Category: making movies

Bunnies Multiplying Like Rabbits

What is it about bunnies and short films? First, the NY Times has a hi-larious, yet thoughtfully insightful interview with Jennifer Shiman, the creator of 30-Second Bunny Theatre. Then Chris Harding’s 50’s instructional film-style short for Hallmark features a hutchful of retro bunnies flogging greeting cards.
Spielbunny [NYT, oh wait, I wrote that. Not that that taints my judgment or anything…]
Classic films, re-enacted in 30 seconds by bunnies [angryalien.com]
Make Mine Shoebox corporate video [chrisharding.net]

Czech Republic, $@#! Yeah!

North Korea’s ambassador in Prague has demanded that Team America World Police be banned from the Czech Republic; it depicts Kim Jong Il consorting with Alec Baldwin, which, he says, would totally NEVER happen.
Replies Foreign Ministry spokesman Vit Kolar, “We told them it’s an unrealistic wish. Obviously, it’s absurd to demand that in a democratic country. And anyway, Alec Baldwin is still better than Vin Diesel.”
N. Korea Wants Czech Ban of Team America [guardian]

On Not Writing Alone In The Dark

Blair Erickson writes about his experience working with director Uwe Boll on an early treatment and script for the Tara Reid vehicle [sic] Alone In The Dark.
Even if it IS the Worst Movie Ever Of The Century Of The Week, it sure has generated a lot of ancillary entertainment opportunities.
Blair Erickson – Behind the Scenes: Uwe Boll and Uwe Boll’s “Alone In the Dark” [somethingawful.com]
Bad Review Revue: Alone in the Dark, funny funny funny [defectiveyeti.com]

Golden Gate Bridge Meets Its (Suicide Docu) Maker

After all, Eric Steel didn’t say he wasn’t going to film the jumpers off the Golden Gate Bridge when he applied for a permit to shoot the bridge all day, every day, for a year. According to the federal officials who issued him the permit, he described his project as, variously, “a day in the life” of the bridge or “a powerful and spectacular interaction between the monument and nature.”
Steel captured 19 jumpers on film, plus “hundreds” of unsuccessful attempts, including some that were thwarted by his crew’s alerts to authorities. Then he went to interview people affected.
If Tad Friend’s excellent, disturbing 2003 New Yorker piece is to be believed, bridge officials and politicians are rather warily pre-occupied with its reputation as a suicide spot. Which makes their protestations that they were shocked, shocked at the director’s “true intentions” ring a little hollow. Friend’s article is pretty damning of the bridge’s managing board, which adamantly opposes installing suicide-preventing fences.
When you tire of reading self-righteous condemnations from implicated public figures, there are plenty of snap judgments from utterly uninvolved people on Metafilter.
Film captures suicides on Golden Gate Bridge; Angry officials say moviemaker misled them [sfgate.com]
Suicide Documentary Angers Golden Gate Bridge Officials [ktvu.com]
LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA/ Tad Friend/ Jumpers/ The fatal grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge/ Issue of 2003-10-13 [newyorker.com]
The GGB Suicide Documentary [mefi]
Related: Bureau of Inverse Technology’s conceptual(-only) art project, “Suicide Box,” which was shown at the Whitney Biennial [bureauit.org]

We’re Going To The Pan Pacifics, Fran!

“‘We’ve been given the mandate to compete on a more aggressive level,’ says [Paramount Classics co-pres David] Dinerstein, who also helped orchestrate the reported $2 million purchase of Mad Hot Ballroom, a Slamdance documentary widely described as Spellbound meets Strictly Ballroom.”
1) One of the odd, still-annoys-me things was that Strictly Ballroom was vaguely a documentary, too. The early scenes were all “talking-head-and-captions,” and then it just disappeared. Weird, edgy, or sloppy, whatever, it got him to Romeo+Juliet.
2) Every group with more than five adolescent dorks in it should get an agent, or at least look up “life rights” on Google before the cameras descend. Drill teamers, pep clubbers, band members, chess clubbers, debaters, science fair entrants, video gamers, D&D/RPG players, and incessant IM’ers, this means you.

