street really hasn’t paid for the damage they may have done. Regarding The Girlfriend Experience, and how much he paid a girl that was cute, sure, but not worth that much per hour (in fact I can say I’ve been out with cuter women, for free, well it’s never really free - it usually involves buying dinner and perhaps a movie - but that’s dating after all, not prostitution), Spitzer said he’s still gaining perspective essentially. Hey, none of my business what he’s going though or what he was actually in, perhaps it’s not so much his wife he wasn’t in to, but that it’s something different.

I hate to be cruel but if you were told you could only eat Peter Luger’s steak for the rest of your life and you could never say, go to Chick-Fil-A, for example - you’d get bored soon, even with the best steak known to man. This is why I don’t understand the rush to get married, not with Plato’s Retreat closed for good.

But back to The Girlfriend Experience - a decent enough movie with a good performance by Sasha Grey who plays a high end call girl who doesn’t always have sex with her clients, in fact she likes what she does, she’s selective. Her boyfriend, played by Chris Santos, feels the need to indulge her, they live in an awesome apartment in Manhattan of coarse, he’s a personal trainer. She is a trainer or healer of sorts as well.

The story is non-linear, in fact it may even lack a plot (Ercan tells me my films have no plots either, fair enough - I like to capture time and place, it’s why I’d be bound to fail out of Florida State University’s graduate film program). It’s the type of film that I didn’t mind watching at home, where you have probably watched the other performances of Ms. Grey. This is not to say it’s explicit, it’s the type of film that actually benefits I think from being relaxed at home for some odd reason. I rather enjoyed laying on the couch for The Girlfriend Experience, maybe I’m becoming boring.

With this said, please Magnolia and IFC, please - Video On Demand can’t become a reality. I’m with David Fenkel, who co-founded one of the most exciting new film distributers to come on the scene Oscilloscope Laboratories (the company behind Wendy & Lucy and most recently the beatiful yet simple Treeless Mountain). Mr. Fenkel’s belief, as recorded in the most recent issue of Filmmaker, is that there needs to be some sort of theatrical release first, before video and video on demand, and that theatrical has a certain value. I agree - why not release it first in theaters, and then two weeks or so later on demand. It’s sick when IFC and Magnolia are showing films on demand the same day they are playing at film festivals, no less. I knew things were going to hell when South by Southwest partnered with IFC Films, it’s great that you can build awareness for the festival but at what cost?

Then again it’s unfair to slam IFC, they are picking up literally everything lately - there aren’t many distributers, and they are getting indie film out there. I just wish some, not just the better ones, but most would get a chance to prove themselves in theaters first. A movie like The Hunger should be seen on a big screen - it’d be boring to watch at home. What’s the incentive to play it outside of New York and LA when it’s on demand. I, for one, prefer Oscillosope’s model. But if you don’t - then you too can have The Girlfriend Experience in your apartment, with your girlfriend, or someone you’ve rented for the hour.

from BFF to TFF - Reviews from Tribeca

2009-05-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while and I’m playing catch up. I’m getting over being sick - and I’ve been in the middle of several other things, including screening a film at the Bergenfield Film Festival, which had a nice sized crowd (thanks for the filmmakers of Chronicles of the Beyond, which had 100+ folks packed into a tiny theater at the Clearview Cinemas in Bergenfield - we had about 80 or so at my film, Mary May’s Suicide Letter).

But now to focus on TFF - the film festival in the area:

----

Perhaps shrinking Tribeca this year is the best thing they’ve done. The Tribeca Film Festival has in the past few years struggled to really find its identity, often trying to compete with SXSW in looking for cutting edge indies, often it’s been a mixed bag. Tribeca still isn’t in the same category as Toronto or the New York Film Festival, but the slate seems stronger this year.

