Category: making movies

Your Dream Project, Our Nightmare

Caryn James barely scratches the surface with her article-cum-warning about directors’ dream projects: “Here is a basic rule of moviegoing,” she starts, “when you hear about someone’s dream project, run from the box office fast.”
On the list of dreamers and their flops: Oliver Stone (Alexander), Kevin Spacey (Beyond The Sea), Scorsese (Gangs of New York, AND Last Temptation of Christ), John Travolta (Battlefield Earth)… seriously, there’s a year’s worth of articles to write on this. I’ll leave the comments open for a while, so feel free to add your own favorites.
The Making of The Megaflop: Curse of The Pet Project [NYT]

Hey, It Worked For Kinsey

The must-have vanity project for 2005: your own biopic.
Andy Towle reports that the NY Post reports that W Magazine reports that Bill Condon’s developing a script based on a 2001 Vanity Fair article for Tribeca Films. The subject: Pepe and Alfie Fanjul, the socialite sugar overlords.
Which makes sense, because that NYT article a few weeks ago about Castro stealing Pepe’s painting seemed like such a brazen movie pitch.

A-Clips: Anti-Sponsored Shorts

This just in, in time to seal 2004 as The Year Of The Sponsored Short, is A-Clips, a series of aggressively unsponsored shorts:

A-Clip plays with the aesthetics of cinema commercials, which are reproduced, satirized or subverted. Each of them has a length of approximately 50 seconds and will be shown on 35mm film among the commercials at movie theatres, with the illicit co-operation of the projectionists and management of individual cinemas.
Among the advertisements for lifestyles products cinemagoers are surprised by short movies that contain critical messages and disrupts the linear narratives of the commercials that surround them. Each film comments on aspects of urban life from its own thought-provoking and subjective perspective.

Good luck finding them. Of course, if you’re a subversion-minded projectionist or theater manager, why not drop A-Clip a line from your Gmail account?
A-Clips [via coudal]
Previously: Amazon Theater, GettyImages, Interpol Shorts, Nike’s Art of Speed, or Commission A Short Film Portrait by Jeff Scher

greg.org: the movie, Coming January 10th

Or maybe it’s greg.org: the videoblog. It’s a veritable greg.orgy: everybody come! [uh…]
On Monday, January 10th, I’m presenting a program of short films (including one of my own), video art, scenes from features, and other stuff, as part of The Reel Roundtable’s Film and Blogs series.
But more than an elaborate excuse to show and talk about my own work (don’t get me wrong, it IS that), I’m interested in seeing how a weblog functions over time as a programming/editorial/curatorial venue. The program re-imagines the weblog as a movie, or as movie-like, an event that you experience in a movie theater.
There are several ways a weblog’s video/audio content could be transmitted as a program: as you find it (serendipitously, or chronologically, as you read it (reverse chronologically) narratively, categorically, or thematically. If this had remained only a production journal, it’d become a DVD extra. I took the thematic path.
I sifted through every film, short, animation, video, video art, and TV reference on greg.org, looking for common threads and recurring themes. I narrowed the list down to the ideas–and the works related to them–that I thought would make an interesting, entertaining, and representative evening. Maybe it’s not surprising that most relate to the site’s over-arching “making of” theme. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

  • Film/Video Game Cross-Pollination: Sorry, no Matrix. I’m thinking more of the trifecta of Red vs. Blue, Gerry, and yes, Elephant.

  • an NYT interview with RvB co-founder Burnie Burns.
  • an interview with Dany Wolf, Van Sant’s longtime producer
  • previous mentions of Gerry and Elephant
  • Artists Approach Video: aka, the making of video-based art. Methods vary from the self-consciously simple, like Gabriel Orozco’s “found” images, edited in-camera; to the bafflingly complex, like Christian Marclay’s minutely edited appropriations. There’s culturally literate/literal, like Jon Routson’s reconceived-for-TV Cremaster 4, and conceptual (like the artist whose permission I’m still awaiting).

