February 20, 2004

Learning at Errol Morris's Knee

Last week, in the Sony Classics offices on Madison Avenue, I sat down to talk with Errol Morris, whose current documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, was nominated for an Academy Award. Morris's films are best known for the intensity of the interviews he conducts. He invented the Interrotron, a teleprompter setup that gets the interviewee to look and speak straight into the camera. I, in the mean time, didn't have...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2004

Umbrellas of Cherbourg at Film Forum

Ever since 1992, when I stumbled, completely ignorant and unprepared, into a screening of the restored version introduced by Agnes Varda ("she does documentaries or something, right?" was all I had in my head), I've been transfixed and fascinated by The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's an unabashed-yet-triste story of young love, set in a color-saturated fantasy French town, about a girl left pregnant and alone when her mechanic boyfriend gets shipped off to the war in Algeria. And the...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2004

19th Century War Reports from Harper's

Since relaunching their website, Harper's has been posting selections from their 140+year archive. For example, "Battle Gossip," an 1861 column by Charles Nordhoff. In addition to vivid accounts of women in combat, Nordhoff writes about Napoleon III's use of balloons for battlefield surveillance; correspondence with the enemy; and animals in war:There are many instances of worn-out cavalry horses, sold out of the army and used in menial employments, remembering and obeying, years after, the sound of a regimental trumpet. At...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2004

John Cage Weekend at Barbican Centre (check the spelling. It's in London.)

[via Kultureflash] John Cage Uncaged is a weekend of performances, films and discussions ("and mushrooms!") at Barbican Hall. Cage symphony performances are rare enough to make them not-to-be-missed events. Highlights: Friday's BBC Orchestra concert, "Cage in his American Context," (which will include the first UK radio performance of Cage's most famous work, 4'33") and Saturday's Musiccircus, a happening-within-a-happening which gets an annoyingly giddy description "Bassoons in the bars, flutes in the foyers and, who knows, you might even find a...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2004

On "In What Language," a Different Kind of Airport Music

I'm listening to the composer Vijay Iyer and poet/rapper Mike Ladd discuss their collaborative song cycle, "In What Language," on WNYC's Soundcheck. It explores the inner lives and thoughts of people in international airports, and it rocks. Iyer and Ladd composed the multi-layered, improvisational music/vocal suite in response to the experience of an Iranian filmmaker who was detained, harassed and deported at JFK a couple of years ago. The first scene of my first short, Souvenir (November 2001), is in...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2004

warning: 350pp of the new Cervantes novel

has me talking/writing like a knight. I.e., half Quixote, half medieval times. oh, and all posts will be 900 pages long....
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Posted by greg allen at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2003

Gus Van Sant's Go-to Guy

Gus Van Sant, Elias McConnell, and Dany Wolf at Cannes 2003, image: festival-cannes.com There he is, scorched in Death Valley and on the Saltflats of Utah; in a mold-closed school with a barebones crew on scooters; and on the Palais steps of Cannes, where he accepted the Palme D'Or this year for Elephant. Gus Van Sant? Sure, he's there, too, but I'm talking about Dany Wolf, the producer. The guy who actually has to figure out how to make...
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Posted by greg allen at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 25, 2003

Agnes Varda Speaks (and shows film, of course)

[via GreenCine] Doug Cumming's got an account of Agnes Varda discussing a screening of her latest short film in Seattle. Also, an earlier bonus Varda discussion at Filmjourney. My Google Ad, which used to read, "Damn you, Agnes Varda/The Gleaners made me make a film/it's showing at MoMA next month," wouldn't be allowed under Google's prissier, clean up for the IPO-style terms of service. feh. Today, though, Doug's tells of an Errol Morris performance at a Fog of War screening....
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Posted by greg allen at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2003

Ennio Morricone, The Movie Music Man

In a Guardian interview, Ennio Morricone talks about composing music for films. My favorite of his theories: "The music in a film must enter politely, very slowly," like an uninvited guest at a party. [Guess they raise a more genteel breed of gatecrashers in Italy.] I'm the first to cop to being influenced by Morricone. While still on location for Souvenir (November 2001), I considered using some of his music for our soundtrack. Once the post-production party got underway, though,...
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Posted by greg allen at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2003

"We can easily believe that Gus Van Sant is worth ten Greenaways."

Gus Van Sant's the center of the universe, you see, or you will see, by the end of this post. [Before, I'd been forced to the alarming conclusion that the universe revolved around Norman Mailer, so you'll understand if i'm eager for a replacement.] Anyway, if you were dazzled by my groundbreaking interpretation of Gus Van Sant's Elephant and Gerry you'll be double-dazzled by Scott Macaulay's excellent interview in Filmmaker Magazine with Van Sant on the inspiration, ideas, and...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2003

Whereas, Ten Hours of Polish Film is NOT an Ordeal...

I came to Kieslowski for the fateful mystery of La Double Vie de Veronique, but I stayed for the unassuming, naturalistic power of the Dekalog. This seminal ten-part series of films is playing this weekend at Symphony Space in NYC. POV has an excellent write-up, with good links to get you in the mood. The Decalogue was one of the greatest unwatchable works of film, ever. For years in North America, the series, which Kieslowski and writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz originally...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2003

"Kieslowski Season!" "Tarantino Season!" "Kieslowski Season!"

