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Day 10: Steel Trap

2008-07-10T13:51:00.001-05:00

The first thing I was thinking upon watching the recently released straight-to-DVD flick Steel Trap was that the cast looked so old. After that, I realized that they just looked old for a horror movie, as the typical cast of a typical horror movie are about 21 years old. Steel Trap sets itself apart by having a cast of real adults instead of overgrown teens. Unfortunately, this is the best thing I can say about this stinking pile of crap.

Steel Trap starts us off with an entertainment industry New Years Eve party on the top floor of an abandoned office building. Apparently, wealthy studio executives can’t afford a decent hotel or club. It’s at this party that we meet our protagonists. We have Adam the Arrogant Suit with Party Girl Melanie, Nicole the Advice Columnist and her boyfriend Robert, Kathy the Celebrity Chef, Pam the TV Exec, and Wade the Rock Star who has “fucked so many skanks it’s gotten old”. You now know everything about the characters.

After the new year has been rung in, the Scooby gang each get a text message inviting them to another party on a different floor. Of course, they go and find a series of nursery rhyme clues to follow. Only after finding a severed pig’s head do they think that maybe something is wrong.

And wrong it is. The gang find themselves trapped on the floor with low-tech booby traps and a masked killer stalking them. As you may have guessed, they die off one by one until the killer is revealed. (At one point, Nicole misspeaks a line giving a clue to the killer’s identity.)

People who know me know that I love horror movies. I even love bad horror movies. As Steel Trap goes, it’s pretty generic. It’s basically a horror-by-numbers kind of flick. The characters fall into their distinct types: the pompous jerk, the scaredy-cat, the brassy chick, etc. Even that I could’ve dealt with if the characters hadn’t been so goddamned annoying.

The most annoying trait we can assign to Gen Xers was the overuse of sarcasm. Like garlic, a little sarcasm can spice up a scene quite a bit, but with too much of it, the whole thing reeks. And brother, let me tell you, these characters never stop being sarcastic for one second. Even as a MASKED PSYCHO is stalking them, they keep on making sarcastic remarks at each other. I think the screenwriters thought it would make us think that the characters are witty and cool. Instead, it just made me happier when they inevitably got killed off. The camp counselors at Camp Blood weren’t this annoying.

By the ending, when the killer and motive has been revealed, I didn’t care. Even worse, the revelation was done in an even more sarcastic way that resembled a bad stand-up act more than what could have been a chilling scene about grudges and revenge. I honestly wished I had used the time watching this movie for something more productive.

My recommendation is that you pass on seeing Steel Trap. If you want a good horror flick about people trapped on a floor of a building, check out the far funnier and quirkier, but no less bloody film, Botched, starring Stephen Dorff.

Day 9: The Birthday

2008-07-08T17:58:00.001-05:00

You ever have one of those horrible days where every little thing goes wrong and you feel like you’re totally out of sync with the world? Well, that’s the kind of day that Norman Forrester (Corey Feldman) is having in the stylish, quirky-as-hell 2004 film, The Birthday by Spanish director Eugenio Mira.

Norman Forrester is a nebbish man who is totally in love with his domineering, neglectful girlfriend, Alison Fulton (Erica Prior). This night being the first time he’s seen her since her trip to Europe, he has a special gift he wants to give her, but she’s so preoccupied with everything being perfect for her father’s birthday party, she never takes a spare moment to listen to Norman stammer his way through what he wants to say. Instead, she pushes him out of her hotel room and sends him downstairs to wait for her.

At the party, Norman is constantly pushed around by Alison’s highly eccentric family. While all of this is going on, the waitstaff are ominously going about their duties, pushing large boxes from room to room and “accidentally” keeping the hotel at a chilly temperature. After Norman suffers through a conversation about dolphins and pamphlets, he decides to leave for a bit and soon finds himself embroiled in some secret plot to foil a dangerous cult that’s trying to bring their evil god to life in the physical world.

Throughout the whole film, Feldman nervously stumbles from one bizarre situation to the next, all the while freaking out about how to stop the end of the world. He speaks in such a strange Jerry-Lewis-meets-NYC-Cabbie voice that no one ever listens to him. I have to say, I was actually impressed with Feldman in this movie. If only he could get some decent roles, maybe he could shed himself of that cheesy image from his youth. I don’t think doing a role in the new Lost Boys movie will help on that front.

The whole movie is stylishly done. The sets are brilliant and beautiful, rendered in a lush 50’s Hollywood style as only a great production designer could do. Everything was shot on a sound stage, so the camera is able to make these lovely tracking shots and the lighting is incredible. Even if you think the story is dumb, you could lose yourself in the look and feel of the film.

Unfortunately, Mira’s filmography is very, very brief. I’m really interested in seeing what he brings us in the future.

Day 8: Death to Smoochy

2008-07-07T14:09:00.000-05:00

Danny DeVito’s 2002 comedy-noir, Death to Smoochy, was panned heavily by the critics when it was released. Roger Ebert gave it only one star when he trashed it. You can read that review in his book, Your Movie Sucks. Ouch.

Personally, I think this movie deserves a second look. Sure, it’s a bit flawed, but it’s a pretty scathing satire of how the corporate nature of show business takes things that can be beneficial to people and twist it around to sell “sugar and cheap plastic.” Death to Smoochy is a film with a few flaws, but it’s not a horrible failure.

When popular kid’s show personality Rainbow Randolph (Robin Williams) is busted by the feds for accepting bribes to put kids on camera, the network needs a replacement to fill the time slot who is squeaky-clean free of scandal. They find ubër-idealist Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton) who is Smoochy the Rhino.

Sheldon is the ultimate idealistic guy. He plays music at the local methadone clinic and tries to get people into soy-based organic food products. When he gets the time-slot, he constantly fights against the capitalist agenda of the network. He rejects the need for all the merchandising and whatnot.

However, the children’s entertainment business is a deadly, corrupt world. Sheldon soon finds himself involved with the Irish mob, threatened by a crooked charity scam, and stalked by Randolph. When Sheldon takes on Burke (Danny DeVito) as his agent, Burke’s first action is to give Sheldon a gun.

While this movie is funny and definitely worth the watching, it does have a few flaws. The first of which is that Sheldon’s conflicts seem to keep resolving themselves without him actually doing anything. Every time he’s in hot water, a few scenes later, everything gets sorted out by someone else. Sheldon also never has a crisis of character; he never really wonders if his idealism is a chased windmill. In fact, his motto is “You can’t change the world, but you can make a dit.”

The film also felt long. It’s only 109 minutes, but it felt like it was over two hours. I think part of the problem here was in the pacing and structure of the movie. There were so many crises solved by someone else, there was never a true build to something that could be called a climax. I think some more time I the rewriting stage and in the editing room would’ve made a tighter, better film.

All in all though, I’d say it was a funny film that hit on some of the right spots. Definitely not going to be a classic, but worth a rental.

Day 7: WALL-E

2008-07-07T13:38:00.001-05:00

Almost every elementary screenwriting textbook says that the magic of story is that it serves as the candy coating for the message you’re getting the audience to take. Usually, the reason a movie may be considered bad is because the filmmaker isn’t sure what their message is (could be a result of the Hollywood practice of having multiple screenwriters doing revisions) or because the filmmaker is more about presenting a spectacle than a meaningful theme. (Think of a bad action movie like Ghost Rider. Did that have anything meaningful to contribute?)

WALL-E, the latest Pixar animated feature is brilliant because it presents a good story, brilliant spectacle, and actually has something to say, much to the dissatisfaction of Republican bloggers and pundits. (Honestly, to the Republicans just think everything is an attack on America?)

WALL-E is the last functioning robot on a ruined planet Earth. 700 years prior, all of human kind took a five year space cruise while the robots were left behind to clean up the massive mess on a highly toxic scale. Over time, the other robots broke down and our lone Wall-E dutifully continues his lone directive, takes care of his pet cockroach, and watches clips of My Fair Lady, dreaming of not being alone.

While out compacting and piling garbage into a skyscraper-high tower, a rocket ship shows up and drops of a sleeker-looking robot that resembles the next model of iPod. (In fact, most of the robots in this movie look like they were designed by Apple.) Named EV-A, it takes no time for Wall-E to develop a robot crush.

The plot progresses and soon Wall-E is on the cruise ship. The future is a scary one, my friends. People have developed over the centuries into obese blobs in hoverchairs. Everything they eat or drink is sucked out of a cup with straw. Their chairs function as iPhones and no one notices their surroundings. Children are raised and taught by robots touting the Buy ‘N’ Large brand. People do nothing more than consume; progress has halted. You have to wonder at this point if the human race is worth the effort.

As I mentioned earlier, the Republican bloggers and pundits are vilifying this movie for its depiction of a polluted world and harsh criticism of the culture of over-consumption. They proclaim that the film is pessimistic and un—American. I, however, actually watched the film and found that this film may have been a cautionary tale of a possible future we’re heading for, but in the end, the main message was one of hope. Yes, things may be bleak, but they can be changed. If you see this movie, make sure to watch the animated sequence during the ending credits. It is the true epilogue of the film.

One final thing: while in the theater, I was surprised to see that the majority of the audience were adults. Usually a G-rated screening is filled with kids who can’t keep their attention focused and stroller-pushers who talk to each other. Wall-E’s screening was way different than I had expected.

Day 6: Hancock

2008-07-05T12:43:00.001-05:00

Day 6: Hancock

I’ve always thought that Highlander was a great movie. One of the reasons for this is that there’s no Perfectly-Plausible-Explanation (or PPE for short) for why people like the Highlander are immortal. They’re just born that way. So of course, I absolutely hated Highlander 2 when the screenwriter decided to offer the PPE of the immortals being some sort of exiled space alien. Had they not bothered with the lame need for an origin, we might have had something better.

Hancock is like Highlander in that the movie is a fun popcorn flick until it decides to get into the origin story. Once it reaches that point (which just so happens to be the Hollywood-standard halfway turning point) the movie goes south.

Will Smith plays the title character, John Hancock, an alcoholic with super powers who fights crime, but does it pretty sloppy. While stopping a high speed chase, he causes 9 million dollars worth of property damage. While that might look cool in movies and comic books, LA taxpayers aren’t too thrilled.

Hancock later saves the life of Ray Embrey (Justin Bateman) who is a PR guy trying to sign corporations onto a charitable cause, but has no luck. Ray offers to remake Hancock’s public image so he’ll be loved by the people. This leads to Hancock doing time for past transgressions in hopes that when the crime rates rise, the city will miss him and release him early. This is exactly what happens.

Enter the newly refashioned Hancock, complete in X-Man style uniform, to stop a preposterous bank robbery scheme in which the robbers have military style weaponry and high explosives strapped to every hostage. I guess they need to rob banks to fun their bank robbing.

Now, had the movie stayed in the realm of being about a superhero trying to make himself over to be welcomed by the public, we could’ve had a good movie. There was a lot to work with. Unfortunately, execs in story meetings had other ideas. Without saying too much, let’s just say that they really screw the pooch with a convoluted story about immortals with more than a few plot holes about the mechanics of Hancock’s powers.

I really, really wish I could understand the mind of the Hollywood screenwriter. I mean, how is it that they constantly have a theme to delve into only to avoid it in favor of some stupid plot twist? Do they just think that the public will fall for the shallow gimmick? It baffles the mind.

Choke trailer

2008-07-05T12:13:00.000-05:00

Oh man, I can't wait! http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/choke/trailer/

Day 5: The Ruins

2008-07-05T12:06:00.000-05:00

I’m one of those curmudgeonly people that always seems to get annoyed by others. I know I’m just too high-strung, but when I’m out in public, I’m constantly ticked off by people who seem like they were taught how to socialize with others by a drunk NASCAR fan. One group in particular that annoys me are young, arrogant white college kids of privilege.

