Screenlabs

Peter Broderick & Alt Distribution

2010-01-18T10:19:00.000-08:00

The Future of Indie Film Distribution: Peter Broderick from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.

Peter Broderick is considered by many to be the guru of alternative indie film distribution. In many ways, his terminology captures both the frustrations of past indie failure and hopes of future with more democratic connections between filmmakers and their audiences.

In his terminology, Broderick describes the old world hierarchical distribution system of "gatekeepers" who control access of audiences to film. Of course, given the ratio of filmmakers to timeslots in movie theaters or cinema houses, the distribution of celluloid by necessity was hierarchical. And distributors were not only self-appointed gatekeepers, they stood up with actual dollars and financial investment to shepherd a film into a marketplace of a competitive viewing public.

Yes, the digital realm offers filmmakers "more control" over the distribution of their films but at a creative and financial cost to the filmmakers. Often instead of partnering with people who have an expertise (albeit a bias as well) and sharing the financial risk with investors, independent filmmakers have to go it alone and reach through the title wave of the over-saturated information and entertainment products to reach a target or general audience. If the indie filmmaker doesn't want to (or appeal to) the "hierarchical" old world distribution system, they are left without partners and must absorb the additional work on their won.

If filmmakers find themselves complaining that they have little creative time left after trying to raise the finance to produce, they will further reduce their creative up time on distribution - an equally arduous and time consuming task.

The question becomes, seriously, do filmmakers really want "full control over their work from beginning to end."? Do they want to be their one and only sole backer? Do they want to fully invest their film themselves? Do they want to wear all the hats - writer, producer, director, editor, distributor, residual contracts holder/administrator? Typically, some of the "control" and investment is shared with trusted "experts" and partners in the various phases of the stream from beginning to end for good reason.

A Serious Man a Minnesota Story

2009-10-02T15:24:00.000-07:00

There is no question that the Coen Brothers A SERIOUS MAN story comes out of the Book of Job and it more universally applies to any person who has "cursed God in their hearts." As much as I laughed and enjoyed the details the Coen's relate about being Jewish in Minnesota, Larry Gopnik could easily have been my Scottish (mostly) father, with a ungovernable family, a house in the suburbs in the 1960s, a teaching position on his way to tenure, and trying to be a serious man while nearingly failing even the most average expectations for success. It's a brilliant movie. A portrait of a time and funny, really funny.

The interesting thing to watch is how A SERIOUS MAN will be accepted either by a wide or narrow audience. Nobody quite predictded how FARGO would go over with a wider audience or in the world-wide market because many felt it was "too Minnesotan" but it was accepted everywhere. So, are the hilarious inside references to Minnesota culture and individuals in A SERIOUS MAN going to carry to a national or international audience? Ron Meshbesher? Will audiences in Southern California or Seattle or London recognize the subtle humor that Meshbesher, the late night TV ad, ambulance chasing, Jewish lawyer that proper staid country club gentiles liked to curse under their breath and then lose to in court.

The same holds true of TRAINSPOTTING or films by Mike Leigh, the best parts of those films are in the details and the specificity of the culture. I love the little story within the story, "Goy's Teeth" starring Michael Tezla playing dentist Dr. Sussman - it could be a hilarious film short all by itself. And Tezla's styled comic acting abilities are brilliant.

One thing that bowled me over about A SERIOUS MAN was the detail and specificity of period and place. SERIOUS MAN is a period piece but, as the Coen's would say, all their films are period pieces and they pay a lot of attention to making artistic direction right to the time of the story. It's a bit like MAD MEN, in that respect, as they carefully frame the story and each scene with elaborate details specific to the 1960s and their particular world of Minnesota at that time. More than just good writing that's great filmmaking.

Thus you see their story in the wall paper, it the countertops, on the desktop of Larry Gopniks desk, along the property line that so-call divides his property from the neighbors - nothing goes unexamined for its potential to contribute to the richness of the story and the internal world of the film.

SXSW Panel Picker

2009-08-17T12:23:00.001-07:00

In preparation for the 2010 SXSW Film and music festival in Austin Texas the staff and board have come up with a unique online method for soliciting ideas and interest in their week long panels.

The Online Panel Picker gives the digital community the ability to browse through programming proposals and vote on which ideas they feel are most interesting for SXSWeek 2010. The voting from the panel picker will only play a percentage participation in the final decisions - 30% - while 40% of the weight of the decision remains with the advisory board and 30% with the festival staff.

I must say this is an interesting public participation experiment in arts programming. Non-profit arts organizations are always wrestling with the problem of knowing weather their programming is serving their constituency. The panel picker creates an easy to use feedback loop both for, sort of whiteboarding ideas, but also for pre-testing them before their target audience.

This is a method that could easily be used in other membership organizations like IFP, Screenwriters' Workshop, Minnesota Film Arts and the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival.

Here is the URL:

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/

SUNDANCE '09: NO IMPACT MAN

2009-01-19T11:37:00.000-08:00

At Sundance you'll see an array of dramatic indie films, foreign and probably more than many of the premiere festivals around the world documentaries. Last year it was "Man on a Wire" which has to be the favorite for an Oscar nomination.

At the '09 Sundance festivals there are a couple of documentary standouts sure to come out of the festival with some buzz. First, there is "Tyson" that gives a fairly unvarnished portrait by James Toback of the troubled life of boxer Mike Tyson, who rose to fame as a pugilist and fell as a convicted rapists and drug addict.

Another standout is former Minnesotan Laura Gabbert's "No Impact Man" that follows a Greenwich Village, Manhattan couple Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin and their vow to give up luxuries to lessen their carbon footprint but not without remorse and some pretty funny situations. As the Colin explains to their daughter Isabelle "Daddy does nature. Mommy does retail" we witness the travails of giving up lifestyle for ideals.

Scorcese Homage to Hitchcock

2008-12-14T07:55:00.000-08:00

The Key to Reserva: Martin Scorcese (9 minutes, 22 seconds)

THANKSGIVING WEEKEND FILMS

2008-11-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving films are often a subject for indie filmmakers to explore issues of families, parent/child relationship and sibling interactions. Oh, as if we need that match thrown onto the fire during family gatherings. But, on those lazy fall evenings, it can be fun to gather with family an relatives to have assembled from near and far to pop some corn and indulge in family stories.

Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986) tags itself to a few Thanksgiving scenes and follows the general themes explored in Thanksgiving films but Turkey day is not at the center of the story.

Here are a few films that feature Thanksgiving as the central premise I would recommend for the Thanksgiving family film festival:

"The House of Yes" (1997) features Minnesota local Rachael Leigh Cook in the first movie she made after her debut in Peter Syvertsen's Minnesota local Screenlabs production of "26 Summer Street." Cook filmed the opening a closing sequences of "House of Yes" after all the other principle photography had been completed, so she knew little of Parker Posey's performance as he adult version of herself, the young Jackie Bouvier and her relationship over Thanksgiving holiday to a sibling that pushes the boundaries of rivalry.

"Pieces of April" (2003) is written and directed by Iowan Peter Hedges who also wrote "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and it tells the story of a wayward daughter living in a lower East Side tenement who decides to reunite with family because her dying mother Patricia Clarkson who was nominated for an Oscar for this role) to have a family Thanksgiving in her run down NYC walk up.

"The Myth of Fingerprints" (1997) is another debut film on the Thansgiving list for indie director Bart Freundlich about a family reunion that uncovers lets just say family issues.

"The Ice Storm" (1997) is an James Schamus, Ang Lee classic period piece located in 1973 and centers on a families, the Hoods and the Carvers, brought together over Thanksgiving break in their Connecticut cul de sac community of upper middle clas conformity only to reveal, adultry, sexual experimentation, drug use and other petty crimes. If you've been in Hudson river valley, Westchester county communities during an infamous fall ice storm, you can appreciate the precarious situation of living the "good life" as in a John Cheever story. Ang Lee is brillant in his understated psychological insights and the performances by Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire and Christina Ricci are memorable while being career defining.

Many like the crowd pleaser "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles" by Chicagoan John Hughes which as a TG classic about two guys hoping to get home for Thanksgiving has large box office appeal due to comedic Steve Martin and John Candy performances.

Impossible Contest Rules

2008-11-13T08:07:00.001-08:00

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A 'Good' Video

Mike Leigh: Secrets and Lies

2008-10-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

In the first significant scene of SECRETS AND LIES, after he's introduced his characters in montage, Mike leigh takes us to an office and the lead character Hortense Cumberbatch is inquiring about an event in her past that Leigh takes most of the ongoing conversation to unveil. Through staggered speech, broken dialogue and interruptions we are left hanging without knowing the subject of their discussion. It is as if a secret or a lie is desperately but slowly coming out.

Just within the scene Leigh masterfully writes into this dialogue all the trappings of the central conflict of his film. And method of conceal and reveal is repetitive throughout the film, allowing us to witness the masked and emotionally veiled social taboos work on our psyche and persona.

Later in the film, when Hortense meets Cynthia's family for the first time, there is a back garden BBQ scene. A set shot done all in one take, it is amazing to watch for all the intricacies and the layers of veiled storytelling and inquiry. Gradually, details like the future son-in-law having his license removed, Hortense not being a co-worker at a factory, her degree from University, all leading to an unraveling of veils of secrets and deceptions -- Leigh is masterful in his peeling away of the story as it unfolds.

Of all the Leigh films you must see, SECRETS AND LIES and VERA DRAKE should be at the top of your list. They are classics of independent filmmaking.

Chicago 10: An Homage to Abbie

2008-10-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

Brett Morgan's CHICAGO 10 played at the Walker Art Center last night in front of an audience who chose to skip the debate between Sarah "aw-sucks" Palin and jumpin' Joe Biden.

Fact or fiction? Documentary or drama?

Morgan's hagiography to Abbie Hoffman is yet another film that attempts to canonize the colorful and exuberantly inspiring leader of the Yuppie movement founded by Anita and Abbie Hoffman as well as Paul Krassner. The first film to take on the Hoffman legend was Robert Greenwald's 2000 film STEAL THIS MOVIE.

Without question, CHICAGO 10 places a lot of the focus on Hoffman very much at the expense of the other more politically important figures: David Dillenger, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, and Black Panther Bobby Seale.

While Hoffman is a colorful extrovert and easily captured for film, the extent and depth of his political philosophy was to shout "Fuck You" and "Fuck the system" as often and loudly as he could. Other participants and witnesses to the movement often found Abbie to be thwarting their gains with his yippie non-sense.

Hayden, Dillinger, and Rubin had wider reaching political philosophies with implications for transforming American government while Hoffman was primarily a proponent of an anarchist drug culture which ultimately brought Hoffman's life to an end but never held any promise for a country worth living in.

Morgan's storytelling challenge is considerable as much has been written and debated on the 60s and 1968 in particular. And before the film, Morgan tried to contextualize this fictionalized documentary by explaining CHICAGO 10 simply is a film and that we all have subjective or individual truths. Certainly, since this film was completed and premiered at Sundance in 2007, it has become under intense scrutiny from all the factions of the left who rightly feel it is thin on content, context and clarity.

If nothing else, the film does blur the distinctions between what is documentary and what is drama or fiction. And that is one of Morgan desired outcomes with viewing his films is to raise this very question.

During the evening with Morgan, he repeatedly made the point that he was merely a fetus when the Democratic National Convention of 1968 happened and thus not a direct observer of the actions. He emphatically stated that he didn't care about objectivity or truth but that he wanted to tell his story as a filmmaker in mastery of the medium.

I've always felt filmmakers who take this auteur position are selfish and often self-indulgent. They are raw and uncooked. Obviously, documentary filmmakers begin from a position of their self-indugent truth but can only be enriched by the facts, by other perspectives and the burden of reaching a higher truth than their subjective reality will allow.

Contrast Morgan's stated purpose with Errol Morris and I think, although Morris fully acknowledges his subjectivity, Morris puts himself in service of the truth and overcomes his subjective lens with meticulous emersion into the waters of the facts, of the evidence, and through a scrupulous interrogation of the witnesses. This is where Morgan's methodology falls short of Morris' exacting standards.

In the end Moragn said he didn't want to put a post-mordem on the film's end cards because he wanted this movie to mythologize the Chicago 10 and their story. I was immediately struck with the question of whether it needs "mythologizing" and instead demystifying.

Yet, I felt CHICAGO 10 was very entertaining. The drive behind the story to its dramatic conclusions was reached when Dillinger and Allen Ginsburg lead the new generation of anti-war youth in a march from the Ampitheater toward the Chicago Coliseum where the 68 Convention was being held. Knowing that they would be beat to a bloody pulp by the Chicago police and the National Guard, the marchers went anyway as a matter of principle and angry defiance.

The Chicago police had been beating the protestors for days with little more than the protestors trying to shield their heads from the bloody batons and noses from the suffocating tear gas. The correlations between the exaggerated actions and force of the Chicago police and the Saint Paul police at this years RNC convention are striking. Members of the RNC Eight were in attendance at the Walker Art Center for this screening and made appeals for funds to assist in their legal defense.

Four Sheets to the Wind

2008-07-11T07:50:00.000-07:00

Four Sheets to the Wind (2007) stars Cody Lighting
Writer/Director Sterlin Harjo

When I spoke to Sterlin Harjo over dinner at 2021 in the Walker Art Center, I sensed a mild case of exasperation. The Seminole/Creek filmmaker has been traveling, speaking and explaining his 2007 Sundance audience award winner for almost 18 months and is looking to move on.

"Tell us about your film," pleads Catherine Whipple, Managing Editor of The Circle News.

"I don't feel like talking about the film. You'll see it tonight," Harjo replied. I find I admire his straightforward honesty in light of what any PR-minded person would consider an obligation to explain.

An occupational hazard of being a filmmaker is most of your time is spend NOT making films and instead promoting them, finding backers, meeting with distribution and marketing and it is easy to get lost in the wilderness of promotion.

"I couldn't live in Los Angeles. I go there a lot but I would get nothing done if I lived there. Everybody is trying to make a film there so what's the point?" Instead he choses to live in Tulsa, Ohlahoma, "Nobody makes films in Tulsa. I feel like I have a purpose. I'm close to my family. I'm close to my tribe," he says.

Harjo is currently editing his follow-on feature BARKING WATER with Isabel Archuleta and he seems to find sustenance in going back to Tulsa to work on his films.

Four Sheets is a coming-of-age drama set in rural Oklahoma with contrasting urban locations in Tulsa and depicts a young man in search of his identity on the reservation and beyond. Featuring a performance of quiet intensity by Cody Lightning, the film tactfully balances the pathos and humor in the parallel transitions from rural to urban and boyhood to maturity. Lighting is the son of actress/director Georgina Lighting who recently finished directing OLDER THAN AMERICA, shot in northern Minnesota with local producer Christine Walker.

Harjo's feature film restores a faith in filmmakers who chose to live outside the false pretenses of industry movie making with stories fabricated through negotiations with agents, studio development executives, and expectant producers who know little about the subject of their movies but end up dictating the terms of story or character plot to fit their investment package.

Watching Four Sheets gives the sense that you are in the Tulsa that Harjo lives in -- the coffeeshop where Miri Smallhill (played beutifully by Tamara Podemski) works, the bar where Cufe Smallhill goes with Francie, the house party where 20-somethings mix and mingle, asking odd naive questions of each other, resonates as personal detail just as the streets of Ausin, Texas did for Richard Linklater's 1991 indie film SLACKERS.

"The best thing about Sundance Institute is that you make connections with the right people for the right reasons," Harjo explained about his experience with the Labs. Actors, cinematograhers, music composers, casting directors, as he observed, come to Sundance for the love of film and not for the money.

A project of the Sundance Lab, Four Sheets to the Wind won a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

On The Ice: Masterful Short Story

2008-07-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sikumi (On the Ice) (excerpts)
in Iñupiaq with English subtitles, 2008, 35mm, 15 minutes

Andrew Okpeaha MacLean has made the first film in the Iñupiaq language and tells the story of an Inuit hunter who drives his dog team out onto the frozen Arctic Ocean and fortuitously witnesses a murder. The short poignant drama won a 2008 Sundance Short Filmmaking Award. Sikumi shows an artistic mastery of simplicity and elegance in capturing a thought-provoking story.

One has to admire MacLeans pitch-perfect balance between what is seen, what is said and what circumstances dictate in the stories unfolding. The director uses just one location, three actors and two dog sled teams to shoot this contemplative moment that makes a viewer prize short storytelling in the film medium.

SCRIPTNIGHT @ RITZ: Incarnation

2008-06-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

Tueday, July 8th @ 7:30 PM
The Ritz Theater • $10 general/$5 SWW members
13th and University Ave N.E. (345 13th Ave)
Minneapolis, Minnesota

INCARNATION Script by Bill True
Directed by Dean Lincoln Hyers
Produced by Robb Mitchell

Al Pacino Orders a Cappuccino

2008-06-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

Getting the smallest details right makes the entire impression, a very nimble and deft acting lesson.

Herzog's Minnesota Declaration

2008-06-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

The Minnesota Declaration was issued at the Walker Art Center in 1999 by German filmmaker Werner Herzog A statement of principles, Herzog speaks of the "lessons of darkness" including observations on then Governor Jesse Ventura and the idea "You can't legislate stupidity" regarding people riding their snowmobiles on lakes when the ice has already melted.

At the time Herzog had grown critical of Cinema Verité and was calling for new answers to the 1960s filmmaking principles used as a Bible. Herzog also sat down with Henry Rollin's Show to continue to articulate his ideas about filmmaking.

The conversation between film critic Roger Ebert and Werner Herzog took place on April 30, 1999 during the Regis Dialogue series which will be celebrating 20 years.

Tribute to Blacklisted Screenwriter Trumbo

2008-05-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

Isn't it unusual to find such high-praise for a screenwriter in Hollywood by some of its leading dignitaries?

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s notable journey from Hollywood nobility to McCarthy-ear blacklisted writer to Academy Award winner is a great story idea in itself. Focusing on Trumbo's own scripted words and attitudes, TRUMBO features performances of his letters, clips from his films and, archival and contemporary interviews with those who knew him best.

As an intellectual feisty man of the era, TRUMBO illustrates how one his steadfast belief in the First Amendment and the power of the written word - aided by a drink or two - empowered Dalton to battle back after his HUAC blacklisting that destroyed many in the film industry. If freedom means anything, it must have fighters like Dalton Trumbo on its side.

Blacklisting in America came at at time, not all the different than today, when the culture held high contempt for intellectuals and ideas. Accusations flew about and the acquisitors had little need to prove their claims to assure their motives were pure. The only shallow motive needed as proof was "patriotism." Yet, quite clearly those who bashed, battered and threw American principles of political freedom to waste bins of government ruled the day.

Forced to write underground, the exposition of his letter writing became the chief repository of Trumbo’s phenomenal reasoning talents, and serve as a exceptionally entertaining tribute to his creative intellect, acerbic humor, and authentic resilience against powerful yet brutishly dull men.

TRUMBO is slated to open in cinema's at the end of June.

Errol Morris Speaks

2008-04-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

An interview with Errol Morris in New York with Andrew O'Hehir about making Standard Operating Procedure.

S.O.P.: Evil is Not Banal

2008-04-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, unlike recent Iraq films is about seeing, perception and the act of photographing. Errol Morris turns his camera on a very thin slice of time and space in this vast conflict but a layer with huge moral and political implications.

In typical Morris fashion, his documentary doesn't provide easy black and white answers. Factions on both the right and left want their documentary films to wrap up neatly and tight but Morris is not going to be the filmmaker who makes the viewer feel comfy by providing a quick and easy sound bite answer to the difficult questions of war. Were the kid soldiers inside Abu Ghraib who took pictures and appeared in them guilty as charged?

Ron Rosenbaum in his article for Slate online, keeps asking the question are the "bad Apple's" responsible for their actions even if we accept that higher-ups order them to carry out actions against the prisoners?

First, the "bad-Apples" Rosenbaum is referring to are Lynndie England (shown in photographs holding a "leash" around a prisoners neck), Sabrina Harmon (shown giving the thumbs-up next to corpse of a former prisoner) Javal Davis, Tony Diaz, Tim Dugan, Megan Ambuhl, Jeremy Sivitz, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski and others. Morris gives us the first opportunity, using his non-patented tele-prompter interview camera, to hear England, Harmon, Davis, Diaz, Dugan, Karpinski and direct participants talk about what when on inside the prison and in their heads. Why would they do these horrible acts? Why take pictures?

Well, for the most part it wasn't their idea. Let's be clear, the "bad-Apples" pleaded guilty, lost their rank and status in the U.S. military, were dishonorably discharged and went to prison. Is that enough responsibility for Salon magazine? Apparently not.

Obviously, Rosenbaum wants a few bad apples to be the responsible the American people won't be held responsible for these actions torture and death inside Iraq death chambers. That's the bigger order Salon magazine and others wish the bad apples would follow. This certainly was true of the audience I saw the film with - they wanted contrition and for the "bad-Apples" to apologize to the American people. They wanted tears and remorse. America wants a neat and tidy ending. Closure perhaps? Morris is not the man who is going to give easy endings to morally uplift.

Just as back in the 1970s the American people wanted the Vietnam Vet to suffer all the guilt and remorse for the policies of that war, the people living safely in their comfy homes on American soil want the "bad-Apples" to take the rap for Iraq and Abu Ghraib. And then the bad dream can all be over with and we can go on our merry way. I have always thought England, Harmon, Davis, Diaz, and Sivitz should take responsibility for their actions and they do. BUT, they don't do it in the way everybody wants them to, in the way that exonerates American citizens and covers our horrible government actions and policies.

But let's look deeper. Truth be told, the real bad-Apple's at Abu Ghraib have never been charged. The corpse Harmon stands next to is not a prisoner she killed but the CIA or MI person who did torture and killed this prisoner has never been charged for his murder. Never. And the U.S. government has covered it up. The only thing Harmon is guilty of is thumbs-up and a smile like a cheshire cat.

Gruesome, no question, but hardly a major crime in comparison to those going on all over Iraq, in secret prisons on European soil, Bagram prison in Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo under the auspices of the U.S. government. The pictures that put Harmon and England in front of the camera, posing before prisoners in the moments of and surrounding their humiliation are only the staged face of American humiliation while the true crimes of torture and murder have been covered up.

Morris reveals in these interviews there is good reason to believe America's true reason for invading Iraq is to humiliate Arab men and use our young women soldiers to do so. The photos inside the prison bare this out. Talking with Morris after he screened the film in Minneapolis, he told me it's very difficult to wrap his head around the insanity, the lack of rational clarity on the part of our political leaders who have lead us into this senseless war. Even more so for the fact that their actions come nowhere near producing what they pretend they wish will result.

Rosenbaum likes to create an eroticized view of Morris' use of slow motion or super-slo-mo in the re-enactment scenes of STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE. Morris uses a camera called the Phantom v12 to capture motion at 1,000 frames per second as opposed to standard 24 movie frames or previously the standard over cranked slo-mo of 130 frames per second. If anything unintended or off-message, Morris' slo-mo makes horrific motion stunningly beautiful. We see dogs snarling and bullet casings drop and bounce on the floor set to Danny Elfman repetitive and melodic scores.

However, it is clear why Morris uses slo-motion in many of his films from THIN BLUE LINE to FOG OF WAR. Less I think for the "moral investigation" as Rosenbaum likes to imply (the use of slow motion in science fiction as in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or football games to show the spiraling ball in motion which does not have moral overtones) and more as a tool that focuses viewers attention more precisely on the details of the real world. In dramatic filmmaking we think about our purpose constantly: How important it is to direct the viewer to comprehend the story with purpose and focus. Great documentary filmmaking should do exactly the same thing. Comprehension is reinactment

The reason Morris footage of Abu Ghraib appears charged with moral implications is because, mostly simply stated, war has moral implications. Treatment of captive prisoners, innocent and guilty alike, is the most moral of all situations. That is why our founding fathers took a restrained view of government abuse of the people. None: This means all human beings and their rights not just American national human beings.

The truth behind the Terror memos by John Yoo and Timothy Flanigan, the White House and the Justice Department is that they have no moral compass and fail to see the horror of their actions and policies. They see exceptions abound. To circumvent the law, they seek court opinions that will rule human-beings as non-people just as the most notorious tyrants and dictators in history have done.

Morris' use of slo-mo is perhaps more pronounced in an age when information is devalued by its speed and constantly updating nature. We need slo-motion to gain focus and put the space of closely observant thought back into seeing. Slo-motion give us the time to contemplate critical details that fast and dirty media skips over.

The questions that are more important is "What was happening outside the frame?" Of course, this means what is happening in terms of these young soldiers being instructed and order to comply with their commanding officers. This also means what is going on inside the torture chambers and secret prison camps.

Certainly, as Rosenbaum wishes, the bad apples could have violated their orders and faced immediate and severe discipline in a war zone. Not a happy course for a soldier in a hostile war zone but, yes a possibility. Would the shameful actions of torture and murder end there? No. Would American's moral authority have been retained? You've got to be kidding.

Morris has called this film a "non-fiction horror movie" and it truly is - Evil is not banal it is horror.

