Category: making movies

Now! From television’s acknowledged experts in adultery, profanity, lying, and covetousness!
According to Variety, FX SVP Gerard Bocaccio dreamed up the concept for ‘The Ten Commandments,’ a series of 10 one-hour TV movies which will “explore the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America.”
Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Section Eight will exec produce, and the two will be joined by eight other “A-list directors [sic, Clooney’s A-list? how about ‘up-and-coming’? Seriously, people],” and each will tackle a commandment.
I wonder who gets “Thou shalt not steal?”
Related:
FX gets serious about Bible study [Variety, via Yahoo, thanks to GreenCine]
Read like a million posts about Kieslowski’s Decalogue, a ten-hour made-for-TV exploration of the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America Poland.

“Artists from Abbas Kiarostami to Shirin Neshat to Ousmane Sembene have confronted the misogyny of conservative Islam in ways that are at once more damning and less willfully profane.”
Still, just because it was at once outrageously incendiary and a lackluster piece of filmmaking, it’s still chilling and despicable that Van Gogh was killed for Submission.

The Day I Became a Martyr: Islam Protest Brings Fatal Fatwa [Village Voice]
Related: greg.org entries for Theo Van Gogh

Fimoculous has an excellent collection of articles, interviews [including Rex’s own], and links for the premiere last week of Chuck Olsen’s film/site/project Blogumentary . Check it out.
Blogumentary [mitochondria at fimoculous]
Blogumentary production blog

From the team who ruined BMWFilms.com comes a new collection of dependent shorts, just in time for the holidays. Amazon Theater is a series of five short films “featur[ing] products you can purchase at Amazon.”
Someone’s not getting it in a very deep way. On paper, Amazon Theater should be an ad/film/shoppertainment convergence dream-come-true:

“Definitely available” actors, Minnie Driver, Daryl Hannah, Chris Noth, and Blair Underwood (now rebranded as “Amazon Theater celebrities”)

A database of every product every one of your customers has looked at or bought over the last eight years

Credit card financing [very indie, especially for shorts]

Unlimited bandwidth
…and a whole mess of directors named Scott: Ridley, Tony, Jordan, Jake.
The films include clickable shopping credits, both for featured and “celebrity products,” but it only goes so far. Whether that makes it half-ass, or just ass, I can’t say.
Take the first short, “Portrait,” an at-once vapid and cynical Heathers-meets-Shallow Hal “fable” which finally answers the best-forgotten question, what did Amanda’s agency on Melrose Place actually create? You can buy the skinny villainess’s corporate bitchwear, but for the cruelly written loser fatchick’s blouse, you’ll have to go to QVC. Annd there’s no link to the dinnerplates she’s constantly eating off of–at work, in her boss’s office–even though they’re on sale, 47% off, for $79.99. Once you unpack it, the story turns on a snide conversation about reading spam, which includes a mention of “bayesian filters”, but there’s no “Spam for Dummies” tie-in. And while they offer Sephora makeup “used in the film,” they ignore the mall-makeover studio, Glamourshots which is the story’s manipulative McGuffin.
Seriously, Amazon Theater is to short films what a hole is to a donut. Or what a donut is to a diabetic. Or what a brain is to the marketing exec who greenlighted this thing. Can’t wait to see how the Chris Noth one turns out.
Shopporrifying links:
“Enjoy the exclusive films in Amazon Theater, our holiday gift to you.”
Buy this Fiestaware Periwinkle 16-piece Dinnerware set for your pathological office binges!
Beauty pageant makeup can reveal your inner worth! Shop at Sephora, or go to the portrait studio at the mall!
[via fimoculous]

Scott MacMillan has a wide-ranging, disturbing roundup of the violent aftermath of Theo Van Gogh’s murder and public cremation, including the 5-hour standoff–complete with gunfire and grenades–with militant terrorist suspects in The Hague.
[Slate] Holland in Flames
Religious violence and terror arrests stun the Netherlands in the aftermath of filmmaker Theo van Gogh’s murder.

Huh, what’re the odds? I just finished a piece for an offline publication about machinima, and the first thing I see at this year’s Margaret Mead Documentary Festival is Beyond Manzanar, a video game-based exploration of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII and political attitudes toward Iranian Americans during the 1979-80 hostage crisis. It was created by Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand.
Fortunately, America has moved beyond the dark era of racially based policies, into the crystal clear dawn of religion- and nationality-based detention and discrimination. Why not celebrate our progress this Saturday?