It’s been said that films work because of their closeness to dreams. Freud even said that dreams were mainly wish-fulfillment. In that case, The Ruins, the 2008 film directed by Carter Smith and starring Jena Malone (who was in Donnie Darko) is the wish-fulfilling dream for me.

Our story starts with four college kids in Mexico for vacation. We have Amy (Jena Malone) who seems to pop on glasses when she needs to look smart for something, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) the pre-med student, Stacy (Laura Ramsay) who is there to show the required gratuitous boobs, and Eric (Shawn Ashmore) because you need one guy who looks like a stoner. I’d offer more description if I could, but these characters have nothing unique about them worth describing. We never get to know anything deeper about them other than Amy and Stacy are, like totally, BFFs and that Jeff is a pre-med student.

Our over-worked and stressed college kids of privilege are relaxing by a hotel pool when they meet Methias (Joe Anderson), a German who just happens to be visiting his archeologist brother at this Aztec pyramid that’s, get this… NOT ON THE MAP! After having only known each other 30 seconds, Methias invites the four to join him. Well, it turns out that the kids didn’t want to do anything touristy while in Mexico (apparently lounging by a hotel pool, ordering room service, and drinking on the beach isn’t touristy) but since this ruin ISN’T ON THE MAP, what the hell.

Once at the titular ruins, things go wrong as locals sequester the Scooby gang to the pyramid. You see, the ruins are covered in the vines of a man-eating plant that exhibits some major intelligence. The vines attack and confuse our heroes, picking them off as the movie progresses.

The arrogance I mentioned earlier is manifested most clearly in the character of pre—med Jeff. Being Mr. Future Doctor, his interactions with everyone is that of a smug superiority, When trying to hire a ride out to the ruins, the Mexican (with grumpy dog and beat-up pick-up truck) says “That place is no good.’ Instead of even asking what he means, he just shrugs and smugly offers the guy more money. He tries the same tactic later when the locals start enforcing the quarantine on the kids. It doesn’t work, but he’s not worried because this “doesn’t happen to Americans.”

After having watched this, I can’t see how the vines are really all that scary. The characters do worse horror to each other than the vines ever do. In fact, the vines are more like natural predators, picking off the weak and the sick. Throughout the film, all I kept asking was, “Why haven’t the locals just covered the damn things with a ton of herbicide if they’re such a threat?” Unfortunately, the plot needs the vines, so no herbicide.

This movie could’ve been better if the characters had actually had more personality other than “partygoer”. Other than that, it was an okay flick.

Day 4: 24 Hrs. on Craigslist

2008-07-03T14:50:00.002-05:00

I didn't feel like watching a long movie today, so I settled down with the short (80 min.) documentary, 24 Hours on Craigslist. It was released in 2005 and directed by Michael Ferris Gibson, who was an executive producer on the highly boring horror film, The Hamiltons.

24 Hours is a pretty basic documentary. People who used Craigslist in San Francisco (where CL started) had the option to be part of the film, allowing a crew to come out and interview them about their posting, what CL is all about, etc. For the most part, it's a lot of talking heads, but it keeps moving quick enough to not get boring.

The main focus of the doc seems to be the diverse range of people who use the site. You have the drag queen who wants to front a 70's rock-style band as Ethel Merman. You have the masseuse who also stars in gay porn. You have a Vietnam Vet with redneck sensibilities looking for a 270 lb woman to love. Some of the people are interesting, such as the "Metal Chef" who names all of his dishes after Slayer songs, and some of them are highly annoying, such as the female Chinese painter whose idea of high art is painting sexual innuendos into copies of religious Renaissance works. (Yawn.)

Thankfully, Gibson doesn't make the whole film into a sideshow attraction. I think that he's mainly interested in showing how technology has made it easier for people to connect and get things done or help each other out. Thanks to a service such as CL, people find work, trade consumer goods (instead of filling landfills), form bands, find housing, find love, etc. At one point, a new age spiritualist talks about how the internet and something like CL is a modern miracle that we just think of as an everyday life thing. (He likened it to a modern day Tower of Babel.)

My only real critique of the film is that it presents us with some good themes, but never delves deeply into any of them. Of course, over the span of 80 minutes, you can't delve much time into a lot of subjects, but I think if the film had been a little less "Hey, Look at these oddballs!" we could've had a better documentary that actually said something poignant.

Day 3: Nothing

2008-07-02T19:26:00.003-05:00

Wow, I just watched another incredible movie. Today's entry is the 2003 film, Nothing, by Canadian filmmaker Vincenzo Natali, who made the also brilliant Cube.

Nothing is an absurdist comedy about two friends since childhood. You have Dave (Dave Hewlitt) and Andrew (Andrew Miller). Both friends are having one of the worst days of their lives when they realize that the problem isn't with themselves, but with them; that is, the outside world. As the outside world is threatening to crash in on their lives yet again and destroy all that they have, they "hate" away the world.

Suddenly, their house is floating in a totally white void. There is literally nothing. They only have each other, the house and whatever was in the house when the world disappeared.

While for most people, this would be a horrible nightmare, for Dave and Andrew, this is paradise. In this nothingness, they are completely free to do whatever they wish. The expectations and rules of the outside world no longer apply and out heroes are no longer the butts of life's cosmic joke.

I know I've harped on Hollywood flicks on the last two days' movies. I don't mean to keep criticizing, but Nothing's ending took me by surprise because it didn't have the conventional Hollywood ending you would expect. In it's own way, the ending presented in this movie is more authentic to the idea of the movie. I'd go into more detail, but I'd rather not spoil it.

Nothing is a fine film and I can't wait to see what Vincenzo Natali gives us next.

Saw 5...meh.

2008-07-02T19:20:00.002-05:00

As you may have heard, Saw 5 is planned for release for this coming Halloween season. Now, I actually dug the first two movies of the (unbelievably) successful franchise, but the last two flicks sucked barnyard scrotum and I'm sure that this next one will be no different.

Honestly, just watching the series is like a lesson in the law of diminishing returns. The first movie was great, the second was good, the third was passable, and the fourth was tedious. At this rate, the fifth flick should be like a cinematic root canal.

I'm hoping that this movie bombs. That way, we'll only have to deal with a few direct-to-DVD sequels before the series fizzles out.

CeltX 1.0

2008-07-01T20:39:00.002-05:00

I've recently started scripting the pilot episode to an animated project I've been wanting to do for a few months now. In the past, I've used Final Draft or Montage for my screenwriting. Both are great programs, but I'm one of those guys who has a hard as hell time just opening up a blank screen and hitting the keys.

Enter CeltX, a free open-source screenwriting program that also handles a lot of preproduction paperwork. (It had me at Hello.) Not only can you write your script on this thing, CeltX will also:

Keep info on attached cast & crew
Breakdown your scripts
Keep a list of needed props, effects, sets, locations, music, etc.
Provide shoot scheduling features
Create call sheets
Let you put together a full storyboard
Reformat your script to AV style and back
Collaborate with others via the web

Since I'm writing my pilot episode right now, I'm digging the development features that CeltX provides. For every character, you can use a contained form for description and motivations of the character. If you have an actor already cast for the role, you can link up that actor's information. For every scene, there's a provided section where you detail the nature and conflict of the scene as well as the opposing characters' wants and plans to achieve that want.

For the screenwriter that likes to use the Index Card method of plotting the story, CeltX lets you organize your scenes with virtual index cards. You can name the scene and add a description on one side, and on the reverse you can have the slug line with the first few lines of the scene. You can also drag and drop the index cards around to change the scene order and CeltX will update your script to match. Awesome!

One thing I'd like to see on future releases is the ability to import/export your script for other screenwriting programs. The best you can do right now is exporting as either a PDF or a text file.

Finally, as a nice touch, you can add different media files for whatever reason. In my current project, I included a short mp3 that I thought set the mood of the piece. Who knows, it could be used for the theme.

Did I mention that CeltX is totally free? Download it at CeltX.com.

Day 2: Unagi (The Eel)

2008-07-01T20:37:00.001-05:00

Day two’s movie is Unagi (The Eel). It’s a Japanese film directed by Shohei Imamura in 1997 and doesn’t feature any Yakuza, giant robots, cyborg samurai, or penis-tentacle monsters. If you can get around these serious deficiencies, you’ll be enjoying an otherwise fine film about a man dealing with the demons of his past.

Takuro Yamashita (Koji Yakusho) is a white-collar office drone who likes to take all-night fishing trips. On his way home, he reads a letter detailing that his wife is seeing another man when he’s out fishing. That night, he decides to return home from fishing quite early and finds his wife entwined with another man. In a fit of passion, Yamashita takes a kitchen knife to his wife and then turns himself in to the police.

Eight years later, Yamashita is out on parole. He starts life anew as a barber in a small village under the guidance of his parole officer/reverend. He spends his time quietly cutting hair during the day and fishing at night. He also keeps an eel he caught while in prison as a pet. “They know how to listen,” he says when asked why he prefers the eel’s company.

One day while out fishing, he finds an unconscious woman named Keiko Hattori (Misa Shimizu). It turns out she was attempting suicide. She comes to live at the temple and help out around the barber shop. Of course, this brings up the past that Yamashita has been trying to forget and put behind him. Let’s not forget also Keiko’s demons that drove her to suicide.

Unagi is a well crafted film that builds slowly to its climax. This seems to be the usual case for films from the East. You don’t find so much of the typical Hollywood three-act structure inherent in mainstream Western fare. In fact, Yamashita doesn’t really do much in the way of making the choices; he’s pretty passive for the most part. It’s the outside world that forces him to confront his past and move on.

Eventually, we all must come to terms with who we are and what we’ve done. Some of us won’t be able to accept what we find, but as Unagi shows, it doesn’t matter where we come from, we’re all magnificent eels.

Day 1: Out of the Past

2008-06-30T22:17:00.000-05:00

First up: Jacques Tourneur’s 1947 film noir classic, Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum.

Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) is the owner of a gas station in a small California town. One day, while out fishing with his girlfriend, Ann (Virginia Huston), he’s visited by a shady guy named Joe (Paul Valentine). Apparently, Bailey has a mysterious past that had laid buried for a few years. Joe tells Bailey to go and see Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). On the drive to Sterling’s place, Bailey tells Ann about his past and how he had double-crossed Sterling.

Upon meeting Sterling again, it turns out that Bailey must do a job for him to be considered squared up. It turns out that some tax information is being held for less than legitimate purposes and Sterling would like Bailey to retrieve it. Of course, being a film noir, complications ensue.

Out of the Past is one of those wonderful noirs that plays like you’re reading a 40’s pulp. The dialogue is crisp and loaded with the classic pulp slang: guns are rods, women are dames, etc. What’s interesting is that Bailey speaks like an average Joe unless he’s dealing with the shady characters from his past.

Jane Greer is stunning as Kathy Moffat, the femme fatale that is the catalyst for everything getting complicated for our hero. In true noir fashion, you never know whose side she’s on or what her game is. Of course, in these movies, everyone is on a team of one.

What I liked about this movie is that the plot is well constructed (and quite convoluted) and that the story is gripping without any huge action scenes or effect sequences. We don’t even get a chase scene. I don’t know if the average modern audience would even go for a movie like this anymore. Out of the Past does require some attention span; there’s no shocking action every couple of minutes to keep you in the seat. Films like this make you complicit in your entertainment.

Out of the Past is definitely worth the watching.