FORGOTTEN AT MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL INTERNATIONAL FILM FEST

2008-04-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

A year ago at this time Screenlabs Challenge participants were hard and fast at work molding scripts into shape and bring their crews together. One of those projects, FORGOTTEN written by Julie Kane Meyer, produced and directed by Chris Gegax will be screening in the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival on Tuesday, April 29th at 7:00PM

Meyer had read her script in the Sunday night Screenwriters' Workshop Script Group and was able to create a tight character study matching two women during a chance encounter that melds their lives in ways they previously would not have wanted or imagined.

In her script group was Chris Gegax, a film director with a few shorts under his belt and a eager interest in looking for new material. Chris and Julie became partners in response to the Screenlabs Challenge.

As those who followed this web site last summer know, Gegax and Meyer's FORGOTTEN was awarded the Jury Awarded Best Film Prize and Meyer also given Best Screenplay for the short dramatic film.

Gegax took risks with casting the film by pairing experienced stage actress Marilyn Murray with Katie Rhoades, a counselor who works with victims of prostitution but no acting in her background. Drawing upon personal experience, Rhoades brought a cool confidence matched with determined street smarts to her role.

If you are interested in making your own Screenlabs Challenge dramatic short for the 2008 challenge, like Chris and Julie, you can attend a free workshop this Thursday, April 24th from 7:00pm to 9:30pm at IFP Minnesota Film Center.

---------
The FORGOTTEN screening takes place at St. Anthony Main Cinemas on Tuesday April 29th at 7:00 PM, 115 Main Street NE, Minneapolis (50-cent parking all-day at St. Anthony Falls Ramp). This program is likely to sell-out. Arrive early to guarantee a seat, or purchase tickets online.

Planet B-Boy and the Dance

2008-04-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

When I was living in New York in the mid-1980s I would take my lunch during the summers and eat it in Washington Square Park. The park was a nexus of activity both legal and illegal from chess playing, comedy acts, feats of daring-do, escape artists, student filmmakers shooting films to crack dealers right next to NYPD's finest sitting in their Ford cruisers.

And then there were the dancers. The break dancers.

One weekday afternoon, my co-office worker at New York University, Sheri Bishop and I went over to the park and on that day her son Bobo had come down from the Bronx on the subway to share lunch with his mother. We went to the park where a bunch of kids with boom-box and cardboard sheets set up for break dancing.

After a few minutes of Sheri watching in consternation, her brow deeply boroughed with confusion she said "Bobo, you show these boys how to break dance!"

"Ma, no, don't start" he said. We were close enough to this group of East Village kids to hear Sheri's comments who often came over from Alphabet City to do their dancing in the park and hoping for a few dimes and quarters to be thrown their way.

"No Bobo, that ain't break dancing. These boys don't know how to break dance."

"Ma, shut up" he said embarrassed and trying not to be heard by the downtown crowd, "I don't come downtown to show anyone how to break dance."

"Bobo! Show these boys how to break dance! This ain't dancing they are just pulling tricks."

"This isn't my turf ma, don't make me..."

Truth was that the Alphabet city boys, some crush and some stravin; marvin, weren't break dancing -- all they were doing were tricks. Amazing as tricks can be, the ten, twenty or thirty second routine was nothing more than gymnastic flips, freezes, twists and spins. Astonishing and cool enough for any guy eating his Gyro and grape Fanta at lunch, but, Sheri was right: it is not break dancing.

A few minutes later one of kids came over and invited Bobo to join them and he did. The kid from the Bronx showed these downtown guys how check-in, take out, cut it and the challenge was on. This kind of community dancing in the streets, the give-and-take, and the exchange of moves both athletic and artistic is amazing.

When you watch PLANET B-BOY by filmmaker Benson Lee you feel at bit of the same way. You're not seeing the whole dance but the tricks are so amazing and death defying you won't be disappointed.

MUTUM: Story of Brazil's Recent Past

2008-04-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Patricia and I went to the Walker Art Center to see MUTUM during the Women's in the Directors Chair series. This Brazilian film by Sandra Kogut is about a family on an isolated subsistence farm in the arid backlands of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Our central character is Thiago, a ten year old boy who knows little about the outside world except for a few horseback trips into a nearby village.

Thiago's father is distressed by a passing way of life and trying to provide for his family. His mother bares the burden of her husbands anger and frustrations and Thiago throws himself between them as his mother protector.

The feature film is an adaption of Jose Guimaraes Rosa's novel and while it is fiction, it strikes at the heart of Brazil true agrarian migration and the poverty that devastated rural Brazilian states like Minas Gerais and Bahia.

Religion plays a significant role in MUTUM, as the mystery of how nature delivers its fate evades common experience or a social consciousness thus becoming an acceptance of an authority beyond that which you can see or touch. But there is no preaching and deifying of faith.

In many ways, MUTUM reminds me of the brilliant German documentary film THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL for the intensity and detail of how they story is told. Not much dialog and visual detail aplenty, it keeps your head in the world in which Thiago lives. We feel the full power of a thunderstorm as dramatic as it can be in a place where a person is not constantly barraged with manufactured drama.

MUTUM is a mood-piece, a film that is evocative and deeply detailed in creating the sense of a simple life where children spend the day playing with insects, teaching the papagaio to talk, and chasing chickens. The pacing and lack of dialog set the viewer in a different spatial and temporal frame -- a pace of life that is nearly incomprehensible to modern western over-stimulated audiences. But MUTUM's unhurried observations are well worth the effort to persist in watching.

The young actor whose name is also Thiago is astonishing and the film, with all its subtlety and nuance pays off hugely at the end -- even with its small and unsensational emotion. The emotional impact is deep but not blunt. You may never get the chance to see this film but if you do, let it transport you into a different world than the one your are accustomed to living.

Thinking Short and Efficient

2008-03-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the upcoming Screenlabs Challenge, here is a short digital film shot for SNL with Ellen Page as the guest host. Simple. Easy. And filled with comic twist -- this short proves you don't need much time, money or extravagant locations to make a funny short film.

How Will the Coen's Handle Mainstream Success?

2008-02-25T14:08:00.000-08:00

Just months before Joel and Ethan Coen released BLOOD SIMPLE in January of 1985 I attended a indie film conference in Los Angeles in conjunction with AFI/Filmex Festival. On the panel was Steven Spielberg who made the comment "I would love to make a low budget indie film but for me that is impossible."

The Coen's first film caused the TIME magazine critic Richard Corliss to rave BLOOD SIMPLE was the greatest directorial debut since Orson Wells. A comparison drawn to the fiercely independent Wells was not only for Joel and Ethan's original vision but also the outsider status the Coen's would come to represent in the film world. As time passed the Coen's remained isolated from the comings and goings of Hollywood studio bosses both with their productions as well with the releases of their films. Much of their recognition and film awards came from France.

Spielberg's envy of indie film and desire to make one was brought on by the ability to make decisions outside the controlling mechanisms of Hollywood studios. Despite the success and million upon millions Spielberg had earned by then on films like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, E.T. and JAWS it hadn't given the Hollywood autuer the freedom or independence, instead only a bigger burden to make the type of movie on a scale that arrested control away from him. Or so the father of mega-mulitplex blockbuster movies claimed.

Now, after last night's Oscars and 3 more statues, Hollywood insiders embraced the two decade long outsiders -- the storied indie rebel Coen Brothers. The question now becomes, how will success effect the Coen Brothers and their future filmmaking?

Many like to point to Martin Scorsese as a former New York outsider who in his later years sought to be accepted and embraced by inside Hollywood. Before the former film teacher at NYU where Joel and Ethan went to school, hovered closer to the L.A. orbit, Scorsese made hard edged films like TAXI DRIVER, MEAN STREETS, KING OF COMEDY, THE LAST WALTZ, RAGING BULL, and GOODFELLAS. In these early focused New York films Scorsese bent, stretched and often redefined the rules of intelligent filmmaking. RAGING BULL came to be considered one of the greatest films of all times.

Then, fever struck Scorsese and he started making mainstream movies and epic multi-million dollar projects like GANGS OF NEW YORK and THE AVIATOR that many criticized as compromised, inferior, and that pandered to the Hollywood insider aesthetic.

THE AVIATOR was called vast but ultimately emotionally empty by critics. Film enthusiasts took it as a direct attempt to win an Oscar either for directing and/or best picture and GANGS OF NEW YORK also received a lurk-warm welcome only to be hyped by the Weinstein Brothers who staked their reputation as Oscar forgers on the film release. Although GANGS was nominated for 10 Oscars in 2002 it was shut out and this seemed only to intensify Scorsese's desire to fit in to the Hollywood mainstream.

Others have sited another outer borough born New Yorker, Woody Allen's career and his temperament to avoid disapproving critics and adulating awards equally. When Hollywood tried to pull Allen into its orbit after ANNIE HALL, the Manhattanite pulled away and avoided the trappings big finance can bring. Allen remained steadfastly in New York, continued to work with his regular crew, wrote scripts for specific actors and actresses, and refused to accept the high flung acclaim of Hollywood as reality. Allen kept making small films aimed at an art house audience.

How will the Coen's be affected by becoming Hollywood's most celebrated directors and producers? Time will tell.

Coen Brothers Photo by Sam Javanrouh at the Toronto International Film Festival used under Creative Commons limited license

Doing Workshop

2008-02-14T05:24:00.000-08:00

A great advantage to doing workshop production in the Twin Cities is the opportunity to see the wealth of acting talent we have "north of ordinary."

A lot of people I speak with like to say, "Diablo Cody wasn't born here or go to one of our renown colleges and universities." Brooke Busey went to college at the University of Iowa, "the writers' University" that has produced a number of great writers from Bi Feiyu to Robert Penn Warren and Ann Patchett among many others. But Cody did come to Minnesota to reach her artistic maturity as she pointed out at her Walker Art Center debut screening of JUNO.

Talent comes to the Twin Cities from all over the region and it is important that as an artistic community there are mechanisms for those talented and coming-of-age have the places to develop their craft and skills whether they be writers, producers and directors, actors working in collaboration.

The clear fact is if you wish to be a filmmaker or writer you just have to do it and see your scripts thru to completion. You have to keep working with others to make it happen.

And by that I do not mean, writing proposals, promoting your image, networking with the bigwig suits, writing ad copy or playing the ego-centric celebrity chasing game -- I mean working on and developing your vision, skills, and talent. I find it often shocking in many art schools today, that more emphasis is place on honing the "professional skills" and grooming their students for the world of foundation funding and grants writing and less specific classes in artistic development.

Over the last decades there have been those places where talent gathers like the Playwright's Horizons in New York, the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in the rockies, even those incubators of talent and ideas like Second City first in Chicago and then later in Toronto that have become a focal point for the emergence of new talent.

The best place to synthesis those skills is in a space where other artists of equal talent come together to share. Its called workshop. Workshop, for lack of better analogy, is the place after college and during everyday life to further incubate talent. It is a place where creative artists and performers possessing all different types of skills, varying aesthetic perspectives and high levels of passion come together to lend their skills and share a vision.

More important to the process of workshop collaboration is the experience of having to work with other talents and at reconciling differences in points of view. All too often, creative people get bound in and ego driven tunnel of self-obsession and stop listening, stop being open to new ideas and this leads to stagnation. It is not hard to see this even in some of our most talented filmmakers and they need to change gears and innovate.

We need to do our work here but also bring the highest level talent and new faces of cinema to Minnesota to work with us on our scripts, ideas, and vision. Next week, at the Guthrie Theater you will have an opportunity to see great local actors, new fresh faces in the national cinema and Minnesota producers, directors and script read in the Dowling Studio. If you are serious about film and storytelling in this medium you will participate.

"Discussing the script" above photo by Jon Wiley

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days

2008-02-11T10:24:00.000-08:00

4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile by Cristian Mungiu

When Walker Art Center film curator Sheryl Mousley talks about Cristian Mungiu's astonishing film, she describes a generation of Romanian filmmakers, born in the late 60s and early 70s who had a very particular experience growing up under Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. To a first generation to come-of-age at the time of the dictators demise and have began to embrace new freedoms while still cautiously aware of the tenuous nature of being a filmmaker in a country devastated by brutal dictatorship.

Another brilliant Romanian director from this new generation of filmmakers was Cristian Nemescu who made the 2007 Cannes Un Certain Regard award winning California Dreamin' (Endless). Nemescu died tragically when his car was struck by a speeding Landrover in Bucharest that had run a red light, cutting short a career that would certainly have made a huge contribution to cinema.

While there is something truly refreshing in seeing this new generation of Romanian filmmakers, there is also a retro quality to their films. Mungiu said it himself that because he was limited in the kinds of films he could see, his influences in cinema came from a period before our present day movies, pre-millennium cinematic languages and tradition of cinema verite as well as the French New Wave.

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days all takes place inside one 24 hour period and the camera follows closely our lead character Otilia played pitch perfect by an incredible Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca who now lives in London. Mungiu's choice to follow Otilia, as opposed to the more obvious, Gabriela whose plight has dramatic arc of the story is brilliant.

Otilia sets off out in the morning on the clandestine mission to help her student roomate Gabita as she is affectionately called, obtain an illegal abortion. There are many scenes in this film where the camera literally follows, almost in real time, Otilia's march through the minefield she is trying to navigate. The filmmakers are careful not to take sides, instead to tell the story without moral or political proselytizing.

Probably the most upsetting but rich aspect of the story is that Otilia puts it all on the line for Gabita. She holds back absolutely nothing in her aid to her friend. There is something deeply abiding in Otilia's commitment to Gabita and yet this duty and protection is not reciprocated and, in fact, abrogated in return.

I have named this film one of the best films of 2007 and far and away better than JUNO or most the the heralded award winning films of the year. As we left the cinema, however, as brilliant as this film is, it cannot and will not fair well with the Academy Awards, Golden Globes or even BAFTA awards. 4 / 3 / 2 is far too stark, too real, too intelligent, and too bracing to ever fall into the commercial morass these awards bring out.

But that's okay, we can live with the knowledge that the Oscar and Globes and all the rest are not the judges of the realm or the indicator of greatness.

Diablo Redux on Letterman

2008-01-28T08:14:00.000-08:00

Diablo Cody returns to Late Night to talk with Dave Letterman about being an Oscar nominee, what success has done to her, and the Starbucks at Target in Robbinsdale as inspiration for writing her screenplay JUNO.

The now famous, Diablo Cody developed many of her professional skills and interpersonal negotiations from being a stripper. I can say, even before she wrote JUNO she was plying her ability to manipulate people attentions for her to the maximum effect. She will admit to this fully.

At the magazine I work for we had an incident where we sent a photographer out to shoot a photo of her during the time of her “Candy Girl” book release. She was working at City Pages and had a desk there, so she wore fishnets and stripper lingerie and stuck a provocative pose – camera down low, one leg up, bottie hitched high. A lot to see...

Before our photographer left, she begged, pleaded and promised, in order to get him to give her copies of the photos “just for her personal use.” Within hours those digital photos were up on her blog site and she was spreading vicious gossip about our magazines art director -- most of it invented with a National Inquirer like tone.

The hot pose story spread like wildfire with both the StarTribune (gossip clumnist CJ) and The Rake magazine doing stories about the story. That’s one of Diablo’s biggest talents – she’s a self-marketing team onto herself and could teach a few of the handlers in LA some tricks. At that time, I wrote an quick message to Diablo telling her the trouble she caused the photographer because it violated our contract with him when he gave her a copy and then that she used it was yet another instance. She immediately removed the photos from her web site and apologized for her indiscretion in the matter, insisting, “I am a professional.”

By this time, however, Cody’s purpose had been achieved to double and triple her exposure and get everybody talking even if it involved some double-crossing to get there. I think she is very smart.

There is bound to be a lot of resentment and envy from fellow scribes for Cody’s actions and her stellar rise. Screenwriters’ never get the attention she has been able to garner and, likewise, screenwriters are not the most generous of folks when it comes to ego. Mind you, we do often get shafted and treated poorly by directors, producers and the industry in general. I am in sympathy. Especially in these times of the strike, when a great big shaft is being perpetuated against us.

I’d say there is a dimension to “Diablo Cody phenomena” that transcends her as an individual. Cody’s is the American rags-to-riches story so many in Hollywood like to glorify. Sure, here in Minnesota we have fairytale fantasies but perhaps it is the weather that prevents us for going about thinking we can act them out and live them. LA and California has no such pragmatic restraint.

More than anything else, the Diablo Cody fee-nom is related to the place Hollywood is in today. There is a perception that due to the internet, the business of entertainment and making movies is slipping away form the studio execs and their old-world models of filmmaking. They are grasping at straws, trying to find the next great, best thing that will walk in their doors. And Diablo being an irreverent, mouthy, self-promoting, PC generation standout is, for the moment, a dream come true.

But, no question, Cody did jump the stack. A lot of writers have been humping the LA treatmill for years and none have come near the stardom, celebracy, and attraction that Diablo has suddenly found herself inside. JUNO, her first screenplay has won her an Oscar nomination and she seems to be leading the polls. Not too many people are going to like she moved to the front of the line. The popularity polls don't vote for Oscars, the screenwriters' and members of the academy do. Her bubble will burst. As much as America likes to create sensational stories of the rise to fame, it just as quickly likes to expose and undermine them.

I don't use any of it against her. Diablo Cody is an entertainer. And so is everybody else working in the industry in Hollywood and New York. I think she has fun with the game and more of us should also. Compared to the droll hatred and self-righteousness of Robert Towne (even if he is a better screenwriter) I'd take Diablo any day over Towne. Cody's rise does not have much to do with great screenwriting but even she cannot live on her personality and instinct for the jugular alone.

Diablo Cody still has to sit down and write an interesting story and good dialogue and she does better at that than most first-timers. She's not a genius but this is not an industry for them. Afterall, look at all the brilliant writers in the 30s and 40s who went to Hollywood and got nowhere. It wasn't that they weren't great, it was just that they were in the wrong town.

Minnesotan Sarah Pillsbury's Film Plays Sundance

2008-01-23T05:25:00.000-08:00

Minnesota producer Sarah Pillsbury's newest film QUID PRO QUO opened at the Sundance Film Festival this week. Based on writer/director Carlos Brooks take on the scarier side of weird, able bodied people with paralysis envy, the film played on Sunday (1/20) in the Library Center Theater.

QUID PRO QUO is produced by Pillsbury and her long-time producing partner Midge Sanford whom together go back to the 1985 Madonna vehicle, Susan Seidelman's DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, Tim Hunter's RIVER'S EDGE the next year and John Sayles' EIGHT MEN OUT in 1988.

After attending Yale University, Pillsbury went to Los Angeles and continued her studies at UCLA. The first film she worked on was David Lynch's EASERHEAD in 1977. Pillsbury then co-produced BOARD AND CARE for which she won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. Since her first award Pillsbury has gone onto to win a Independent Spirt Award and Emmy.

Carlos Brooks grew up in Bellevue, Washington and studied film at USC and credits his admiration for music and particularly for singer/songwriters for his decision to become a film writer/director. In an interview with Indiewire, Brooks explained, "If you are constrained by any kind of budget (even if it's only the 20 minutes before the security guard arrives), directing a film is like writing while running for your life from a bear. Even the low points have a certain urgency. After doing it once, I knew I never wanted to be anything but a director. So I spent a lot of time studying and practicing how to write a good screenplay."

Billed as dramatic thriller, QUID PRO QUO is about a semi-paralyzed NPR-styled radio reporter (Nick Stahl) who, while investigating a story on paralysis discovers the strange subculture of paralysis inducing denizens. In the process of uncovering the story meets Fiona (Vera Famiga) who may have a connection to the accident that caused his injury and killed his parents. Stahl will also be seen on screen this week in Park City in Zac Standford's scripted film SLEEPWALKING that also stars Charlize Theron, Dennis Hopper, and Woody Harrelson.

In an interview with The Reeler, Brooks said about his script, "I've always wanted to write a detective story, and what this really is is a detective story in disguise. It's an investigative journalistic piece, and the best detective stories are the ones where the detective ultimately realizes he's been investigating himself."

QUID PRO QUO will be released by Magnolia Films Releasing.

Oscar Noms This Morning

2008-01-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

Best Motion Picture
“Atonement” (Focus Features)
A Working Title Production
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Paul Webster, Producers
“Juno” (Fox Searchlight)
A Dancing Elk Pictures, LLC Production
Lianne Halfon, Mason Novick and Russell Smith, Producers
“Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)
A Clayton Productions, LLC Production
Sydney Pollack, Jennifer Fox and Kerry Orent, Producers
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
A Scott Rudin/Mike Zoss Production
Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, Producers
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
A JoAnne Sellar/Ghoulardi Film Company Production
JoAnne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Lupi, Producers

Achievement in Directing
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (Miramax/Pathé Renn) Julian Schnabel
“Juno” (Fox Searchlight) Jason Reitman
“Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.) Tony Gilroy
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage) Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax) Paul Thomas Anderson

Adapted Screenplay
“Atonement” (Focus Features)
Screenplay by Christopher Hampton
“Away from Her” (Lionsgate)
Written by Sarah Polley
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (Miramax/Pathé Renn)
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
Written for the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson

Original Screenplay
“Juno” (Fox Searchlight)
Written by Diablo Cody
“Lars and the Real Girl” (MGM)
Written by Nancy Oliver
“Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)
Written by Tony Gilroy
“Ratatouille” (Walt Disney)
Screenplay by Brad Bird
Story by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird
“The Savages” (Fox Searchlight)
Written by Tamara Jenkins

Best Documentary Feature
“No End in Sight” (Magnolia Pictures)
A Representational Pictures Production
Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience” (The Documentary Group)
A Documentary Group Production
Richard E. Robbins
“Sicko” (Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company)
A Dog Eat Dog Films Production
Michael Moore and Meghan O’Hara
“Taxi to the Dark Side” (THINKFilm)
An X-Ray Production
Alex Gibney and Eva Orner
“War/Dance” (THINKFilm)
A Shine Global and Fine Films Production
Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine

Best Foreign Language Film
“Beaufort” A Metro Communications, Movie Plus Production
Israel
“The Counterfeiters” An Aichholzer Filmproduktion, Magnolia Filmproduktion Production
Austria
“Katyń” An Akson Studio Production
Poland
“Mongol” A Eurasia Film Production
Kazakhstan
“12” A Three T Production
Russia

Achievement in Cinematography
“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (Warner Bros.) Roger Deakins
“Atonement” (Focus Features) Seamus McGarvey
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (Miramax/Pathé Renn) Janusz Kaminski
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage) Roger Deakins
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax) Robert Elswit

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
George Clooney in “Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)
Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
Johnny Depp in “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
(DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount)
Tommy Lee Jones in “In the Valley of Elah” (Warner Independent)
Viggo Mortensen in “Eastern Promises” (Focus Features)

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Casey Affleck in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (Warner Bros.)
Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Charlie Wilson’s War” (Universal)
Hal Holbrook in “Into the Wild” (Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment)
Tom Wilkinson in “Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Cate Blanchett in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (Universal)
Julie Christie in “Away from Her” (Lionsgate)
Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose” (Picturehouse)
Laura Linney in “The Savages” (Fox Searchlight)
Ellen Page in “Juno” (Fox Searchlight)

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Cate Blanchett in “I’m Not There” (The Weinstein Company)
Ruby Dee in “American Gangster” (Universal)
Saoirse Ronan in “Atonement” (Focus Features)
Amy Ryan in “Gone Baby Gone” (Miramax)
Tilda Swinton in “Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)

Best Animated Feature Film
“Persepolis” (Sony Pictures Classics) Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
“Ratatouille” (Walt Disney) Brad Bird
“Surf's Up” (Sony Pictures Releasing) Ash Brannon and Chris Buck

Achievement in Art Direction
“American Gangster” (Universal)
Art Direction: Arthur Max
Set Decoration: Beth A. Rubino
“Atonement” (Focus Features)
Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood
Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
“The Golden Compass” (New Line in association with Ingenious Film Partners)
Art Direction: Dennis Gassner
Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
“Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount)
Art Direction: Dante Ferretti
Set Decoration: Francesca Lo Schiavo
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
Art Direction: Jack Fisk
Set Decoration: Jim Erickson

Achievement in Costume Design
“Across the Universe” (Sony Pictures Releasing) Albert Wolsky
“Atonement” (Focus Features) Jacqueline Durran
“Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (Universal) Alexandra Byrne
“La Vie en Rose” (Picturehouse) Marit Allen
“Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (DreamWorks and Warner Bros.,
Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount) Colleen Atwood

Best Documentary Short Subject
“Freeheld”
A Lieutenant Films Production
Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth
“La Corona (The Crown)”
A Runaway Films and Vega Films Production
Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega
“Salim Baba”
A Ropa Vieja Films and Paradox Smoke Production
Tim Sternberg and Francisco Bello
“Sari’s Mother” (Cinema Guild)
A Daylight Factory Production
James Longley

Achievement in Film Editing
“The Bourne Ultimatum” (Universal) Christopher Rouse
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (Miramax/Pathé Renn) Juliette Welfling
“Into the Wild” (Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment) Jay Cassidy
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage) Roderick Jaynes
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax) Dylan Tichenor

Achievement in Makeup
“La Vie en Rose” (Picturehouse) Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald
“Norbit” (DreamWorks, Distributed by Paramount) Rick Baker and Kazuhiro Tsuji
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” (Walt Disney) Ve Neill and Martin Samuel

Best Original Score
“Atonement” (Focus Features) Dario Marianelli
“The Kite Runner” (DreamWorks, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Participant Productions,
Distributed by Paramount Classics) Alberto Iglesias
“Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.) James Newton Howard
“Ratatouille” (Walt Disney) Michael Giacchino
“3:10 to Yuma” (Lionsgate) Marco Beltrami

Best Original Song
“Falling Slowly” from “Once”
(Fox Searchlight)
Music and Lyric by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
“Happy Working Song” from “Enchanted”
(Walt Disney)
Music by Alan Menken
Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
“Raise It Up” from “August Rush”
(Warner Bros.)
Nominees to be determined
“So Close” from “Enchanted”
(Walt Disney)
Music by Alan Menken
Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
“That’s How You Know” from “Enchanted”
(Walt Disney)
Music by Alan Menken
Lyric by Stephen Schwartz

Best Animated Short Film
“I Met the Walrus”
A Kids & Explosions Production
Josh Raskin
“Madame Tutli-Putli” (National Film Board of Canada)
A National Film Board of Canada Production
Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski
“Même Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)” (Premium Films)
A BUF Compagnie Production
Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse
“My Love (Moya Lyubov)” (Channel One Russia)
A Dago-Film Studio, Channel One Russia and Dentsu Tec Production
Alexander Petrov
“Peter & the Wolf” (BreakThru Films)
A BreakThru Films/Se-ma-for Studios Production
Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman

Best Live Action Short Film
“At Night”
A Zentropa Entertainments 10 Production
Christian E. Christiansen and Louise Vesth
“Il Supplente (The Substitute)” (Sky Cinema Italia)
A Frame by Frame Italia Production
Andrea Jublin
“Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)” (Premium Films)
A Karé Production
Philippe Pollet-Villard
“Tanghi Argentini” (Premium Films)
An Another Dimension of an Idea Production
Guido Thys and Anja Daelemans
“The Tonto Woman”
A Knucklehead, Little Mo and Rose Hackney Barber Production
Daniel Barber and Matthew Brown

Achievement in Sound Editing
“The Bourne Ultimatum” (Universal)
Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
Skip Lievsay
“Ratatouille” (Walt Disney)
Randy Thom and Michael Silvers
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
Matthew Wood
“Transformers” (DreamWorks and Paramount in association with Hasbro)
Ethan Van der Ryn and Mike Hopkins

Achievement in Sound Mixing
“The Bourne Ultimatum” (Universal)
Scott Millan, David Parker and Kirk Francis
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland
“Ratatouille” (Walt Disney)
Randy Thom, Michael Semanick and Doc Kane
“3:10 to Yuma” (Lionsgate)
Paul Massey, David Giammarco and Jim Stuebe
“Transformers” (DreamWorks and Paramount in association with Hasbro)
Kevin O’Connell, Greg P. Russell and Peter J. Devlin

Achievement in Visual Effects
“The Golden Compass” (New Line in association with Ingenious Film Partners)
Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” (Walt Disney)
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and John Frazier
“Transformers” (DreamWorks and Paramount in association with Hasbro)
Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier

Has Sundance Lost It Soul?