My first day was pretty typical of TFF - I saw four screenings, two were pretty good - Blank City, a documentary about underground filmmaking in New York City in the late 70’s-early 90’s, and the fun British romantic comedy My Last Five Girlfriends. The other two programs were a little disappointing, a shorts program of documentaries and Shadow Billionaire, a documentary about DHL founder Larry Hillblom. Shadow Billionaire seemed too long (even at 86 minutes), it would have made for an interesting short subject. It also seemed a bit too soft, it held back and never reached a level in which emotionally cared about the subjects, even though it is a fascinating legal case, it never builds to outrage.

Then I had further doubts at TFF - the next night I saw Stay Cool, the Polish brother’s latest and not their best. The film had an interesting 80’s style vibe, but lacked the wit required to pull the thing together. I kept watching thinking the lead would have been good for Adam Sander, not sure if Mark Polish pulls it off.

The next night I had two shorts programs: both pretty good with strong selections. Deadline was the strongest, telling a clear, three-act story about a prison guard and a “released” prisoner facing off. It’s one you hope will get expanded into a feature. Also fun in its briefness was Section 44 by Daniel Wilson.

The next program I saw featured Cutless by Kate Hudson, who wasn’t in attendance that evening, most of the other filmmakers were, however. Here’s where I have problems: while film festivals can use celebrities to attract mainstream media to the new talent playing, it’s bizarre that a whole set of limits are put on other films. Kate Hudson’s film, which is a fine, professional film and deserving to be in the film series had screened online including on YouTube and iTunes. Strange that it was showcased in the program, yet Kate Hudson was a no-show.

Of the other selections, the best was Todd Luoto’s Oil Change, which is very much in the mode of a good comedy TV show like The Office or Arrested Development, melded with an early Neil Labute film. It’s pitch perfect with an ending that one-ups itself to new and perverse levels - stick with it, it’s brilliant. Also in this strong line up was This Will All Make Perfect Sense One Day, also another film that could be expanded to a feature, and a lovely romance. Two others in the series I’d like to endorse are Of Best Intentions from Iceland and the haunting Shiamsani. This was a strong narrative program.

The next day of TFF was enough to make a film geek like me orgasm. I only saw two programs but both were brilliant - Vegas: Based on a True Story by Amir Naderi, like his Sound Barrier was an edge of your seat film about greed and destruction, there was no happy ending in one of the most tense films of the year. I don’t want to say much - discover this one for yourself, it’s genus.

Then I saw the festival’s only experimental program - a very strong set of films, amazingly diverse, it also included a special treat - a screening of Helen Levitt’s brilliant time capsule In The Streets, a pure documentary that is a heartwarming flashback. It’s a truly wonderful film.

The program was comprised of experimental short works from all over the world and a few from NYC, including Chop Off by M.M. Serra, Mark Street’s latest Trailer Trash, and Ken Jacob’s latest attempt at 3-D without polarized glasses - Hot Dogs at the Met. This program also introduced me to some new international filmmakers including Sara Cox, Tal Rosner, Anna Linder, Paula Gaitan and Martan Caporte - all working in various modes of experimental film. At the post film Q & A I asked each filmmaker to elaborate on their intentions and process - which unfortunately for others occupied the whole duration of the Q & A, still the answers were all fascinating.

Coming into Friday, I started to feel sick - but couldn’t stop - I had five shows to get to. My first was the lovely collaboration between filmmaker Laura Bari and a blind young man, Antoine - the film was a hybrid of eliminates - both narrative and documentary to capture Anoine’s world. Next up was Wonderful World - Joshua Goldin’s romantic comedy, similar to the film The Visitor, Matthew Broadrick plays the world’s most negative man. It’s a fun flick - uplifting and light, I went along for it and dug it.

Rachel, a long (well it felt long) and haunting documentary by Simone Biton about Rachel Corrie, a 22-year old protestor who was murdered by Israeli construction workers, it’s important but doubles back too often to cover the same ground, perhaps the accounts, the witnesses to this action are the point. The world is watching.

