Mission Accomplished (aka f***newyork, the name of the .mov file) was the hi-larious (so true, though, we’re only laughing on the outside) video of a gang of private school wiggaz telling it like it was about the RNC takeover of the city.
While the rest of the world just sat back and laughed at it, the folks at hip hop music tracked down the film’s creators, writer Sam Marks and director Max Rockatansky (aka Matt Lenski) for an interview. It’s great stuff, even if they do use the N-word. And the F-word. And a bunch of other words. A lot.
The Guys Behind the F***NewYork Video [hiphopmusic.com]
Google “f***newyork.mov”, but not with asterisks to find the file.
[via Anil]
Category: making movies
Aaron Eckhart IS Samson IN The Grizzly Adams Production OF
The Bible’s Greatest Miracles. Yes, before he donned a wig in Erin Brockovich, but after his breakout performances in Neil Labute’s In The Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors (and a supporting role in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday), Aaron Eckhart, sporting a wig that must have required a lot of faith, played an almost Stoppardian Samson in this 1999 made-for-PaxTV documentary.
I remember stopping dead in my channel surfing tracks when I saw my former BYU classmate, New York neighbor and fellow parishioner, and ex-boyfriend of my good friend, doing an Old Testament John Wayne on what looked like the Egyptian set of Dr. Who. My kingdom for a video capture.
But don’t just take my word for the power of this film. Grizzly Adams witnesses best:
History’s most spectacular miracles and claims. . .but are they true? Bible scholars and skeptics examine four of the Bible’s greatest mysteries–David and Goliath; Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; and the story of strongman Samson and Delilah–to determine if they are myth or reality. Watch dramatic re-creations of Bible events, expert testimony, and conclusive scientific experiments that put these Bible stories to the test. See compelling new evidence that the Bible is indeed factual and trustworthy!
Bonus: the script was written by David Balsiger, who just wow’ed em in Dallas.
Buy The Bible’s Greatest Miracles on DVD, direct from Grizzly Adams Productions, for $19.95.
C’Etait Un Rendezvous: a pure Parisian chase movie

And I thought Ronin had the most jaw-dropping Parisian car chase scene.
In August 1976, French director Claude Lelouch (who, it turns out, did the French segment of 11″09’01, the one where the deaf chick decides to break up with her boyfriend at 9:59 or something) had 9 minutes of film, a Ferrari 275 GTB, a gyro-stabilized camera and mount, and an idea.
He set a route through the center of Paris, from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre and up to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, strapped the camera on the bumper, and drove flat out through the (somewhat empty) early morning streets.
Rendezvous is the one-take artifact of that insane and illegal trip. Not technically a chase scene, maybe it should be called a race scene. It’s the verite equivalent of the Hollywood-staged Sunset Blvd race in Against All Odds, and it ranks with the likes of Peter Yates’ Bullitt and Friedkin’s The French Connection for best car chase scenes ever.
With one difference: the obvious danger to bystanders during Rendezvous throws peoples’ moral compasses out of whack. Some, like neonrebel, get all hot for the film, then suddenly turn all critical and judgmental, like a self-hating preacher after scoring a hooker. Others, like a writer for The Daily Express, show amazing lack of judgment when he calls the film “an automotive equivalent of September 11th footage.”
Now you, too, can hate yourself in the morning; after decades underground, C’Etait Un Rendezvous is now available on DVD.
Buy Spirit Level Film’s release of Rendezvous for $28.95 from Chasecam. Read neonrebel’s review. [via the Sachs Report? Why didn’t you tell me about him before?]
[9/17 update: Lelouch has performed another stunt this week, offering free nationwide screenings for his latest film, Les Parisiens, which got panned by critics.]