2008-01-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

This is a question that is annually asked and only answered in service to the interests of the current wave of festival participants.

I must say, this year when I received my Sundance gift catalogue, nearly a hundred pages of clothing, jewlery and gift items you can purchase with a "branded" Sundance identity I though to myself, "Okay, this is the end. I give Sundance three years"

The thing about the Sundance catelogue is that it very accurately reflects the "old soul" of Sundance. The products, especailly the clothing and jewelry, are classic vintage Sundance cowboy western hippie wear.

In the last few years it has become fashionable to wax nostalgic for the old Sundance, "When John Sayles and John Cassavetes films were shown there." In truth there is no idyllic past for Sundance. Even in the early days when Redford tried to impose a somber, politically correct and boorish aesthetic it failed miserably. There were all kinds of factions trying to define "what type of film" should be shown in Park City. This lead to stratification, infighting, and charges of control by a tight knit group of insiders operating in their narrow self-interests.

There was a saying that in order to get into the labs or have an indie film considered for the festival, the characters had to be wearing bib-overalls, chew straw out of the side of their mouth, be downtrodden and oppressed by the man and more simply reflect Redford's passion for the western rural vision he looked at through rose colored glasses.

If those waxing nostalgic for that time and want that aesthetic, it is a good thing the festival spun out of control.

What we've seen evolve since the early days of 1978 happily widely diverge from these narrow restrictions and show more different types of films than Sayles and Cassavetes. What Sundance has showcased in those years is hugely desperate movements from gay militant cinema by Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, and Gregg Araki to pulp film movement of Quentin Tarantino to "Half Nelson", and Craig Brewers' "Hustle & Flow." Despite the stereotype by some who've never been to Sundance that it is made up of only "coming-of-age" movies, its dramatic features and documentaries each year are widely diverse even if the buyers don't want to buy them.

What is probably more disappointing than the few than a dozen films that get theatrical distribution with major releasing companies is that out of Sundance and all the other film festivals showing new indie films, a distribution channel hasn't opened up for the 250+ films at Sundance that could be marketed in a variety of fashions to niche audiences. People like to herald Slamdance for being alternative when there are more alternative films inside Sundance than Slamdance could ever hope to unreel.

Let's hope Sundance has lost the soul of the late 1970s when the narrow, boring and misguided mission was still in its infancy. The best thing Sundance can hope for is to be a reflection of the unproven talent of new and emerging filmmakers around the country and the world. Each year Sundance should begin with a open slate and try to capture the mood of the indie filmmakers in the time. Frankly, that's the only choice it has because seeking a nostalgic past can never inspire a film about filmmaking today.

Redford's hippie cowboy western aesthetic is dead. RIP!

BEST of 2007: A MINNESOTA YEAR

2008-01-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

One cannot help but note how quickly people have backed away from Minnesota connected films simply because of their wide-spread success. An age-old inferiority complex here in the midwest causes us to winch when any Minnesotan achieves a level of success. The locals want to accuse them of "selling out," "being aesthetically compromised" or the makers "forgetting where they came from" or worse accusations -- all based on envy and petty jealousy.

Yet the success of these films: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, JUNO and INTO THE WILD can have a huge impact on Minnesota filmmaking for years to come. As a result two follow-on films by the Coens and Cody are already slated to be filmed in Minnesota in 2008 with another by Garrison Keillor that should reach wider theatrical audiences - the state is experiencing a new level of national productions. Unlike the past with GRUMPY OLD MEN or MIGHTY DUCKS, new productions coming here have Minnesota talent, stories, and creators connected to them. And, let the bashful be damned, we should not be ashamed if these films can make money at the box office. Worshipping failure is no virtue.

After reading the City Pages critics choices of best films in 2007, I almost decided not to make a list because of their pretentious posturing and overt attempt to appear B-list smart when they are just acting morons. Their top films list makes one wonder why they write lists at all. CP film writing has dropped to the depths of bad this year and along with massively decreased coverage in the daily rags this signals a very bad note for the future of Minnesota film writing and criticism.

The top films in all the award races and international film festivals this year have the mark of Minnesota on them and we ought to celebrate even if it is in our character as Minnesotans to stare down at our shoes, not think very highly of ourselves and critique our films by mumbling, "It could be worse."

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Coen Brothers just get better and better at mastering the filmmaking form while retaining their distinctive humor, perspective and glibness of vision and they keep coming back to what is true to them as evidence the film they will be shooting in Minnesota next year based on their father;

INTO THE WILD, Sean Penn and Minnesota producer Bill Pohlad hit the mark with this adaptation of the best selling book by the same name. Although people wanted the film to vilify the parents in backstory and make grand statements about the past, Penn resists and let the story remained particular to playing out the drama;

JUNO all the critics want to resist the appeal of her film because of the hype surrounding first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody but put it all aside and your posturing too, this is a really decent film in a year when a fresh new look for indie drama is needed -- a hundred times better than previously hyped small indies Little Miss Sunshine, Sideways and Napoleon Dynamite all vastly inferior films

LAKE OF FIRE, a must see documentary on the culture war surrounding the abortion rage that has devolved into senseless irrational infidel accusations and bloody murder all around - the actions of religious extremist sounds like terrorism and it is;

DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, 80s abstract artist and New York East Village inhabitant Julian Schnabel began his filmmaking career auspiciously with a bio-pic based on the life and death of graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat has hit his stride with this brilliant adaptation;

12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST, a hilarious satire from Romanian helmer Corneliu Perumboiu; who thought two Romanian films would be up the same year on a "best of" list;

AWAY FROM HER, in which Julie Christie breaks hearts as a woman afflicted with Alzheimer's. An auspicious feature-directing debut by sweet and talented Canadian actress Sarah Polley.

SIMPLE THINGS, a Russian film by first time director Alexei Popogrebsky about a aging doctor and a former Soviet-era film star who are struggling to survive in Putin-era Russia, filmed in a Mike Leigh-style realism;

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, Cristian Mungiu's girtty story set in the time of Ceausescu's dictatorship marks an exciting new beginning for Romanian cinema and tells the story of a young couple who set out to obtain an illegal abortion in the dreary and uptight 80s;

THIS IS ENGLAND, a British film by Shane Meadows depicts the coming of age of a Bit skinhead with only a slight resemblance to American History X, it was hailed in England as best indie in 2006 but did not reach the U.S. until 2007;

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, Julie Taymors treatment is how musicals should be made and although I'M NOT THERE Todd Hayne's homage to the multi-personalities of Bob Dylan is worthy of note for reinventing the bio-pic form, the flawed guey Americana segments with Richard Gere position at the dramatic apex of the film blew it out of contention.

My 2007 list should be qualified with the proviso that I focus primary in up and coming indie filmmakers who are making dramas that tell stories and while I enjoy abstract, avant-garde, shorts and animation, they are not on this list saved for another category of filmmaking.

Reading New Years resolutions, one I appreciated a lot was Ty Burr writing in The Boston Globe, "Look for interesting filmmaking in places it's not supposed to be. On the Internet, handhelds, cellphones, the sides of buildings. Maybe even in movie theaters."

ALSO WORTHY OF MENTION: Send a Bullet, Persepolis, No End in Sight, Casa do Alice, The Kite Runner, Once, Black Book, There Will Be Blood, Atonement, My Kid Could Paint That, and Zodiac.

Tribute to Women in Film

2007-12-27T09:57:00.001-08:00

Back at the beginning of October Warner Bros. head of production, Jeff Robinov, publicly spued “We are no longer going to make films with women in the lead.” Robinov’s words follow two WB female-led movies under performing at the box office, The Brave One with Jodie Foster and The Invasion with Nicole Kidman.

To make up for this one of year 2007 most idiot statement by a studio executive I post this tribute to women leads in film by Phillip Scott Johnson and the women:

Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Ruth Chatterton, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Vivien Leigh, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young, Deborah Kerr, Judy Garland, Anne Baxter, Lauren Bacall, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Audrey Hepburn, Dorothy Dandridge, Shirley MacLaine, Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, Janet Leigh, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Ann Margret, Julie Andrews, Raquel Welch, Tuesday Weld, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Catherine Deneuve, Jacqueline Bisset, Candice Bergen, Isabella Rossellini, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sigourney Weaver, Kathleen Turner, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster, Angela Bassett, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Salma Hayek, Sandra Bullock, Julianne Moore, Diane Lane, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon, Halle Berry

Music: Bach's Prelude from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G

Jonny Be Gone

2007-12-19T18:38:00.000-08:00

How is it that we can be 6,000 miles away in Brazil and still hear the news that Diablo dumped Jonny? Bush could have bombed Iran and we would not have heard about it BUT Diablo dumps Jonny and has tatoo banner redesigned into Oscar roses... now that's world-wide news.

Jonny is the man Cody pledged to Steve Marsh in her Mpls/St. Paul magazine interview a few short months ago she'd never, ever get rid of due to her meteoric rise (watch out for the slippery slope) in Hollywood.

You had to see that coming even from 6 thousand miles away.

As they say in L.A., "Never say never." And tatoos can be fixed.

JUNO OPENS IN SELECT CITIES

2007-12-03T07:19:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back Screenlabs blog got a special exclusive invitation to see JUNO, well, us and 400 kids from area high schools. We walked to the Lagoon Theater in Uptown, looked for the Fox Seachlight hired promo ace and BOOM we were though the turnstiles. And while the wide release date looks to be pushed to Christmas week, this long awaited and much ballyhooed Oscar hopeful is now playing in a few selected cities.

Believe me, there was a lot of chewing gum and text messaging going on around us once we got in our seats. The target audience for this film, I observed, has to be 15-year-old teens who gotta have unlimited minutes plan on the 'rents credit (who has time to worry about how many minutes you've got left?) and sharky grrrls with major attitude. Those TSA-styled movie industry thugs who strip search and confiscate cell phones outside movie screenings scare me but these kids blow them off, stuff their hand-devices in their undies without stop while keying their current rely.

A semi-depressed mid-teen girl dressed in grungy-T and tattered tights a few seats to my left is, like, breaking up with her boyfriend and trying to get in her last words in before the trailers start.

Behind me is a group of three boys, obviously geeky, smart, and high tech who all seem to be struggling with graduating from college. Not that they can't afford to graduate or that they aren't "college material" but they are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs types who don't see the point of wasting time in college so they went out and got jobs at Radio Shack

But we got free Fighting Elk T-shirts!

Where do you buy a mailing list for this target audience? Are these kids who all bought pink and purple Hello Kitty cell phones at the kiosk at Ridgedale Mall? If this room full of teenage lust is the target list, than we're sitting in front of the right movie to rock their world.

Ellen Page is perfect. She deserves an Oscar nom for this acting performance.

JUNO is a coming-of-age teenage, not too original, movie that feels a bit like a TV episode of THAT '70s SHOW. Cody's whipslash dialogue is sizzling and new to commercial films and would never pass censors on TV. Already, all over the net you'll find naysaysers who dispute JUNO's originality, its new vision, and the indie sophistication it tries to pass off in the marketplace.

Cody's JUNO is not Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER but there certainly is more humor and subtle critique in JUNO than LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, AMERICAN PIE, or PORKY'S. Let's be honest, comparing JUNO to the 2004 NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, as I think Jason Reitman started to realize after final edit, is an bitch-slap.

Juno McGriff, who Page plays, is a street-smart girl who knows she's still a kid and needs to remind the adults around her of her teen irresponsible nature and that THEY are suppose to be the ADULTS. The dysfunctional world spinning around her is not teens out of control but instead fueled by feckless and fickle adults. Juno's musings on the nature of her predicament, her quick sass back toward friends and parents, and especially her tender yet blunt comments to the clueless boyfriend are well-worth the ticket price.

The reason Hollywood is gah-gah over Diablo Cody is because, first, they know how to and love exploiting the teenage audience especially when they have 2 weeks off school between Christmas and New Year. The studio execs realize they are a bunch of old men who don't speak the sexy double talk of cyber language in chat rooms, blogs, and the snap back of shopping malls cruisers. Cody does. They fear loosing this cash-cow audience segment to the internet.

Second, Diablo Cody is her own marketing machine. Well before entering the self-marketing center of the universe, Cody was molding every PR opportunity in her favor and blogging it - whether it be her naughtly photo in Mpls/St. Paul magazine episode that she deftly manipulated to get into CJ's column to seducing David Letterman with raunchy couch-talk - she's got that big Hollywood gossip entertainment instinct.

And while the smart-set always tries to criticize new films by the tyranny of "it's not original" it really doesn't matter because the more films you see, the greater number of books you read, theater scripts, film scripts, poems, short stories you will begin to discover nothing is original. The charge "it is not original" can be used against piece of art or literature without comeback. But JUNO is fresh for the fact that the dialog will amuse, the perspective of the lead character is uplifitingly real and invigoratingly present day.

I liked JUNO a lot and a huge number people are going to love it to death - most definitely the teenage girl who catches you out of the corner of her eye looking her Apple iPhone touch screen and snaps, "What are you LOOKING at scumbag?"

..........
If you act really fast, you might be able to get tickets to the Walker Art Center's FIRST LOOKS series screening of JUNO with Diablo Cody introducing her film and taking questions. General public tickets go on sale December 4th and it will likely sell out fast. Call: 612.375.7600 or walkerart.org/tickets/

JUST ANOTHER KISSY-E REPORTER

2007-11-28T07:27:00.000-08:00

David Carr has relaunched his seasonal Carpetbagger column in the NY Times as we head into the Oscar season. The concept behind Carr adopting the self-described kissy-entertainment reporter identity (the man standing on the red carpet) is for the ex-Minnesota Twin Cities Reader reporter to blog about Oscar celebs leading into the statute horse race.

In one of his first blogs, Carr reveals he is writing a story of the upcoming Sunday NYT (December 2, 2007) on Minnesota-girl-gone-Hollywood Diablo Cody while speaking to JUNO film lead and Halifax native Ellen Page.

Carr also confesses he is ashamed of his kissy-ass reporting for the Bagger blog. Humm... I wonder who's holding the gun to his head?

BARBET SCHROEDER'S TERROR'S ADVOCATE

2007-11-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

TERROR'S ADVOCATE opened this weekend at my neighborhood movie house, the Oak Street cinema. A small movie on a complex subject, it is the work of accomplished French director, Barbet Schroeder who never stops to wallow in fame or fortune and continues to explore controversial topics and the people at the center of international uproar.

In today's political world simply being French and born in Iran could be inflammatory enough to get all the smashmouth screaming radio-jocks and FOX News anti-intellectual blowhards spitting and angry invective. Add to that the subject of this film, Jacques Verges, the lawyer who defended Pol Pot, Carlos the Jackal, Slobodna Milosovic and Klaus Barbie and the wizards of emotional spin on the right-wing are likely to go all-Taliban on us.

Even decent Americans who believe in the fundamental America right in the great writ of habeas corpus might wonder why Verges is attracted to the most evil men in the world and how he can defend their rationalizations let alone be in their close company.

Barbet Schroeder is a French director born in 1941 in Tehran to a German-born physician mother and a Swiss geologist father who came into filmmaking during the French New Wave of the early 1960s. He grew up much of his youth in Central Africa and Columbia before settling in Paris. Schroeder is also fascinated by why and how people become so contestable.

Barbet's first film as a director was MORE (1969) on the subject of heroin addiction but he later directed a number of large budget American films BARFLY (1987) with Mickey Rourke based on the alcoholic poet Charles Bukowski (the first of many Bukowski bio-films); KISS OF DEATH (1995) another thriller with Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson; SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992) a New York thriller starring Bridget Fonda; and notably REVERSAL OF FORTUNE (1990) that won an Oscar for Jeremy Irons for his depiction of the films subject Claus Von Bulow.

Barbet is well known for his 25 year engagement with French New Wave star and working theater actress Bulle Ogier (mother of the late film star Pascale Ogier) until he finally married Bulle in 2000. I first met Barbet in Los Angeles in 1984 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel while he was preparing for the Bukowski film. Despite his cross over success from the French producer of Eric Rohmer's films to director of big-budget American films, Barbet remained interested in making small films that challenge educated art-house audiences and clearly L'Avocat de la Terreur (TERROR'S ADVOCATE) is one of his films that asks us to look at the world with all its complexity instead of simple black and white dichotomies.

Schroeder is a filmmaker who keeps us actively thinking about the moral and ethical dimensions of our world. He could be making millions of dollars shooting action thrillers but there is more to life than fame and fortune.

DAILY SHOW LIVE

2007-11-19T07:12:00.000-08:00

Found this story in the Huffington Post from the picket line:

OKAY, I know you are screaming that we are not offering balanced and objective journalism (like you are used to with FOX News?), so in the interest of providing the other side in this debate, here is Producer Roger A. Trivanti:**

Thanks Mike Maupin for refusing to write anything in the coming days as we near Thanksgiving, but remember, you cannot use the WGA Strike as an excuse for being lazy and not blogging or making deadlines. You must be covered by the WGA contract pending and not just writers' block. You're only striking yourself and we see through the guise. Being lazy is not the same as being on strike. Writers block cannot be blamed on the strike!

** If you are having trouble viewing the clip of Roger A. Trivanti, remember, there is a strike on right now.

THANK YOU JOHN SOBERG

2007-11-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

A Letter from Dave Halls

Our friend John Soberg passed away this week. He was diagnosed with cancer of the bile duct in May. John was a member of the Minnesota Film and TV Board of Directors, as well as an executive committee member of Shoot In Minnesota. Many of you did not know John, but you should know the impact he had on our production community.

John almost literally "fell out of the sky" for us. Three years ago I received a phone call from him, and he introduced himself by saying that he briefly was a stand-in for Garrison Keilor on "A Prairie Home Companion.” He said he was fascinated by our industry, and was amazed to discover that Minnesota was rich in technical and production talent. He had heard that locally our industry was struggling, and was aware that there was an effort underway to lobby the state legislature for production incentives. John told me that he was fortunate to have been successful in his business ventures and was looking for new challenges in his life. He mentioned that he had experience as a volunteer lobbyist in Washington, D.C. as well as being politically connected here in Minnesota. He asked if he could be of help to Shoot In Minnesota.

John was extremely intelligent and articulate. He was a big man both physically and spiritually. At 45 years of age, he died too young, yet he was a wise old soul. He was one of those people that seemed to always say and do the right thing. He also did what he said he was going to do. John often said to me, "the only thing we are fighting against is fear, doubt and uncertainty". I know that John lived by those words until his last breath.

John's talents and abilities were quickly noticed by Lucinda Winter, Executive Director of the Minnesota Film and TV Board. John became a member of the Film and TV Board of Directors in 2006 and served as Chair of the Snowbate Operations Committee.

Whenever the legislative process became difficult to understand or when there were moments of despair, John was always there with sage advice, a positive attitude and a plan of action.

It was always a bit of a mystery to me why John was compelled to help in the effort to strengthen production incentives in Minnesota. His motivations were not driven by professional or financial gain from the motion picture industry. He told me that he did not quite understand it either, but that he did indeed feel "a calling" to be involved. In an email that John sent out in May, announcing that he had been diagnosed with cancer he said the following, "It has been a great journey. Several lifetimes of experience and adventure have been compacted into these years. I have found that service to others is the most fulfilling.”

John was indeed a man of service. He gave his time unselfishly to our cause. John took the time out of his busy days, managing his businesses, and raising his four boys, to give advice, encouragement and to take action. John represented our community well at the State Capitol as he met with legislators and Governor Pawlenty. John attended a meeting at the Capitol in September with representatives of the Governor’s office. John was visibly very ill and under quite a bit of discomfort at that time, but remained his old self - articulate and persuasive.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to John's wife Tarryn and their four boys, Zach, Alex, Daniel and Benjamin.

John's absence in our community will surely be felt. Yet, we are stronger, better people for knowing him. In honor of his memory we move on, always fighting fear, doubt and uncertainty.

God Bless John Soberg

Dave Halls
Executive Director/Shoot In Minnesota

SNL, 30 ROCK LIVE STRIKE PERFORMANCES

2007-11-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

Live from New York its Saturday night...!

One thing I've thought long and hard about with labor strikes is why the producers, instead of just being role players in the production process, somehow own the labor and creativity of writers and actors. Why do the creative players so easily relinquish the product of their labor? Being on strike doesn't mean you have to live under the steal heal of the man! Take control of your labor and creativity.

According to items on Broadcast & Cable web site and TV Squad the crews and cast of SNL and 30 Rock plan live performances at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and, of course, the tickets for Saturday and Sunday were instantly sold out.

NEXT STEP: Tape them, stream and post the live performances on the internet. And it would be great to see episodes of The Daily Show and Colbert Report performed as live stage shows as well. The WGA could use the vast network on the web to schedule meetups along with live performances in cities around the U.S. for a variety of the shows no longer in production. And the proceeds from the performances as well as internet ad sales could go to benefit the WGA strike fund.

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE AMPTP

2007-11-16T05:32:00.000-08:00

Finally, the AMPTP's has a spokesman who is clearly articulating their concerns in a personal and passionate response to the WGA. It is important that you listen to this man's plea for understanding. There is more than one side to this strike... Please listen!

BEST OF THE WORSE :: TROLL 2

2007-11-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been out on a first or blind date and exploring the world of shared interests with the person you've just met and THEN the shoe drops. You find out the other is a Darkon superhereo RPG or s/he starts talking very seriously about how shape-shifting lizard-people are running the world or Paul Is Dead! and was replaced by a look-a-like Billy Shepherd back in December 1966. Or she loved the movie TROLL 2. WTF?

Well, I have had all these dates during the first 40-some years of my life (before I met the most incredible woman in the world) it seemed these types of dates were the only ones I'd ever get ONCE.

TROLL 2 has won the distinction as the worst movie EVER! Bad writing, bad acting, bad direction, filmed in Utah... a movie that has it all. Although I have a hard time telling good horror films from bad, my standard is if it reminds me of all the bad dates I've ever suffered then it's a nighmare.