30 Days of Movies

2008-06-30T22:16:00.000-05:00

I have two problems. The first problem is that I have a blog dedicated to film, but I’m horrible at posting regularly. Part of this is because I’m not particularly privy to insider news any sooner than anyone else. Why should I repeat what’s already in a bunch of other sites? The other part is that I just don’t have a structure in place for regular updating.

The second problem is that I have acquired so many films as of late that my viewing list is totally backlogged. I’m getting at least a one film a day and right now, I probably watch about 3 a week. That list builds up quick.

So here’s what I’m doing: First, I’m planning a redesign of the blog and establishing a schedule for updating that works with my freelancing and personal life. While that’s going on, I’m going to implement a blogging goal starting today to get me in the habit of updating. I’m going to post a small review every day for the next 30 days.

30 days of movies. This way, I’ll work down my viewing list and be productive with Shot Reverse Shot.

Not so sure this is a good idea

2008-05-03T13:19:00.004-05:00

The big thing about the web and media is how do you produce content for the web and make money off of it?

You got some people with online stores, such as Apple, who rent and sell digital coppies of movies and TV shows. You have online video portals, such as Revver and Youtube, that monetize free videos with advertising content.

In a way these two models make sense. With feature films and TV shows, these are commodities that people actively seek out to watch. A demand for that content has been built out marketing and promotion. People will pay for the content.

The content on sites such as Revver (I'm pushing them because their video quality is higher than Youtube's. YT transcodes and overcompresses video in my opinion.) the videos aren't necessarily something that people have a desire to see. More likely, the viewer wants a brief distraction for a few minutes. While something like Mediocre Film's Retarded Policeman are funny and awesome, I found it merely by happenstance. I viewed it because it seemed like a fun two minute break to a day full of emails and outlines. If there had been a charge to watch it, I most likely would've hit the back button on Firefox and done something else.

That's the beauty of the video portal sites though, they offer free user-generated content. We're entertaining ourselves. Some videos will suck, sure, but some will also be awesome. Fact is, it doesn't cost us to sift through the dreck to find the gems.

However, there's a start up that wants to change the video portal model. Gorilla Tango thinks that you will pay money to watch videos on their site. Their idea is to have user-generated video content and charge you a pay-per-minute rate to watch these videos. The worst part of this is that we're not talking about professionally made video here, we're talking amateur video. Take a look at a sample of the Gorilla Tango experience.

I don't know about you, but that sample video is pretty awful and the idea of spending any sort of cash to watch what looks like a bad After Effects 101 class project offends me.

Skimming through their FAQ, it seems as if the proprietors are assuming that people will pay. They seem to have a superiority complex over sites such as Youtube, calling their content garbage. They just assume that people will pay for their videos instead. (Of course, they also suggest using YT as a promotional tool to drive people to your Gorilla Tango video, so go figure.) Also, take this quote from their FAQ:

Why don't I just put it on YouTube (and the like)?
Free video sites are great for generating traffic to short content but they will not generate you any revenue. If you want to put the movie that you put your valuable time, effort and money into on YouTube next to yet another video of some guy getting kicked in the balls, go ahead, it's your movie.

My main concern is that assumption of people paying. While people are wanting higher quality content, no one I know would want to spend cash on a what is essentially a pay-per-view Youtube. Besides, sites such as OnNetworks.com, Revision3.com, and Ted.com are offering high-quality, professional internet video for free.

I'm curious though, any thoughts?

Iron Man

2008-05-03T13:12:00.002-05:00

Okee dokee, I went to see Iron Man last night, adding my few bucks into the opening weekend gross, helping guarantee a sequel. (They're already talking about Iron Man 2 in 2010.)

I'll spare you a long review since there are already a million of them. Short story: It was pretty awesome.

It's your standard origin story and the story arc of Tony Stark becoming Iron Man is great. The fight scenes are awesome. You're getting exactly what you want for your ticket.

I gotta say, Downey Jr. was the perfect choice for Stark. After watching it, I don't think they could've picked a better actor.

Quick political complaint

2008-05-03T12:55:00.002-05:00

Very, very rarely will I get into anything political on here as there are a skajillion other forums on the web for it, but I do want to voice a complaint.

I'm sick of riders on legislation.

I just read an article about how Bush wants to spend $770 million on alleviating rising food costs for impoverished countries in Africa. When I saw that, I thought, "Really? He actually wants to do something philanthropic?" Helping feed the hungry is awesome! What can be wrong with that?

Well, upon reading further, it turns out that the money to help feed the hungry is part of a larger bill to spend $70 billion on the Iraq war for 2009. In essence, the millions for food is only attained if the billions for war is approved. Not so philanthropic after all.

The bitch of this is that if Congress poo-poos spending any more money on a war that the majority of the American people want to be done with, the GOP will say that the Dems are horrible human beings who won't help the starving. The only other option in this case is to fund a war you don't support for the year after Bush leaves office.

I'm sickened by this tactic of taking something important and using it as a kind of hostage to get a horrible piece of legislation passed. The worst thing is that it usually works. Hey, here's a bill to give all kids with cancer a cute puppy! Of course, it's only a part of a bill that allows mercury dumping in water reservoirs. Don't deny them bald kids the puppies!

It works the other way around too. Sometimes there's a wonderful piece of legislation to be approved, but there's a rider in it to allow something absolutely horrible. For instance, a bill could be introduced that did away with mandatory sentencing on non-violent drug felonies, leaving the sentencing to the discretion of a judge, but in the bill is a rider for immunity to the telecom companies for illegal wiretapping.

I know it won't change, but I sure would like to see some sort of reform made to stop this practice of adding things to bills.

My cat thinks he's hiding.

2008-03-25T13:31:00.001-06:00

This tree is awesome.

2008-03-21T15:58:00.001-06:00

Recent pictures

2008-03-21T10:19:00.002-06:00

I just upgraded my phone a week ago and it has a camera on it. Since I can upload pics to here via MMS, I've decided to do a picture a day.

The camera on a phone is a cheap little thing. The lens is tiny and wide-angled so that you never have to worry about focus. The images are a little soft. The shutter time is slow, so you get blurring.

Despite all that, I don't believe the tools dictate the quality of the picture just as having access to state-of-the-art technology didn't save Transformers from being a huge dung heap of a movie.

What I like the most is the immediacy of being able to make an image. I do have a nicer Nikon D70s, but due to the size and cost, I don't like the idea of taking it with me everywhere in Chicago. However, the cameraphone is in my pocket, ready to shoot whatever takes my attention. In it's own way, it's like a photographic documentary.

A picture a day. Enjoy them.

Cat bath.

2008-03-21T00:40:00.001-06:00

She's putting my head on a cup.

2008-03-20T17:11:00.002-06:00

2008-03-18T13:15:00.001-06:00

Morse Red Line platform facing West.

2008-03-17T20:23:00.001-06:00

old guy in Burger King

2008-03-14T14:55:00.002-06:00

2008-03-11T19:30:00.000-06:00

Streaky lights.

2008-03-11T19:24:00.001-06:00

Test

Advice for Actors

2008-03-07T16:36:00.001-06:00

I’m going to start off by saying that I know an actor’s job isn’t easy. While most people just think an actor sits in a trailer all day and then goes to play Pretend for five minutes, I understand how difficult it can be to bare yourself to the camera lens. I also understand the frustration of most people casting only for student or low-budget productions where they can’t afford to pay actors, let alone themselves (or they’re some opportunistic prick who thinks talent aren’t worth paying.)

I also understand the hassle it is to get a headshot, put together a resume and/or a demo reel, and send it out to countless cattle calls. It all costs money (a headshot can be a couple hundred bucks, then you got printing costs, never mind the postage fees you’ll accrue.) and a lot of time and effort.

That being said, last weekend, I placed a cattle call on Craigslist. Within the first half hour, I received two dozen headshots. A few days later, and I have received more than seventy responses, some of which were for more than one actor (in all but one of these cases, the multiple submissions were children.)

Let me tell you something, the flood of responses into my inadequate Yahoo account was overwhelming. It took me four hours to get through half of them. When I started reading my replies, I vowed to be fair and give everyone’s response the time it deserved. If an actor is willing to blow a lot of cash and time on getting their materials together, the least I can do is give the materials a fair shake.

However, as the hours wore on, the fatigue came in. With so many responses taking so much time, I didn’t have the energy to keep downloading all the attachments, read all the resumes, click all of the demo links and download videos. I started crossing people off for small reasons just so I could move on.

That being said, I wish to offer this advice to actors making submissions to casting calls.

1. Craigslist can’t send anything over 150kb. You’re not going to be able to send that hi-res headshot of yours to the reply address. Prepare for this. Instead of asking me to send you a “real email address” so you can then send your headshot, create a public page that contains your headshot, resume, and demo reel if you have one. I don’t have the time to respond to the many emails asking for the “real email address.”

2. If you don’t have a public webpage, get one. So much is done online, it really pays to have an online one-stop shop with all of your information. On one page you can have your headshot, resume, and demo videos. You don’t even need to hire a web designer! You can get yourself a free blog site at blogger.com or wordpress.com and then make your first post your headshot, your second post your resume, and then embed any videos from YouTube.com or Revver.com into subsequent posts. Also, you can go to actorsaccess.com and create a public profile with resume, pictures, and videos for free.

3. Don’t send links to MySpace (or any of that ilk) profiles. If I don’t have a membership, that means I have to sign up. That means a ten minute ordeal just to look at a couple of pictures and hopefully a video. If I’m going to have to sign up, I’m going to pass over your submission.

4. Send only your own information. Don’t include a friend’s headshot. First, it adds competition to yourself. Second, it makes me worry that you guys may be a package deal. If you have a friend who’s interested in a part, make them send a submission like everyone else.

5. Send the submission first; ask questions later. I’ve received a few responses that were just questions about shoot dates, pay range, etc. No headshots or resumes. I don’t have the time to answer all of these questions. Best thing to do is send your submission, and then if you get a call for an audition, ask then. You can always turn down a role, it’s not a crime.

I Am Legend's original ending!

2008-03-05T09:44:00.002-06:00

FirstShowing.net has posted the original ending of the Will Smith flick, I Am Legend, that will be included when the DVD is released in a few weeks. Here's the link: http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/03/05/must-watch-i-am-legends-original-ending-this-is-amazing/

Those of you who know me know that I Am Legend has always been my dream project. The themes in the book are ones I usually hit on when attempting dramatic works, so it's always really grabbed me. When I saw the flick, I was disappointed. The movie is good, but the way Hollywood cocked it up (the project was in development hell for many years) just betrayed the book and paradigm-shifting concept.

The original ending is amazing. While still not close to the book's plot, the original ending at least stays thematically correct. It's worth watching.

I feel cheated that this was not the ending I saw in the theater.

The Signal & Be Kind Rewind

2008-02-25T15:45:00.002-06:00

It's kind of funny how the universe works sometimes. I've often said that if you pay attention, the world is trying to tell you something. Maybe it's some sort of cosmic thing, maybe it's just our very human capability to find patterns in chaos. I don't know and I don't really care. (Leave that to the philosophers.) What matters is that I get the point therein and do something with it.

Over the last two weeks, I saw The Signal and Be Kind Rewind. Both deal with the influence of media and human connectedness. In one, the media is an overwhelming presence that drives people to kill, and the other shows people making media for themselves and growing as a community.

The Signal is a triptych of short films about a mysterious signal emanating from every TV, radio, and phone that causes people to kill each other. Ironically, everyone thinks everyone else is crazy and the reasons they use to justify murder make a bizarre sort of sense to themselves. The eponymous signal is inescapable. TVs and radios just come on with the broadcast playing.