Bloghdad.com/Gunner_Palace
Tony Scott’s first report from Toronto really gives you a feel for the festival’s sprawl and cinematic frenzy, where you feel like you’re missing movies more than watching them. Meanwhile, he only mentions one film, and he mentions the hell out of it: Gunner Palace, Mike Tucker and Petra Epperlein’s documentary about US soldiers’ lives in Baghad. Here’s a taste:
Gunner Palace is so startling because it suggests – it shows – just how complicated the reality of this war has been. It may not change your mind, but it will certainly deepen your perception and challenge your assumptions, whatever they may be. I hope “Gunner Palace” makes its way quickly from this festival to American theaters, because it is not a movie anyone should miss.
Sure, but did you like it?
Sex, War, and Hype at Toronto Festival of Films [A.O. Scott, NYT]
See a trailer and clips at GunnerPalace.com
Time Lapsing at the WTC Site
Jim Whitaker is the director of a documentary in the making of the changes taking place at the World Trade Center site. Project Rebirth, as it’s called, has been taking time lapse imagery from various cameras perched on buildings surrounding the site since the Spring of 2002, after most debris was cleared away from The Bathtub.
Now, in time for the third anniversary of the attacks, they’ve released a trailer, some time lapse segments, and a webcam. Begun with an imperative to capture History and only a bare conception of what it might actually look like, the filmmakers added street-level and firehouse cameras later on.
Which is interesting, because by definition, human presence, the individual, is rendered invisible in a multi-year time lapse. Like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s movie screen photographs, which are exposed for the duration of a film. Technically, the resulting image “contains” all the information in the film, but the screen itself is pure white. Meanwhile, the minutest details of the theaters–architecture, seats, stages, curtains–emerge from the darkness only because of the projected film.
projectrebirth.org
Ground Zero, The Long View [Sarah Boxer, NYT]
Time Lapsing at the WTC Site
Jim Whitaker is the director of a documentary in the making of the changes taking place at the World Trade Center site. Project Rebirth, as it’s called, has been taking time lapse imagery from various cameras perched on buildings surrounding the site since the Spring of 2002, after most debris was cleared away from The Bathtub.
Now, in time for the third anniversary of the attacks, they’ve released a trailer, some time lapse segments, and a webcam. Begun with an imperative to capture History and only a bare conception of what it might actually look like, the filmmakers added street-level and firehouse cameras later on.
Which is interesting, because by definition, human presence, the individual, is rendered invisible in a multi-year time lapse. Like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s movie screen photographs, which are exposed for the duration of a film. Technically, the resulting image “contains” all the information in the film, but the screen itself is pure white. Meanwhile, the minutest details of the theaters–architecture, seats, stages, curtains–emerge from the darkness only because of the projected film.
projectrebirth.org
Ground Zero, The Long View [Sarah Boxer, NYT]
Like Watching Wallpaper Dry
Wallpaper* founding editor Tyler Brule will host and produce The Desk, BBC4’s “long awaited media show,” a media-gazing TV gig even more prestigious than, say, Topic A with Tina Brown.
Brule’s strategy for getting the slot may give a hint of what to come; according to the Guardian, Brule first had to beat off some stiff challengers, and “he also beat off other more experienced media experts including Loaded founder James Wheeler, author Paul Morley and Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark.”
Apparently, so many people wanted to try their hand at the low-paying job because it’s been a stepping stone for careers in television. I was going to try to squeeze a couple more jokes out of this, but I think I’ll stop here.
Wallpaper man wraps up BBC media role [Media Guardian, via mediabistro]
It takes a village planner, Brule’s imaginary neighborhood shop-a-thon for NYT’s T
Like Watching Wallpaper Dry
Wallpaper* founding editor Tyler Brule will host and produce The Desk, BBC4’s “long awaited media show,” a media-gazing TV gig even more prestigious than, say, Topic A with Tina Brown.
Brule’s strategy for getting the slot may give a hint of what to come; according to the Guardian, Brule first had to beat off some stiff challengers, and “he also beat off other more experienced media experts including Loaded founder James Wheeler, author Paul Morley and Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark.”