To explain how I came up with my Souvenir series of ultimately inter-related short films, I went into an extended discussion of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Dekalog with someone recently. Now it turns out Riverside Studios in London is screening the entire Dekalog starting Sunday as part of its Krzysztof Kieslowski Season. It's not like it used to be, when you could only see Dekalog in festival screenings. Now there's a 3-disc DVD version available, marginally better than the 2-disc set released...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:07 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2003

When four Soderbergh links in a week are not enough:

Get the greg.org e-commerce fire hose ready*. I'm wrapping up Soderbergh's book, Getting Away With It, and I've rather liked it. Makes me want to see Schizopolis, one of the movies he angsts over in his journal entries. Trouble is, it's only been available on VHS, until now. According to Amazon, Criterion will release Schizopolis on Region 1 DVD October 14. * Just an update on the pressure the greg.org e-commerce fire hose exerts: Amazon showed three copies of...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2003

KST:3K, KiaroStami Theatre: 3K

The Guardian's Lee Roberts reports on Iranian film godfather Abbas Kiarostami's debut stage production of the Ta'ziyeh, a compilation of classic tales of the death of Mohammed's grandson, Hussein. The plays are a traditional part of fervent religious festivals in Iran, but are often considered vaudeville in the West. Kiarostami lets a troupe of Ta'ziyeh players do their thing on stage, while synchronized images of Iranian audiences' reactions to the same play are projected behind them. The result: the Roman...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2003

That Elephant in the room just won the Palme d'Or

Swearing may be better in French, but teen shooting? That's best en anglais, mon ami. Gus Van Sant just won the Palme d'Or and Best Director awards at Cannes for his latest film, Elephant, which is Columbine-esque, but actually based on the late Alan Clarke's last film, a 1989 short about killings in Northern Ireland. Check out a review from Elvis Mitchell, wild, anti-american reports from those lushes at the Guardian, and an interesting theory of Cannes' gunloving esprit...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2003

Now We're Gettin' Somewhere, Gerry

The compelling/amusing Super Mario Brothers: A Literary Criticism (thanks, Jason!), which puts paid to my (non-)critique of the connections between Gerry, its filmic antecedents, and SimCity-style video games....
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Posted by greg allen at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2003

Dirt Mattress, Shirt Basket

Watch Matt Damon and Casey Affleck stagger, scramble and trudge through the desert in Gerry to forget the snow that you staggered, scrambled and trudged through to see it. If that reasoning's too circuitous for you, though, skip the movie; it's deeply self-referential and hermetic. It's the kind of film where half of the audience got there half an hour early, all eager, and half got there three minutes early, sure they'll be the only ones there. Even with...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2002

On Why We Should All Go To Austin, Texas

View from the window at Le Gras, 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce image: Ransom Center, UT Austin Or specifically, the Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin: 1) to see the world's first photograph, a view out his window taken by a Frenchman, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, in 1826. Jim Lewis writes about it on Slate. 2) to read the unpublished manuscript of Minstral Island, a futuristic musical by Thomas Pynchon and Kirkpatrick Sale, which they recently acquired. [Fill out...
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Posted by greg allen at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2002

And I Felt A Little Paranoid Before Learning Pynchon Wrote A Musical

"Mistral Island Manuscript acquired by Univ. of Texas" According to this report from last week, Pynchon collaborated with Kirkpatrick Sale in 1958 to create a musical set decades in the future, where IBM controls the world. Sale gave "Luddite" its contemporary meaning and "wrote extensively on the political, economic, sociological, and environmental impacts of technology." I'm backing quietly out of the room... Pynchon and animation: "Except maybe for Brainy Smurf, it's hard to imagine anybody these days wanting to be...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

Places Where It Feels Odd To Be Reading Gravity's Rainbow

It's not quite like whipping out your copy of Lolita at the playground, but it sometimes feels weird to read Gravity's Rainbow "in public." Can't say if it's the book itself, which is rather unsettling and is shot through with Strangelove-ian absurdity; my used paperback copy (which I sought out for instant authenticity, as if I pulled it off that cinderblock bookcase I apparently had in apparent grad school); the conspicuous tape job (I was clearly the first person...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2002

Weblogging from the Pop!Tech Conference

"Great web philosopher" David Weinberger weblogged several talks at PopTech 2002, which had the theme of Artificial Worlds. From his posts, it sounded like a lot of thought-provoking fun. But what's in it for me you ask? (Me meaning me, of course, not you.) Some speakers addressed stuff that matters to the Animated Musical (which now has a future-based flashback-to-the-present structure, as noodled over here): Ray Kurzweil spoke about the future (of computing), where human brain power and computing power...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2002

Mystics, Astronauts & Filmmakers, or Is Becoming Jodie Foster in Contact The Best I Can Hope For?

Palm recharging at home, I had a little red notebook with me on the train last night, and, still stuck on the entry from the other day, I wrote "Who are such mystics, astronauts, filmmakers, ?, people with a Knowledge, but limited means to convey that knowledge/experience?" Film technology and technique go so far in "accurately" communicating/realizing what is in the director's (realisateur, in French, you know) mind, but how long does it remain effective? Early filmgoers reportedly jumped...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2002

How Wes Anderson influences my career (minor)

To paraphrase Max Fischer: I've applied for early admission to the Edinburgh Film Festival and Cannes. Sundance is my safety. [wesanderson.org is a good source for active fans.]...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2002

So tonight, Les Glaneurs et

So tonight, Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse is on Sundance Channel as I come home from the gym. It's the first time I've seen it on television, not in the theater, and the image difference is quite noticeable between video-to-film transfer and video-on-television (Agnès Varda shot the movie herself in DV). It's a relief/heartening to see that it does look like video on TV, since Souvenir November 2001 looks like video on TV, too. It'll be nice to see it...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)