Be Kind Rewind is about two guys remaking older movies with a VHS camcorder after a magnetized Jack Black inadvertently erases the store's stock of VHS movies. The self-made remakes become a hit and the people in the neighborhood get in on the action. Of course, the studios come in to piss all over the parade.

The reason I bring this up is because I feel like I've been taken too much with the mass media. I've been watching too much TV. I've been reading Digg way too much. I would be totally vulnerable to some sort of killer transmission.

I haven't been working on my back-burner projects. I haven't been making my own media. I keep worrying about finding the next gig so I can pay my bills. I keep living in this weird, fear-based state instead of embracing the whole "do what you love and the money will follow" edict. This kind of progression will only continue to lead me away from the work I wanted to do when I got into this whole industry in the first place.

I'm shifting gears. I'm not sure of how I'm going to get to my destination just yet, but the journey should be pretty cool.

Film Editing & Memory

2008-02-03T13:54:00.000-06:00

Here's a little article I found on Digg: Cuts in Movies and Their Impact on Memory. In the article, the authors discuss a study that shows a viewer's memory of the actions in a scene isn't as good if the scene utilizes cuts as opposed to a still or moving camera.

Apparently, the reason for this is that our eyes take a moment to adjust to the composition of the new shot. Not surprising as Walter Murch wrote of this in his book, In the Blink of an Eye.

While I found the article interesting, what I found more interesting were the comments in following the article. The majority of people posting on their seem to think that longer takes equals better film or better directing. Maybe it's because faster paced editing is so associated as the requisite technique in brainless action films (see any Michael Bay atrocity for evidence of this).

Editing, regardless of pace, exists as a technique to tell the story. The way shots are put together creates new meanings that may not be evident in the long take. The speed of the cuts may elicit an emotional response (such as a disorienting confusion) or the refusal to cut away from a shot may be to force us to witness something (such as a character's reaction.) We should also remember that editing isn't just cutting, but also not cutting.

Anyway, it seems to me that editing may be the most misunderstood part of the motion picture arts to the general public. I may pen some articles on basic editing theory in the future.

I would definitely suggest watching The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing.

The Model Needs Changing

2008-01-29T12:42:00.000-06:00

I just read this article over at Slate.com titled Please Pirate My Sundance Film. In the article, Tim Wu writes about all of the anti-piracy measures that the Sundance Film Festival is using to prevent bootlegging of the films shown. However, Wu points out that the measures are mostly unnecessary since the more obscure the film, the less likely it is to be pirated. In fact, he could find no 2008 Sundance film on any BitTorrent search, nor could he find more than a scant few of the 2007 films.

Checking out his claim, I did a search for what had to have been the most notorious of last year’s films, Teeth. (See the trailer here.) This is the film about a teen girl with the mythical condition of vagina dentata. It seemed as if the film was doomed to never find distribution until it recently got picked up for theatrical release later this year. I couldn’t find one copy of Teeth anywhere.

Unfortunately, for every film like Teeth or even the sweet-but-kitschy Fido that gets a distribution deal, there are a number of well made and good films that will never be seen outside of the festival circuit, if at all. This leaves the filmmaker in a predicament: they want the film to be seen, but they also want to make back some of the exorbitant costs from the production.

As Wu points out in his article, “[Allowing piracy of your film] isn’t likely to happen. For that would mean accepting that your film isn’t going anywhere, and at Sundance that kind of pessimism is strictly verboten.”

Besides, if you let your flick get pirated over BitTorrent, you’d kill any chance of ever getting it distributed. I mean, if the film is already easily available for free, who’d pay to see it? Right?

Well, releasing a free version of the film over Torrent shares may not be as crazy as one would think. According to a report at Torrentfreak.com, author Paulo Coelho has pirated his books over Torrent sites and the result has been a huge increase in the sales of his books. While there is a huge difference between books and films, the article definitely shows that there could be gains for the feature filmmaker gutsy enough to leak their film onto the web.

In these times where the majors aren’t willing to take as many risks as they used to with independent film, maybe it’s time to change the model used to get a movie out into the pop culture. I personally would love to see someone try this and be successful with it.

What do you guys think? Feel free to comment and discuss.

One Last Note: According to Billboard.com, Radiohead's In Rainbows album is the top selling independent CD right now. You may remember when this was released months ago on the web for a "pay-what-you-feel-is-right" price. Their CD sales seem to not have taken a hit, eh?

Fingerpainting masterpieces

2007-12-05T20:24:00.000-06:00

Once again, there is another case of some mother selling paintings done by her very young child and people paying sums of cash for them. This article, Toddler fools the art world into buying his tomato ketchup paintings, shows the child and his works.

Personally, I despise articles like these because right from the headline, the reader (who is most likely a casual art consumer at best) immediately takes it to be a full vilification of the art world. Apparently, art critics are just "too stupid" and "gullible" and can easily be fooled by mere "paint daubs."

Unfortunately, the majority of people feel intimidated by the modern art world. It sometimes makes no sense. Sometimes, it is too conceptual and leaves you feeling like you need some sort of decoder ring to understand it. When some article comes out about how a "toddler fool[ed] the art world" then we can all feel superior to this intimidating culture. We can laugh and pat ourselves on the back about how we would never buy canvas fingerpainted by someone who still shits his pants.

But here's the thing: I've looked at those pictures of this toddler's work. They're absolutely beautiful. The use of color and the raw energy in the marks captivate me. I don't care if the person who made it was 2 or 102, they still look amazing.

Picasso once said, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." And it's true. This kid is painting his paintings with the whole of his being. He doesn't care what anyone thinks of them or even if they're good enough. He's delighting himself in the act of painting and that's it. It's the purest form of artmaking there is. He's expressing himself purely through the colors onto the canvas. Sure, it may not look like some Thomas Kinkade piece of crap (Kinkade being a talented hack for people who think that art should be snow covered cottages), but it is a pure piece of expression.

The people mocking the art critics now may feel superior, but in my estimation, they didn't get it then and they sure as hell don't get it now. They just lack the ability to see the brilliance in front of them.

Music Video Product Placement

2007-11-11T11:33:00.000-06:00

I'm currently in the development phase of a music video with a friend of mine and while brainstorming our approach, we looked to mainstream hip-hop videos for inspiration. While surfing YouTube, we came across the video for Fergie's Fergalicious single.

At 2:51 into the video, there is gratuitous technology usage, as is typical. The multitude of dancers all take a listen to the song they're dancing to on an MP3 player that opens to reveal a small set of speakers. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the device is held in pure commercial fashion.

Since when did music videos start having product placement? It's literally a commercial within a commercial.

It's not like the label needed the cash to make the video (although you can tell that the budget for it must have been huge). What's happening is that advertising is getting so pervasive that ads are selling adspace in their own ads!

Sigh. I guess it's just all part of the machine to keep people buying crap they don't need. And more importantly, to keep people buying crap that they'll annoy me with on the el trains.

The End of Blockbuster?!

2007-11-02T14:10:00.000-06:00

I just came across this post about the coming end of Blockbuster.

For the past 8 years, I've been boycotting Blockbuster due to their censoring of movies before and after production. Finding an unaltered version of Last Tango in Paris or even Terror Firmer was impossible. Even worse was Hollywood execs changing films in production to fit the moralistic nature of the company's leaders.

Finally, thanks to the power of Netflix, Blockbuster is on the way out and I, for one, am glad to see it go.

It's official: I freaking hate Michael Bay.

2007-10-26T11:59:00.001-05:00

So I had the unfortunate experience of watching The Island the other night. This makes for the third pile of garbage I've seen from Michael Bay; the other two being Transformers and Armageddon.

The thing that really pisses me off about Bay's movies is that everything happens so fast, there's so much spectacle of chases and fights and explosions and sfx, that people watch this tripe and think it's gold, never realizing that they just ate a huge plate of steaming fuck. Second to that is Bay's complete neglect to take his movies into any area where the situations or issues posed could get into any deep contemplation. Of course, who can talk about issues when there's a helicopter/car chase to be had?

Let's take The Island, for example. A huge population of people cloned and grown ultimately for perfect organ replacements for their DNA-original masters. They've no idea about their purpose. They're told a lie about a worldwide contamination and if they're lucky, they win a lottery to go to "the island": the only contamination-free zone on Earth to help repopulate the world. In reality winning the lottery means certain death as they're to be carved up for transplantation.

Yes, farming clones as organ replacements is wrong since the clones have a consciousness and sentience, but that's not an argument that many would counter. It's easy to be on the side of the happy little clones and their cutesy innocence. We can all agree on this and pat ourselves on the back for being humanitarians.

The thing that Bay brings up and skirts around is with Scarlett Johansson's character. Her original has recently suffered a horrible car wreck and has 48 hours to live unless she gets the transplants from her clone. Although she knows that her original is dying, she does nothing and doesn't even seem to care about the fact. Even after speaking via videophone with her original's very young child, she never contemplates her purpose for being: keeping her original alive.

I'm not saying that Scarlett's character should've sacrificed herself or not. I'm saying that you had a delicious ethical issue here and instead of ever devoting any time to it, we get another helicopter chase, some running from mercenaries, and a campy scene where the lead mercenary judges the owner of the cloning company as an unethical man. (A mercenary who saw nothing wrong with firing automatic weapons and bombs in crowded civilian areas, mind you.) Bay dropped the ball.

Add to that all of Bay's awkward expositions, needless secondary characters bloating the runtime to more than 2 hours, and an almost fetishistic love for all things military, and you have a celluloid shit sandwich. You get the equivalent of the teenager who thinks he's all grown up: able to recognize the complexities of adult life, but unable to deal or address any of them.

There is no spotlight in collaboration.

2007-10-20T17:32:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had the benefit of seeing Electric Six in concert with opening bands We Are the Fury and The Gore Gore Girls. It was a great show and Electric Six were absolutely amazing (one of the best acts I've seen all year!).

However, the Gore Gore Girls didn't put on that great a show and it was for one simple reason: The failure to share the limelight. During the performance, in most of the songs, the singer also played lead guitar. The other guitarist was also more than capable of playing lead, but for some reason, only played lead on two songs.

The singer was wearing herself out trying to do everything and in the end, it just got embarrassing to watch. On the one instrumental where the 2nd guitarist actually played lead, the singer actually got up on one of the monitor speakers and danced around, stealing the spotlight from the lead performer. It became a boring ordeal of "Look at me! Look at me!" The indulgence grew tiresome and I was glad when it was over.

The thing is that when you're taking part in any kind of collaborative artform, you cannot ever assume full credit for the work produced. You also cannot try to garner all the attention that the work gets.

In film, there's all this worry about who's the author of the piece. Oh, it's the screenwriter. Oh, it's the director. Oh, it's the producer. The truth is that the author is the group of people who made the piece. Change any member of that key crew and you're going to end up with a different film. Ingmar Bergman's films wouldn't be the same without Sven Nykvyst. The Coen Brothers make different movies if the script is from someone else.

Film is the most collaborative art. It is completely unfair for one person to ignore the hard work of everyone else and proclaim themselves the author of the film.

I've had the unfortunate experience of working in the past with people who come from this mindset of sole authorship. There were many creative disagreements and a constant struggle to keep the ideas flowing freely back and forth. Unfortunately, the project devolved into a horrible power struggle, the flow of ideas stopped and turned into either outright dictation or passive-aggressive mind-reading. In the end, the project was absolutely awful and an outright heartbreak for me, who was hoping for turning out a great product.

If you're going to work collaboratively, then you need to remember that the key idea is teamwork. You cannot do everything yourself, nor should you.