Apparently, so many people wanted to try their hand at the low-paying job because it’s been a stepping stone for careers in television. I was going to try to squeeze a couple more jokes out of this, but I think I’ll stop here.
Wallpaper man wraps up BBC media role [Media Guardian, via mediabistro]
It takes a village planner, Brule’s imaginary neighborhood shop-a-thon for NYT’s T
The Woman in the Hefty Bag Speaks
“We are starting to go buggy, just getting on one another’s nerves,” Mrs Mildred Mauney, 81, told The New York Times, after spending the night with some strangers in a classroom-turned-shelter in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
Whatever, Millie. Join the club. Mrs. Mauney’s must-have accessory for evacuating their mobile home, an inflated trash bag, reminded me of a Bill Cunningham snap of hard-core fashion muse Isabella Blow that was used to illustrate a NYT street photography story in 2002.
I can’t believe that just two years ago, I would’ve mused so hard on Walter Benjamin, Jean Paul Gaultier, “accidental” street photography, and documentary film staging.
“Well, you have to be a nut, kid.” [greg.org, oct. 2002]
Triumph of the W.
So you’re saying, if you suspend habeas corpus and pre-emptively arrest hundreds of pedestrians, I’ll be able to drive my Mercedes [sic] to the Upper East Side from the Holland Tunnel in 10 minutes every day? I have to confess, it’s a seductive proposition.
[First they came for the carless, yet I did nothing…]

And while I’m watching the giant flag behind George Patton Pataki–It’s rippling!– I’m thinking, “gots to get me one of those 3-story high monitors.”
[Then, they came for the flatscreenless, yet I did nothing…]
Then, when the guy who plays the Giuliani-style right-wing DA on L&O starts narrating a Bush video–I’m all, ah, a slide show; the resolution on that monitor probably can’t handle full motion–the photographs seem strangely alive, with an intensified depth of field. And movement? Naw…

Oh my hell, talk about seductive. This full-blown cult of personality film is using a more sophisticated version of the entrancing photo-animation technique developed for The Kid Stays in The Picture, the ultimate self-deluded, “so seductive who care’s how much of it’s true” Hollywood insider documentary. They’ve turned Robert Evans and Graydon Carter against themselves–and the whole celebrity-worshipping country–and made them bow to George W. and His Will.
[Then they came for the DVD-less, yet I did nothing…]
Scott Sforza, you are truly worthy to be called the Leni Riefenstahl of your generation.
[And then they came for me, and there was no one left.]
Dude, I really wish you’d skip right to making movies about fish.
Film Directors ‘Discover’ Opera?
Irene Lacher writes in the NYT about the influx of film directors to the operatic stage. Lacher likes her movie directos old and in hollywood; she mentions Garry Marshall, William Friedkin, Robert Altman. Sure, Julie Taymor, who was directing operas long before Disney got her to direct Lion King…on Broadway, which was before she directed an actual film. And Scorsese, who’s repeatedly told the Met the opera can wait as he heeds the camera’s call.
And she likes her opera small and local. Baz Luhrman gets a parenthetical, but then, he only directed La Boheme, TWICE. Zhang Yimou’s mentioned in passing, but, oddly, not for either of his spectacular Turandot stagings.
And film’s biggest opera divas, meanwhile, are left talking to the hand: Lars von Trier’s high profile abandonment of Bayreuth (doesn’t Wagner still count as opera? I mean, come on, Viking chicks? Hello?) gets nothing. And a movie/opera article without even a hint of Peter Greenaway, whose movie-opera-website-installation art synesthesia made him the tiresome eminence grise of the genre? As W. says, we’ve turned a corner.
The Camera Can Wait: Directors Hear Opera’s Call [NYT]
[update: Barry/Bloggy also points out another director who’s operatic dabblings don’t register in Hollywood never heard of in Hollywood: Luchino Visconti. So he revived Donizetti at La Scala with Maria Callas. What’s he done lately?]