Tell Tale was an effective horror film by Michael Cuesta, director of L.I.E. and 12 and Holding. I’m shocked it didn’t have a big studio’s logo in front of it yet, it’s extremely mainstream but also pretty effective. Josh Lucus and Brian Cox star.

My last film of the evening wasn’t worth staying up for the 11:45PM showtime - it was a one joke, b-grade action flick named Newsmakers from Russia. This is like something you would see on HBO at 3AM, fitting for midnight madness perhaps. The only problem with TFF’s Midnight show is they aren’t anywhere near as exciting as Toronto’s. Where is Collin Gedies when you need him. The audience isn’t energized, and the programers here are warn out.

At Toronto they only run one screen at midnight - Ryerson, everyone gathers and it’s like going to a party or a graduation - beach balls fly around - it’s wild and fun. At Tribeca, it’s like a Wednesday night at 10PM here at the Loews Village 7, you feel alone in one of those creepy top floor theaters.

The next day, as the festival winds down and the energy slows down I continued. Going uptown for the screening and Tribeca Talks panel of American Casino, a rather paint by the numbers film about the mortgage crisis. The film never reached the engaging, easy to follow and informative reporting of moderator of the panel Alex Blumberg. The panel was interesting featuring the filmmakers, NYU economist Nouriel Roubini and Bloomberg News correspondent Mark Pittmann. If you’ve been following the mortgage crisis the way I have, the film isn’t necessary, it has some emotional punches but never nails it home, and it’s a bit dry. Not that every doc has to be in your face like Michael Moore, but the voice of its filmmaker is very journalistic and a bit bland as a film.

Anything but bland, next up was the lively Here and There, taking place in Belgrade and New York City, this is a character driven comedy that won the festival’s award for New York Narrative, it’s a little film that could and it delivers. Lastly the night closed with Hysterical Psycho, Dan Fougle’s B-movie (another Midnight show). The film was actually surprisingly fun, it’s more on par with Psycho Beach Party in terms of actually being worth while, it’s silly, sure but it’s fun and short enough to pull it off.

The last day of Tribeca is always like being hung over, it’s a Sunday naturally, the festival is dying down, practically nothing has a rush line and the theaters are crowded but not sold out. It’s sad. Everyone is tired and dizzy. The film I had purchased tickets for was the winner of New York Documentary - this year it was Partly Private about circumcision, not a great film, in fact I think I saw a better New York documentary on day one, Blank City - but not horrible. The voice of the filmmaker is there, which leads me to question how much was staged. But that’s not really fair given the film is what it is, a mother's journey and an exploration of cut flesh. Interesting stuff, at times.

TFF was strong this year, I think the festival, under Geoffrey Gilmore will become more exciting the next few years - so far so good, I could see a new direction here. I just hope it doesn’t become a festival for the elite only - that would suck.

Welcome.

2009-05-04T17:53:00.001-07:00

Alright - here goes, my first blog post here.

I have been blogging on Live Journal for years, which isn’t really a blog although I happen to think it inspired the whole blogging revolution in some strange way. Blogging can offer commentary or it can be a way of chronicling your every move. For those of you that don’t know me, I keep a separate journal offline, in fact on paper for those types of things.

Friends that know me and know about that separate journal will make fun of me, saying that even Dougie Houser MD was more advanced and that was 1990 when he kept his journal on his computer. Well, I am not a 16 year old Doctor, and boy I wish I was sometimes.

Feel free to catch up at johnfink.livejournal.com. The purpose of this blog is to announce new projects and share commentary and film reviews. I see an awful lot of films and used to be pretty good about updating flickster over at facebook, I hope to be better at it here.

I intend to catch up on a some reviews and commentary from this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, where I caught 15 features and 4 shorts programs, still a drop in the bucket but I had an excuse (I got to it later than I did last year).

Enjoy - this will be awfully random but hopefully interesting. Feel free to holla back at anytime.

-John Fink May 4, 2009