Then in 2007, or so the story continues, TROLL 2 became a cult classic, at least in Austin, Texas and Salt Lake where audiences line up around the block to see midnight matinees of the movie and shout lines from the amateur actors mouth before they say them just like ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. When actors, producers and the director appear at the screenings, frantic fans earnestly tell them how much they loved their performance and how "honest" and authentic their emotions are in the film. Astonished, all those actors can respond with is "Really?"

The lead actor Michael Stephenson, who played the 11-year-old lead Joshua Waits in TROLL 2 and regretted it for the next ten years of his life, has made The Best Worst Movie, a documentary marking the evolution from its making in the ealty 90s to its being declared the best worst movie to its comeback as a cult hit in 2006.

Stranger things have happened. You know NASA faked the moon landings.

Trust me: It's best not to go looking for old flames.

HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG DELETED SCENES

2007-11-12T15:06:00.000-08:00

As they say, films are written at least twice -- once by the screenwriter during pre-production and then again by the editor when cutting the film. A story can change radically through this process and nuance can be added or lost.

In this YouTube clip are a few scenes cut and deleted from the 2003 film HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG exquisitely adapted by Shawn Lawrence Otto and edited by Lisa Zeno Churgin (DEAD MEN WALKING, GATTACA, CEDAR HOUSE RULES among others) with voice over by director Vadim Perelman.

Often, story or character exposition is left on the cutting floor for the sake of timing and pacing through the dramatic apex of the film or when it seems plotting and repetitive. However, in this set of deleted scenes, probably the most missed scene cut fom the film is between Ron Eldard (playing the deputy sheriff Lester), Ben Kingsley (playing Behrani) and Shohreh Aghdashloo (playing Nadi).

Editing a film is a reductive process, while writing it is a additive and creative building endeavour. A million decisions have to be made and each could have a significant impact on the quality of the finished movie. The debate around these decisions and all the aesthetic considerations are the tools to honing the art and craft of filmmaking.

There are no right and wrong answers, just better ways to reach masterful films - that is what can be so vexing.

INSPIRED TO STRIKE

2007-11-08T09:43:00.000-08:00

United Hollywood has become the homepage/blog of the WGA strike with daily updates on the progress of the industrial action. Striking writers have been encourage to write their thoughts on the strike and offer suggestions on possible resolutions including a modest proposal to Google by writer, director, producer, and WGA member Ed Decter.

WGA TO HOLLYWOOD PRODUCERS: OFFICE CLOSED

2007-11-08T07:06:00.000-08:00

A lay person's explanation (sans lawyers) for the uninitiated about the issues behind the WGA strike from Greg Daniels, Paul Lieberstein, Mike Schur, B.J. Novak, Kelly Kapoor all the writers for the THE OFFICE, a show with 7 million iTunes downloads and no compensation to the writers... Watch, Listen and Decide.

STRIKES, YIKES & COMBAT BOOTS

2007-11-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

Striking under Walter P. Reuther was never this exciting!

Diablo Cody, who Hollywood elsewhere's Jeffrey Welles has taken to calling "the new Tarantino" takes the picket line outside Paramounts Bronson gate entrance after a world-wind tour of Italy and London pimping her film JUNO at world festivals.

Is that Versace couture - sexy, fierce, and chic? Cody is high on everybodies preliminary lists for an original screenplay Oscar. Other Minnesotan's topping the lists are the Coen Brothers for best adapted screenplay and best picture for their NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN opening this weekend in theaters.

Talk around Hollywood is Cody had dinner with auteur director/producer Quentin Tarantino (if you're the new-Tarantino a meet is inorder) and also did phone with legendary rocker Roger Daltrey and posed in front of an Audi, tatoos ablaze in the flash of photographers strobes for the AFI Centerpiece Gala for JUNO -- officially the L.A. opening for her film.

As Jason Reitman blogged, JUNO got to play the Cineramadome, "...one of those milestones every filmmaker wants to hit in their lifetime" said the 30-year-old film director. However, Reitman felt comedy doesn't play as spirited on the crowd in the Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes vast space.

"That high ceiling just sucks the energy out of the room," blogged Reitman about the geodesic that is regarded to have the highest ratio of enclosed volume to weight.

An Edgar Wright Interview with Diablo Cody captures the mood of L.A. striking writers while their conversation naturally drifts toward the life of a stripper. As with the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly demonstrates, the rag to riches tale of stripper to Hollywood A-list writer suggests she is holding onto the tail of the dragon. In that article she explains that she wrote JUNO while sitting in a suburban Minneapolis Target store - a world vastly removed from that of an A-lister in Hollywood.

If Diablo hopes the talk about her adventures as Margaret Meade in the red light district will end with JUNO, just wait until she's up for an Academy Award.

I'M NOT THERE

2007-11-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

Bob Dylan, over the course of decades in the public spotlight is everything from a 60s pop icon to a angry recluse, a poet political sage, cowboy individualist, religious rivivalist, and a traveling troubadour. How do you play all these characters, wear all these hats, manifest all these roles? Better yet, how does a filmmaker portray them?

Todd Haynes has been American indie film's deconstructionist and semiologist and for him the big question is how do you cast Bob Dylan? Haynes' answer: six different actors; one of them a woman (Cate Blanchett), Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, and one a young black actor Marcus Carl Franklin all using alias to evoke the periods in Dylan's life.

In addition to switching and manipulating film stocks, Haynes also jumped between psuedo-documentary (i.e., THIS IS SPINAL TAP) and dramatization while turning bio-pic genre on its ear. Not only does genre shifting present the director with unique challenges and the audience with a suspension of disbelief, it also provides an opportunity to describe Dylan in a fashion Dylan always cast himself -- a private man who's public faces were masked fictional personifications as whole and mulitfaceted as the songs the Hibbing native wrote and sang.

Two years ago I spoke with Todd Haynes when he was in Minneapolis at a reception for the 75th anniversary of the Jerome Foundation. I always felt Dylan in London, who leaped to the height of his fame in 1965 with his World Tour, was the most other-worldly of all the Dylan personifications over time. This was not the Dylan of Hibbing, Minnesota. This was a highly groomed, androgynous and pixy-pretty Dylan. Haynes agreed and told me he cast Blanchett to play Dylan during that period in his life. I was amazed at Haynes decision and she's amazing as Dylan or "Jude."

Haynes brillance, aside from daring-do, is in breaking through and looking at style conventions, like his 2002 drama FAR FROM HEAVEN did with cinema of the 1950s. With I'M NOT THERE, Haynes looks at film in the 1960s, media stardom, press mediated pop-music, and how Dylan deconstructed his own iconic image in the popular culture. Paying homage to Fellini's 8 1/2 and grainy balck and white rock docs such as the famed 1967 D.A. Pennebacker film DON'T LOOK BACK, Haynes dazzles again with his artful direction of film frame and his actors to capture the significant feeling of time. I'M NOT THERE is especially thrilling and filled with pregnant moments and poignant dialogue you'll recognize if you are a Dylan fan and know the entire Dylan canon of poetry and song.

I'M NOT THERE plays tonight in a special preview screening at the Walker Art Center with producer Christine Vachon will introduce the film and answer questions from the audience. The film will open in theaters on November 21st at Landmark Lagoon.

Walker Art Center: I'M NOT THERE

CODY & REITMAN WIN TOP PRIZE AT ROME

2007-11-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

Director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody accept the top prize at the 2007 Rome Film Festival for Cody's JUNO. Cody explained she was pimped in Versace dresses by Cody grooming Glam Squad before adding the old man's wooly rain cap.

The former-Minneapolis screenwriter can hardly believe her good luck in adapting to life in L.A. and the open doors she has encountered since moving to Tinsel Town. In addition to a grueling promotional tour, trips to film festivals to accept awards, being asked to reluctantly sit on "women in film" panels, she is also developing a TV series for Steven Speilberg called "United States of Tara" while facing a looming WGA writers strike.

Furthermore, there is much talk about Cody's next film, GIRLY STYLE an all-girl college sex comedy about a group of girls determined to lose their virginity yet may be too selective to achive their goals. Cody compares her movies to PORKY'S and other teenage sex titlators but believes she is taking risks by putting women in the lead roles normally reserved for young male actors.

Diablo Cody Interview

HOW TO SILENCE YOUR CRITICS

2007-10-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

Even if you are Welsh and have bad TEETH...

WALT SAYS LOCK NEEDS BREAKING

2007-10-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

The venerated Wall Street Journal (WSJ) technology columnist Walt Mossberg recently commented (view the clip above) that the unholy alliance between handset makers and the cellphone networks needs to be broken. Absolutely!

The coercive effects on innovation the control by networks has had became much clearer when Apple came out with the iPhone, a palm device that much more than just a cell phone. The iPhone is truly a computer in your pocket with a content delivery system unrivaled in the past by any other hardware designer -- Motorola, Noika, LG, NEC, Samsung, Kyocera, Blackberry, etc. While these manufacturers tried to provide limited multimedia tidbits, primarily in the form of ringtones and wallpaper, they never came close to providing a rich environment that is open to video, music, graphics, web surfing, Google mapping, YouTube, email, and personal photography that iPhone amazingly provides.

By rich environment, Apple has created a cellphone operating eco-system that will allow third-party developers and vallue added retailers to write applications that do not come installed on the iPhone when you purchase it online, at the Apple store or from ATT. In Janaury Apple will release the software deveopers kit (SDK) for the legends of programmers who currently write widgets, plug-ins, full-blown GUI applications and open source projects currently for the Macintosh.

If the consumer can enjoy the freedom of being unchained from the dreaded calling plan a huge transformation of content delivery and mobile computing is awaiting them. New forms of creating and delivering stories as well as practical information will evolve. The irony with iPhone is, as Mossberg asserts, Apple was forced to make "a pact with the devil" ATT and lock iPhone to a restrictive service plan. Attempts by hackers and third-party developers to "unlock" the iPhone have resulted in hostile actions with software upgrades to "brick" iPhones and void the warrantee. But the cat is out of the bag. Law suits will follow. Mossberg puts out a siren call for government to step in and/or for disruptive technology to continue -- basically encouragement from WSJ's tech-guru for hackers to continue with their mission.

And with this new computing device and its power to deliver to the handset a variety of media, it is clear cellphone service providers have stymied technological advancement with their strangehold over the market. The iPhone is the first cellphone with an operating system developed independently from the cellphone netwoks and it is groundbreaking for that reason. But the battle is still not over. Listen to Uncle Walt. Break the lock!

FLIM FLAM MAN @ GUTHRIE THEATER

2007-10-04T04:56:00.000-07:00

the true story of my fathers counterfeit life
based on the memoir by Jennifer Vogel
script by Jez Butterworth

One frosty winter morning, Jennifer Vogel's father went on the lam. John Vogel, fifty-two, had been arrested for single-handedly counterfeiting nearly $20 million in U.S. currency, the fourth-largest sum ever seized by federal agents. Unwisely, he was released pending trial. At that same time Jennifer had become one of the city's leading investigative journalists in the weekly tabloid press.

Though Jennifer hadn't spoken to him in four years, police suspected he might turn up at her Minneapolis apartment. They parked outside, watching her every move. A skeptical crime reporter asking questions or a loving daughter seeking answers, she gives us a breathtaking glimpse into the secret life of the man she thought she knew best.

Jennifer Vogel's engaging and relentless account of her outlaw father is being adapted for film by British playwright and film director Jez Butterworth (MOJO, BIRTHDAY GIRL and THE LAST LEGION) and is adapting the James Brown story for producer/director Spike Lee and the Valerie Plame Story. Vogel and Butterworth will be at the Guthrie along with a local cast including Prairie Home Companion's Sue Scott, City Pages 2007 "Best Actress" Tracey Maloney, an amazing young Children Theater talent Raven Maizy Bellefleur, Emmy and Golden Globes nominated Linda Kelsey known for roles on "Lou Grant", "Detective Fictions" writer/director/actor Patrick Coyle and Stephen Pelinski. This ScriptNight staged script reading is produced/directed by Robb Mitchell with Jez Butterworth.

Vogel, as depicted in the screenplay being developed for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment (SKE), was a student at the University of Minnesota and started in her field as a reporter for the Minnesota Daily. She continued her career in Minneapolis as an investigative reporter for City Pages uncovering stories of police corruption and the environmental impact of pesticides on toads. Her memoir was a National PEN Center Finalist in 2005 and the winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Creative Non-fiction the same year. Currently, she has accepted a temporary editors assignment with Mother Jones Magazine in San Francisco but maintains her home in Minneapolis.

ScriptNight is sponsored by Fredrikson & Byron, Minnesota Film and TV Board, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, The Rake Magazine, and the Screenwriters' Workshop in partnership with the Guthrie Dowling Studio.

-----------------------------------
For Tickets call Guthrie Box Office: 612.377.2224
or on the web: guthrietheater.org -- $10.00 (one hamilton)
http://www.guthrietheater.org/whats_happening/events/2007/flim_flam_man

2007 SCREENLABS CHALLENGE WINNERS

2007-09-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

On Saturday September 22nd the Screenwriters Workshop announced the winners of the 2007 "A Simple Twist of Fate" Screenlabs Challenge.

Jury Award Best Short Film

FORGOTTEN

Jury Award - Runner Up

BLIND FATE

Jury Award - Best Screenplay

Julie Kane Meyer for FORGOTTEN

Audience Award

BLIND FATE

The 2007 Jury was comprised of producer Christine Walker, producer/director Craig Rice, and Director of Photography Greg Winter with screenwriter Hafed Boussaida and Screenlabs producer Robb Mitchell. The audience award was decided online with 5718 votes cast and the winner edging out second place finisher by 19 votes.

Congratulations to the winners and all those who made it to the finish line!

REMEMBER MINNESOTA INTERVIEW

2007-07-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

Guthrie alumni actor John Carroll Lynch teamed up with Screenwriters' Workshop in May to read the script he co-authored with Tess Clark "Remember Minnesota." You all know John from his roles in FARGO and most recently ZODIAC. In the interview with FOX9, Brad Melby and Lynch talk about their plan to shoot the film in Minnesota in 2008.

Through the ScriptNight reading at the Ritz, the Workshop provides audiences, writers and actors with the opportunity to hear scripts in development read by professional actors and to gain insight prior to the film going into production. ScriptNight is presented on major stages including the Ritz Theater and the Guthrie Theaters new Dowling Lab, where works-in-progress are read.

The reading at the Ritz was produced by Robb Mitchell and Michael Maupin and featured a stellar cast including Mike Rylander, Stephen Pelinski, Bob Davis, Sara Marsh, Jonas Goslow, Maren Bush, Steve Yoakam, Sally Wingert, Brandon Ewald, Andrew Hovelson, and Sue Scott.

The reading of "Remember Minnesota" was made possible with financial contributions from Fredrikson & Byron, Ameriprise Financial, and the Minnesota Film and TV Board and with rooms provided our guests by Marriott Towne Place Suites.

SLC ENTRY :: THE ART OF THE DREAM

2007-06-20T17:54:00.001-07:00

Click To Play

SLC ENTRY :: BLIND FATE

2007-06-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

Click To Play

SLC ENTRY :: BORN TO THE STARS

2007-06-20T17:51:00.000-07:00

Click To Play

SLC ENTRY :: FORGOTTEN

2007-06-20T17:50:00.001-07:00

Click To Play

SLC ENTRY :: HEARTS

2007-06-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Click To Play

SLC ENTRY :: ILLEGAL AND THRIVING

2007-06-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

Click To Play

SLC ENTRY :: STITCH AND BITCH

2007-06-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

Click To Play

SLC ENTRY :: THREAT LEVEL ORANGE

2007-06-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

Click To Play

MYTHS OF SUNDANCE #7

2007-06-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

MYTH #7: SUNDANCE WAS REALLY SUBVERTING THE SPIRIT OF THE "INDIE FILM" MOVEMENT BY INVITING MIRAMAX AND THE HOLLYWOOD ART HOUSE DISTRIBUTORS SET THE AGENDA FOR FILMMAKERS.

In 1998 Minnesotan Garret Williams' first feature SPARK went to Sundance, ten years after Minnesotan's Sandy Smolan's RACHEL RIVER and David Burton Morris' PATTI ROCKS took the stage at Park City. While many lament the lack of Minnesota films at Sundance, the fact is that long before Patrick Coyle's DETECTIVE FICTION unreeled at the festival in 2003, there had been many Minnesotan's in the running for Sundance glory.

Truth be told, the expectations and high visibility of being accepted at Sundance had so eclipsed the early years of the festival that many, including writers for the StarTribune of Minneapolis had forgotten the legacy of Minnesota artists whose films has screening there and at the old US Film Festival. By the time Coyle arrived at Sundance so many Minnesotan's were saying DETECTIVE FICTION's acceptance was the "first Minnesota indie filmmaker" to be selected it was bewildering. How blind could people be?

Yet, a person really could not blame this misperception since Sundance had been radically transformed from the early days (before Geoffrey Gilmore) and its reputation really preceded itself. It almost seemed that, because of its distant existence on the outer edge of the universe, news about Sundance or at least its legends, could take a couple of years to enter the common vernacular.

In many people's minds Sundance was a monolithic gorilla holding the indie film world in its hands like Ann Darrow in KING KONG. But upclose and inside the the festival and institute to which it was attached, Sundance once again was unraveling by numbers. And the power center of indie film still did not rest with Sundance as both its pundits and supporters would want us to believe.

In an brilliantly insightful moment in the mid-90s, the people at Sundance had envisioned a world outside Park City that would transform film distribution and exhibition. The two vehicles Redford and the Sundance staff saw for exporting the brand were cable TV and special exhibition cinema centers that far exceeded the conventional four wall black room sticky floor with popcorn in the lobby arcades where films had been shown for decades -- a arcane model that came into existence in the 1930s and never really updated itself.

Ideas are great but basically a dime a dozen unless you can execute as almost any branding operation from Starbucks to Apple to Amazon can easily understand. And Sundance had a great idea. They launched the Sundance Channel for cable and in partnership with General Cinema (GC) began building two cinema complexes -- one in Westchester County north of New York City and the other in Portland, Oregon -- that would house a venue for Sundance indie films, cafe, restaurants, and retail devoted to indie cinema chic. These two cimena complexes were meant to be the first in a chain of cinema's that would one day rival Landmark cinema's around the country but would not rely on distributors like Miramax, Focus Features, Sony Classics, or other distributors that were clogging the distribution channel for low budget indie films.

The belief behind Sundance cinema complexes was that there was a large enough intelligent film going audience around the country, albeit niche, that would want to see films that never made it through the million dollar P&A distribution mill to see films like William's SPARK, James Gray's THE YARDS, Darren Aronofsky's REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, Jarmusch's DEAD MAN, or Todd Haynes VELVET GOLDMINE or edgy foreign-like pics such as Leon Ichaso's bio-pic PIñERO without suffering under the brutal and crushing investment pressures of an 600 or 1000 screen nationwide release. Having the Sundance brand might just bring audiences into the film complexes without huge media buys and expensive print roll outs.

However, the Sundance branding exercise came up against a number of painful obstacles. First, just as the Sundance Channel was about to unveil itself, a brisk rival arrived on the scene in the form of the Independent Film Channel. Second, while in the middle of construction of the cinema centers, GC collapsed and went into bankruptcy along with a number of other cinema chains. And third, Sundance tried to leap before it had a concrete plan of execution. Redford is known by friend and foe alike for his inability to execute due to his micro-management and controlling tendencies. Redford, a frustrated graphic designer and artist, would pick over the minute details of designing posters or film catalogues but was painfully remiss in returning phone calls from investors like Paul Allen who showed interest in expanding the Sundance brand to cable, cinema complexes and even digital channel distribution.

And while these concepts were being thrown up and poorly executed, films like SPARKS, THE YARDS, and others from the Sundance catalogue -- a "middle industry" if you will -- where never reaching an audience that might have returned a small margin of profit by blockbuster standards but still enriched the culture and language of cinema. Sundance had branched out in the attempt to broaden the exhibition opportunites beyond Miramax, Focus Features, and Sony Classics to the benefit of the undistributed indie. A noble quest but nothing like a conspiracy that nay-sayers like to paint Sundance with as a subversive element in the indie film culture.

MYTHS OF SUNDANCE #6

2007-05-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

MYTH #6: SUNDANCE TRIED TO CREATE BIDDING WARS TO SHAPE A FILM AESTHETIC MORE MALIABLE TO THE HOLLYWOOD INDUSTRY

What many people think of today, when they imagine Sundance in January, are rented 4-wheel drive SUVs with darkened windows doubled parked on Main street; cell phones glued to the ears of studio execs running between screenings; starlets like Paris Hilton making appearances; designer bags of expensive swag for the stars; and distributors grabbing up films in a bidding frenzy at Park City diners. First, it hasn't always been this way; Second, a vast majority of the films at Sundance never win distribution; Third, since 1994 many films never reach to the bidding wars because they are bought before the film cans are shipped to Sundance.

But the halcyon days of Sundance, when the festival gained its reputation as the mighty staging ground for battles between indie distributors for niche markets films were 1996 and later. That year a film unreeled at Sundance and set the stage for a battle that came to fist-fighting, insults, firings and big cash buys for indie film. The film was SHINE, based on a true story, it told of a talented prodigy pianist David Helfgott played by Geoffrey Rush and directed by Scott Hicks. And like the Australian indie film to leap into Oscar contention the year before, THE PIANO, all the indie distributors hoped for Oscar statues to buoy the box office.

While some might say SHINE was a "coming of age" film it really isn't. It is film about the wages of genuis on the psychie of and individual given the grant of incredible talent. Helfgott does come of age during the second act of SHINE, however, it is the story of his entire life and Rush's performance is more about living adulthood with a mental alteration of personality due to his breakdown from stress. The pressure of constraining and fully utilizing a creative talent at it highest level of artisttry leads to the collapse of Helfgott.

At Sundance, Helfgott's dramatic story is analogous to the mental breakdown of Harvey Weinstein in trying to procure the film and failing. Indie film was becoming as much a phenomenon for its production and distribution backstories as for the dramas unreeling on screen. After Tony Safford left the staff of Sundance he eventually took up employment with the Weinstein brothers in acquisitions, giving him special entree at the festival for grabbing up new films by young talent -- or so the Weinsteins hoped.

In a bidding war that Fine Line Features finally won, Safford lost out, not because he wasn't in the game or willing to offer the last and highest bid for the film that brought everyone to tears during its festival screening -- even the hard-bitten agents and talent reps. Miramax lost because Jonathan Taplin, a former Bob Dylan roadie, who had been trying to sell the film to Miramax for more than a year simply wanted to screw Harvey out of the final bid. And who could blame Taupin, engaging in negiotation with Harvey or Bob Weinsteins made the invading parasite in ALIEN seem like an invited house guest by comparsion. Producer Taupin said to director Hicks, "I don't like Miramax, I don't like their arrogance, I don't like anything about them."

This battle for a clear pure breed high-stakes race horse of a film could have all been fought out in other arena's but it all came to a head at Sundance.

But the winds and market pressures of the previous five years were all building to this point of breaking. American Indie film had reached a profitable middle market where investors could realize a profit margin, albeit smaller than high risk box office busters, and with the purchase of Miramax by Disney and Ted Turner buying Fine Line, as well as the evolution of the "classics" or art house divisions of the majors, the stakes for buying hot indie properties increased. The January film festival in the mountains of Utah became the new staging ground for these distribution bidding wars.

Harvey lost his mind in rage after loosing SHINE. The 1996 festival would come to be called the "Ten Days That Shook the Indie World" named after the Russian revolution when the Czar was put out by the Bolsheviks. Castle Rock, the indie division of Warner's paid $10 million for that years festival winner CARE OF THE SPITFIRE GRILL that also got swooped up in the buying frenzy.

After Harvey pushed and punched his way with Taupin, shouted at women reps from other distribution companies using the "B-word" toward the women and almost took Safford's head off for loosing the SHINE film, Sundance was in for yet another shift in percpetion. More than these backroom bully-boy antics that caught the attention of film festival enthusiasts around the country, the purchase price for films at Sundance has escalated with all the studio's sending art house boutique divisions and the former independents Miramax by now owned by Disney, Fine Line now owned by Turner and October by Universal, the heat was turned up underneath sales but also the expectations for box office performance shifted.

Following this incident, Harvey became determined never to loose a bidding war at Sundance again. Miramax would win these wars by buying the films before they reached the festival and the next films Miramax would grab up THE ENGLISH PATIENT and SLING BLADE were acquired before they could reach the festival circuit. The mountaineous roads through Sundance were just too rocky and Miramax would not be the only indie distributor to finally realize this fact.

When the films SHINE and SPITFIRE GRILL failed to reach break even point and payback high bid driven prices, after all the commotion at Sundance, there was little sustained interest in paying inflated dollars the intense competition created. A less spoken truth about free markets is that intense competition among giants actually leads to price inflation and rising costs rather than efficiences as utopian business school economists would have us believe.

Again in the following years, instead of setting the terms of film and story aesthetics as well as picking winners, Sundance was a victim of a vasting shifting marketplace. Just as film critics are not good predictors of popular taste, film festivals like Sundance, were no longer seen as indicators of success for films in distribution. In the future, Geoffrey Gilmore would try to advise indie filmmakers not to sell their films prior to screening them at Sundance in hopes of inflaming Park City bidding wars but that time had passed and $10 million speaks much louder than Gilmore's advice deilvered in hushed tones to inexperienced filmmakers as Billy Bob Thorton would soon to learn with his film SLING BLADE.