Beyond Manzanar, presented somehow at 4:15, Sat. 11/13 at the AMNH
Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, Nov. 11-14 and 20-21, at the American Museum of Natural History
Beyond Manzanar‘s site
Ansel Adams’ photographs of Manzanar and its internees

ICM’s Man in New York, Bart Walker is going to CAA. Walker is known for making it happen for filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Sofia Coppola. His “Jarmusch-style” foreign presale fundraising helped Coppola keep the copyright for Virgin Suicides and maintain final cut over Lost in Translation. [via filmmakermagazineblog]
Related:
Translating the deals into a movie [greg.org]
Tokyo Story [fall 2003 Filmmaker Mag]

ICM’s Man in New York, Bart Walker is going to CAA. Walker is known for making it happen for filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Sofia Coppola. His “Jarmusch-style” foreign presale fundraising helped Coppola keep the copyright for Virgin Suicides and maintain final cut over Lost in Translation. [via filmmakermagazineblog]
Related:
Translating the deals into a movie [greg.org]
Tokyo Story [fall 2003 Filmmaker Mag]

No, that doesn’t mean they’re now recruiting Bush dodgers. It means they’re promoting the country as an up-and-coming alternative location for film production. Here’s a partial list of benefits to shooting in Iceland:

At least four months a year, you don’t have to shoot “day for night”.

Another four months, there’s 18 hours of sunlight.

You remember how Tribeca was just starting out, and you’d always see Bobby taking meetings at Tribeca Grill? Reykjavik’s like that, except that it’s Sigurjon Sighvatssonn.

On the weekend, the whole place parties like rockstars.

Fewer Bjork sightings than shooting in Brooklyn.

You can scout a location one day, and when you go to shoot the next, it’s gone. Something about the weather. [wtf?]

Whatever. Iceland will rebate 12% of your in-country production costs, and without demanding a part for their new wife.
In Iceland, Freeze Frame Takes on New Meaning [NYT]
There it is in black & white at The Invest in Iceland Agency.

Dutch filmmaker and great grandson* Theo Van Gogh was murdered on an Amsterdam street today, ostensibly because of his short film, Submission. [That’s the title.] Since Submission was broadcast on the VPRO TV network in August, Van Gogh and the film’s writer, an “ex-Muslim” member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, had received numerous death threats and accusations of blasphemy.
Seriously, what is up with these people? I can’t believe anyone not related to the filmmakers actually watches a short film, much less gets mad enough to kill over one.
[There was that one time when MVRDV got death threats over their short animated film, Pig City… And the guy who got them in that trouble, Pim Fortuyn, did get assassinated himself…]
Of course, if you make a movie with verses from the Koran painted on nude women’s bodies, which are visible through a translucent chador, I guess you might piss some of the wrong people off. So is it the offended militant Muslims who are crazy, or the Dutch?
Watch several minutes of Van Gogh and Ali’s film, Submission at VPRO.
A BBC profile of Van Gogh calls him “the Netherlands’ Michael Moore.” [talk about kickin’ a guy when he’s down…]
Reuters just reports, thank you very much.
* [update: When a guy’s named Van Gogh, you figure he’s related. When he’s named Theo, you should figure he’s related to the brother. He is. He’s Theo’s great-grandson, i.e., Vincent’s great grand-nephew. Vincent didn’t have any kids. That we know of.]

Dutch filmmaker and great grandson* Theo Van Gogh was murdered on an Amsterdam street today, ostensibly because of his short film, Submission. [That’s the title.] Since Submission was broadcast on the VPRO TV network in August, Van Gogh and the film’s writer, an “ex-Muslim” member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, had received numerous death threats and accusations of blasphemy.
Seriously, what is up with these people? I can’t believe anyone not related to the filmmakers actually watches a short film, much less gets mad enough to kill over one.
[There was that one time when MVRDV got death threats over their short animated film, Pig City… And the guy who got them in that trouble, Pim Fortuyn, did get assassinated himself…]
Of course, if you make a movie with verses from the Koran painted on nude women’s bodies, which are visible through a translucent chador, I guess you might piss some of the wrong people off. So is it the offended militant Muslims who are crazy, or the Dutch?
Watch several minutes of Van Gogh and Ali’s film, Submission at VPRO.
A BBC profile of Van Gogh calls him “the Netherlands’ Michael Moore.” [talk about kickin’ a guy when he’s down…]
Reuters just reports, thank you very much.
* [update: When a guy’s named Van Gogh, you figure he’s related. When he’s named Theo, you should figure he’s related to the brother. He is. He’s Theo’s great-grandson, i.e., Vincent’s great grand-nephew. Vincent didn’t have any kids. That we know of.]

Interpol Claims Designer Knockoffs Fund Terrorism [via village voice]
related: Interpol announces short film contest

Why didn’t I think of that? After reading the page in Matthew Barney’s film-financing handbook where he describes selling sculptures and limited editions to raise money for the Cremaster movies, Tom Ford has released his own veritable work of art.
Actually, it’s probably more of a catalogue raisonnee, but there is a white leather-bound limited edition for $350. Don’t worry, Amazon knows you never pay retail; they’ve got it for $238. [There’s also a pleather-priced edition, $85, down from $125.]
Yes, this IS the book on Ford’s coffee table when The Times dropped by last weekend. Tacky? Not in LA, my friend. Not when a man’s got a book to sell. And a movie to finance. [via Towleroad]