Photoshopping the flaws away

2007-09-20T16:38:00.000-05:00

I was going to write this post a couple of days ago, but didn't get the time to plan out what I was going to say. However, today I saw an article in the Sun-Times about this very subject, so I'm weighing in.

There's been a lot of fervor lately over how Photoshop and photographic retouching are horrible practices that distort the reality of beauty and glamour and blah blah blah. These people are saying that beauty is some lie perpetuated by a dark, shadowy cabal in league with retouching artists.

Let's back off for a moment and look at the reality of the situation. Reality and Glamour are not the best of pals. Hell, the word glamour is the name of fairy-magic. Making something seem like more than it is. We put these models and celebrities on such high pedestals that their reality is that of glamour. No one wants to think of someone like Tyra Banks dropping kids off at soccer practice or Cate Blanchett scooping out a cat's litter box.

Yeah, Faith Hill may be an aging mother of three that leads a hard-working lifestyle and as such, doesn't look like a supermodel. But people have this idealistic idea of who Faith Hill is based on her music and public persona and so, when her image is put out to sell magazines, records, or whatever, she's going to be made to look like the goddess that people imagine. In this case, it's not the fashion world dictating what beauty is, they're dressing up a person in the expectations of the public who consumes these images. To put it simply, as Bill Maher once said, "Hollywood is your mirror."

Remember in the late 90's when some fashion designers tried to hype and use what they called, "ugly models?" We're talking bald women, odd shaped people, too skinny, etc. I don't know about you, but I didn't see a slew of bald, skinny chicks running amok through the city. To be honest, I don't believe that a small group of people could make the unattractive attractive, no matter how hard they tried. Attractiveness plays on certain triggers we have on an evolutionary level. Some guys may have a bald girl fetish, but most guys won't feel attracted to bald girls because a woman's hair is a sign of her health. Good health is attractive.

They reality of the matter is that throughout history, artists have always done what they could to portray their subjects in the most flattering possible way. Moles were just not painted. That spare tire wasn't scultped. Unfortunately, a camera mechanically records the light reflecting off of a subject. That means every mole, every flyaway hair, every inch of flab gets written in the emulsion for all time. It's up to the retouching process to bring out the "inner truth" of the shot, much like the painter may change a model's eyes to blue.

The Sun-Times article also talked about the harmful effect all of this evil retouching was having on teen girls who were undergoing fashionable eating disorders to look like idealized images. I find it reprehensible to place blame on retouchers. This is clearly a result of the public not having the tools to take a critical look at the media that aurrounds them daily. I mean, I've heard people calling reality shows "documentaries." To be ignorant of the retouching process is one thing, but even they most unknowing person has to realize that every photo is the result of a hair, makeup, and wardrobe team under the supervision of a professional photographer with professional lighting who is paid to use his expertise to make the subject look like a million bucks.

Retouching may be able to change reality, but it's only doing what so many artists have done for centuries and should come as no surprise.

Summer flick round-up

2007-08-30T19:38:00.000-05:00

This past month has been a busy one for yours truly as I worked on a few projects that required a lot of HD work. Good stuff, good money. Makes me happy to earn.

Anyway, here's a list of flicks I saw this summer with a brief impression of each:

Knocked Up: I know it was a big hit, but I'm tired of clichéd gender war humor. Women don't get guys. Guys don't get women. Jeez. The lead guy is a lazy stoner and the the lead girl is an ambitious careerist? What a shock! At least it had plenty of funny moments.

Sunshine: Wow. Boyle and Garland should team up forever. The ending confused me a bit, but the film was amazing. This shows that not every sci-fi flick needs to be about quasi-goths shooting each other.

Simpsons Movie: Why did these past writers ever leave? Way funnier than the current show, the movie made me actually like the Simpsons again.

Ratatouille: While I thought that the "no stealing" moral was clumsily tacked on, this was just an amazing and fun film to watch. Brad Bird knows how to make an animated feature, that's for sure. Damn, I really loved this movie. I'll probably buy it when it comes out on DVD.

Bourne Ultimatum: Gives you what you expect to receive. Lots of chase sequences and a few good fights. Plot was kind of lame, but this is all about the action, not the story. That beaing said, there's nothing wrong with taking in the spectacle. D.W. Griffith did say film was all about the chase sequence.

Sicko: Wow. Reviewed in another post.

Transformers: Shit sandwich. Reviewed in another post.

Ingmar, where are you now that we need you?

2007-07-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

Ingmar Bergman died. He was 89.

It was Bergman's work that really showed me the true power that cinema has. No matter which film of his I saw, whether it was Wild Strawberries, Winter Light, or Fanny & Alexander, they always stuck with me. The man was a total genius and a true auteur in every sense of the word.

The BBC article about it can be seen here.

Review: SiCKO

2007-07-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

As anyone who's looked at the mainstream cable news or read a political blog lately knows, Michael Moore's new documentary, SiCKO , just recently came out. Before the film even made it’s debut, people on both sides of the political fence were lobbing attacks at each other over the issue that SiCKO raises: The American Healthcare system is fundamentally fucked.

As far as this documentary goes, it's pretty standard Michael Moore fare. Moore takes a huge issue, puts a human face on it to show how Corporate America is failing the common man, and then pulls a few pranks to show how totally screwed up the whole situation really is.

Moore starts out showing a man without health insurance literally stitch his own knee wound shut because he can't afford the medical cost of an ER visit. The sad thing is that this isn't as grim as the film gets. Moore spends about five minutes on two people without insurance and then informs us that SiCKO isn't about them. In fact, SiCKO is about those who do have insurance and how the insurance companies have failed them.

After Moore presents some of the tragedies that a corrupt system has caused, he then proceeds to show us the medical systems of Canada, England, and France. In each case, the country provides universal healthcare coverage paid for by taxes. Moore then tackles the myths that our government has propagated about “socialized medicine” for years such as people being turned away, operation quotas, lack of doctors, etc. In each case, he shows that the myth is only a myth.

Finally, Moore ends the film with his set-piece: taking ill 9/11 rescue workers to Guatanamo Bay and demanding that they be provided “with the same healthcare that Al-Quaeda gets. No more, no less.” Of course, no help comes, so Moore gets them treated at no out-of-pocket expense in that most hated country, Cuba.

What strikes me most about the film isn't the film itself (although I was movedto tears of rage at how horrible our own system is when we could have a system that provides for all) but the polemic that has erupted over it. This is not a political issue, or at least, it shouldn't be. This is a humanity issue.

We're all very dependent on each other, despite what our rugged-individualist culture may want to preach. As such, we have to take care of each other if we want to continue as a species. People shouldn't have to choose which severed fingers to save based on their savings. People shouldn't be forced into poverty because of a cancer that developed. People shouldn't let a disease go untreated because they have to pay their mortgages. Even more so, the trust and money that people put into the healthcare providers should pay off when the unfortunate happens and they desperately need that care. Maybe, I'm just a goddamned pinko, but I think that the health of people is more important than the second homes of these millionaire HMO CEOs who profit off of denying treatment to those ailing.

All in all, I hope that this film helps turn the tide toward America adopting universal healthcare coverage for all. Unfortunately, Moore has been so demonized by the right-wing media that his film will most likely be another case of preaching to the converted, but let's hope that we can one day soon walk into a hospital without fearing bankruptcy.

Review: Transformers

2007-07-06T23:07:00.000-05:00

On the 4th of July, I saw Michael Bay's newest recruitment ad for the USMC, Transformers. After the soul-crushing experience of watching this god-awful dreck, all I really wanted was those two and half hours of my life back.

Let's just get the requisite plot summary out of the way before I try to relate why I feel like a part of me died inside. Marines in the Qatar (a monarchy that punishes dissenters) encounter a giant robot that can transform into a helicopter. In the USA, a nerdy teen, Sam (Shia LaBouf), is special and unique enough to warrant soon becoming friends with more giant robots that can transform into vehicles. Complications ensue and giant robots battle each other while Marines shoot at said robots and Sam gets enough character to overcome his nerdiness, get the girl (Megan Fox), and attain the honorary rank of soldier from Josh Duhamel. The end credits roll while you feel cheated and Hasbro's shareholders masturbate with enthusiasm.

That being said, this long cartoon just didn't do it for me. One thing that could've helped would have been if someone told Bay that he isn't funny. Then maybe I wouldn't have had to endure one crappy gag after another. Here's a classic from the movie: a little girl clutching the requisite stuffed animal watches a 30-foot tall robot step out of the family pool. She says to the towering mechanoid, "Are you the Tooth Fairy?" Are you effing kidding? Sadly, this is the best joke in a whole movie whose jokes are so old and tired that they make Vaudeville humor seem cutting-edge.

As one might expect in a summer action flick, none of the characters are even worth caring about. I didn't care about Captain Lennox (Duhamel) and the fact that his wife and baby were back in the states, nor did I care about Sam and his lame attempts to impress the shallow-teen-hottie-who-isn't-shallow-and-holy-crap!-she-can-fix-cars love interest. I also snoozed through the boring scenes with Jon Voigt as the Secretary of Defense and the computer nerds deciphering alien signals. No one in the film was a three-dimensional character.

Most disturbing in this piece of propaganda is that the Autobots speak English while the Decepticons speak their native language. After a couple of scenes of Marines admonishing their Latino team member to "speak English" it becomes apparent that only true Americans speak English. The Decepticons become almost like foreign terrorists as they infiltrate military bases and even Airforce One. (The Latino Marine dies in battle.)

I could go on about stupid plot choices, hokey sloganeering, etc. but I want to get to the heart of this: this film offers nothing to say. Call me crazy, but I want more to a movie than just spectacle. A film should teach me something.

While discussing this with a friend of mine, he told me that it was a dumb, escapist summer action flick and that I shouldn't go in expecting some arthouse-quality film. To quote, "I wanted to see giant robots fighting and that's what I got." That being said, I can only retort that the "it's a dumb flick" excuse isn't good enough. In the past, we got great films like Hostel 2, Grindhouse, Night Watch, Spider-Man, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, etc. that all were spectacle-heavy, but had something genuine to say and share with us.

The problem is that we keep buying into the tease of the specatacle that the film offers, but never hold the filmmakers accountable for the lack of substance. Unfortunately, this movie will make a ton of cash and Hollywood will keep pumping out shit like this.

I wish I had gone to see Ratatouille instead. I'm going to have to go see Herzog's The Great Escape now. I have to feed my soul with good stuff.

EW's Top action movie?

2007-06-20T17:06:00.000-05:00

So Entertainment Weekly listed Die Hard as the number 1 action movie. I'm sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with the new Die Hard film coming out soon. Nothing whatsoever.

Ah fuck, who am I kidding? Fucking marketing. This type of marketing pisses me off. Like how the Red Eye splashes the movie of the week on their Friday paper.

The NC-17 works when used right

2007-06-20T14:43:00.000-05:00

In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, Mark Harris writes about the failure of the current MPAA ratings system and argues for the end of the NC-17 rating. He specifically cites the release of Eli Roth's Hostel 2 with it's over the top torture sequences and it’s R rating.

I do have to say that Harris makes a valid point about how even a 5-year old can get into an R movie with the addition of an accompanying adult. When I saw Hostel 2 a week ago, there were three teenagers in the audience (and thanks to the understaffed theater, these kids didn't even have that accompanying adult). Of course, the kids decided to irritate people in the audience with their incessant yapping and cell phone gabbing. I had dearly wished for an NC-17 rating on the film so I wouldn’t have to put up with that. (This is why I never see a movie on the opening weekend.)

I think the real issue to address here isn't that “the NC-17 rating…preserves the illusion that R-rated films like Hostel 2 are okay for kids,” but that the MPAA is a failure that either needs to be overhauled or done away with completely.