MYTHS OF SUNDANCE #5

2007-05-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

MYTH #5: THE NARRATIVE STORY OF SUNDANCE FILMS IS DRIVEN BY THE MARKETPLACE MENTALITY OF THE FESTIVAL

The year 1994 was another big turning point for Sundance as the Geoffrey Gilmore era was further taking hold at Sundance. Three films David O. Russell's SPANKING THE MONKEY, Rose Troche's GO FISH and Kevin Smiths' CLERKS came forward as the emerging films in the newly market-like atmosphere of Sundance.

Sure, in years past there had been success with Sundance films SEX. LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE and RESERVOIR DOGS, however, neither film was picked up at Sundance and nobody had seen anything like the bidding wars that would come to typify the cinema lobbies, streets and cafe's of Park City in the mid and late 90s. Prior to 1994, filmmakers came to Utah out of a love for their film and a chance to screen it but never in hopes of striking it rich, hitting the lottery or even acquiring theatrical distribution.

Rose Troche's GO FISH and Kevin Smiths' CLERKS were small budget limited location talkie pics with a gritty urban sensibility that both seemed inspired by the storyless atmospheric films of Jim Jarmsuch and Richard Linklater. Yet, their tone, trajectory, and cultural perspective of each were vastly different. Smith recalls watching Linklater's SLACKERS in New York city and thinking, this guy is from Austin, Texas and I am watching his film and "I can do that" however, Smith's aimless and directless existential CLERKS is about New Jersey. SPANKING THE MONKEY is a mother-son incest film that few would claim was wrritten and made to inspire a distributors feeding-frenzy.

CLERKS had been screened at IFP's IFFM in New York the fall before and no one took interest but in the newly rarified and competitive atmosphere of Gilmore's Sundance Smith film caught the attention, almost to Pierson's surprise, of Harvey Weinstein who with fistfuls of Disney cash was buying up films at an all-you-can-eat-buffet eaters pace.

Christine Vachon and Tom Kalin teamed to bring the lesbian love story, that when reduced down, is about whether an attractive urbane lesbian is lonely enough to accept a frumpy, homely, and older lesbian as her girlfriend. Both Smith's CLERKS and Troche's GO FISH were being rep'd by John Pierson who tauntingly provoked indie distributors to buy the minimalist narratives. As Pierson, Weinstein, and Smith crossed the street to sit down and deal for CLERKS, Pierson shouted out to the reps from the other indies waiting outside the cinema, "This is your last chance" amkinf sure they knew Harvey was going to be soon sitting at their table.

Other indie distributors were also caught by surprise and worried that all the most viable product was being swept onto Harvey's newly enlarged plate. They too were jumping at films that might have been easily passed over a few years ago for the plotting and dismal lack of dramatic arch. But again, the market forces that made indie distributors like October, Miramax, Fine Line, and Goldwyn buy up small indies for a few hundred thousand and see only a few million in profit needed a place to call home and Sundance provided that farm league atmosphere and the competitive bidding began.

Pierson was able to tap this competition among suitors that year to also land a deal with Goldwyn for the distribution of GO FISH. Was there a new wave of Ameircan Indie filmmakers creating and entirely new marketplace? Was Sundance providing a staging place for indies to launch their previously unseen and unknown films that would have ended up in a box in their basements never to see the bulb in a movie theater? Was Sundance forcing indie filmmakers to make film tailored for sales at the sake of an independent and experiemntal vision?

If any aesthetic these films shared it was one of making a feature film on extremely limited budgets. CLERKS was filmed and edited for $27,000 on location in Smith's place of employment. After experiencing extraordinary success at Sundance and later joining the Miramax entourage at Cannes where Tarantino's PULP FICTION took home the Palm d'Or, Smith returned to his clerking job in New Jersey at the same convenience store where he shot the film CLERKS. To say the films and their stories were driven by the marketplace bidding wars at Sundance is to put the cart before the horse.

MYTHS OF SUNDANCE #4

2007-05-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

MYTH #4: SUNDANCE IS PREDICTABLE AND THE JURY FOLLOWS LAST YEARS TREND

And just when it seemed Sundance had turned the corner and begun embracing radical new ideas from the New Queer Cinema movement, another even less politically progressive statement emerged -- Quentin Tarantino, RESERVOIR DOGS and the pulp fiction aesthetic.

Quentin Tarantino is a brilliantly geeky throwback to a bygone era of violently gratuitous film and literature for which his masterful breakout film PULP FICTION is named. First and foremost, like his predecessors in pulp or detective fiction of the serie noire and weird menace schools, Tarantino is an inspired writer with defiant flair and tongue firmly in cheek.

Tarantino was born of an entirely new generation of VHS film enthusiasts who never went to film school (in fact, he never graduated from high school) and after simply and obsessively working at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California. Tarantino and his friend Roger Avery (co-writer of PULP FICTION) watched, wrote and dreamed of making their own films. The video rental geeks fashioned their own graduate program in film by watching movies day-in and day-out. While Sundance was founded by a generation of film enthusiasts who were starved by the lack of access to film viewing (other than in revival cinema houses) the VHS generation grew up with the TV and VCR as their babysitters.

With Tarantino, violent films should be violent for violence sake. He never had time for the pretense of art house films. In fact, at a screening of RESERVOIR DOGS in Park City, when asked about the offensive nature of violence in his films, as if to spit in their face, Tarantino answered, he was offended by the pretentious beauty of Merchant and Ivory films. Afterall, despite the wealth of plenty, titles the video stores were primarily stocked with action and adventure, horror, kung-fu, and b-movies of the sensationalist vein. For Tarantion and Avery there were no classics of early cinema other than shoot-em ups, blood-and-horror, super-natural fight films, high-impact FX, and action and adventure and these movies shaped their world view.

In many ways, if Sundance embodied the indie spirit, it did so by bashing and breaking down paradigms. The b-side mentality that populated the most conservative state of Utah in January was always ready to confront, accuse, and shock you out of what you came to expect from Sundance itself. Tarantino brought back to Sundance the indie spirit embodied in Roger Corman from the early 1960s -- a visceral shock of the weird, sensational and objectly violent. Tarantino's aspirations for film were school-boyish, as he once told Allison Anders on a date he wanted to write a book about how to go to film festivals to get laid.

If you came to Sundance expecting crunchy granola films it gave you New Queer Cinema instead. If you came expecting Native American films it gave you the geeky LA white boy spouting the "n-word" in his scripts without any remorse or regret. If you expected the films to be safe uplifting toiling in the soil stories from the heartland it gave you POISON or sex, lies, and videotape instead.

For better or worse, American Indie film consists of rule breakers, outlaws, misfits and non-conformists to the movie industry standard. The twist Tarantino brought was of careless irony, his films were parodies of themselves and yet very much nothing more serious than the films they parodied.

In the year Tarantino brought RESERVOIR DOGS to Sundance, Alison Anders screened GAS, FOOD AND LODGING and Alexander Rockwell's IN THE SOUP also contended but Rockwell's SOUP about a down and out indie filmmaker played by Steve Buscemi unexpectedly took the top prize. Their films could not have been more different from each other in scope, if they'd met and planned them in advance.

In street cred terms, as an emerging filmmakers festival Sundance always had to deliver something each year that defied the logic of a trend. The festival was in a continual process of trying to reinvent itself and was able to do so because between the period of the mid to late 80s to the earl 90s the number of indie filmmakers sending their films to Sundance for consideration dramatically increased from a few hundred to thousands.

If anything is predictable about Sundance is the defiant spirit of the filmmakers who are outsiders to an insiders industry and want to make a statement.

MYTHS OF SUNDANCE #3

2007-05-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

In all my discussions about the American indie film festivals, people often like to throw out plithy statements that fail to appreciate the conplex history and evolution of the festival. And common recant among critics goes like this:

MYTH #3: SUNDANCE ALWAYS PLAYS IT SAFE

If anything Redford deserves a lot of credit for sticking with Sundance despite it's inability to serve his interests and follow the course he'd set for it aesthetically and politically. Often what conspiratorialists and simplistic paranoids fail to appreciate about the success of a cultural phenomenon that reaches critical mass is that as an organism its vitlaity often transcends individuals, supersedes best laid plans and takes on a life of its own far, far beyond the founding visions or masterminds behind them.

In order to maintain a pure conspiracy, there must be a vigorous denial of the truth and the truth behind Sundance is that it never had a cohesive plan that gelled into a controlled form of power. Redford could favor a film or a filmmaker, a script or a project but that never assured it of success either in the arena of Sundance itself or in the outside world of distribution, box office or financial success. Likewise, a filmmaker who saw success emerge from Sundance, Soderbergh for instance, could not easily return favor to Redford or any other minion or passionate loyalist in the Sundance family. As it should be in the world of dynamic and changing artistic expression, it's never that easy.

Before 1992 Sundance tried to promote a culture where artists could be protected from the mean and brutal world of business suits, lawyers, powerbrokers, shady dealers, and blood sucking bottom feeders. However, due to their open door practices and the onslaught of success the festival only served to attract these types more. What people fail to realize, is that the studio system in Hollywood, that everybody rebelled against for their creative survival, was originally established as a West Coast sanctuary for creative artists or, at least, the idea of it in the minds of Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, Marcus Loew, William Fox, and Samuel Goldwyn, and all the studio bosses that proceded them. But power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The years 1991 and 92 were big turning points for Sundance when its reputation shifted from the crunchy granola soft 70s-styled PCness that was in its founders hearts to what some would term the cell phone era. Did Sundance promote and conspire to create a "cell phone" culture ? -- No, the cell phone transformed Sundance at a time when it was at its weakest.

While in the midst of staff shake out and hugely changing times Sundance did NOT play it safe. In 1991 the New Queer Cinema movement arrived at Sundance with a young semotics deconstructionist from Brown named Todd Haynes and his producer Christine Vachon. This producer/director duo brought to the festival in Utah a film that was anything but safe called POISON. Haynes previous movie SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY had raised a considerable controversy, first with its funders in the Lynn Cheney NEA era, and then with Mattel the makers of Barbie doll. Haynes Karen Carpenter film has been banned in the U.S. but has become available on the internet. Haynes, with an artist grant support from the Jerome Foundation, and Vachon led a troop of new gay filmmakers with an activist agenda.

Greg Araki THE LIVING END, Tom Kalin, Christopher Munch's THE HOURS AND TIMES and the doc PARIS IS BURNING are all militant gay films that made the Lands End, dockers, and mountain boot Sundance establishment uneasy. Sure, Sundanistias could happily have their heart-strings pulled with films like PARTING GLANCES and enjoy the antics of a film like THE BIRDCAGE but POISON drove them from the theater in fear.

In one scene from POISON, men spit in each other's mouths, a horrifying evocation in the post-HIV trauma era of the early 1990s. More than just a shocking depiction of rape and violence (topics not commonly appearing on the Sundance screen in the early years), Haynes film intercuts three stories of completely different genre, one staged as a documentary to challenge the very conventions of film itself. While most film institutions and certainly the funders were narrowing their aesthetic to narrative "golden mean" storytelling, Haynes was producing avante-garde cinema one could only rarely see on folding chairs in dank warehouses below Canal street or in European cinematheques.

Haynes was experimental and an exception to the simple narrative trend in American indie film. While the expectations at Sundance that year were that Hal Hartnley's TRUST or Julie Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST might take home the Grand Jury Prize from Sundance, the surprise was Hayne's shocking deconstructionist film POISON came away the winner and Vachon's thumbprint would stamp many Sudance seasons to come.

The Sundance of 1991 could not be termed safe and it radically shook the foundation and shifted the direction of the festival for the future.

MYTHS OF SUNDANCE #2

2007-04-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

In the early 90s, just after the phenomenal success of SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE, the administration of Sundance crumbled and many associated with the actor financed enterprise. Tony Safford left, there was much displeasure with the non-profit festival and institute and the for-profit resort and their symbiotic relationship. But more than anything else, people were asking what is the purpose of Sundance and why was Redford still funding it?

MYTH #2: SUNDANCE WILL ALWAYS SERVE REDFORD'S PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS AND NOT THE INDIE INDUSTRY OR FILMMAKER.

After almost sweeping the awards competition at Cannes, Steven Soderbergh returned to L.A. in hot demand. He agreed to be a poster boy for Sundance and let the festival take credit for being the world-wide launch pad for "sex, lies and videotape." For reasons of ego and money, not all filmmakers want to concede anything or give away credits to profit and especially non-profit development institutions whether they helped them or not. But Soderbergh, although he might come regret it later, was more giving than the average indie filmmaker toward Sundance and Redford.

And Robert Redford was actively courting Soderbergh for a film he wanted to make with Soderbergh called KING OF THE HILL. Even before Miramax released "sex lies and videotape" to sensational box office, Sodebergh was making arrangements to make his next films. He was happy to be talking with Redford, even hoped the generous A-list actor would become a mentor to his future career. But the young southerner was also talking with Pollack about making the biopic KAFKA and time frames are critical in packaging movies regardless if you are an rogue indie, a wannabee, or a Hollywood insider.

As many speculated at the time, it appeared Redford was using the developmental processes of Sundance Institute and launch pad of Sundance Film Festival to feather his own professional career. Many successful Hollywood actors found their own theater company but ultimately fail because of the conficts between personal interest and company concerns. Roping in Soderbergh was proof for some of Redford using the advantage of the non-profit for his own personal gain. While Sundance administration was in shambles, its mission and focus unclear and uncertain, his critics were certain Redford would ignore the needs of Sundance to make a deal for KING OF THE HILL.

The year after "sex, lies, and videotape" propelled Sundance forward despite staff defections, a new era was about to begin -- the Geoffrey Gilmore era. Two films highlighted the 1990 Sundance Festival: Charles Burnett's brilliant TO SLEEP WITH ANGER and the winner of the Filmmakers Trophy Hudlin Brother's HOUSE PARTY. These two films could not have had more opposite fates in theatrical distribution. Yet, the so-called "bidding wars" that would later come to typlify the atmosphere of Sundance had not come to the street cafes of Park City. "sex, lies" did not get picked up at Sundance and the Hudlin Brothers sold their house party dance movie at Toronto.

If for nothing else, as pundants and prognosticators would try to easily but wrongfully suggest, a Sundance "aesthetic" had still not emerged and Redford's professional interests in KING OF THE HILL were seemingly dashed as Soderberg picked KAFA (1991) to go into production rather than KING OF THE HILL (1993) much to Redford's displeasure. In the evolution of Sundance, 1990 was still a difficult adjustment year and one Redford had to bound through with no assurance of success for either the profit or non-profit aspects of his personal commitment to the concept of a mountain-side film development institute and American indie festival.

MYTHS OF SUNDANCE #1

2007-04-28T17:26:00.000-07:00

Over the years I managed to have many arguments with filmmakers and enthusiasts about the power and influence of the Sundance Film Festival on independent film in the U.S. A couple of weeks back, after spending a few happy and nostalgic days with John and Janet Pierson of Austin, Texas I was reminded of the early years of Sundance and its effect on American indie film.

While observations of Sundance are passionate, others acute and perceptive, most are filtered through a lens of different myths that surround the institute and festival either by envious outsiders or insiders who engaged in a battle for the heart and soul of what they felt the festival should stand for and lost.

MYTH #1: SUNDANCE IS A FESTIVAL THAT LIKES COMING OF AGE FILMS AND HOLLYWOOD WANNABEES.

In the very beginning, Redford wanted the Sundance Institute and festival to feature regional character drama's with a political statement both in the Institute's development process and with the U.S Film Festival (as it was called before becoming Sundance). Redford had a soft spot for identity films, especially dealing with issues in the Native American community out west and environmetnal issues.

The first films to emerge from the Sundnace Institute were EL NORTE, THE BALLAD OF GREGORIO CORTEZ, HEARTLAND and the first films to win awards at the U.S. Film Festival Park City were WAITING FOR THE MOON a film that bitterly accounts the lesbian love between Alice B. Toklas and Getrude Stein. None of the films Redford wanted to push out into the world fit either stereotype of "coming of age" or "Hollywood wannabees". In some circles, they would say, if you wanted to act in a Sundance movie to had to be able to wear bib overalls.

Michelle Satter, who was one of the early employees at the Institute responsible for feature film development said, the Institute did not have a political censoring mechanism but it did have a stylistic one. The approach to formal filmmaking, following a Aristotelian golden mean and three act story structure was extremely conservative. Other Sundance employees like Tony Safford felt in the mid and late 80s, Sundance had missed the boat, when most of the greatest new American filmmakers being crowned at the Cannes Festival in France.

If anything, the early years of the Sundance Institute and festival defined its own stereotype of being what we called at the time "crunchy granola" films. In the arena of Native American films, Sundance championed Jonathan Wach's POWWOW HIGHWAY.

Many will argue Sundance had a aesthetic set by Redford or Sundance film family members like Annick Smith who made HEARTLAND a politically correct version of western drama that lionized the little man. However, soon Smith would be out of the sphere of influence that at the beginning propelled its programming forward. First, to others it was clear these films with a "content" driven agenda would soon give way to an author driven agenda.

But it should come as no surprise films like Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING, Gus Van Zant's DRUGSTORE COWBOY, the Coen's Brothers BLOOD SIMPLE, Jim Jarmusch's STRANGER THAN PARADISE, John Water's HAIRSPRAY or documentary fillmakers Errol Morris' THIN BLUE LINE and Michael Moore's ROGER & ME were completely absent from the Sundance obit -- they never received Institute backing and were never screened in the mountain side festival. As Safford commented, Sundance missed the boat on the title wave of new American independent filmmakers who redefined the film industry after the studio system fell apart in the middle 1980s.

That new less politically correct face of Sundance arrived in January 1989 when Steven Soderbergh arrived with SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE shot in Baton Rouge, Lousiana. The slacker aesthetic of sex, lies and videotape wasn't a politically correct western drama, nor a Native American sufferage film -- it defied the angry indie films that emerged from the 60s. The film would be Sundance's first big hit. It subject was neither coming of age or a hollywood wannabee with a perverted sex tape maker who masturbates to his tapes of women "talking" about sex.

Just as likely, you will find people from that time argue that Sundance was not setting the agenda of the indie film community as much as following it and falling prey to it. Much bigger winds were blowing in the industry in the mid and late 1980s and Sundance became caught in them just like everybody else. Films were less often being made for a theatrical release in movie houses owned by the studios and more for direct to video and other ancillary markets. In fact, the ancillary markets were driving film to a much larger extent than the theatrical market. This gave indies an inside track to get around the studios. It was the VHR and home viewing of movies that would drive the new aesthetic not the much ballyhooed but mythic dominance of Redford's Sundance.

Sundance Institute and what was to become Sundance Film Festival struggled for nearly 10 years with a continuous lack of success. In the realm of independent film, it barely held a candle to Telluride and certainly nothing like the New York Film Festival, Cannes, Berlin or Toronto.

Yet, against all probability Sundance, nestled in a difficult and inaccessible second-rate ski resort corner of the Rocky Mountains would come to play a large role in the indie film movement even though it came late to the game and did not have success until the 1990s.

REFOCUS: THE STATE OF MEDIA IN MINNESOTA

2007-02-12T15:05:00.000-08:00

After we faced the prospect last year about this time of the Oak Street Cinema closing, the staff of Minnesota Film Arts (MFA) being let go and possibly the complete loss of our 25 plus years of Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival the picture looked grim. Was the writing on the wall?

The fact the dismall prognosis was being written all over the country, not just here in Minnesota. Brian Newman, a New York media center visionary could see the furure and it looked grim for non-profit media arts organizations around the country. AIVF was failing. And a whole bunch of revival house cinemas were closing. The IFP national franchise was breaking apart, chapters closing, and they were all changing their names in the attempt to break from past identities and feuding that has plagued them in recent years. Here in Minnesota former rivals at Oak Street and UFilm become partners were now biting at each others throats, exchanging accusations and, come on let's admit it, they were throwing snowballs at each other over in Dinkytown at the Varsity Theater community meeting on the future of MFA! Not a pretty sight.

And I remember the day Chuck Olson walked in the door at IFP and proclaimed, "It has never been better for indie makers!"

While these old venerated institutions in the media arts community were facing either renewal or death, out there in the ether(net) new horizons await for those who are not embroiled in these old battles. Chuck Olson can see it. Juan Antonio and Cristina "the Chasing Windmill" folks can see it. How will the community adapt?

Yes, it is time for the media artists to embrace the future and think seriously about how we do things together. How we create. How we collaborate. The places from where production orignates and the destination where our works are going. The phrase I keep hearing over and over is the train has already left the station and is speeding down the tracks. Either we get on the train or let it pass us by.

There is no lack of quality talent in Minnesota. Or as entertainment attorney Dan Satorius says, there is plenty of talent here and quite probably more than in Austin, Portland, or Miami. In Texas they point to Ethan Hawk, Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez as the talented triad that built the city into one of the leading indie film centers in the nation. Our list is longer.

But the train is running down the track and the future leaders in the indie film movement are not cutting super 8 films with razor blades and hot gluing the splices together like Linklater did with his first film. All the rules are changing and they are sweeping the media industry. More and more, we are seeing a convergence of artistic sensibilities as well as mediums and technologies. Nobody can avoid it or if they do they will run the risk of wasting up on the shore like dead fish with mercury poison.

Film distribution is changing. Film production is changing. Film itself has changed.

And thus, if you look at the old models and notions of "media access centers" and "revival house cinema" we are in the midst of a radical revolution in culture. If you look at the constituency of 40-year-old plus who used to be the patrons of the old non-profit cinema you will see them installing home theaters in their basement or rec room and a collection of classic movies that rival Ted Turner.

If you look at the generation of 20-somethings, their media viewing experiences have been completely transformed and the idea of "media access" is ancient if not unknown to them. The kids edit their films on their Powerbooks. Given them a free editing bench somewhere and they would rather say home and do it.

In this light the leadership in the media industry need to re-examin their charters and purpose and reinvent their methods.

CHICAGO 10 AT SUNDANCE

2007-01-19T05:40:00.000-08:00

Minneapolis based production company headed by Bill Pohlad, River Road Entertainment, lands in Park City Utah for the annual Sundance Film Festival touting its new film CHICAGO 10. Producers Pohald and Laura Bickford have backed this unique treatment in film of the historical Chicago uprising by writer/director Brett Morgen.

The Chicago 7 trial was a crowning moment of the 1960s anti-war movement, when after the riots in the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, a group of eight went on trial before Judge Julius Hoffman represented by William Kunstler. The two men to emerge from the trial Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin became the Yippie counter-cultural icons of the era.

Morgen explained the originally charged Chicago 8 are joined by two lawyers as defendents in the trial because of the frequency in which they were held for "contempt of court" amounting to years of sentences of their counrtroom antics even though they were never charged in the original counts.

Morgen previous art house success THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE also appealed to a young smart hipster group that might be the audience target of this look back at their counterparts of 40 years ago. The film uses motion-capture rotoscope animation and archival photographs to recreate courtroom antics with voice characterization of Abbie Hoffman (Hank Azaria) and Jerry Rubin (Mark Ruffulo). While Morgen was born in 1968, he does not dwell to heavily on a labored account of history and seeks parallels between the Vietnam era and our war time culture of today.

As Morgen focuses most of his attention on Hoffman and Rubin, the most theatrical of the original eight defendents, he runs the risk of missing the more interesting stories posed in thsi drama by equally infamous defendents Tom Hayden, Bobbie Seale, Rennie Davis and David Dellinger.

The documentary film opened the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

FUR Opens Around U.S.

2006-11-22T08:50:00.000-08:00

Nicole Kidman makes the movie FUR. Although the film carries the title an "An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus" you cannot help but feel that any fan of Arbus will be disappointed at an attempted portrayal of the paradigm breaking life in history of photography.

However, if a viewer can suspend expectations or better, pretend this story has nothing to do with the legendary photographer Diane Arbus, you might find the film satisfying. And unless you grew up in New York city just after WWII, you might not know anything factual about the history anyway.

Not to put to big a point on it, simply stated, Arbus's life and character as an artist was considerably more complex than the unassuming and demur housewife depicted in Erin Cressida Wilson's script for FUR.

But watching FUR is a very satisfying experience. At it heart the film is about the mystery and inspiration that sparks an artists imagination to delve into worlds unknown. The imaginative release is palpable and treated in this film as a mystery, almost a thriller, in its dramatic build up. The key is Kidman's performance.

At one critical moment, the film itself crosses the line into an absurd and very questionable realm and the only person who can hold it from becoming laughable is Kidman. Certainly, you cannot count on Robert Downey, Jr.

Factually, the script takes great leaps and bounds from the first scene where Arbus allegedly disrobes for her photo shoot in a nudist colony (she never did) but Kidman cares less. Kidman must craft and entirely new character whole cloth.

And so she does. Many in the audience are likely to leave the film hoping they might one day see an actual bio-pic of Arbus and maybe FUR will spark that project to happen.

MAKE ME A CELEBRITY OR ELSE...