  • Gabriel Orozco’s videos
  • on Jon Routson and the future of video art
  • Call it ‘Homage’: Or in my case, call it a substitute for film school. When I ran into “editor’s block” while cutting Souvenir (January 2003), a short about, um, well, about ironing, the solution was revealed while watching the Clooney/J. Lo seduction sequencein Out of Sight. Then on the DVD commentary, Soderbergh admitted he got the idea from a Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie sex scene in Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Shown here together for the first time, obviously…

  • Souvenir (January 2003) production log and related posts
  • How a J. Lo sex scene inspires a movie about nostalgic ironing
  • On watching Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now
  • Surprise US Premiere (TBC): I’ve been working on it a while, and I’m hoping to have a special screening of a film that caught the attention of the media and filmlovers alike in 2004 (and no, it doesn’t involve Paris Hilton). Stay tuned.

    • There. That should be a decent couple of hours. So clear your calendars, and get on over to the Millennium Theater, 66 E 4th St, on Monday, Jan. 10th at 7:30PM.
    And for details on the rest of The Reel Roundtable’s series, check out the site, or Elizabeth’s IndieWIRE blog.

    It’s Not Just Derek Jarman’s Blue

    From Peter Wollen’s essay on Jarman’s Blue, recently published in Paris/Manhattan and quoted at length on In Search of The Miraculous, one of Brian Sholis’s millions of projects:

    However, there were more specific reasons for Jarman’s growing fascination with Klein. Jarman always had an ambivalent relationship with film and particularly, as we have seen, with television. Towards the end of his life he made it clear that he was only interested in films which were deeply personal, which were about the film-maker’s own life. Blue is just such an autobiographical film, dealing with Aids directly as an experience lived by its maker. Blue was the colour Jarman saw when eye-drops were put in his eyes in the hope of alleviating his blindness. Paradoxically, blindness allowed Jarman to see, beyond the distraction of images, directly into the realm of colour, as Yves Klein had wished. Aids was too important to Jarman for it to be represented by images.

    Peter Wollen on Derek Jarman’s Blue [In Search of The Miraculous]
    Buy Paris/Manhattan in paperback or hardcover [Amazon]
    Buy the soundtrack to Blue and stare at VIDEO 2 on your TV. [Amazon]
    How odd. I wrote about Blue almost this exact day two years ago.

    Where’s the When NBA Fans Attack DVD?

    “Brilliant! Best PowerPoint of The Year!” -Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.
    The Indianapolis Star has a play-by-play account of the investigation into the Pacers-fans brawl during the Detroit Pistons game Nov. 19. To announce charges against both fans and players, the prosecutor’s office in Pontiac, MI created an elaborate PowerPoint presentation full of witness quotes, video clips, and a breakdown of the incident.

    My staff worked countless hours, and many nights past midnight,” Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said. “I don’t know how much it cost, other than it being a helluva lot.”

    Dude, you put all that on the DVD, along with the game footage of the shot itself, and even 0.001% of the Sportscenter commentary, and you’ll recoup your production costs in NO TIME.
    Elaborate PowerPoint presentation culminated extensive brawl probe [IndyStar.com, via fimoculous]

    All I Want For Christmas Is Stanley Kubrick’s Lens

    In order to shoot interior scenes of Barry Lyndon entirely by candlelight, Stanley Kubrick had two extremely fast Zeiss photo lenses from NASA custom-adapted for a motion picture camera. There is a third Zeiss lens in existence, un-Kubricized, and Justin at Chromogenic would like it for Christmas, please. With a Nikon mount.
    I don’t know if Justin has been naughty or nice, but he’s sure gotta be nicer than Vincent Gallo, who had–and tried to sell on ebay–another lens Kubrick had custom-built for Barry Lyndon, an Angenieux 20-to-1 zoom.
    Speed Demon [Chromogenics.net, via Kottke]
    Buy it and make something good with it [greg.org on gallo]
    Two Special Lenses for “Barry Lyndon,” by Ed diGiulio (President, Cinema Products Corp.) [American Cinematographer, via Visual Memory]

    Maxi Geil tonight at Joe’s Pub

    maxigeil.gifUnlike that otherart rock band, Fischerspooner, Maxi Geil & PlayColt are actually still around. Also unlike FS, you might actually like hearing them play. [Other ways they differ from that flash in the 2002 pan: they’re smart, but not in a stupid way; knowing, but not in an annoying way; they actually perform, and not in a lipsynchy way; and they’re not tired; oh, and they don’t blowwww.]
    Anyway, they’ve got a date coming up at their old haunt, Joe’s Pub, November 29th, so mark your calendars. WTH? That’s TONIGHT. [thanks for the heads up, Beck.] Screw your calendars, just go stand in line.
    Maxi Geil & PlayColt site
    [Oh, this is under “making movies” because, although she probably denies it now, MG&PC singer Rebecca Chamberlain was in my first film.]

