Category: making movies

Now that’s a deft review. While Michael Atkinson praises Wong Kar Wai’s segment of Eros he largely ignores Soderbergh’s contribution–and he totally pans Antonioni’s in the most deferential possible way: “[Antonioni]…is 20 years into his post-stroke period and whoit must be said, should consider resting on his laurels and, perhaps, supervising the transfers and supplements on his old movies’ DVDs.”
Triple X [vv]

Technically, The Year of The Dependent Short was 2004, but the people at Blu Dot are usually so far ahead of the curve, I’ll cut them some slack.
In conjunction with Daylight Savings Time, Blu Dot launched the first in a series of sponsored short films. Seven Twenty is directed by Christopher Arcella, and it’s about, well, it’s about the making of a clock.
What, you think you’re gonna hear criticism from a guy who made a short about ironing?
Blu Dot Film(s) [bludot, via mocoloco]
Christopher Arcella

I want to say, “Finally!” The NYT reports on the players in the burgeoning medium of DVD extras: directors like Laurent Bouzereau (Spielberg) and producers like Mark Rowen (Shrek 2).
Bouzereau started in the laser disc business and spent time at standard-setting Criterion–which gets short shrift in the article, by the way; The Matrix may have made the DVD business, but Criterion made the DVD extra–before setting up his own shop. He’s the making of documentary and bonus material guy.
Meanwhile, it’s the producer who takes the blame for the pointlessly animated, time-killing interactive menus. And it’s suits like the guy from Lion’s Gate who think no one cares about DVD extras who are to blame for nearly naked DVD’s with little more than a few crappy trailers tacked on.
That said, there are plenty of directors whose fans would surely appreciate some more DVD material who can’t get their distribs to rub more than two dimes together for a 10-min. making of, Gus Van Sant. Now that I think about it, the quintessential DVD extra–director commentaries–get almost no play at all in the article, even though they’re almost a medium in themselves. [Carrot Top’s commentary track on Rules of Attraction is in a category all its own.]
The Powers Behind the Home-Video Throne [nyt]

Will Ferrell’s last line in the trailer for Bewitched is, “How did this happen??!”
I was wondering the same thing when I found out the movie’s not a remake of the TV series, it’s about making a remake of the TV series.
Halfway through the trailer, you think you’re watching When Harry Met Sam, and you are; Nora Ephron wrote the script. Actually, I think Meryl Streep is to blame somehow; she’s played both Ephron (in Heartburn) AND Susan Orlean.
My nose is itching on this one, even with Steve Carell as Uncle Arthur.
Watch the Bewitched trailer if you dare, or just puzzle over the imdb entry.
[update: Thanks Travis, who pulled out the direct URL for the trailer, since Moviefone screws with Firefox.]

I finally saw John Walter’s entertaining and transfixing 2002 documentary, How To Draw A Bunny tonight on Sundance Channel. Walter–an editor-turned-director–collages together the incredible story of the artist’s artist Ray Johnson, whose life, art, and elaborately contrived 1995 suicide in Sag Harbor were inextricably connected. It’s that rarest of things–a good documentary about an artist.
[Since then, Walter’s done another doc, Some Assembly Required, which also aired on Sundance, about protestors at the Republican Convention. Unfortunately, when it aired around the holidays, its target audience was in a tense stupor about visiting their Republican families.]
Almost as impressive and a definite surprise: Sundance Channel’s awesome on-air identity system. For their program intros and bumpers, they anchor each show on an animated photo timeline that scrolls left across the screen. It’s like a stylized Final Cut Pro sequence, or a storyboard; it rocks on both brand and context-setting fronts. Screencap and credits, anyone?
Watch How Draw A Bunny four more times this month [3/19, 3/30] on Sundance, then either buy it on DVD, or rent it at GreenCine.
FilmForum’s HTDAB page, with good reviews and links

“{Dimension Films exec Andrew] Rona is only too delighted to play the heavy and play it to the Mephistophelean hilt. In fact, when the studio doesn’t get its way in the selection of a director, he signals that he will make that director’s life a living hell.”
Sounds like a nice plot for a reality series.
Since Project Greenlight started burning $1 million/film on the corner-cutting ghetto end of the Hollywood production system, fifty, a hundred, actually good films were made for even less money. One of these days, Greenlight should show someone spending the money smartly. Even though it’d mean less air time for Chris Moore.
Making It, and Taking It on the Chin from a Studio Bigwig [nyt]
Project Greelight site [liveplanet.com]
[update: the timing and content of this post and the appearance of an ad for Reality Green Light’s contest to find a winning reality series idea is pure coincidence. Obviously, if I’d known about the contest this morning, I wouldn’ta gone and blabbed my kick-ass idea, yo. Damn.]

So let it be written, so let it be done.
Many of the thousands of Ten Commandments statues gracing public parks, courthouses and city halls around the country–including the one whose constitutionality is being considered by the Supreme Court–were placed by Cecil B. DeMille and the Fraternal Order of Eagles as a promotion for the film. Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, and Martha Scott attended many of the monument unveilings.
Many Commandments monuments started out as movie promotion [dallas morning news, via mefi]

The cannabis connections of the Ocean’s 12 cast and crew [via kottke, party on, dude!]