2006-11-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

We are often asked by local screenwriters' if there is a way we, at the Screenwriters' Workshop can get them an agent, land a deal with a producer or studio and make them famous. Can't this be a "program" of the Workshop?

Realistically, no way. Ask anyone who is in the business of screenwriting and from their experience they will say. "You've got to be kidding"

The reason I know this is because Screenwriters' Workshop tried to develop a program some ten years ago called "Industry Connections" whose purpose was to find local Minnesota screenwriters agents and production deals. A number of writers desperately wanted this program to succeed. Desperately is the key word. I think they maybe invisioned themselves as a registry for industry development executives to tap for future projects. The Industry Connection group sat down did some research, wrote a lot of letters, sent a bunch of scripts and simply ended up with a lot more rejection letters. Industry connections failed to connect.

Let me just say, I was not invovled with theis program because my efforts went more toward producing local scripts using local talent by bring screenwriters, filmmakers, directors, producers and acting talent together. Even though the process of submission and rejection is antithetical to my philosophy of "just do it" and "empower yourself" rather than forfeit your power and creativity to the judgement of others, I did wish these people all the best and if they wanted to put the trust in a program like "Industry Connections" I hope they succeed. Truly. Why not. I love to see people, through their own effort succeed in achieving their life dream.

But the reason it didn't work is because that's not how the system works. More than almost any other professional area of endeavour, screenwriting and filmmaking are industries filled with ambition and high expecations for success. All too often, writers come to the workshop and immediately want success and they put those ambitions for achievement on the backs of the other volunteer writers who are putting together workshop programs. That is worng and unfair as well as a recipe for disaster in interpersonal relations.

Getting an agent, finding producers and executives who will believe in your work and invest not only coutless hours of personal effort but, perhaps, millions of dollars of their hard earned money is a very individual and personal enterprise and cannot be programmed. It can never be made simple. There is too much at stake.

I was reminded of all this after reading this article in the New York Times about the processes of achieving success or find a voice in film and entertainment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/magazine/12youtube.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

As the writer Matthew Klam points out, these avenues to gaining a voice or achieving success in the industry are radically shifting and changing in todays digital media world.

I hope my friends in the Screenwriters' Workshop take notice. Nodoby can make you a celebrity.

BRENT BOYD KEYNOTES SCREENWRITERS' WORKSHOP ANNUAL MEET

2006-10-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

Minnesota-born screenwriter Brent Boyd will be the featured guest of the Screenwriters' Workshop in Minneapolis on October 28th while his film AURORA BOREALIS is being rolled out, city by city, across the country during the months of October and November.

AURORA BOREALIS main character Duncan, played by TV-star and teen heart-throb Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek) is a Minneapolis-slacker who moves from one job to the next, not due to economic hard times but more out of disrespect for authority. Duncan job problems are because of his attitude-itch.

Gradually, we learn Duncan's history and watch his indifferent exterior melt away under sway of healthcare professional Kate, played by Juliette Lewis, but moreso due to a growing bond with his grandfather Ronald played by Donald Sutherland. Duncan is stuck in Minnesota and Kate challenges him to go somewhere else in order to appreciate why Minnesota is a nice place to live.

A romantic comedy hangs in the wings while the true center of the film is the relationship between Ronald, struggling with end-of-life dehabilitating issues and Duncan who is trying to find meaning in his emotionally desolate life.

Larger themes are the autobiographical core of AURORA BOREALIS and Boyd acknowledge everybody asks if Duncan's story is his Minnesota story. The only scene Boyd will admit to being "real-life" is the end-second act Mall of America bathroom scene between Duncan and Ronald and the one that seems to stands out with viewers and movie critics. But it isn't the emotional apex of the movie which arrives later in the third-act.

How does such a particular a Minnesota film get sold in Hollywood and how do inside Minnesota jokes play to audiences around the country? Boyd doesn't have a simple or direct answer to the first question, however, he believes the more specific and detailed you make a film about its time and place the more universal its story becomes.

MPR calls AURORA BOREALIS Boyd's love letter to Minnesota. Star Tribune chief film critic Jeff Strickler [as I also speculated in this blog before Strictler wrote his review] says the real attention for Boyd's film will come when Sutherland is nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Ronald Shorter. Still, I believe Regent Releasing is way out of its league in the Oscar race and I doubt they can draw enough attention to this film.

Boyd described how when the film screened in festivals, the teenage girls would swarm and scream around Josh Jackson while elderly women swarmed around him. At the same time, he claims, the Minnesota insider jokes play to all audiences in North Carolina and New York.

...............................
WHAT: Screenwriters' Workshop Annual Meeting
WHO: Featured Guest BRENT BOYD screenwriter of "Aurora Borealis"
WHEN: October 28th, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (with Break for Lunch)
WHERE: Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC)
1500 Hennepin Avenue South, 3rd Floor, Whitney Library, Minneapolis
...............................

Links: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/09/29/brentboyd/
http://www.startribune.com/1553/story/707853.html
http://ae.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ui/mercurynews/movie.html?id=499882&reviewId=null

Photos courtsey of Regent Releasing 2006

WINNING A SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

2006-10-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

WE WON!

The IFP Cinema Lounge Bill Keyes MC announced, "And the jury awarded special recognition to I WILL COME BACK..." and a big image of Amahl Grant popped onto the screen and the clip, "My grandfather wore a suit everyday of his life. Cold, Heat... it didn't matter, it wasn't a matter of showing out for other people. It was a matter of dignity and Italy had a lot to do with that..."

That was pretty cool to see and hear Amahl talking on that big screen and the crowd applauding our bio-doc film about Buffalo Soldier Samuel H. Grant for the Minnesota Historical Societies' Greatest Generation Film Festival.

Special Jury Prize. I am always curious about why people are awarded Special Jury Prizes, for instance, at Cannes or Sundance. Of course, for us it means we didn't get a share of the big pot of money being put out for prizes. But we did get parting gifts!

Even better, I think, was our reception in the screening rooms. I ran between the two theaters and listened to audience reactions. The audiences cheered at the end of the film and not just in the screening room loaded with Grant family. In fact, the Grant family theater was more subdued than the larger main screening area at the Minnesota History Center. Many from the audience gave us and the Grants warm and appreciative feedback and said they were moved by the story and Samuel Grants courage. not only at war but on the homefront in starting the civil rights movement.

And then the post-mortem sets in, why a "Special Jury Prize" and not the big tamale? Withstanding I had no opportunity for a speech, probably the real reason we didn't get a main category prize. Let me first just express my gratitude for not winning a cash prize. Cash prizes always produce nothing but problems with vendors, with participants, with lawyers who prey upon filmmakers and with outsiders critical of the project who feel the filmmaker just "did it all for the cash." Everybody wants a piece of prize money. It's like winning the lottery and discovering instantly you have hundreds of long lost relatives. There is never enough prize money to recoup expenses.

Let's be honest, screenwriters and filmmakers are two classes of sufferers who will never be made whole by any amount of cash. We don't make films for cash reward. You'd be crazy to think that was our motivation. We do nothing but lose money on films because we believe in them. Besides, jury awards are like homecoming queen contests and cash prizes should never be counted upon.

One thing about the contest this year was how the winning films reflect upon our image of ourselves as Minnesotans. We have myths that must be upheld and this set of films fully embraced the Midwest Minnesotan image of subdued optimism and joy in the face of unbridled hardship.

Our special jury prize film, I WILL COME BACK has the same theme, an honest man who fought for his country even though it never wanted to give him full rights as a citizen and even tried to burn him at the stake but, other-than-than, there is very little variation from the sentimental ghee-whiz sympathy profiles and heroic virtues the Minnesota Historical Society sought to promote.

The suffering Scandinavian is an archetype juries pick because they feel public pressure to uphold Minnesota myths. Or maybe that's the only subject filmmakers felt they should pursue because the MNHS wanted them in the collection.

Over the years you will find an ongoing thread of story that continually gets retold about Minnesota people, that we cannot stop working as our Protestant work ethic will not allow it; we will suffer even Gods and natures vengeance valiantly and without too much complaint; and we never take ourselves too seriously even when we sometimes should. We love this story about ourselves. We want to hear it over and over, whether it be from Garrison Keillor or the Coen Brothers -- it is the archetypal Minnesotan story.

The great thing, I've discovered, is the suffering Scandinavian archetype is not the only story in Minnesota. And hopefully, with future Minnesota Historical Society projects we can get beyond simple stereotypes and explore the rich heritage of Minnesota from the Eastern European immigrants on the Iron Range to the German's of New Ulm, from the farmer to the shopkeeper to the Jewish deli owner to the Italians who lived on the flats along St. Paul's riverfront.

Our states culture is made of different perspectives and prisms through which it can be viewed and should be seen. There are stories of medical discovers, engineering marvels, heroic deeds and achievements, cartoonists, innovators, politicians, artistic achievements and hardworking migrant field workers. And, you'd probably find just as many stories about flappers, strippers and showgirls, nightclub entertainers, snake oil salesmen and gangsters, Holy rollers, boxers and poolsharks than in Brooklyn, New Orleans or Chicago.

This isn't to take any credit away from the winners. I loved Maxine Davis' THE GOOD DOCTOR that won for "best intergenerational film" and "56" by Deacon Warner about a Gopher football hero (also a Special Jury Prize winner) and THE SATISFIED LIFE and unflinching monologue by Ted Wryk by Freya Schirmacher took the top prize for "best film." MY GRANDMA LUCY was a heartfelt film narrated by Ali Drube about her grandmother who suffered from tuberculosis produced with her father Tom that won for "best collaboration" (between father and daughter).

MAKING THE BEST OF HARD TIMES by Roger Bindl won the prize for "best film about children growing up in the depression" who never "felt poor because nobody told them" and that intercut oral history interviews at a cafe in St. Paul. And A SACRED HEART by Norah Shapiro about the poetry of Phebe Hanson that arrived in her journals out of death and loss during an era with plenty of it. All were great stories and deserving winners. And we got to ride up to the premiere in a Rolls Royce limo and walk down the red carpet. It is so much better than cash, really!

Congratulations. Hopefully these film will inspire much more citizen scholarship and documentary making in years to come.

For a list of all 32 films go to:

http://www.mnhs.org

On the way home Patricia asked me why we didn't win the top film prize and money. I told her juries all have their dynamic and perhaps they couldn't fit us neatly into one of the categories. And her response was, "Well, I guess we can take confort that we are true artists, since we won a prize but still remain poor and misunderstood."

We both laughed outloud at her comment.

STRIPPER TO SCREENWRITER...

2006-10-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

...or how to get the recognition you want in Hollywood.

Our ever so charming yet naughty Minnesota girl Brook Busey-Hunt, aka Diablo Cody, cred has been lingering in a Hollywood purgatory since her lusty splash to fame on David Letterman this spring. By her own admit, Diablo's instant fame turned quickly into fledgling career and this is the stuff on which Hollywood is made.

Originally, Cody's red-hot script JUNO was shopped around by Mason Novick of the firm Benderspink, who has gained the reputation as the "horny manager" seeking sexy-girl blogger for career in pictures, who discovered Diablo in the Pussy Ranch, took his cut and signed her book "Candy Girl" to a six-figure publishing contract. As if there are not enough horny boys in LA LA land and lusty girls down in the valley! Novick was exposed to Diablo's writing while reading her raunchy blog on the internet. With profits, Brook bought a house in Minneapolis with hubby Jonny as apparently a book deal and a few thousand for a WB "three-picture deal" can no longer finance a house in LA.

According to columnist Jay Fernandez who writes Scriptland for the LA Times Diablo Cody is the kind of success story Hollywood loves. And he continues, "Novick has proven, is that surfing porn at work can no longer unilaterally be written off as unproductive."

LEMONY-SNICKET'S director Brad Silberling was originally slated to direct JUNO but has since been replaced by soup du jour THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING writer-director Jason Reitman and GHOST WORLD'S Russ Smith and Lianne Halfon producing for Mandate Pictures. JUNO has long been referred to as the female version of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, not a flattering comparison in my book, however Reitman is reportedly working with Cody to "flesh-out" the adult characters. [Exactly what ND never got IMHO]

In order to fulfilled her promise to WB, Cody has written the feature script TIME AND A HALF, a dark comedy about a recent college grad swimming into a "mid-20s life crisis" and is finishing scripts for TV pilots she owes Sony and Dreamworks. As Fernandez describes her ascending career, Diablo's "work meetings no longer require a sheet of protective glass." Cody wants to write a horror movie and is tagged as a big fan of THE DESCENT.

Just this week, the Hollywood Reporter announced casting decisions have been made for JUNO. Cody reacted on her blog, "Ellen Page and Michael Cera are both so good. They're gooder than good. They're goodical. They're a Mark Goodson production. I could not be happier."

So the word on the street is that with an entirely new team for JUNO it could begin shooting in January 2007. Will they consider coming to shoot in Hopkins Minnesota again?

ON LOCATION WITH CHASING WINDMILLS

2006-10-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

Chasing Windmills is one of the most exciting adventures in dramatic filmmaking to come out of the Twin Cities. Whether you are drawn to the genre of urbane Quixotic drama with a Latin flare or not, you have to admire the shear tenacity of storytelling and the bravado of posting a dramatic story everyday to the internet.

In the couple's first season, during the fall of 2005, Juan Antonio del Rosario and Cristina Cordova centered the short episodic stories primary around themselves and a fictious floundering relationship between a Minneapolis couple with family ties to Puetro Rico. Almost all their scenes were shot in their downtown Minneapolis apartment or nearby skyways and coffeeshops. Dunn Bros. at the Freighthouse is featured prominently in a couple of episodes as well as Runyons Bar. At season end, the couple take a trip to Puetro Rico to visit family and announce their expectations for family expansion.

Then, how quickly the story turns...

In the second season that began appearing on September 25th, the couple have expanded their pallet of locations, story options and characters. They have drawn their characters out of their fan base and through their web presence called together unusual, almost comic book, personae from the world of the web. You don't see these characters on TV because they are post-television digital age citizens. The second season episodes take us in many different directions, following the new characters and into new prominent Minnesota locales.

While the style of their productions appears, at times, to be hap-hazard and loose - a part of its charm - the stories are actually highly crafted and storyboarded. Juan and Cristina take turns handling the camera while the other performs in the scene.

My wife Patricia and I went on location after Juan and Cristina asked Patricia via email if she'd appear in this seasons episodes. The first episode Patricia appears in is titled LURKING. The main character Q and his new roomate Sam Carr enter a Lake street video store, cruising for single women to pick up. Once inside Sam gives his psycho-sexual analysis of women's film taste based on their availability status and suitability for mating. Sam finally concludes the foreign film section presents the best opportunities for a healthy coupling with a partner. And, as is often the case, that's where Q and Sam find Patricia browsing the shelves.

http://www.chasingmills.com

You can view individual episodes of Chasing Windmills on their main page but also see back episodes and read viewer comments on each on their videoblog:

http://chasingmills.blogspot.com

You can also subscribe to Chasing Windmills in iTunes and set them up to be loaded onto your Video iPod. These new distribution mechanisms and the world-wide audience Chasing Windmills has attracted put Juan Antonio and Cristina on the cutting edge of dramatic storeytelling for a new medium. Television had its golden era with the serialized sitcom; printing mastered its storytelling format with the novel; radio found its perfect form with the radio hour variety show; and now the internet with its fast, immediate and very portable content will find its idiom and golden mean.

INTO THE WILD WITH BILL POHLAD

2006-10-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

I ran into Producer Bill Pohlad and his wife at SW Minneapolis' YUM! restaurant on Saturday evening, where he was taking a break from his hectic travel schedule to grab dinner at this homey bistro owned by brother Bob and sister-in-law Michelle. Bill ate fruit salad and lemon chicken as their infant son slept in the stroller between them. We had a few moments to chat about his film productions.

FUR is going to open at the Rome Film Festival, Bill said, in a couple of weeks, however, he will not be in Rome for the festival due to the production schedule for INTO THE WILD, taking him to Portland while the Shawn Penn film shoots on location in Beaverton, Oregon in October.

FUR stars Nicole Kidman as Diane Arbus and has evolved into "an imaginary portrait" of Arbus under Steven Shainberg's direction and script by Erin Cressida Wilson, the writing team who brought the adaption SECRETARY to the screen. A wind of controversy swirls around FUR as the writer and director focused this portrait somewhat narrowly on an Arbus' obsession with forbidden sexual behavior, also a central theme in SECRETARY, as opposed to Arbus' complex career as a New York artist and photographic genius.

Pohlad's current production, INTO THE WILD is an adventure drama based on the bestselling story by Jon Krakauer about a top student and athlete from Emory University, Christopher McCandless (being played by Emile Hirsch) who abandons conventional life for the Alaskan wilderness. The script adaptation was written by Sean Penn who is also directing the film with Pohlad as Producer. The cast includes William Hurt as McCandless' demanding aerospace engineering father and Catherine Keener as well as Vince Vaughn as Wayne Westerberg.

In the non-fiction book by Krakauer, McCandless in a Tolstoyan fit renounced all his possessions, hitch-hikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness and return to nature. Keener plays Jan Burns who picked up McCandless and treated him as a surrogate son while Vaughn plays a tow-truck driver he meets while on the road. Shockingly, McCandless died of starvation four months later in a remote campsite inside an abandoned bus.

While Penn has been director of other special projects and several music documentaries, his last film for Warner Bros was THE PLEDGE (2001) that carried an estimated budget of $45M and ended grossing $20 in U.S. box office receipts. Penn's effort on THE PLEDGE was noticed with nominations for Cannes' Golden Palm and Berlin's Golden Bear but failed to achieve significant notoriety upon release.

Penn has recently been in the news for his interest expressed making the politically hot-button film adaptation of Richard Clark's Washington insiders memoir AGAINST ALL ENEMIES also with Vince Vaughn.

BRENT BOYD'S AURORA BOREALIS

2006-09-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

In the first date scene between Duncan (Joshua Jackson) and Kate (Juliette Lewis), meant to resemble Matt's Bar in South Minneapolis, Kate exclaims that Minneapolis is a great city to live in. Duncan asks if she means his neighborhood and she answers, "Well, this isn't as nice as St. Paul" to which Duncan answers, "St. What?" and she resserts "St. Paul!" Duncan, whose lived in Minneapolis all his life says, "Never heard of it."

At the Lagoon Theater preview screening in Minneapolis, this line gets a big laugh but one has to wonder if it plays in New York or North Carloina and if people in those cities even know that the boundry between the two cities is blurred, perhaps even, indisquishable except for the winding Mississippi. I asked Brent Boyd this question. He says, yes, the insider lines and distinctive Minnesota humor plays all over the country. In fact, Boyd claims the more particular and specific you get writing your screenplay and defining characters, the more unviersal the story becomes.

AURORA BOREALIS opens nationwide this week with Donald Sutherland, Lewis, Jackson, and Louise Fletcher (you might remember Fletcher as nurse Ratchett in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST) and a distinctively regional Minnesota accent. While the film was shot in Toronto, the exteriors are dresssed up to look like Minneapolis with a few b-roll juxtapostions to fool you. But make no mistake, the film is pure Minnesota in character and perspective from the opening song Bob Dylan's "Everything is Broken" to the oft referenced Replacements with a cameo appearance from Paul Westerberg.

Sutherland's character Ronald Shorter emerges directly out of the Minnesota's Northwoods. Almost lumberjackian in displeasure and Finish in temperment, the former hardware store owner suffers from Parkinson's and the "A-bomb." Through the trials of losing control over his body and environment becomes uneasily settled in South Minneapolis under the caring eye of his wife (played by Fletcher) and his unemployed and unambitious grandson Duncan as well as a health care assistant played by Lewis.

Sutherland grabs onto the old feisty Scandinavian rugged-individualism attitude with success. During the filming of AURORA BOREALIS, Boyd was kept on the set for rewrites and often Sutherland badgered and podded the young writer as a way of reaching a better understanding of Ronald Shorter. Depending on the field of possible supporting actor roles this year, Sutherland might grab a nomination for best supporting actor in this film, however, the film's release has no backing from a studio and is struggling under the inexperience of its specialized distributor Regent who might not be up for the challenge of handling the larger audience potential of a Sutherland film. And certainly, in the horse-race for Oscar nominations an experienced distribution company makes an enormous difference in placing their horse in the gates.

Never-the-less, the appreciation of the films humor and specificity comes from the contrast a Minnesota character offers to the outside viewer. For viewers like my wife (a Brazilian) and her friends from outside the country, they immediately recongize the "Minnesota-guy" syndrome that Duncan suffers under. And perhaps also the release an outsider like Kate presents to their focused world under his fur lined parka hood.

Definitely a film for the autumn holiday season.

GUILTY SELF-INDULGENCES ON 4/11

2006-04-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

Being today is my birthday today, April 11th, I thought I might go to the subject of self-indulgent cinema tastes -- my secret uncensored interests and joys.

On the political front, I my curiosity sways toward films from countries that give me a chance to probe and investigate political cultures other than my own. With the Italian election just completed and Silvio Berlusconi refusing to concede power, I am reminded of the first political films that appealed to me in cinema were by the great Italian auteurs: Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paulo Passolini and Bernardo Bertolucci.

OEDIPUS REX, 8 1/2, THE CONFORMIST, BLOWUP, VIVA L'ITALIA! were Italian realist and political films, I used to program in the cinema club lounge during my university days. While college students today prefer ANIMAL HOUSE and such frat-boy humor as ANCHORMAN, radicalized students in my day flocked in numbers to Eastern European, Russian, and Italian movies condemning fascism and unfettered abuse of government power.

More recently, however, I have been enjoying political film from Brazil. And, while you may have recently seen THE CONSTANT GARDENER, a film enjoyed because my fondness for political firebrands like Tessa (played by Rachel Weisz) I go back to Fernando Meirelles' first film (who directed CONSTANT GARDENER). CITY OF GOD is absolutely amazing and probably the best film of 2002.

I also enjoyed Seigio Bianchi's CRONICAMENTE INVIAVEL (2002) or the English translation would be CHRONICALLY INFEASIBLE which is both satirically biting and funny. Not since Luis Bunuel's DISCRETE CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (which this film resembles) has a film been more incisive and powerful.

Another interesting Brazilian political film would be ONIBUS 174 (Bus 174) a gripping documentary by Jose Padilha also from 2002. Padilha chronicals the actual events in 2000 when a street bandit took control of a bus after armed robbery gone bad turns a hostage situation and unfolds into a surreal drama involving the media, police incompetence and desparate victims in a face-to-face conundrum.

Now, away from the Brazilian front, I also very much enjoyed a Norwegian film called UTOPIA, which I probably shouldn't even mention since it has never been distributed in the U.S. and if difficult to obtain. I had to write to the Producer Ørjan Karlsen and request it under its native language title "Folk flest bor i Kina" or translated MOST PEOPLE LIVE IN CHINA Ørjan didn't at first understand when I asked him for UTOPIA which film I was talking about but then explained the title was changed provisionally to UTOPIA for a potential American distributor who never contracted the movie.

Anyway, UTOPIA or MOST PEOPLE LIVE IN CHINA is a very funny and inventive film constructed in 9 parts (one parable for each political party in Norway), each part describing with humor and self-humility (Norwegians are great at self-humor) the aspirations and lifestyles of its people. The films sections were each written by a different screenwriter within a collective called Oslo Screenwriters Workshop and directed by different directors. Each political allegory was edited and shopped to festivals as film shorts. A few won international prizes. Writer/Director Thomas Robsahm than wrote an interstitial movie to tie all the short films together. And its brilliant.

I am a big champion of UTOPIA or FOLK FLEST BOR I KINA and am sorely disappointed that this inventive drama never received American distribution. I found the film listed on the Norwegian Film Insitute web site (http://www.nfi.no/english) and then contacted Motly's, its distributor. You also have to obtain or own a multi-region capable DVD player because the DVD is not encoded for the U.S. but let's hope the future will break down all these arbitrary and artificial barriers to stories and cultural understanding. Technology and copy protection schemes, at the moment, only seem to throw more barriers and fences up.

MSPIFF: AL FRANKEN'S GOD SPOKE

2006-04-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

AL FRANKEN: GOD SPOKE will open the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film festival on April 20. The normally intensive international festival will take on a decidedly local flavor this year due to radical cutbacks in administration and lack of scheduling from international festivals.

Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, the makers of THE WAR ROOM and START-UP.COM turn their cinema verite cameras on the burgeoning political career of Minnesota's own comedian turned bull-dog Al Franken. Shot over the course of two years, the film follows the former SNL writer/producer turned hard-hitting commentarist from his highly publicized (and well-timed) feud with Bill O’Reilly over Franken’s best selling book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” to his tireless campaign against George Bush in the 2004 Presidential election.

“I take what they say and use it against them. What I do is jujitsu.” Al Franken describes his style of counter-punch politics.

From Franken's USO tour in Iraq, to the studios of liberal radio network Air America and on the campaign trail, filmmakers Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus were granted entre to one of the most effective political satirists of our time. Minnesotan's will recognize documentary footage shot in Minnesota, and Franken will make an appearance on the opening night of the MSPIFF.