WWJBD?
Sharon Waxman has a report from the set of Team America: World Police, a $32 million puppet action film being directed by a couple of reluctant, foul-mouthed punks pulled from obscurity by Paramount.
Somehow the pair of college buddies, named Matt Stone and Trey Parker, got their pitch–a 3-minute clip of The Thunderbirds with new dialogue dubbed over it–to producer Scott Rudin, and Paramount to greenlight it immediately, even though the guys have no previous puppeteering experience.
Now enduring weeks of 14-hour days shooting, “with three weeks of production to go, the filmmakers found themselves in a warp-speed work schedule of shooting all day, editing half the night and rewriting on the weekends. ‘Every shot is problem solving,’ Mr. Parker explained.”
When they’re stumped, the pair follows one article of faith aspiring action filmmakers would do well to remember, WWJBD? What Would Jerry Bruckheimer Do?
Observer: Two’s an Undergound Trend
The UK Observer does a trend story on guerilla media, that starts with grafitti and small-house publishing, but is mostly a mashup on underground bands–kids playing gigs on the tube, for example–and indie filmmakers–like Outfoxed‘s Roger Greenwald, and Chris Jones and Genevieve Joliffe, authors of The Guerrilla Film Makers Handbook.
According to the Observer, J&J “managed to cast Harrison Ford’s little-known brother Terence as the male lead in The Runner,” their 1992 sci-fi? thriller? horror? flick. Considering how hard he is to reach these days, I’m sure the Observer means “then-little-known.”
Art Attack [Observer-UK]
Republican “Switch” Ads, by Errol Morris
You’ve gotta see Errol Morris’s commercials for MoveOn PAC, the unaccountable special interest division of MoveOn.org. Morris took the “Switch” concept he used for Apple, and shot ads of Republicans who discuss switching their vote to Kerry. Morris’s straight-on interviewing style and deft editing manage to convey real peoples’ nuanced, complex, and sincere perspectives. The word that sticks with me most: Betrayed.
Of course, MoveOn’s populist, anti-war-energized donors voted to run the ad about WMD lies, which strikes me as the ad they most want to show Republicans rather than the ad that’s most likely to sway Republicans to switch.
Each ad may elicit its own rebuttal–or, at least there are automatic administration retorts of varying degrees of accuracy/effectiveness; I see the William Harrop ad as vulnerable to criticism of “sour grapes,” and the economic thesis of the Brady Van Matre ad doesn’t make sense. But the cumulative effect of so many Republican voices of discontent is quite powerful.
As a registered Republican (Yow, where’d that come from??) my top picks are Rhonda Nix, Kenneth Berg, and Sid Hasan.
Related:
Philip Gourevitch reports from the set: context, insightful comments from Morris, spin from MoveOn’s Wes Boyd, and a bit of “we’re politicians above all” from the Kerry campaign.
“Confessions of A Republican,” Johnson’s powerful 1964 ad, which was entirely scripted. [from AMMI’s The Living Room Candidate]
My interview with Errol Morris
Speaking of Losers Who Found a Bag of Mail
Despite the unmitigated embarassment of his last three directorial forays, the actor Kevin Costner still felt qualified, nay, compelled to let fly with the advice on the set of his current film, Untitled Ted Griffin Project. After wrapping for the day rather than engage in a duel-to-the-death on jet skis, writer/first-time director, Ted Griffin, got the axe. A Fly on The Wall has a gory report from the set [via Defamer]
Now tell me first-time directors, what hurts more:
1) Getting fired from your first film, which you wrote the script for, and which is still named after you?
2) Getting fired by the Patron Saint of First Filmmakers, the man you wrote Ocean’s Eleven for, Steven Soderbergh?
3) Getting replaced by Rob Reiner? I mean, come on, what’s he ever done?? [Okay, you’re not helping here…]