The real tragedy here is that Mark Harris touches on why a film like Hostel 2 can get the R-rating. There’s the single phrase, “The indies have it harder than the studio films.” That's it. But right there is your reason why Hostel 2 evaded the NC-17 even though it breaks a number of previous taboos for R-rated films.

Hostel 2, for all intents and purposes, is a studio film. It's being distributed by Sony. Sony and Lionsgate have the pull necessary to take a flick and push it through the MPAA with an R, while Killer Films and IFC films can't get John Water's A Dirty Shame through the MPAA without an NC-17. Aside from a pair of enormous, prosthetic breasts and a bare ass, there’s no nudity in A Dirty Shame and definitely no extreme violence.

The NC-17 rating works when it's implemented correctly and not undermined for the sake of a larger studio getting the coveted R-rating that will draw in the spendthrift teens.

Review: Hostel 2

2007-06-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

Whenever you have a movie like Eli Roth’s Hostel 2 get released, you inevitably have the critics decrying the film as nothing more than pointless “torture-porn” and then suggest that we, the audience, should be ashamed for plunking down our $10 and chomping popcorn throughout the spectacle of dismemberment and other wholesome amusements.

While I do concede that there are a lot of really bad movies that feature such forms of body-horror and have nothing else to offer in terms of having anything to say, this has never been the case with Eli Roth. When I saw Roth’s first feature, Cabin Fever, I knew that this was going to be a director to watch over the coming years. Roth’s tale of camping friends and the fragility of that friendship in a generation that grew up never knowing a world without AIDS was complex and poignant, all within the oft-maligned splatter genre.

Then came Hostel, a film about America’s role in a larger global society. Roth depicted a scenario in which a poor European country made its bread and butter on selling wealthy European businessmen the opportunity to hack upon arrogant, American youth. At a time when Americans foster no goodwill in the larger global society, this film played on the fears arising from the disdain our country had fostered in the past few years.

Now comes Roth’s Hostel 2, his finest feature to date, where he turns his critical lens as a scathing indictment of the Upper Class.

Hostel 2 is about an American art student, Beth, who is studying in Rome with her friends Lorna and Whitney. Finishing their lesson, they decide to head off to Prague for the weekend. Unfortunately, the army of “gross guys” on the night train put them off and they get talked into visiting the wonderful town of Slovakia, home to fabulous hot springs, extravagant harvest festivals, and the best murder factory you ever saw.

Intercut with the story of Beth and her pals, is the story of Todd and Stuart, two American businessmen who win the online auction to be the ones to kill Whitney and Beth. (Lorna gets dispatched by another lucky bidder.) These two guys go into this thinking that having killed someone will give them a psychological, competitive edge in the business world. As the film progresses, Stuart and Todd make their way through the hunting club initiation and the girls get abducted one by one until both meet in a shocking and bloody climax.

By making the two soon-to-be killers American, Roth takes the focus away from the the nationality of the victims and murderers and focuses us more on the disparity between the classes. Here are the wealthy business types hacking up the lower-class backpacking kids. Their money buys them the experience to take a human life. In this case, life is literally worth less than commerce. In one scene the lives of homeless children are so undervalued that taking the life of a child is seen as almost a birthright.

While other reviewers may point and shout about how films such as this are horrible for depicting life and cheap and worthless, the real point is that Roth is showing us the mindset of the modern business model. Everything is for sale and for those who are wealthy enough, the social contract of morality doesn’t even apply. Why play by the rules when you can buy off the system?

If you can stomach the gore (which, in my opinion, wasn't that hardcore), then Hostel 2 is a great choice for a film to go see.

Review: Brand Upon the Brain!

2007-06-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

Last night was the final showing of Guy Maddin's latest cinematic offering, Brand Upon the Brain! I had very much wanted to see it the opening weekend when the Music Box had the orchestra, Foley artists, castrato, benshi, and Crispin Glover to provide the sound. Thankfully, it doesn't matter how you dress up Maddin, because his genius will always shine through.

Brand Upon the Brain! is the second film from Maddin in which the tale is faux-autobiographical. It concerns a middle-aged Guy, who is now a world-renowned house painter, returning to his childhood home (a lighthouse doubling as an orphanage) to give everything two good coats of paint as instructed in a letter from his estranged mother.

Guy starts slathering on the coats of paint, covering up every crack in the walls as well as his remembered past. Guy then flashbacks to when he was a child. He runs and plays on the lighthouse island, always under the vigilant, ever-watchful eye of his mother. One day, he encounters Wendy Hale, teen detective/harpist. Young Guy is in love and helps her with her investigation. Over time, the traditional Guy Maddin themes of complicated lust, bizarre love triangles, and denied passion all come into play.

Brand, along with Maddin's other "autobiographical" effort, Cowards Bend the Knee, marks a real experimental approach to Maddin's storytelling. The image quality stays very grainy throughout, as well as high-contrast. It's as if Guy's memories are very black & white morally, but the recollections are hazy from 30 years' time. The editing is rapid, with character movement being highly treated, looking almost like stills being projected in a flip-book procession. I'm not quite sure what Maddin's intention with this editing approach is, but damn if it doesn't look cool.

Brand was an enjoyable film. Being Maddin fan of a few years now, I was overjoyed to see this and see Maddin furthering his work and aesthetic into more avant-garde territory. For the first-time Maddin viewer, I would suggest something more accessible, such as The Saddest Music in the World or Tales From Gimli Hospital. For everyone else, see this flick.

Haters Hating on The Secret

2007-05-31T22:34:00.000-05:00

Okay, this post isn't really film or art related, but since I do believe that synchronicity does happen, I wanted to weigh in on all this.

The Chicago Reader published an article today about the latest self-help book craze, The Secret. Their article is just one of many now that refutes the ideas brought up in the movie and companion book.

For the most part, I agree with the Reader's article in that Rhonda Byrne (the woman behind The Secret) is a nutjob. I think that assertions she makes in her book such as "you're fat because you think fat thoughts" or relating the story of a woman who used visualization to beat breast cancer are irresponsible at best. However, nowhere in the film (I didn't read the book since the movie makes the point pretty well. The book seemed more like a way to keep milking the cash cow.) does it say that everything will occur with only visualization. In fact, in the film, they explicitly say that you must act when the opportunity arises to reach or further yourself toward your goal.

That being said, I'm trying to figure out why so many people seem to be so incensed by the idea of setting your intentions and manifesting them. Is it that scary?

The point of The Secret is simple: If you believe that you can do something, you can. There it is. Simple. There's really no magic to it. Fuck, we're talking The Little Engine That Could here.

This concept has been around for at least a century. Earl Nightingale talks about it in his audio program, The Strangest Secret, which was originally a pep talk to his sales staff. Napoleon Hill alludes to it throughout his book, Think & Grow Rich. James Allen writes about it in his book, As a Man Thinketh.

Honestly, what is bad about this? Teaching people to train themselves to think positively is not a bad thing. Bhuddist monks spend their lives training their minds toward positivity. We live in a culture that almost seems to glorify pessimism and constant kvetching. A little dose of real optimism once in a while is like a breath of fresh air.

I think the backlash against this not-so-secret Secret is that to accept the idea that positive thinking (and taking action when opportunity appears) is to also accept that you've limited yourself by your own negative beliefs in the past. That's a scary thought. Who wants to be the blame for all the bad shit that's happened to them? It's easier when you can say outside circumstances kept you working a dead-end job or your mother's lack of understanding caused you to quit your passion.

Positive Thinking isn't a bad thing and it isn't mystical, quantum physics alchemy either. It's just the belief (the faith) that you'll get whatever it is that you want if you believe and try hard enough. Rhonda Byrne just took an old idea and dressed it up in mumbo-jumbo, added in a lot of good ol' New Age guilt (It's your own fault you're in a shitty relationship since you attracted it into your life!) and got Oprah to hawk it. It doesn't matter how the message is delivered as long as it is delivered.

Here's a great link to another non-magical look at The Secret: Why Henry Ford Knew More Than The Secret.

Finally! Jodorowski on DVD!

2007-05-28T17:45:00.001-05:00

It's about goddamned time!

A box set of Alexander Jodorowski's films, Fando Y Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain has finally been released! Apparently, there is also a rarely seen earlier film included called La Cravate.

I love the work of Jodorowski so much. Who else could make a film about a vicious gunfighter who finds Buddha-esque enlightenment in a mountain cave with circus freaks and manages to include slapstick, naked monks being whipped with cacti, and explosions?

I've got to get this box set. I also need to find a copy of his later film, Santa Sangre.

I don't walk, I stroll.

2007-05-24T19:14:00.000-05:00

I had to do a lot of walking today and I kept noticing that everyone was speeding to wherever they had to get to without any thought about what was going on around them. Since I had nowhere urgent to get to, I strolled everywhere I went, observing everything going on.

We live in this wonderful, amazing city of Chicago, but we're too wrapped in our heads to pay attention to the beauty and wonder of what's out there. It's a shame.

I understand that some of this is the result of defending ourselves from unwelcome intrusions upon our daily existence, namely those that come in the form of crazy, scary people in rat-skin loincloths, but this is an inevitable occurrence that happens when you try to be present in the moment instead of somewhere else. The crazy thing is that these disturbances help you appreciate the sublime things you normally don't notice all the more.

There's no real point to this other than that sometimes it's worth the effort and risk to get the benefit of those instances of beauty.

Haiku #6

2007-05-24T19:13:00.000-05:00

Hot sweat on my skin
growing cold
from the storm winds

Haiku #5

2007-05-23T17:45:00.000-05:00

Bleary eyed
coffee in hand
waiting for clients

Haiku #4

2007-05-22T00:26:00.000-05:00

My fellow fringe-dwellers
Talking cinema
and breathing smoke

Living and Hacking Life

2007-05-21T15:47:00.000-05:00

So, I've been negelctful of Shot Reverse Shot for the past week. I'm not apologizing.

For the last week, I've been in the "living life" cycle of things. I've missed a lot of sleep and lot of meals, but I've also gorged myself silly on excitement and adventure. I've expanded my horizons by playing a role outswide my experience and I've stocked the creative well like crazy.

The Haiku Challenge got derailed, but it's still on.

Also, I've gotten into this whole idea of lifehacking lately. Holy god, the tricks that people come up with to stay on top of the goals that they're striving for is amazing. Nothing short of amazing.

Haiku #3

2007-05-14T00:51:00.000-05:00

Staring out the train window
avoiding eyes in the reflection
Flat light on blank faces

Ways To Ruin Your Film: Blair Witch Syndrome

2007-05-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

OK, you've got a bare-bones script, a small crew ready to work, and some talent on set. To be honest, your script isn't that good so you've given your actors permission and even encouragement to improvise based on the scenario of the scene. I mean, they're actors and they know the characters, right? Why even bother writing a full script anyway?

So you spend your shoot day going all Dogme 95 with it and you're swept by the powerful emotions coming from your talent. You're so excited that you're having a hard time containing your bowels. You thump yourself on the chest, proclaim yourself the next John Cassavetes, and call it a wrap.

Your movie comes out and all anyone sees of your genius is 90 minutes of people yelling at each other. 90 solid fucking minutes of circular argumentative yelling. Shit, if that's what people wanted to see, they could wait until Thanksgiving and announce to the family that they're getting a sex-change and joining the Moonies.

This was how I felt while and after seeing that god-awful, overrated piece of crap known as The Blair Witch Project. If you remember, three annoying film students go into the woods looking for a ghost, yell at each other for 90 minutes, and then finally die in a totally anti-climactic way. Here's a sample part of the film:

Annoying Film Student: Where's the fucking map?