    Matthew Barney Gets A Brazilian

    barney_lamina.jpg

    For those who wondered how Matthew Barney was planning to top his five-part Cremaster Cycle…
    For those who wondered, after watching The Cremaster Cycle, if Matthew Barney was really a top…
    For those who want to top Matthew Barney yourself…
    Have I got a site for you: CremasterFanatic.com
    While there’s plenty of Cremaster-related material, including fan photos and videos [!!], I like the news section the best. It’s got reports on Barney’s latest film, de Lama Lamina, which opened last month at the Sao Paolo Biennial.
    de Lama Lamina was shot documentary-style during this year’s Carnaval in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, on a Barney-created float surrounded by 1,000 Barney-clad samba dancers. Two actors representing deities from the local Candomble religion rode the float, a mud-covered clearcutting tractor hauling a torn up tree trunk.
    Did someone say trunk? Since one role involved an “auto-erotic scene filmed under a slow-moving vehicle in an extremely confined set,” Barney’s people ran an ad, hoping to cast someone from local “porn/stuntman” stock. Yow, documentary-style indeed.
    Links:
    CremasterFanatic.com
    Local Male Pornstars Wanted [AIN]

    Working Title: Le Corbusier via Pierre Huyghe at Harvard

    The debut live performance of Pierre Huyghe’s puppet opera was last week at Harvard’s Carpenter Center, Le Corbusier’s only building in the US.
    While it’s not quite a review, Ann Wilson Lloyd’s report in the Times gives more details of the production/exhibition, which runs through April 2005.
    The synopsis: it’s Team America: World Police meets Adaptation meets My Architect.
    Says Huyghe,

    “I found myself in the same position as Le Corbusier,” he said recently, “of someone invited to do a project and formalize it in a specific context. I felt overwhelmed by the conditions of this predefined context. Then I found this book by Sekler and Curtis, and I realized it was a parallel situation. The difficulty in coming up with an idea became the idea.”

    A Puppet Opera at Harvard Channels Le Corbusier [NYT]
    Previously: Team France Harvard Opera Police

    The NYT A&L Hegemony Continues

    Sorry, your entire Sunday morning isn’t enough. Now the NYT Arts & Leisure section wants your whole weekend. Jan 7-9, 2005, to be precise, far enough in advance that you can’t pretend you have something else planned.
    Some program highlights:
    Sat (1/8), 6:00-7:15 p.m.
    “Bigger Roles, Smaller Films” Patricia Clarkson and Hilary Swank tell rockstar editor Jodi Kantor what it’s like to work with Katie Holmes, [“that Oscar-nom-less little scene-stealer.”]
    Sunday (1/9), 4:00-5:15 p.m.
    “The Prophet of a New Modern Architecture”
    Nicolai “Herbie Who?” Ouroussoff interviews Rem Koolhaas. Doesn’t say who they’re talking about. Huh.

    Forget The Trailer; I Want A Japanese Retail Cult

    humans_mike_mills.jpgIs it a Hollywood perk trend, or just a by-product of working at The Directors Bureau? Whichever, director/artist Mike Mills is the latest auteur to attain that most incongruous of filmmaking achievements: his own blindingly trendy store in Tokyo.
    Humans by Mike Mills, located in Harajuku, right by the massive Roppongi Hills comples, is actually a “store cum gallery” [eww. there goes my Net Nanny rating…] and “more a conceptual experience than a shopping trip,” according to Casa BRUTUS, one of a million Paper-like magazines in Japan.
    From the limited Japanese writeups I’m finding, that means t-shirts, cd’s, and window installations by the likes of Susan Cianciolo and her Japanese doppelgangers.
    From Mills’s Humans Manifesto: “I don’t trust people who are very articulate. The only way to be sane is to embrace your insanity. When you feel guilty about being sad, remember Walt Disney was a manic depressive. Everything I said could be totally wrong.”
    Yep, sounds great, now get back to work.
    Humans by Mike Mills near-empty official site, Casa BRUTUS mention, and 06/2004 launch week info (in Japanese)
    The Directors Bureau
    Coincidence? Fellow TDB’er Sofia Coppola’s Japanese fashion line, Milk Fed
    Related Mike Mills posts on greg.org