Interpol’s video for “Evil” from their recent album “Antic” was directed by the artist/CG animator Charlie White. It features an Interpol-ish puppet–“pale, thin, with dark hair and a boyish-man quality”–that looks like White’s trademark alien/troll figures in human drag.
MTV.com has some press junket-level technical details of the making of.
Interpol’s ‘Evil’ Is More Like ‘Creepy’ [mtv.com, via fimoculous]
Previously: greg.org on Interpol

So while he is taping himself for “his talk show on skates,” Tony Danza runs into The Gates and falls flat on his face. I don’t know how to unpack this little gem of a story, though:

Danza, Schmanza, is that Sony VX2100 alright?

Who’s got that tape?

I’m supposed to believe there were really two paparazzi following Tony Danza around?

A “talk show on skates”?
Tony Danza Crash photo sequence [via Forward Retreat]
Sony VX2100 Buy a [new] Sony VX2100 at Amazon for $2,349.88 [amazon]
The Tony Danza Show [why? and why do they still use go.com? go.com]

Art in General’s hosting a screening of Tarnation at 3, and Jonathan Caouette will be entertaining your questions while you all drink their wine at around 6.
Whatever you can get him to do in that mystical hour or so between when the movie ends and the reception begins remains to be seen.
3-6 PM Tarnation Screening
Jonathan Caouette interrogations (dress: Basic Instinct)
Art in General
79 Walker Street
East of Broadway somewhere, on the SE corner of some street
Art in General video program [artingeneral.org]

Jason’s got his photos of The Gates up, I’m sure the rest of the camera-equipped world will follow.
Albert Maysles talks on WPS1 about the 25+year-long process of making his film about The Gates, The Gates. Maysles is making this film with collaborator Antonio Ferrera for HBO, but he also made other Christo and Jeanne-Claude films over the years. [Actually, a lot of them at the time were just Christo films. I’ll let the gender studies art historians figure that one out. Ask Coosje van Bruggen about it, too.]
Maysles has switched to DV lately, and revels in being able to be even less obtrusive and more flexible than 16mm used to let them be.
Kottke-gate [kottke.org]
Maysles-gate [wps1.org]

I admit, a lot of Sundance went by me in a blur. No one I knew I knew was showing anything this year, and I knew non-film work would conspire to keep me out of Park City, so maybe I’m the only person who DIDN’T know about New York Doll. Well, in the last week, I’ve heard about it from three different people, each of whom called it one of the top films at the festival.
Greg Whiteley started shooting a documentary about his friend from church, Arthur Kane, when Morissey called [?!] and asked if his old band, the New York Dolls, would reunite and play for the first time in 30 years at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London.
Turns out Brother Kane, who may be more familiar to rock fans as Killer Kane, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the late 80’s, and when Morissey called, he was working in the genealogy library near the LA temple on Santa Monica. Imagining Kane fitting in in the Mormon Church, Blondie drummer Clem Burke said, “It would be like Donny Osmond becoming a New York Doll.”
It also turns out–and this is less of a surprise to music fans–that the New York Dolls were possibly the single greatest influence on glam-rock and punk in the early seventies, and were a key inspiration for everyone from Morissey to Blondie to the Ramones to the Sex Pistols. I’m not giving anything of the film away to point out that the Meltdown reunion–for which Kane dressed, not in feathery glam drag, but in a ruffled shirt inspired by the 19th c. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and which featured the three band members who hadn’t died of punk-lifestyle-related causes–was a star-filled, exuberant success. Additional tour dates were hastily set, then just days later, Kane died two hours after being diagnosed with leukemia.
The film includes interviews with the musicians who were inspired by the dolls as well as Kane’s bishop, who talked about the joy Kane was deriving from the upcoming reunion. Whiteley showed some of his rough footage at Kane’s funeral, then edited like crazy to get the film ready for the Sundance screenings last month.
As of right now, the film’s distribution is not decided.
Official Sundance info for New York Doll [sundance.org]
IndieWIRE email interview with director Greg Whiteley [indiewire.com]
Film details Mormon’s final wish: to reunite punk band [reno journal]
New York Dolls play SENSATIONAL comeback show at Meltdown [nme.com]
Arthur Kane, Punk Rock Bassist for New York Dolls, dies at 55 [NYT, via mills.edu]

Microsoft has commissioned Alex Garland (28 Days Later, um, The Beach, but we don’t talk about that) to write a script for Halo–a v1.0, if you will–which will be offered to producers along with with the game’s film rights as a “turnkey” package.
This is a brilliant, precedent-setting move for a multitude of reasons:

As any software veteran knows, v1.0 is always the best.

Producers love nothing more than buying a script that’s ready to shoot–and for only $1mm!

The script could be customized, possibly through the use of a set-up wizard or an animated paperclip [note to self: that guy doesn’t have much backstory either; are his rights available?]

If some rewrites are needed, Microsoft is really good at being corrected and taking advice.

I don’t know what they think they know about “buying rights” and “doing deals” up in Seattle, but I’m pretty sure when Hollywood’s through with’em, those pencil-protectin’ geeks’ll be lucky if they still own the IP to the shirts on their backs.

Seriously, can you name just one movie based on a video game that sucked? Just one? I didn’t think so.
But seriously, folks, I hope they call it Red vs Blue.
Halo, Hollywood [variety.com, via TMN]
Ridley Scott to direct Halo movie? [11/04, ign.com: “because Halo’s like Alien, and Halo 2’s so much like Aliens“–directed by James Cameron, yo.]
more games-to-film news at filmforce [ign.com]