Another Annoying Film Student: I don't have the fucking map!

Third Annoying Film Student: (with beard) I threw the fucking map away!

Annoying Film Student: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT FOR?

Another Annoying Film Student: SEE!? I DIDN'T HAVE THE GODDAMNED MAP!

Annoying Film Student: FUCK YOU!

Another Annoying Film Student: WHAT? NO, FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING MAP!

Third Annoying Film Student: (with beard) FUCK THE BOTH OF YOU IN THE FUCKING NECK!

Lather, rinse, and repeat for 85 more minutes.

It was with The Blair Witch Project that I first discovered Blair Witch Syndrome. I remember watching an interview on Good Morning America where the two "filmmakers" were talking about their film and priding themselves on how great they were for setting up situations in the woods for their cast to come across and improvise about. Hence, the pointless yelling about a small, inconsequential pile of rocks outside of their tent in one scene.

The problem of Blair Witch is that of actors who have no ability to improvise. Unfortunately, not every actor can improvise worth a damn. Usually, with bad improv actors, scenes become quite circular as the point of the scene gets lost and the audience gets bored. Blair Witch could've done much, much better had the filmmakers casted actors who could actually improvise worth a damn. Maybe then the film would've really been spooky and I wouldn't have been dreaming about throwing those rocks at the cast and directors. (Yep, Blair Witch Project had two assholes directing it.)

There are plenty of wonderful, improvised films out there. The movies of John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh, and the Dogme work of Lars Von Trier serving as wonderful examples. Of course, these films had top notch talent and lots of rehearsals before the shoot so everything was worked out.

Thankfully, Blair Witch Syndrome is a rare condition that not many films suffer. The reasons for this are that the majority of sufferers are first-time filmmakers and those filmmakers are usually really wedded to their scripts to even entertain the notion of letting the actors improvise the whole flick.

Haiku #2

2007-05-12T13:58:00.001-05:00

The birds are awake
hours before the sun
singing their joy

Haiku #1

2007-05-11T20:00:00.000-05:00

The cool wind
pushes me along
like blossoms from a tree.

Jack Kerouac & Haikus

2007-05-11T02:12:00.000-05:00

We all remember haiku from back in public school. The teacher would try to instill in us a desire to read and/or create poetry and the haiku was a nice, easy way to do that. 5-7-5, that's it.

Here's five syllables.
Holy shit! Here's seven more!
Have another five.

Promptly after class, we'd gather together and make as many insulting or fucked-up haiku as possible.

You're such a douchebag.
With a fat ass and bad breath.
You eat your own poop.

After awhile, counting syllables would get pretty boring, and we'd just start trading insults. That was the extent of haiku for me back then.

However, a few years ago, I was reading about Jack Kerouac (pictured above with cat, of course) and his haiku. I found out that aside from the fascistic syllable count, a haiku was supposed to capture a mood of mystery, poverty, isolation, or impermanence. Haikus have a feeling of the "now" and are more suggestive of a moment than they are descriptive.

Kerouac suggested that sticking to a rigid syllable pattern wasn't necessary since our language is vastly different from that of the Japanese. Instead of focusing on 5-7-5, we should just use three short lines.

Here are four haiku by Kerouac:

Useless, useless
the heavy rain
Driving into the sea

Perfect moonlit night
marred
by family squabbles

Those birds sitting
out there on the fence
They're all going to die

In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
has died of old age

The video below is from a class project I did about 4 years ago where we had to make video haiku. The videos could've had text or not. They could've been haiku written by ourselves or others. I opted to take these four Kerouac haiku and marry them to video.

Finally, I've been inspired by French Toast Girl and her current project of producing a picture or significant progress on a picture for every day in May. While I came into May late, I'm going to attempt to create a haiku in the Kerouac style that follows the Japanese convention of catching a moment.

Here's the video:

Advice to Film Students

2007-05-09T03:03:00.000-05:00

I have a teacher from my first semester of film school who invites me back to talk to her class about what to expect in future semesters and after graduation. Once, after a decent talk (most times, the students couldn't be bothered to care about what future semesters hold), I came up with some bits of wisdom I would've liked imparted to me when I was a student.

1. Don't try to create a mini Hollywood movie. It's OK to copy stylistic things you find cool because you're still finding your voice. That's craft. However, your content should reflect who you are. Shoot the story that can only be told by you.

2. Embrace and explore the total lexicon of film, whether it be avant-garde, documentary, arthouse, film noir, etc. In the past, all great artists studied and trained in the techniques of the masters thus gaining the skills necessary to express their own visions and voices precisely.

3. Start thinking visually. Take up life drawing, collage, photography, design, etc. How can you show something with only images?

4. Feel free to create scripts without the limits of your own resources, but plan the films you're going to shoot around what's available.

5. Every year, go and look at your body of work to see the pattern of your themes & symbolism. This will also show you how far you've come and how far you've yet to go.

6. Take up another art form. John Waters does photography, David Lynch paints, Miranda July does performance art, Mike Mills is a designer/illustrator, Chris Cunningham sculpts.

7. Learn about business practices as well as personal finance. Commerce is a huge part of life. Making and managing money does not equal selling out. Doing something that goes against your values is selling out. Besides, the image of the starving artist loses its romance when your landlord want his back rent, your electricity is shut off and all you have is a can of boiled peanuts in your cupboard.

8. Get as much set experience as possible as soon as possible. Do everything. Talk to everyone.

9. Cultivate and maintain all of your contacts and relationships.

10. Don't stress out about trying to make a "perfect" production 1 or 2 film. You're still learning a process in a safe environment. Later, when you're at the helm of an advanced production, you'll have the chance to shine and show what you got.

11. It's true: lots of money and high-end gear can make a great film, but the project needs to be great to begin with. Think about what a beautiful piece of shit Van Helsing is.

12. There's more to life than film. Explore it. Learn new things. Read philosophy, science, metaphysics, trivia, etc. Have something to make films about.

13. Read the book, What They Don't Teach You in Film School. It's great.

14. For god's sake, take care of your health. You've only got one body and one life. You can't be at your peak form if you're dealing with aches and pains or you're malnourished on crappy food. Exercise. Learn to cook good stuff. Get the proper amount of sleep. There's a staff nurse for free to keep you healthy. There's a gym and personal trainer at Roosevelt for free for you to use. This is the most important tip I'm giving you.

An Awesome Quote

2007-05-07T02:50:00.000-05:00

Here's a quote I found today:

Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process, we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome, we may not know where we're going, but we will know we want to be there.

-Bruce Mau, from An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Review: Ice Cream Man

2007-05-07T01:32:00.000-05:00

Ice cream that stares back? What a frosty treat!

It's not very often that a movie is so fucking awful that I cannot bring myself to finish it, but Paul Norman's 1995 horror-comedy, Ice Cream Man just stunk. We're talking "The Critics Simply Say, 'Shit Sandwich'" levels of stink here.

Having just checked the film legacy of Paul Norman, I actually now feel sorry for him. The most recent thing on his IMDb page is a piece of pure class called Sperm Bitches. I didn't have the patience to go through all 118 of his films, but I'm going to take a guess and say that this was his only mainstream, non-porno movie.

I just imagine Paul Norman on the set of this flick every day freaking out about how good it needed to be so that he could become a "real" director and break free of the porno industry. I mean, he even went so far as to work with kids for this film! (I wonder if the parents knew of Paul Norman's CV.) I imagine Paul begrudgingly signing the film over to a straight-to-video distributor and then, when the movie tanked, he shrugs sadly to himself and sighs, "Back to money shots..."

As a side note, this film was co-written by David Dobkin, director of Wedding Crashers. I wonder if he and Paul trade Xmas cards.

On to my review of the first 45 minutes of what could've been 84 minutes of pure misery!

We start out with the obligatory flashback of why Gregory (Clint Howard) is a fucked-up individual. You know you're watching a flashback because everything is in black and white. Apparently, the ice cream man of Greg's youth is gunned down in a drug-related drive by shooting. This takes place in an upper middle-class neighborhood where as we all know, drug-related drive-by shootings are an epidemic. Young, soon-to-be-batshit-crazy Gregory is first to the body. He sits on the curb, takes a push-up pop out of the murdered ice cream man's hand and proceeds to eat it. When his mother rushes to him, all the boy can say is, "Who's going to bring the ice cream now?" This is how we're to know he's now officially batshit.

Flashback and some pointless exposition out of the way, we come to the present day where dorky children mob the ice cream truck. Gregory is now the ice cream man, but instead of getting shot in those upper middle-class drive-bys, he just keeps rats and other filth with the ice cream. You know the rats are bad thanks to the synthesizer score mimicking the Bernard Herrman soundtrack to Psycho. Apparently, Gregory's childhood trauma has only caused him to have a flagrant disregard for food sanitation laws instead of becoming a homicidal psychotic as the movie's poster would have us believe.

The heroes of this tale of suburban terror are four children. You have the small, nerdy kid named Small Paul. You have the fat kid named Tuna. Then you have two more kids, but they're pretty normal sized, so you forget them pretty quick. Actually, the kid playing Tuna isn't really fat, so throughout the movie, his shirts are all stuffed with padding in order to give him bulk. Fat suit technology wasn't available yet in 1995, so tons of toilet paper had to fill the girth. (Despite Tuna's "obesity", the character does an amazing amount of cardio with all the running and biking he does throughout the film. Must be a low metabolism.)

During the first half hour, we're led to believe that Gregory has murdered two children, but then it's revealed that both kids are alive. Instead, Gregory has only killed a creepy trash collector and a barking dog. He also puts an eyeball in a cop's ice cream cone.

So the kids that he's supposed to have killed aren't killed and we never see him kill anyone else during the 45 minutes I watched. What the hell's the point? Obviously, Gregory is no threat to our main heroes, so what are the stakes? Some E. Coli poisoning from rat turds in the butter pecan?

Having passed the halfway point and watching a very awkward pursuit in a carpeted grocery store (complete with Doug Llewelyn cameo), I just couldn't take any more. I just couldn't.

I had known that this film would be bad, but I hoped that it would be bad in a fun way, not bad in a "what the fuck were they thinking?" way. This is not worth seeing, even for camp. Who knows, maybe Paul Norman has improved in the past decade and Sperm Bitches is a cinematic masterpiece. Then again, maybe not.

Ways To Ruin Your Film: Alcoholics

2007-05-05T00:44:00.000-05:00

While recently watching the very fun movie, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, I was ticked off at what I consider one of the worst clichés ever: The struggling alcoholic.

Here's the example from Dirty Mary Crazy Larry: Deke (Adam Roarke) is holding the wife and daughter of a supermarket manager hostage while Larry (Peter Fonda) collects the money. While waiting for Larry to call, we get a beautiful use of the Kuleshov Effect:

CU of Deke looking at something.
CU of a few bottles of liquor and glasses.
CU of Deke still looking.

Within those three shots, we instantly know that Deke is supposed to be an alkie and is struggling with staying sober. We can also safely assume that in some point during the film, Deke will also be very tempted to take a drink, but most likely will choose sobriety at the last moment of a long, internal struggle. If we're especially lucky, we'll be treated to a shot of Deke throwing the glass against the wall and wiping cold sweat from his brow.

Okay, we don't get the glass smashing, but we get everything else.

The biggest problem with most movies that include an alcoholic character is that the film doesn't benefit from the addition. Making a character a recovering alkie is a cheap and easy way to give that character "dimension". In Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Deke's character doesn't really have any depth to him. He's obviously the brains of the operation and he keeps their car running with his mechanical expertise, but outside of that, there's nothing to his character that hints to his humanity. Well, instead of trying to figure out how to improve the character and make him fuller, why not just say that he has a drinking problem? We'll show him struggling with it a couple of times and we're good to go.