Strictly Business [Village Voice]

On Jem Cohen’s ‘Chain’

Chain, was directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jem Cohen. The movie tells the story of a pair of women seemingly stranded in an instantly familiar, parking lot-filled landscape of big box retail stores, fast food restaurants and malls. It looks like it could have been made in one pass through AnySuburbanTown, USA, but it was actually shot in 11 states and seven countries over seven years.
Don’t miss the unintentional National Security subplot.
Chain, dir. by Jem Cohen, is screening at the Curzon Soho in London on Feb. 8. It showed at MoMA Gramercy in a 3-screen format last year.
All the world’s a car park [Guardian, via archinect]
Wendy Mitchell on Jem Cohen’s Chain Times Three at MoMA [IndieWIRE]

Section 8: We Make Movies, Not Money

There’s a long profile in the NYT of Section Eight, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Warner Bros-based production company, whose deal is set to run out in a couple of years. I’m not quite sure what the takeaway is:

  • George and Stephen were so focused on creating an environment where filmmakers could work free of studio meddling, that Soderbergh buddy and first-time director Ted Griffin got sacked during the first week of shooting from Untitled Ted Griffin Project and was replaced by Warner chief’s old pal, Rob “Meathead” Reiner. Fittingly, the project’s now called Rumor Has It.
  • Section 8 works well as a farm team. Seriously, do you think Chris Nolan could’ve gotten the Batman gig without making Insomnia. I mean, tell me what he had EVER done before that?
  • Even in a discussion of disappointing performance, literally, no one wants to talk about K Street.
  • The duo set out to make movies, not money, and they’ve succeeded spectacularly.
    Trying to Combine Art and Box Office in Hollywood [NYT]
    Previously: Speaking of Losers, We Found A Bag Of Mail [greg.org]
    No one except me: greg.org posts regarding K Street

    • Someone Hasn’t Heard of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’.,.

    In this week’s Arts & Leisure section, Adam Leipzig entertainingly/depressingly lays out the beyond-improbable odds of 1) having a successful independent film, and 2) getting your script made into a big studio hit.
    Not that I would EVER question the brilliance of the editors who this week afforded me the opportunity to speak with Pamela Anderson, but I worry that if Leipzig’s arguments go unchallenged, too many doctors, dentists, and uncles will be dissuaded from investing in surefire hit films, and then where would our culture be? We’d only have 2,000 features trying to get into Sundance.
    That said, while I could dig up data on indie films and indie scripts and indie budgets and indie returns on investment, I’m kinda wiped out right now. Leipzig’s numbers are empirically correct, but don’t reflect even the basic risk-mitigating, probability-enhancing factors that should accompany a deserving film.
    What are the odds for films that were developed in the Sundance Institute writer’s workshop? How about for movies featuring a recognizable actor? Or the distribution pickup rate of films shown at IFC Market? Or of films by former IFC volunteers, even? How many $5 million films make back their investment? How many $100,000 films? How many films were self-distributed, and at what budget level does self-distribution start (or stop) looking viable?
    The Sundance Odds Get Even Longer [NYT]

    Regarding greg.org at Regarding Clementine

    Demonstrating a curatorial wisdom so vast it puts the [sic] in Sicha, Choire has put me in his show at the Clementine Gallery.
    I’ll be screening and editing a new/old short, footage we shot in the summer of 2001 that I haven’t been able to look at since, tomorrow (Friday) from 11-6.
    Stop by and say hi if you like, and ask me what the hell I’m doing. Not that I’ll have an answer, mind you, but you’re welcome to ask.
    The Show: Regarding Clementine
    Clementine Gallery, 526 West 26 Street, Suite 211, New York.

    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]

    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.