Category: making movies

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]

The Cinetrix has an engrossing review of an equally engrossing documentary, Nina Davenport’s Parallel Lines. The New York director was away on a freelance gig in San Diego on September 11th and decided to film her way home.
Through the fall and early winter of 2001, Davenport asked the dozens of people she met along the way about the terrorist attacks, a question which, more often than not, opened the floodgates to each person’s most nakedly painful experience.
Parallel Lines [pullquote]
Parallel Lines site
Souvenir (November 2001), my first short, set in this same moment in time, about kind of the same thing.

NYT fashion reporter Cathy Horyn goes to Hollywood to see what Tom Ford’s up to. True to reports when he left Gucci, he’s looking to make a small fortune in the movie business.

“If I’m going to get one shot to make an impression,” he said, “I want to have around me at least the padding of professional organization. I would not be able to make a little film that will go unnoticed the way it might for other beginning directors. Everyone will be looking. `Is he any good?'”

Tom Ford’s Intermission [NYT]

On the long-anticipated convergence of films and video games: on City of Sound, Dan Hill points out GTA3: Vice City‘s remarkable multitude of similarities to Scarface, from the landscape, to the music, to the interior decorating details of Tony Montana’s mansion.
Scarface is Vice City is Scarface [City of Sound]

My mother’s house was recently scouted as a location for this season of The WB’s Everwood. She didn’t want all those people stomping across her limestone, so she turned them down.
But according to the LA Times, some homeowners say yes, again and again. Says one location manager who has booked Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 for many films, “You can shoot a McMansion anytime you want, and no one will remember it. It just satisfies my creative juices to get great architecture into movies.”
Using the same houses for every movie? Sounds about as creative as casting Negroes as servants. But that’s L.A., always trying to shoot around the palm trees.
Best House in A Leading Role [LAT, via Towleroad]
Related: Wes Anderson’s Dream House [NYO]
The owner of the New Jersey McMansion used as a set for The Sopranos claims 250 replicas have already been built using his $699 Soprano Home Design blueprints [NYT 08/2002, via City of Sound]

And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free…to take children to see simulated puppet sex.
Kudos to the MPAA censors–now sitting in their collective bed smoking a Marlboro Light–who made the producers of Team America World Police come ten times

Continue reading “MPAA: The Tenth Time’s The Charm”

Call it Team ANTI-America, just the kind of devious attack you’d expect in an election year: The ever-patriotic MPAA is bravely taking a stand, seeking to protect the high-quality of simulated puppet sex [SPS] America’s children know and love from cheap Hollywood imitations.
For the last year or so, the Broadway musical, Avenue Q, has been offering Tony Award-winning SPS to Americas children for $95 a ticket. But now, a devious team of low-rent Hollywood types is seeking to flood the SPS market with a poorly articulated product available everywhere–not just on Broadway–for only $9.50, a shocking 90% discount.
The culprit: Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s ironically named Team America World Police, which is due in theaters next week. MPAA censors have been selflessly “studying” Team America‘s simulated puppet oral sex scene–nine times so far–to certify it’s good enough for kids. So far, the movie’s SPS has only received an NC-17.
Note: the MPAA only certifies the quality of SPS; all other puppet simulations are currently unregulated and available on basic cable.
Puppet oral sex goes against grain for US censors [Guardian, LAT, via boingboing]

It’s hard to remember now, but things looked so different back then. In August. When Sharon Waxman put David O. Russell on the deck of an aircraft carrier the front page of the Times Arts section for “Conquer[ing] the Hollywood Studio System.” On Aug 16, Russell had turned Warner Bros. into his own personal Ahmed Chalabi, ready to do his bidding:

The studio funded a “Where are they now? Actually, they’re dead, or in Walter Reed or Abu Ghraib or wherever” documentary about his Iraqi extras from Three Kings,

were including said doc on a special Gulf War II-edition DVD, and

were promoting the DVD by re-releasing Three Kings and the doc–now titled Soldiers’ Pay–in theaters before November, thus

succeeding where the most powerful woman in show business, Janeane Garofalo, failed, by defeating George W. Bush in the upcoming election.
Well, that was the plan, anyway. To find out the truth, don’t bother reading the Times, who hasn’t covered the story since; slog instead through the foreign papers and crazy alternative journals like the Los Angeles Times.
Here’s a timeline of how, thanks to the foreign insurgents on the ground at Warners, David O. Russell’s grand Iraq strategy went terribly, horribly astray.

Continue reading “FS: ‘Mission Accomplished’ Banner, Qty: One (1)”

David Robb slogged through decades of data–a veritable quagmire of documentation, including production notes, official memos, filmmaker and producer interviews, and screenplay drafts–to write his new book, Operation Hollywood. From the interview he gave to Mother Jones, it sounds like a fascinating story.
That said, the interview gives me an odd feeling that the author–and maybe even Mother Jones herself–might be letting a strong political point of view slip through here and there. Nothing specific, though, maybe it’s just me.
I’m sure Operation Hollywood will become the must-read bible for anyone who decided to get into the motion picture business after seeing Top Gun [one hilarious anecdote from the book: enrollment actually shot up after Top Gun not in film schools, but in the Navy. Who’da thought?].
One wee bit of constructive criticism which I hope arrives in time for the paperback edition: In these perilous times, the book’s subtitle, How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, seems needlessly divisive, by which I mean SATANICALLY UNAMERICAN. I suggest it be changed to How Hollywood Does Its Part To Help Keep The Pentagon’s Recruiting and Funding Pipelines Flowing, While Spending Some of That $500 Billion You’re About To Vote For In YOUR District, Congressman.
[via GreenCine]
Mother Jones Intern Intern-views David Robb
Support David Robb, the anti-Military Entertainment Complex, and buy Operation Hollywood: &c., &c. at Amazon.
Watch the Pentagon’s greatest cinematic success, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line on DVD. [What? You say they didn’t do that one??]

Speaking of Wong Kar Wai… Eros is a compilation of three great directors’ short films on the subject of, well, eros, love, and sex.
Early reports from Toronto say that Wong’s is the only segment that’s right. The others, by Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni, sound like a $5 handjob at the Port Authority and that 15 minutes window before the Spectravision hits your hotel room bill, respectively.
Apparently, the only reason to not leave after WKW’s short is the haunting Caetano Veloso song, “Michelangelo Antonioni,” which bridges the last two films. It’s a wonderful song, to be sure; I’d contemplated using it in the opening scene of my first short, but it was too heavy. I first replaced it with the Pink Floyd bongos from the opening of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point.
I mention this because of the deep, meaningful connections between Soderbergh’s, Antonioni’s and my own work.
Wong Kar-Wai dominates uneven Eros [Peter Brunette, Indiewire]
According to the Italian producer’s site, the whole thing was producer Stephane Tchal Gadjieff and Antonioni’s trophy wife Enrica’s idea. [Fandango, no, not that Fandango]