At one point in the film, Larry decides to wait out the cops. They hide out at a bar. A bar. If you have an alcoholic friend, the last place you're taking him is a bar. That is, unless you really need that obligatory scene of the alcoholic struggling with the urge to drink.

If you have a character that's a little flat and you need to give them some depth, find something that may have more relevance to the story's theme. Maybe you have a character in a romantic comedy where the theme is that we have to open ourselves up to people to find love and fulfillment. Let's say this character is the buddy of the film's hero, but aside from some comedic dialogue, there's nothing being added here. Well, you could cop out and make him a struggling alcoholic complete with cool glass-smashing scene, or you could have him be someone who lost the love of his life because he was always so guarded, yet he never learned the error of his ways, so he advises the hero to close himself off.

If you have to have an alcoholic character, please make the addiction relevant to the story. Look at films like The Verdict and Clean & Sober for references to this.

A Foot in Both Worlds

2007-05-05T00:06:00.000-05:00

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
-Anaïs Nin

Life is the fuel of creativity. As artists, we take our life experiences and transform them into works to communicate to others. We live life, and then we relive it as we create.

I find that in my own experience, I swing from extremes of extroversion and introversion. That is, I go through phases where my soul yearns to be out and about, gathering experiences. Then I go through phases where I only want to go hermit and retreat to my cave to process everything.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't find this kind of bipolar social life frustrating. Sometimes my desires and instincts are at odds. I may really want to go out, but instead, I stay in to work and create. Other times, I may have a deadline looming and need to work, but my mind is out in the fields staring at clouds.

I've often wondered, in the past, if instead of living twice, we actually just live two half-lives. However, I think the reality is that we tend to live more aware and more fully than the majority of our species who sleepwalk through life, paying little attention to the details of our existence.

Recently, I started walking to the Red Line el train from my apartment to get to and from work. This wasn't because of any sort of need or desire to increase my fitness level or to save money on CTA transfers. (I live a mile from the Red Line, but I live 3 blocks from the Brown Line and the bus could just as easily take me to the Red Line.) The weather was nice, the sun was out, and I really just wanted to walk.

Have you ever just marveled at how awesome it is to walk? We usually just take this for granted, going so far as to save ourselves the "hassle" of walking by driving our cars for a mile trip. But walking, though, feels so present, so real. The cool air breezing past you, the sun warming your back. The smell of cut grass and burning charcoals from backyard grills. If I had taken my camera with me, I could've found dozens of things to photograph that were interesting to me.

How many people could say the same? I'm not knocking other people; I know that everyone has things going on in their heads that's taking their attention. Hell, I get preoccupied a lot thinking about projects, women, whatever.

But I think that as artists, we tend to live so fully in the moment, that we take in more of life than a lot of people do. We have to take that downtime just to catch our breaths and empty ourselves so we can do it again. So, we live life sometimes in the moment, extroverted and then we relive it through our work, introverted.

A foot in both worlds.

In Defense of Shit

2007-05-04T02:47:00.000-05:00

The poop joke, or what most critics (and snobs) would refer to as scatalogical humor, always draws ire from those paid judges of our cultural output. I, for one, am proud to say that I absolutely love toilet humor and am baffled by the people who deride such comedy as childish tripe, refusing to even crack a smile.

It is this very inability in some people to laugh at the absurdity of our own bodily functions that points to why poop jokes aren't just funny, but humanizing as well.

There is an old Simpsons episode in which Sideshow Bob is reunited with his brother, Cecil. In a flashback, we learn that Cecil originally auditioned for the sidekick position on the Krusty the Klown Show. During his audition, Cecil gladly smashes a cream pie into his own face in an attempt so show his comedic prowess. No one laughs. Krusty only says, "It's only funny if you got dignity."

Seeing Bob off to the side dressed in a very British-looking 3-piece suit and derby hat, Krusty orders someone to "throw a pie at Lord Fauntleroy there." Bob is taken aback at the creamy assault. His hat falls off and his hair springs out of control. The effect is hilarious.

This is why the poop joke is funny. We, the human race, spend a lot of time trying to preserve this illusion that somehow, we are above Nature. We wear fragrances to mask our natural scents, we streamline our food cultivation so we don't have to hunt or gather, and we treat sex as this insane taboo when it's the sole reason any of us were ever born. We're a species that doesn't like to acknowledge that we're just another kind of animal.

So, enter the poop joke to keep us in check. Poop reminds us that despite whatever our class, culture, society, etc. we still are animals. It makes no difference if you're Donald Trump or some street bum, you still shit.

A great example of the poop joke and how it works can be seen in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. In this greatly funny film, there's a scene where our two heroes are hiding in a women's restroom when in walks two gorgeous girls...

Let us pause for a moment here to reflect on the nature of gorgeous women. Our culture portrays beautiful women as almost-holy deities sent from Heaven to grace us all with their perfect beauty and presence. There's even a phenomenon called the Halo Effect in which we associate a myriad of positive traits with a person based solely on their being attractive. We tend to imagine gorgeous women as kind, intelligent, gracious, etc. So, pretty girls have a lot of esteem and dignity.

Back to Harold & Kumar hiding in the women's room. These two hot girls enter, each grab a stall, and proceed to take the noisiest, grossest-sounding "taco shits" ever depicted. It's downright explosive and hilarious. They go from being dainty creatures full of beauty and grace to filthy critters shitting themselves silly.

So instead of refusing to crack a smile when someone makes a poop joke, get off of your high horse and realize that yeah, it's fucking nuts that we shit. It's even crazier that all living creatures shit and that all of us drop ass every day. It's hilarious.

Wikibooks

2007-05-03T01:06:00.000-05:00

I knew about Wikipedia, but I had no idea that there was such a thing as Wikibooks. Apparently, these are user-edited books on whatever. Here's links to some that are relevant to this blog:

Moviemaking Manual
Cinematography

Ways To Ruin Your Film: DJ Characters

2007-05-02T03:44:00.000-05:00

There are multitudes of ways that one can totally fuck up a flick. Some are obvious, like casting the producer’s girlfriend for the lead role, but there are other ways that aren’t as obvious. These choices are sure to take the film down a notch or two in greatness. That’s what this series is about.

The Fog. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Vanishing Point. The Warriors. Psycho IV. Not the worst movies ever made, but certainly not the best. There’s something that they all have in common that hindered their potential. Can you guess what it is?

They all had radio DJ characters.

A film is about spectacle. It’s action. What does a DJ do? They sit. And talk. They talk a fucking lot. You can’t even say that the set it great. It’s a table with a microphone.

There’s nothing wrong with a lot of dialogue in a film. However, even the most talkative of films set their dialogue among scenes of some interest. Kevin Smith films set dialogue-heavy scenes in retail or work environments so that the characters actually have something to do while talking. (A good example of this “business” is the scene where Jack Lemmon reveals his past infidelities to Bruce Davidson over breakfast in Altman’s Short Cuts.)

A DJ sits by their self and has a one-sided conversation.

When it comes to having a DJ character, one has a few options. One can make them an actual player in the plot or keep them on as pure commentary. Let’s look at the above-mentioned films and see how their DJs play out.

The Fog

The Fog has what is probably the best use of a DJ character in a film. This film is Stevie’s (Adrienne Barbeau) story. She’s a single mom who just happens to DJ in an old lighthouse, which just happens to give her the first views of that weird fog rolling in. She’s also among the first to learn of the fog’s malevolence, causing her to strive towards protecting her son. We actually care about her character. Although there’s too much solo yakking, but at least her job and character works in the film.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 also takes its DJ, Stretch (Caroline Williams), and makes her a player in the events. However, the poor characterization keeps her from being worth watching. There is no character. She’s just a catalyst to get Dennis Hopper involved. If only Hopper had been involved earlier, we wouldn’t have to sit through so many boring scenes of talking to a microphone.

For all the flaws apparent in Chainsaw 2, their DJ is utilized better than in The Warriors and Vanishing Point. In these two films, the DJ acts more like a Greek Chorus telling you what you’ve just seen.

Vanishing Point

The worst of the two films is Vanishing Point and the ineptness of adding a character like Super Soul (Cleavon Little). Here we have a DJ who hears about the film’s high-speed chase on a police scanner and then just assumes that the driver, Kowalski (Barry Newman), is listening only to Super Soul’s broadcast. Quite an assumption for a DJ in a storefront radio station in some small town, but of course, he is blind, so how is he to know he works in a dump?

Super Soul proceeds to pass information to Kowalski in the broadcast. If that wasn’t bad enough, Super Soul starts to act like he has some psychic knowledge of Kowalski’s situation. At one point, the technician asks Super if he’s ready to say what he has to say to Kowalski. “I am,” Super replies, “but he ain’t ready yet.” Of course, Super Soul IS blind, and you know, the movies like for us to believe that the blind possess amazing sensory perception. Maybe Super could smell meth-popping Kowalski from two states away.

Of course, Super Soul never actually meets Kowalski, not does he ever do more than talk in a microphone. He dances like he’s having an epileptic fit for a bit, but that’s mot much better.

The Warriors

In The Warriors, the DJ is never personified. All we see is a mouth, a microphone, and occasionally a reel of tape. Here, the film at least sets up the DJ as a provider of information about the gangs over the airwaves. For us, she’s just a stylish exposition device. What keeps her from hurting the movie too much is that instead of trying to make her a player in the plot, she serves as a transitional device between the episodes in the film. It’s a nice touch, but highly unnecessary.

Psycho IV

The absolute worst use of a DJ ever is in the film, Psycho IV. This is the crappy sequel where Norman talks to a radio shrink throughout the whole goddamned movie. This DJ (CCH Pounder) is nothing more than a convenient confessional so we can endure boring scene after boring scene of Norman’s childhood. Yes, this film is set up like a clip show. Talk, flash back, more talk, more flashbacks. The DJ has no characterization.

One would wonder why the filmmakers didn’t just make a prequel instead. Of course, you wouldn’t then have the sadly-pigeonholed Anthony Perkins on the phone for 90 solid minutes.

In almost every instance, the DJ character is a band-aid of a plot device to keep things moving forward. If the film can not survive without an airwave Greek Chorus, then the script should be rewritten to work without one. A character must act and this isn’t possible talking into a microphone for scene after scene.

Introduction to Shot Reverse Shot

2007-04-30T02:27:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is yet another blog about film and art. Yes, there are many blogs on this subject out in the blogosphere.

I don't care. This one is mine. You can read it or not.

Quick introduction on me and my intention for this:

I'm a filmmaker. Was a film student, but then graduation happened. Being a filmmaker is a lot like being a film student, only with more debt and projects cost more to make. Of course, there's way more freedom too. I feel that my position as a filmmaker gives me more credibility than what mere fandom would and more insight than a regular, journalistic critic in the newspaper would have for the process. Roger Ebert (who I do admire) has to watch 500 films a year. I don't know how anyone could maintain a non-jaded view of film with that much viewing. I have no time to watch that many movies. I'm too busy making my own work.

So what I'm offering you, the casual surfer, is a viewpoint on film from an artist's perspective. Don't worry about heady deconstructions or over-reading symbols for messages about masculinity in a post-feminist era and how it relates to the simulacra of our post-modern culture.

Sometimes I may review a film I've recently seen. Sometimes I may just call attention to a filmmaker I like. Other times I may just reflect on life as a filmmaker and artist. People who know me know that I'm of a very divergent mind. Besides, I like variety.

Either way, enjoy yourself. When you're done, go check out that masturbating cat video on YouTube. It's fucking awesome!