Franken fearlessly confronts pundits and politicians, blurring boundaries between political satire and impassioned citizenry. Featuring a host of beltway big mouths including Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, Al Gore, John Kerry, Robert Kennedy Jr., Sean Hannity, William Safire, Karen Hughes and Henry Kissinger, the film is an hilarious look behind the front lines of the media wars during the most contentious election in recent history.

But ultimately, the film is a personal drama of transformation, as Al Franken leaves comedy behind and moves from his seat in the sidelines to become a contender inside the political ring. And it maybe a inside look at Franken's future aspirations that may include a run at one of his most sought after foes -- Senator Norm Coleman -- who first slighted Franken's friend Paul Wellstone and then went onto replace the Senator after the tragic air crash that killed him, Sheila Wellstone and their daughter Marsha.

In years past MSFIPP has had a strong relationship with the Norwegian consulate and northern European countries and audiences can expect to continue to see international films with a Scandinavian flavor. The festival is scheduled to close with the Minnesota-made Ali Selim's SWEET LAND based on Will Weaver's novel about a Norwegian mail order bride who took root in Minnesota's northwestern wheat fields.

WALKER AND VIERTEL LEAD PRODUCERS CONFERENCE

2006-04-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Minnesota's most active producer Christine Kunewa Walker and wirter/producer Joel Viertel headline the day-long annual IFP Producers Conference constructed around the theme of shooting locations. Location manager Clint Allen for SWEET LAND, Ali Selim's Minnesota indie feature scheduled to close the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival on April 30th will also lead the conference.

The 2006 IFP Independent Producers Conference will focus on the many elements of shooting on location, whether your script is set in the Little Belt Mountains of Montana or Little Italy. Via discussions and case studies of the guest producers' films, you'll learn everything from scouting, legal fees, permits and insurance to prepping a production for a location and much more.

CONVENTIONEERS, co-penned by Viertel and director Mora Stephens, tells of a young Republican man comes to New York for the first time to be a delegate in the Republican National Convention and falls into an unlikely affair with a girl he knew in college - a Democrat who returns to the city to protest the convention. Conventioneers is an ironic Romeo & Juliet story set against the real 2004 RNC that explores the consequences of the divide in American politics. CONVENTIONEERS was the winner of the 2006 Independent Spirit's John Cassavetes Award for Best Feature Made for Under $500K.

Ali Selim’s dramatic feature SWEET LAND based on Will Weavers novel tells the story of Inge as she buries her husband Olaf on their Minnesota farm in 1968, we relive her life story as she tells her grown grandson about how she arrived from Norway in 1920 as Olaf's postal bride and of the epic obstacles they overcame in order to marry. Selim shot the majestic looking landscapes in Central Minnesota with considerable location support from Montevideo town and citizen stand-ins and extras.

Also on hand will be conference panelists James Bigham (SWEET LAND), Mike S. Ryan (JUNEBUG) Lucinda Winter, Executive Director of the Minnesota Film & TV Board, and SWEET LAND Production Manager Clint Allen. Location shooting for locally produced shorts will be discussed by local filmmakers William Kruse and Kris Barberg.

CONVENTIONEERS will be screened at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (producer present) on Friday evening, April 21 (time/location TBA) and will be a featured case study at the conference. Watch for updates on confirmed guests and other details!

IFP Minnesota's 7th Annual Independent Producers Conference
THEME: Location is Everything!
DATE: Saturday, April 22, 2006
TIME: 9:00 am - 4:45 pm
GUESTS: Joel Viertel (Writer/Producer of drama CONVENTIONEERS)
Christine Walker (Producer AMERICAN SPLENDOR, FACTOTUM)
Clint Allen (Production Manager SWEETLAND)
PRICE: $50 IFP Members; $40 Students & Seniors; $75 General Public
LUNCH: $10 (optional - Middle Eastern buffet provided by Holy Land)
PLACE: Minneapolis Community & Technical College, Wheelock Whitney Hall, Rm. L3000
REGISTER: Call 651.644.1912

DIABLO CODY GOES MONDAY

2006-03-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

A revision to David Letterman's CBS Late Night schedule puts Minnesotan Diablo Cody on Monday night March 20th after Denzel Washington.

http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/show_info/

Originally, Cody was to tape on Monday and air as the third guest on Wednesday. Cody will be plugging for her book "Candy Girl," an autobiographical account of the life of a stripper in Minneapolis adult soda pop clubs and will not speak about her script JUNO. In the interview with Letterman, Cody (her real name is Brook Busey-Hunt) reportedly tells Dave "if this writing thing doesn't pan out, I'll go back to the pole." Much to Letterman's delight, Cody describes the work of being a stripper and even "bed dances" an act that simulates sex on a bed according to viewers of the taping session.

Denzel Washington will promote Spike Lee's newest crime mystery thriller INSIDE MAN also starring Clive Owen and Jody Foster. The two-time Oscar winner also currently has a son who is being actively sought in the NFL and a daughter entering Ivy League schools. Washington plays a down-and-out cop who steps into the role of negotiating the release of hostages in a bank robbery gone wrong.

CODE BITCH, CODE BITCH

2006-03-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

The ever sensational and outrageous Diablo Cody is going to be making an appearance in the David Letterman Show. Imagine, the guy from Richfield Minnesota with the hummingbird feeders dangling from his cap outside Woodlake Preserve....our former Minnesota on Letterman claim to fame... but with Diablo, you never know where she's gonna hang her feeders out. Letterman might think he has his hands full with Madonna but he has yet to meet Diablo...

Maybe, just maybe, our code-named devil will behave herself. NOT!

Diablo will appear as the third-guest as an "author." I didn't recall Letterman had a three guest line-up, but perhaps I am sawing logs in those desolate hours. Does Dr. James Dobson of the quickly enraged Focus on Family Counsel stay up late enough to have the hair on his back rise up and in order to scream of them damned nations?

Or maybe Diablo will hire a stand-in to play her in the guest chair on Letterman just as she did with the City Pages cover story [CP: August 17, 2005] detailing her account of meeting and not meeting with nameless WB executives to ink the 3-picture deal for her script JUNO scheduled to be directed by Brad Silberling (LEMONY SNICKET, MOONLIGHT MILE) this spring.

As of a few weeks ago, Minnesota had lost out (according to the Pioneer Press) to Illinois in the bonus bucks bidding wars as prime location for JUNO, a film styled to be Hollywood's answer to NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, even though Silberling approved of Hopkins to shoot most of the Cody scripted pix.

If Diablo's instincts are in true form, you can bet she'll be naughty but nice to fair haired midwestern Letterman from Indiana. The show is scheduled to be taped on Monday and aired Wednesday, March 22nd, if you can stay awake...

http://blogs.citypages.com/dcody/2006/03/a_minor_engagem.asp

MSPIFF: SIGNS OF LIFE

2006-03-17T11:31:00.000-08:00

Despite being hobbled by few film selections from the big international film festivals this winter due to staff shakedowns and Al Milgroms health condition (we wish him the best), email sent from Rick Hansen calling for local submissions suggests the Minneapolis international festival might still be coming to a theater near us.

Minneapolis-St. Paul Int'l Film Festival Seeks Local Work

We're looking for Minnesota-made shorts and medium-length films of any genre (narrative, docs, experimental). Maximum length 40 minutes. Films that have screened in the M-SPIFF in the past are ineligible. Send a DVD or a VHS:

Minnesota Film Arts
Attn: MN Shorts
309 Oak Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Joe@mnfilmarts.org

DEADLINE: Must arrive in office by March 25

We're also looking for your video-blogs and streaming shorts. Send a DVD or VHS to the above address, or send a URL to info@minnesotamovie.com

CHASING THE VIDEOMILLS

2006-03-07T06:41:00.000-08:00

Last Friday as I prepared to leave work for the weekend, I got my line-up of films, docs, funny shorts and even goofy TV commercials ready for my wife and our weekend viewing.

Yes, I said my wife. The big EP found his one true love in life Patricia and tied the knot. I am happy as a jaybird.

As I drive home along LaSalle Ave south I lamented the death of Oak Street Cinema revival house and now, it seems, the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival is going down with MFA. But, I guess, I am not too pained by the loss other than for nostalgic reasons. Frankly, there in my pocket on my iPod video I had four months of programming that I would never have gotten to see at Oak Street and Bell combined even if I'd gone every night and offered my $5 and suffered parking.

When I got home Patricia was excited with the prospect of viewing the newest episodes from the locally written, shot and produced CHASING WINDMILLS drama.

I had old and never before seen films. Old newsreel material from the National Archive in Washington D.C. as well as a 30 minute video from NASA on the Apollo 11 mission. I had a series of old funny off-beat TV commercials shot by our friends at Fallon. A mini-series sponsored by Doc Marten's about working people in London. And a series by a local couple Juan Antonio del Rosario and Cristina Cordova called CHASING WINDMILLS. I had movie trailers and all the short dramatic films nominated for the Academy Awards. Local, regional, national, and international films and video. Shorts, long form, documentary, animation and even archival history. I had a pilot for a new television show along with "behind-the scenes" materials for another.

The exciting development with internet delivered drama and documentary is that the bitstream levels the playing field, making it much easier and less expensive for local filmmakers to deliver their work to thousands, if not millions of eyeballs. And CHASING WINDMILLS is one of the most cutting edge productions in indie media making today.

What was impossible 10 and 20 years ago to view on any given weekend, is now not only possible but really easy. Alternative distribution has changed gears significantly and still the smoke has yet to clear on the directions we are heading. Going back five, ten and fifteen years in this community, we desperately hungered for alternatives to the mainstream distribution channels that delivered cheez-wiz rather than Taleggio or Parmigiano Reggiano.

Alternative content is now plentiful and in the period of a few short years our choices have changed radically. In 2004 and 05, the entire music industry was completely transformed by Napster, Garage Band, and the iPod and, despite the harsh and brutal threats by lawyers in Hollywood, the film industry walls of monopolistic control will fall and distribution will change also.

Digital distribution is a welcome development and a new age for independent filmmakers. Friends, get on board!

SHIFTING SOIL UNDER THE OAK

2006-03-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

At the staff organized community meeting between Casablanca and Citizen Kane, when the topic of the future of MFA was raised, Board member Tim Grady stated that the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF ) was fully funded and would go forward, following on a twenty plus year tradition in April. This assurance seemed to place a China Wall between the crisis of operating the slumping box office at Oak Street for revival films and our world-class film festival.

Now, the international film festival seems to be in doubt.

First, Al Milgrom founder and driving force behind MSPIFF went in for heart surgery during the Berlin International Film Festival (traditional a well-spring of film bookings for MSPIFF) and other Minnesotans hoped to see into Tim Grady in Berlin acting on Milgroms behalf. But nobody saw Grady there.

Second, placing a phone call to the offices of MFA will reveal and entirely new and inexperienced, if not, enthusiastic staff. Adam Sekuler has left for Seattle to began working at the Northwest Film Center. Al Milgrom is still recuperating at home, albeit it reluctantly. Gretchen Williams was picked as one of the hip and cool in Mpls/St. Paul magazine but not an employee of MFA. Emily Condon is gone and needless to say (despite that fact I had coffee with him in the skyway this week) Jamie Hook is happily engaged at a new cinema/live theater organization in Williamsburg Brooklyn. A week ago the MFA staff and board had not booked any films for the April schedule. If the problem at MFA was the staff, as Grady contented and not the board, now that the staff has been wiped out, where is the healing?

Third, according to a source close to the situation, the festival will not be held in April breaking with a decades long tradition and in its place a scaled down film schedule in unreel. The talk around the community is the next main festival will be moved to the fall of 2006.

This is bad news for Minnesota film lovers and could mark the end of our international film festival forever. A fall international film festival is a completely different species than one held in the spring from a programming standpoint. Moving a film festival six months downline is not as simple a task as it might seem -- its not like extending the deadline.

Probably the most disturbing aspect of the situation at MFA as it has unfolded is the lack of communication from the board with the community. Mostly, this is marked by two completely polar assessments of the condition of the organization. Other revival houses like the Oak Street around the country, more specifically the Bratttle Theater in Boston, experienced similiar downturns in box office revenues and declining membership.

Faced with the impending emergency, the Board of the Brattle jumped into action, came up with a comprehensive plan to rescue and revitalize the organization and set a deadline for the community to raise a targeted $400,000 otherwise the Brattle Foundation would close the doors. This clarity of purpose and resolve to go forward with community support is the leadership we need from MFA. Unfortunately, issues and analysis of the problem seem to have polarized the core of the non-profit board and membership.

One pole in the argument says revival cinema and Oak Street are completely healthy and artistically necessary while the Bell Museum and U Film is a drag on the organization. The other side says Oak looses money and has high overhead in keeping the doors open while the Bell with its documentary focus has been programmatically stable. Both positions now have begun to cannibalize the entire organization. And what's missing is responsible leadership and effective fiscal management.

Probbaly the most encouraging sign was a roundtable discussion hosted by Rob Nelson in the City Pages with leading curators and media arts administrators as well as Adam, Emily and Tim Grady from MFA. This community dialogue needs to continue.

PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION AT BERLIN

2006-02-21T10:05:00.000-08:00

At the Berlin International Film Festival during the world premiere screening of PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, Robert Altman was treated to a thunderous standing ovation. Expect more kudos for the 80-year-old American master this year.

PHC embodies many of the trademark Altman storytelling devices -- great ensemble acting; layers masking reality and facade; soft political satire; and parodies of social convention. Like Altman's classic microcosm films that get inside the skin from M*A*S*H* (military field hospital) , NETWORK (television news), THE PLAYER (Hollywood), KANSAS CITY (Jazz music), to MCCABE AND MRS MILLER (cowboy western), with PHC (the world of live radio) he has put together an astonishing cast, under-stated performances with an unassuming almost dispassionate central character.

With PHC Altman centers this milieu on the slow-talking Jimmy Stewart-like persona of Garrison Keillor. Altman began his career in Kansas as a writer for radio and the world of Keillor and PHC is a fitting turn of circle for the America auteur become legend.

Teaming with GK seems to suit Altman well. Both men come out of the midwestern soil of determined iconoclastic Protestants who share suspicion for the hierarchy dominates entertainment and cultural commerce. As such, both men forged their careers and industry by laboring outside the pale and taking stands against powerful Hollywood and New York industry interests with a stubbornness born or landlocked midwestern values.

While Altman and Keillor share critical distan for the hyprocracies of modern Christian life and stingy illiberal politicians, they also maintain a sunny optimism that even if life is unfair "it could be worse." Just so, the show must go on. GK's character in PHC is confronted with the possibility of the last radio show, to which he responds, he treats every show as if it were his last.

For many years, in Minnesota we have talked about a local or midwestern regional aesthetic, even a Minnesota representation in culture. With GK and Altman, this hard boned and bull-headed sensibility has become fully realized. PHC can easily be compared with LAST PICTURE SHOW, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES or MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL for its regional attitudes.

Sure to get a lot of play, partly due to Altman's career arch, unfortunately due to Lindsay Lohan's place in the cast beside a cast of acting legends, and in some part due to the Prairie Home Companion brand, expect a lot of buzz come around the June 9th theatrical release.

If timing is right and planets align, the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival should open with this film.

FACTOTUM: A CHANGE OF HOSTS

2006-01-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

Bent Hamer's FACTOTUM, shot in Minnesota by Producer Christine Walker during the summer of 2004 with indie stalwarts Matt Dillon and Lilli Taylor, has been lingering in pre-release. After its mild debut at Cannes in the spring of 2005, Picturehouse acquired FACTOTUM on May 25th and it looked to be slated for a February 2005 release. Picturehouse is a off-shoot of HBO and New Line Cinema and the deal was brokered by Sara Rose. Then came Sundance line up in December.

FACTOTUM has been called "pitiful, sad and vicious" by some who have seen it, yet a comedy filled with brilliant pickled performances by Dillon and Taylor as chaotic alcoholics. If ever there was a genre called "alcoholic literature", Charles Bukowski embodied it fully.

Dillon's performance as Hank, another autobiographical hard boiled sketch of human flesh marinated in booze and cigarettes perhaps surpasses Mickey Rourke's equally biographical Henry Chinaski in BARFLY form 1987 by French director Barbet Schroeder. Hank or Henry is yet another manifestation of Bukowski's alter-ego.

Not a fun night out at the movies, FACTOTUM running time was cut considerably after its Cannes unreeling and its distributor Picturehouse began to act nervously. As they approached the roll-out Picturehouse began asking for a "clean and sober" version of the film that downplayed the alcohol abuse and sex. What? A Bukowski film without drink and womanizing?

At Sundance, the producers announced, "...the deal [with Picturehouse] fell apart due to an unresolved legal matter...", shortly after the announcement of this year’s Sundance Film Festival lineup. FACTOTUM was then picked up at Sundance by IFC Films and is now planning an August 18th release.

Picturehouse is also slated to release another Minnesota producer-connected picture FUR directed by Steven Shainberg and produced by Bill Pohlad.

JOBS' CHANGE OF HEART

2005-10-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

I don't want to give myself all the credit but...

The Seattle-Post Intelligencer last week wrote about Jobs change of heart in announcing Video iPods:

"Before this week's unveiling of the new video-enabled iPod, Apple Computer's Steve Jobs was renowned in technology circles for his skepticism about video on portable devices.

Just how ridiculous did he consider the concept? Jobs joked in a conference call with reporters last year that if Apple were to add video to the iPod, it might as well turn the device into a toaster, too.

"I want it to brown my bagels when I'm listening to my music," he said at the time. "And we're toying with refrigeration, too."

His change of heart could have big implications for the media and entertainment world. In addition to announcing its new, video-enabled iPod this week, Apple introduced a departure from the TV industry's traditional business model -- generating revenue not by embedding advertising in the shows but by charging a small amount to download them."

We know the real reason Steve Jobs changed his mind was because of my angry email last fall at his mocking attitudes. I exculpated Steve, in that email, explaining that many professional filmmakers already carry their past movies around on their iPods from one machine to the next with their current edit to show producers or investors.

I told Steve, in my angry email, that the "cool" actors and directors keep an MPEG copy of their reel on the iPod, pull it out of their pockets, and connected it by firewire to a computer where they could show their abilities.

I told Steve, in my email blast, that the rock-video market has no resale but sits on the shelf wating for anxious teen-agers wanting their latest Coldplay or Bon-Jovi vids to add to their collections of all that fan stuff. And I told Steve in my email about the potential of PBS and the History Channel and cooking shows to repurpose their content for the pocket TiVo iPod.

I told Steve, completely aside from niche professional uses, all the home video makers using iMovie for their "Katie's Graduation," "Sophie's Birthday" or "My Vacation to San Juan Islands" movies need a device to take these movies to grandma's house and play it on the TV on Thanksgiving.

And Steve listened. So I'll take the credit. Thank you very much.

AUGUST WILSON, 1945 - 2005

2005-10-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

I am saddened and mourning the loss of one of America's greatest dramatists and writers: August Wilson.

Wilson heard voices. In his plays, we witnessed magnificent ensembles of characters who ennobled common men and the struggles of the soul to reconcile truth, history, politics, and individual conscience. Wilson voices lived best on the stage. Few have been translated to another medium because in their physical form, in the theatrical space, with the incredible crescendo of the speech, you had to be in the room. With Wilson's plays, you had to be there.

"I have to confess that I'm not a big movie person," Wilson said, "I don't go to a lot of films. And I don't know very much about the history of stage-to-film adaptations." It was widely known for many years that Eddie Murphy held the movie rights for Wilson's Pulitizer Prize winning FENCES. A great quote by Wilson about his dealings on FENCES when he described, you drive to the California, throw your script across the border and they throw the money back.

While Wilson's plays have not been adapted for film, his influence is huge. I attended the Eugene O'Neill National Playwright Conference the years August Wilson was there and his work thundered in our imaginations and touched many participants. In those years, the talk around O'Neil was that a Minnesota mafia had arrived. We adopted August Wilson as one of our own. Hearing his plays read, I was both awestruck and inspired. Wilson always made you feel that surge that filled the veins when history and passion came together.

When, as a fellow writer, August said, "Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it." he put us back on track.

Although nine of Wilson's plays were set in Pittsburgh and he lived out his final years in Seattle, he will always be important to our community after coming to St. Paul in 1978 and wrote his first play Jitney. Wilson's artistic voice and vision matured here in Minnesota, where he lived until the early 1990s. His impact on Penumbra Theater and Lou Bellamy keep his presence here resonating in our community life. Brother, you will always be a part of us.

NORTH COUNTRY REKINDLES HARASSMENT DEBATE

2005-09-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

While most of the chit-chat on the IMDB boards for Niki Caro's NORTH COUNTRY, shot on Minnesota's Iron Range and scheduled to be released nation-wide on October 21st, center on whether or not the Ranger accents are going to be "like Fargo" or worse DROP DEAD GORGEOUS, Warner Bros, Participant Productions and Oprah foresee a bigger debate.

As billing leading up to the show promises, tomorrow Charlize Theron will appear on Oprah's show to talk about the film and sexual harassment, With an obvious reference to her facial modifications her Oscar-winning MONSTER role, "Charlize Theron is putting on a brave face, for her new movie, North Country. Then, a story that will leave you stunned. What made these women targets of sexual harassment?"

Many are expecting that NORTH COUNTRY will revive a debate about sexual harassment in the workplace that hasn't been heard since Anita Hill appeared before the Senate Judiciary committee in the hearings of Clarence Thomas for Supreme Court Justice.

In Caro's film, based on the true life story of Eveleth miner Lois Jenson, Theron's character Josie sees Anita Hill giving testimony before the committee on television and is moved to actions she feels in response to her treatment. While Hill was successfully rebuffed by Senate Republicans and her witness diminished, Hill propelled women nation-wide and the class action suit in northern Minnesota that changed history to move forward.

In an attempt to counter the obvious hard hitting emotional edge the sexual harassment story presents, Oprah also interviews Theron about her new boyfriend, leading the star-hearthrob to comment on how much they enjoy "making out." Oprah then provides a graphic illustration via rear-view projection.

Caro's company Participate has set up a web site as a part of a campaign to stop sexual harassment and domestic violence:

http://www.participate.net/standup/

AN APPEAL FOR NOLA ARTISTS

2005-09-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of appeals being made for relief for the NOLA victims of Hurricane Katrina but I would like to suggest one that might touch us in a way that we've been touched by New Orleans. It is called the Tipitina Foundation:

http://www.tipitinasfoundation.org

Tipitina's is a club, performing arts organization, recording studio and landing spot for jazz, blues, cajun and zydeco musicians in New Orleans inspired by the legendary Professor Longhair. The last visit I made to their site, they had not changed a word or their schedule of fall classes and performances. You can see a frozen moment in time for yourself, however, I suspect the pages might change very soon:

http://www.tipitinas.com/default.asp

Tipitina's was as a neighborhood juke joint in the mid 1970s run by a group of young music fans (The Fabulous Fo'teen) to provide a place for Professor Longhair to perform in his final years after he was discovered working as a janitor in the deep south. The venue, named for one of Longhair's most enigmatic recordings "Tipitina," has survived in an ever-changing and ups-and-downs of the musical climate to become adept at weathering cultural storms. Professor Longhair wrote the song "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" that has become the anthem to the great music based fest that attracts millions from around the world each year.

In the past 25 years, Tipitina's has grown from a small, neighborhood bar into an international music icon. Since 1984, the venue expanded into a two-story, 1,000 capacity music center located at the famed corner of Napoleon and Tchoupitoulas. Tipitina's now has resources such as a web site, recording studio, record label, and a dynamic special events department. More than a venue, Tipintas reaches deep into the New Orleans community providing support for msucians, classes to students and events.

I think it is telling that Tipitinas was raising money to put instruments in New Orlean's schools prior to last Sunday when Katrina ascended. The last I heard, the club survived the ravaging onslaught of Katrina. A tree fell on their buidling but did minor damage. They are located higher up on the levee so flooding didn't reach them. The manager Bill Taylor fled to Florida and some of the staff and musicians holed up in the club to weather the storm. The story of their survival during Katrina is amazing, including the water rescue of a some 30+ elderly people at the nearby Fountaine Blu apartments and the birth of a baby on Tipitina's Walk of Fame (the sidewalk outside Tipitinas honoring Nola's Jazz Greats) by a woman who could not get to a hospital during the hurricane and flood ravaged week.

Now, Tipitina's Foundation has launched a relief drive to support Nola's great aging Jazz, Blues, Cajun and Zydeco artists by getting them life essentials, replacing lost instruments, putting them back on tour and keeping New Orleans music alive. I'm sure many of you sat, as I did, on the edge of your chair when you heard that Fats Domino was missing and then rescued in his home in New Orleans. Well, there were many more artists with as powerful an influence as Fats who suffered and lost everything. Tipitinas is making an effort, in the tradition they began with support Professor Longhair back in the 1970s to support New Orleans Jazz artists. One goal of Tipitinas drive is to provide foster homes to musicians and has been met with success but the effort needs to be sustained.

If you can support Tipitina's Foundations relief drive with a few dollars or many go to:

http://www.theleaf.com/hurricanesupport

The Leaf, a performing arts center in Black Mountain, North Carolina has offered logistical and web site support for Tipitinas after their staff was forced to flee New Orleans. This is a good fit since Tipitina's and The Leaf work together on jazz and blues festivals throughout the year. A musical performance concernt and benefit is being organized at Black Mountain in October.

If you are able to provide other material support for NOLA musicians such as housing, instruments, and life essentials, you may write to:

tipitinashelp@theleaf.com

These musicians have enriched our past lives and culture and will continue to do so in the future but they need our help now to keep going. Thanks for your consideration.

BRAZILIAN DIRECTOR MEIRELLES TURNS TOWARD KENYA

2005-08-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

THE CONSTANT GARDENER Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles opens this weekend in Minneapolis. Meirelles was the director of the astonishing CITY OF GODS and I was able to attend an advanced screening with the director in attendance to take questions from the audience.

THE CONSTANT GARDNER is based on John le Carrés novel is set in Kenya and follows Justin Quayle (Ralph Fienes) as a British diplomat and his bold wife Tessie (Rachel Weisz) as they venture into Africa to expose a story of international political intrigue. Meirelles opens the film with its ending, so if you are a fan of the genre of pizzling thrillers with plot twists and turns you might find the revelation in the first few minutes that our romantic lead gets quelled a bit disappointing. This isn't to say there are not twists and turns, changes of fate and subplots yet to be unturned in the course of THE CONSTANT GARDNER.

My romantic sympathies went toward Rachel Weisz's portrayal of Tessie since I have known many courageous women who staked their lives for their belief in justice.

In the course, there was a few short moments when the film seem to steer close to being a contemporary study in perception as Justin attempts to unravel Tessie's voyage into the dark underside of medical experimentation in Kenya. Was she disorganized, reckless and flirtatious or was she brilliantly coy and covert in her attempts to expose an horrific cruelty toward humanity? And then, after death, do we romanticize and mourn disproportionally to satisfy our dream of a past that never was? Ultimately, Meirelles decides not to take this story there and sticks with the thriller for its moral impact.

What surprised me the most was finally meeting Meirelles as I expected the director of CITY OF GODS to be dark, brooding and deeply contemplative and instead found him to be almost pixie like in his expression and temperament. Meirelles spent many years in the commercial advertising world and then personally invested his own time and money making CITY OF GODS which became an international sensation and earned him an Oscar nomination.

Meirelles perspective being from Brazil gives THE CONSTANT GARDNER an added perpective and edge on the western influence in third world countries and economy.

DIABLO DOES WB

2005-08-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Yo, who's harshing Diablo's buzz?

A number of people responded snidely or with contempt to the previous blog I wrote about Diablo Cody getting a deal with WB and her film JUNO that is scheduled to begin production this fall. They felt it was contemptible that a stripper recently emerged from the sex industry would be given a two or three picture deal for scripts written or yet to be written. I even received anonymous comment she wasn't getting paid to be vague, as she suggested in her City Pages interview, she was being paid to be a whore or get laid.

Hey, hey we're talking about a married woman here! Show some respect...

One thing I think Diablo Cody does have is a sense of the power of her allure. That's pretty valuable in the entertainment industry and, bluntly speaking, almost any industry. Do you think Steve Jobs is unaware of the powers of his persuasion? Diablo also has a sense that creating intrigue, even controversy, around her work or herself is valuable in selling said script or manuscript.

In many ways, people observing the Diablo Cody / WB deal have the most problem with this aspect of the rise she gives producers, agents, and production companies. Diablo understands a hook and how to mine it. But she's also, obviously, a writer who took an untraditional route to researching and writing a book "Candy Land" and screenplays inlcuding JUNO. The cynics see men experiencing sexual arousal rather than a well written script worthy of being put to screen.

But where people are wrong is to presume Diablo Cody is dumb, manipulative and has no ability to write a screenplay. I would suggest she has enough ability and probably sparkles with certain aspects of the magic of storytelling. And given that the master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa said that he still had much to learn at the age 68, I suspect Diablo in her twenties has much to learn about screenwriting and filmmaking also. But DON'T hold it against her! And JUNO could be a great script for all we know about it.

All those hardened screenwriters out there who I have known for the past 20 years have much to learn from this young brash pony of a chick. And I hope they learn it because they deserve a little spotlight and time to strut their stuff as Diablo learned from the skin trade.

The lesson: there is so much more to a picture deal than ARCO fasteners and MGM-style formatted pages.

DIABLO CODY SELLS SCRIPT, MAKES WB DEAL FOR TWO MORE

2005-07-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

Diablo Cody has got the big mo going. Mandate Pictures will finance, develop and handle worldwide distribution rights for JUNO, the screenwriting debut of Minneapolis-based writer. JUNO is the story of a unique teenage girl forced to make difficult, bizarre and sometimes humorous decisions regarding an unplanned pregnancy by promising the unborn child to a troubled couple.

Creative executive Jim Miller brought the dark comedy JUNO into Mandate and will oversee its development. Mandate is currently in production on Mark Forster's STRANGER THAN FICTION staring Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Wes Craven's RED EYE. Mason Novick, producer of RED EYE is credited with discovering Cody after reading her internet blog. Novick will produce JUNO while Mandate's Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane will executive produce.

Cody is a blogger who maintained a frank and open running journal titled Pussy Ranch while working as a stripper in Minneapolis clubs and phone sex operator. She has written a manuscript called "Candy Girl" that will be published next year by Gotham. In the past year, Cody was hired to write for City Pages where she assumed the title of TV critic. Her blog Pussy Ranch has become part of the City Pages blogshere.

In a recent post on Cody's blog, she characterized her blog jottings in these words, "I know you visit the Pussy Ranch because you've come to rely on me for sick, offensive content, gratuitious use of the word 'cunt'..." and vamp Iowan succeeds in turn to wily entertain her audience with bawdiness and shock. Yet, Cody also exudes a quick and caustic wit and a keen eye for unusual repartee that makes her self-revealing blog nakedly stand out from the millions like her on the internet.

A two picture deal with Warner Bros. Pictures (WB) followed, the first 'Untitled Cody Drama" carries the log line "...centers on a group of twentysomethings at the crossroads of their lives." Does that tag sound vaguely familiar and bromidic? The two script WB deal includes a second blind script.

In an July 8th interview with City Pages writer Dylan Hicks, Cody stated, "The best part about Hollywood is that they pay you to be vague."

Well, let's just say they pay Diablo... kick it girl!

MOVIE-MAN THOMSON ON SEA-CHANGE

2005-06-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

City Pages critic Rob Nelson has long heralded the Movie-Man David Thomson as foreseeing a sea-change in film culture with the advent of the box-office blockbuster.

In his overview of the year in films to date, Thomson suggests the decline in business might be larger than a cyclical dip. Thomson looks forward to the release this weekend of Spielbergs WAR OF THE WORLDS (as do I, see previous post) because of the resonance the film has in movie and cultural history. Yet, Thomson claims film audiences have declined and so has the meaning of films to their makers.

The decline of Hollywood domination may produce, however, a few desirable results for film enthusiasts: the rise of independent small capitalized films in niche markets and potential growth of foreign language films in U.S. markets.

Do films like BATMAN have to be dark and filled with ominous consequence to be redeeming? Pick up and read Rob Nelson's interview with Thomson on the web as a part of City Pages Special Summer Film issue:

http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1282/article13454.asp or go to: www.citypages.com

CITIZEN TRUMP ON KANE

2005-06-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine an bizarro world with Donald Trump starring as the lead in CITIZEN KANE? If that came to pass, perhaps, Trump would get a decent hair prosthetic and a stylist instead of that poorly died and flipped soufflé sitting on top of his head. Does it come as any surprise that the adventures of Charles Foster Kane make the 1941 classic Donald Trump's favorite movie?

Documentary filmmaker who won an Oscar for FOG OF WAR last year and director of TV commercials like the famed PHOTOBOOTH promotional spot for PBS and the anti-Bush ads for Moveon.org, Errol Morris also turns out to be a fairly prodigious master of his own web domain.

http://www.errolmorris.com/content/aborted/projects_donald.html

On this site you can follow the links to Aborted Projects where in MOVIE MOVIE Morris asks world renown figures to provide first-person critiques of their favorite films. Trump gives a bit of personal advice for Kane. Coming soon to the web screen of one of our most accomplished media techno-geeks, Mikhail Gorbachev discusses Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR and Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE.

WORLDS AT WAR

2005-06-01T18:12:00.000-07:00

I was not impulsively compelled to the STAR WARS hype like many perhaps slightly younger movie enthusiasts of my generation and friends who secretly dress up as Darth Vader awaited the first midnight viewing. Many of those friends attributed my lack of excitement to my teetering toward the edge of the viagra generation -- I just cannot pull one anymore for fantastic special effects extravaganzas like warring over the universe and noble gothic virtues.

In reality, it has more to do with grandiose medieval preoccupations of world order by George Lucas than youthful enthusiasm. Lucas may be a foe of George Bush but they share the same epic vision of the world at war as long as neither man is required to personally take up arms and can send other peoples children or hire actors to fight and die. Okay, I'll grant the apologists that Lucas uses light sabers and celluloid effects rather than laser guided bombs and innocent lives and there is a difference.

Honesty, I am more prone to get excited about the upcoming release of Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS with Tom Cruise at the end of June. Yes, Cruise has been acting a bit strange lately. Dreamworks is freaking out about his behavior of Oprah's show. But, while many kids were growing up thinking about the Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, and the fate of the Galactic Empire I was a bit more grounded with drama here on earth.

I recall in the late sixties being profoundly effected when, as a child, my family popped corn in a covered soup pan on the stove and gathered around the black and white 20-inch TV forged from non-organic orange plastic. To watch H.G. Wells chilling depiction, in the 1953 Bryon Haskin movie, of an invasion from outer space, the chill in my spine may have been seeded by the constant hysteria of the cold war fear in America -- none-the-less it was based more in reality than the fantasy universe of pure invention.

Also, as a kid I remembered how there were really two different polar approaches to science-fiction and at the time we viewed them as either fantasy sci-fi where everything was located in a space and time of pure invention and than there was the sci-fi of the internal world that we lived and touched everyday. THE TWILIGHT ZONE series on TV or classic old films such as DONOVAN'S BRAIN best exemplified the science fiction of the mind that made us examine our own predicament on earth. WAR OF THE WORLDS was another great classic that caused us all to react and then reflect.

Maybe greater reflection what is missing for me with STAR WARS. And we'll have to wait to see if Spieberg can reach that wonderful mix of suprise, invention, speculation of an unimagined future and the consequences of life on earth that makes for a great science fiction movie.

CANNES AMERICAN WINNERS JARMUSCH, JONES AND JULY

2005-05-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and actor turn director Tommy Lee Jones walked down the carpet with top awards at the 2005 Cannes Festival du Cinema. Jarmusch won the festivals Grand Prix for BROKEN FLOWERS while Jones' film collected two awards: the Prix du Scenario (Best Screenplay) and Prix d'interpretation masculine (Best Actor) for THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA. First-time filmmaker Miranda July won the Camera d'Or award.

The Grand Prix award is generally considered to be runner-up to the festivals coveted top honor Palme d'Or that was won this year by the Belgium brother filmmaking team of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for their film L'ENFANT. A Prix du Jury (Jury Prize) went to Wang Xiaoshuai for SHANGHAI DREAMS and the directors top prize Prix de la Mise en Scene went to German born director Michael Haneke for French production of CACHE that uses the English title HIDDEN.

Jone's THREE BURIALS resides in a West Texas border town and centers on Pete Perkins (played by Jones) whose best friend Melquiades, a "wet-back" is discovered dead in the desert. The body is quickly buried and the local police have no intention of investigating the death. Perkins decides to investigate the murder himself and provide his friend with a proper burial. A classic lesson in film westerns, primative authority assigned the task of investiagting its own crimes has contemporary poignancy not lost Cannes patrons and jury. Scripted by Guillermo Arriaga, who also wrote the screenplay 21 GRAMS in 2003, the writer explained about West Texas, "I wanted to understand how things are the same, and how they're different, how they're in and out of human control, what ironies might exist there, what injustices, what glory, beauty and redemption you can find in this area that has its own character..."

The much acclaimed Camera d'Or, that launched Jarmusch's career at Cannes in 1984, was shared by first-time feature filmmaker Sri Lankan Vimukthi Jayasundara for SULANGA ENU PINISA (THE FORSAKEN LAND) and American Miranda July for ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW.

The Portland, Oregon filmmaker and performance artist, July was picked as a top young filmmaker to watch in 2004 by FILMMAKER magazine. Before ME AND YOU won top awards at Sundance, July could be seen in the galleries of MoMA, Walker Art Center and the Whitney Biennial for her performance art. Miranda July also lead the cast of ME AND YOU as Christine Jesperson and is featured on the cover of that magazine's Spring 2005 issue.

In a statement issued by Festival de Cannes, July commented after receiving Camera d'Or, "Getting an award like this for your first film is like having someone tell you, "You're doing fine, you can keep it up."

CANNES 2005 PRIZE WINNERS

:: Palme d'Or ::

L'ENFANT (Child) directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

:: Grand Prix ::

BROKEN FLOWERS directed by Jim Jarmusch

:: Prix de la Mise en Scene (Best Director) ::

Michael Haneke for CACHE (Hidden)

:: Prix du Scenario (Best Screenplay Award) ::

Guillermo Arriaga for THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA

:: Camera d'Or (Best First Feature) ::

Vimukthi Jayasundara for SULANGA ENU PINISA (The Forsaken Land) shared with:

Miranda July for ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW

:: Prix du Jury (Jury Prize) ::

SHANGHAI DREAMS directed by Wang Xiaoshuai

:: Prix d'interpretation feminine (Best Actress) ::

Hanna Laslo for FREE ZONE

:: Prix d'interpretation masculine (Best Actor) ::

Tommy Lee Jones for THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA

:: Court-Metrage Palme d'Or (Short Film) ::

PODOROZHINI (Wayfarers) directed by Igor Strembitskyy

:: Prix Du Jury ::

CLARA directed by Van Sowerwine

WAGES OF LIVING THE HARD LIFE

2005-05-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

As NY Times critic A.O. Scott points out in his dispatches from Cannes, the French have a pedigree for a certain type of American filmmaker. Gus Van Sant, Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers, Michael Moore and Jim Jarmusch. In reality, these auteur filmmakers don't have the following anywhere in America that Cannes has created for them -- none of our American festivals have given them as much prominence or honors. But Cannes has elevated them to a position of international influence for their uniqueness and personal vision.

France was the foremost nation that fought for a cherished position for the author and authorship as a concept. Through the centuries, the French insisted that authorship is a transcendental right and cannot be negotiated either in contract or transferred in payment -- a radical concept. Hence it should not be surprising that the Americans filmmakers Jim Jarmusch, Joel and Ethan Coen, Woody Allen, and Gus Van Sant are honored in France more than in their home country.

Appearing at Cannes for the eight time, Jarmsuch screened his film BROKEN FLOWERS which stars Bill Murray and a cast of top liners Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Julie Delpy and Chloe Sevigny along with Jeffrey Wright. Only writer/director Jarmusch can comically elongate a story to avoid the obvious emotional sentimentality one-two-three that American films demand regardless of whether they are Hollywood or indie films. The New York 80s gen filmmaker is astude in avoiding heavy-handed metaphors and allows the viewer space to contemplate what his characters are thinking. Too many movies want to beat you over the head telling what their characters are thinking. It is nice to get the breathing space.

A film directed by another great icon of 80s independent filmmaking Wim Wenders unreels at Cannes. DON'T COME KNOCKING written by Sam Shepard offers a similar story of a hard living soul vacant playboy in search of unknown offspring. Jarmusch and Wenders careers have interesting intersections that come together again with story theme but also in the form of Minnesota actress Jessica Lang who plays almost identical roles. BROKEN FLOWERS and DON'T COME KNOCKING provides an interesting contrast between the two writer/directors working with similar material.

Gus Vant Sant's LAST DAYS is said to be loosely based on the final days in the life of hard living of Seattle grung rocker Kurt Cobain along the theme of the price of fame and raw genius. Although, Van Sant's central character Blake is fictional, we know he is Cobain because of the famous hat with ear flaps that Cobain always wore in the last year of his life. The problem Van Sant is sure to encounter, especially with the Cobain faithful, is the comparisons that are sure to be drawn between the soundtrack's uneasy renditions of Nirvana's originals.

Bent Hamer's FACTOTUM features what many are saying a personal best performance by Matt Dillion in another story about a hard lviing, woman abusing middle aged male. Lacking a unknown offspring waiting Burkowski's alter-ego, FACTOTUM could easily be seen as another variation of this years Cannes theme of middle-aged men paying repentance for living the hard life.

Cannes awards will be announced in ceremonies on Saturday evening May 21st.

CHRISTINE WALKER TO CANNES FOR WORLD PREMIERE OF FACTOTUM

2005-05-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

Minneapolis Producer Christine Walker is headed to Cannes film festival in May with Jim Stark, Bent Hamer, Matt Dillion and Lily Taylor for the world premiere of FACTOTUM. The Norwegian film will compete in the Director's Fortnight, Hamer's second appeareance in the highly sought after section of the festival.

FACTOTUM is based on the novel by Charles Burkowski and was shot eniterly on location in Minneapolis and St. Paul in June and July of 2004. Walker produced the film for Jim Stark and using Minnesota crews and extras cast in addition to the A-list actors brought from New York and LA. Dillion stars as a downcast character based on Burkowski's life as a writer and alcoholic.

MY FAMILY, MY MOVIE, AND OUR CULTURE

2005-05-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

When I read the reports about the Family Movie Act this week in Congress, I was enraged by the film industries acceptance and support. Basically, the industry demonstrated they could care less about the intregity and rights of authorship and even infringement. The Family Movie Act is a glaring example of how the film and music industry cannot claim they have one ounce of concern for the artists, their work, or the culture of creative entertianment.

Of course, certain politicians in Washington turned the Family Movie Act into a right-wing ideological diabtribe and a partisan rant that defies reason. The act turns authorship and the authenticity of original works into a joke. Presumably the Act allows software filters to edit films to suit the tastes of, well, basically a programmer with an attitude or bias what ever it may be. The filter can act to edit out offensive words referring to parts of the human anatomy but likewise, it can just as easily apply a filter edit to include only profanity, sex and violence. The only perversion being demonstrated is the destruction of the original work by the artist or filmmaker. The violation comes through the act of editing, not what it is chosing to censor. While the filters exploit and use original intellectual property, they show nothing by contempt for its original creator.

In exchange for their support of the Family Movie Act, the film and music industry were given greater legal mechanisms and tools to pursue and prosecute consumers. And these consumers are commiting crimes no more grave than music and movie fans who collected films by recording them off TV with their VCR or recorded albums off their favorite long-play FM radio station 20 years ago. By some perversion of intelligence, the film and music industry must think two horrendous wrongs (censroship and abusing their customers) must make one right.

The reason the film and music industry have resorted to abusive actions against consumers is that for the past 5 years years or more, the companies failed to embrace the changing demands of the consumer and seek ways to better provide products and services to people who want them. The irony is while there is a boom in the demand for entertainment and new delivery systems, the industry is bashing and persecuting its most avid fans and first adopters.

In the long run the punitive actions of the industry will hurt everybody including themselves. Greed and the need to control with an iron fist will destroy the marketplace. Ulitmately, while the film and music industry also strongly opposed the advent of VCRs and cassette tapes whose technology was open enough to allow users to collect favorite tracks, albums and shift viewing or listen times, but Congress and the Courts protected consumers from their abuse. In the end, with the previous generations of technology, it became very profitable for the entertainment industry to allow cultural appreciation to grow, freedom for content creators, and innovation among culture enthusiasts.

It is time for industry associations and lobbyists to step back and take a longer view of our cultural heritage and avoid the narrow blinders of greed and political horse trading with those who wish to restrict artistic freedom.

THE THIN LINE BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION

2005-04-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

With documentary films from ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM to AFTER INNOCENCE and MURDERBALL, increasingly filmmakers are working in the documentary form, expanding the vocabulary of documentary with weighter dramatic storytelling for theatrical, broadcast, and cable release. These films employ dramatic structured storytelling, occassional reinactment, and character development normally reserved for dramatic films shot for big screen cinema.

One of the best examples of the blurring of lines between drama and documentary was the 1988 Cannes Camera d'Or winning SALAAM BOMBAY! by Mira Nair. Released in cinemas as a drama, Nair's truth-seeking story depicted life on the streets of Bombay; the casting of real street children as actors for Krishna, Manju, Chillum, and Baba; as well as the faithfulness and honesty of the her storytelling could easily place this powerful film in the category of documentary.

In a stunning and poignant contrast two films from the 80s, Martin Bell's 1984 documentary STREETWISE crafts a realistic yet compelling dramatic fly-on-the-wall story of kids on the streets of Seattle and the Hector Barbenco's drama PIXOTE: A LEI DO MAIS FRACO (1981) about street kids in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Both are films barely distinguish themselves as to which is documentary and which is drama.

In the Oscar nominated documentary LALEE'S KIN (2001), Susan Froemke and Deborah Dickson cast a powerful matriarch figure who cries, prey's and sings her way through the bluesy real life of poverty and illiteracy in the third world conditions of the Mississippi Detla. LaLee's young boy wards of four and six learn to pronounce the word penitentiary before they can begin to comprehend the words chemistry, agriculture, and algebra. Each frame of this incredibly moving documentary carries the weight and visual insight of a carefully crafted and elaborately storyboarded fictional recreation of naturalist narrative or social realism.

Likewise, Siddiq Barmak's OSAMA (2003) cast an amateur 12-year-old Afghan girl Marina Golbahari who has been working as a begger on the Taliban transformed streets of Kabul as the films lead. Golbahari's performance is riveting, especially if you know she isn't acting, she had only seen one film (a pirated back street copy of TITANIC) before starring in the drama and that she earned $14 for her work in OSAMA. In her own words, Golbahari said, after shooting an impactful scene where she is lowered into a well, went home and cried in fear wondering what she had done choosing to be in the film. Where does character acting end and documentary begin?

Jean Luc Godard said, when you start out making dramatic fiction you move toward documentary and when you begin with documentary you move toward fiction. In the faithfulness to any story, a writer, researcher, filmmaker, and documentarian must put themselves in service of a truth to the world the film inhabits and in where it exists to keep the viewer ingrossed in the story.

Yet, with all the emergence of new documentary vocabulary, filmmakers carry an added responsibility and burden in walking the line between fiction and documentary. This is most evident in Jack Cahill and David Eberhardt's LONG GONE. The film is a poetic and romantic depiction of life on the rails but riddled with the pitfalls of honest and dishonest storytelling.

The tramps who ride the rails are notorious for their storytelling and the life has a fanciful romance that is itself fiction. In reality, life riding boxcars is brutal, ugly and wrought with deceptions. One of the character cast in LONG GONE is New York Slim, a man who tells us he went to Vietnam, fought heroic battles, was captured and taken as a prisoner of war and allegedly returned to Seattle in a war prisoner release negotiated by the Nixon administration. Your heart sinks for a war-hero reduced to living his tormented-hell to the constant beat of the steel-wheel screeching against its track. New York Slim rides the rails wearing a POW t-shirt and talks about supporting his men in his a company. In the end, Slim's story is all a huge deception and a metaphor depleted by lies.

Cahill and Eberhardt engage in a documentary deception by refusing to reveal aspects of the story critical to understanding the plain truth. After establishing the illusion throughout the film the filmmakers chose to reveal the fact that New York Slim never went to Vietnam on a card at the end. A dubious revelation and thus it set us up to reflect poorly on Slim rather that try to understand his self-delusions and deliberate fabrications of fact.

But New York Slims facade is only the beginning of the flaws with the story they are trying to tell. The extent of drug use and transport on the rails by the subjects is glossed over in the attempts by the filmmakers to "protect" their subjects. Characters cast in LONG GONE, such as the two upper middle class girls who ride the rails as a form of fanciful escape from the hum-drum lives are not fully realized or explained either dramatically, with insight or unvarnished truth. At one point we see Stonie insert a needle into the arm of Jessie to shoot her up with dope and then just as quickly turns around and acts chivalrous by saying while he is becoming strung out, he would never want to see her using dope. These make up the layers and layers of contradiction and evasiveness at the films core.

Dogman Tony and New York Slim, are depicted as a brotherhood of men on the rails who stand up for each-other but it turns out the filmmakers facade is a romantic myth. In turn, the tramps beat eachother down, are codependent enablers (sorry to use such 12-step loaded language but its true) and the illusions the film struggle to uphold fail to capture the truth of the world in inhabits.

While it is truthful for Cahill and Eberhardt to reveal in LONG GONE the blatant hype and superficial sensationalist storytelling of the 20/20 TV news crew that tries to do a segment on Dogman Tony, they resort to the same filmic deceptions in faithfulness to their poetic romantic preconceptions and conceal as much truth as they chose to reveal.

----
AFTER INNOCENCE and MURDERBALL were shown at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and were picked up for distribution. THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM opened on April 22 in cinemas. LONG GONE was shown at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival in 2003 and won Best Documentary at River Run International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and at the 2003 Slamdance in Park City, Utah.