That old “what defines independent” chestnut gets a little tiresome but I read this from Andrew O’Hehir at Salon with interest:
“The academy showers its laurels on a film that has made about $63 million in domestic box office, while the big winner at the supposedly independent Spirit Awards has grossed double that amount.”
Boring Oscars. Interesting Times.
I have been so caught up with work that I have completely failed to go to any of the screenings at the MoMA Documentary Fortnight. This weekend you can see some of the films that Joan Churchill has been involved with. Churchill is probably best known for her work with Nick Broomfield but she has an impressive body of work behind her as a cinematographer for other noteworthy directors, from Peter Watkins’ extraordinary Punishment Park to Gimme Shelter and the Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing. MoMA is screening Punishment Park along with films Churchill collaborated with Broomfield on: Juvenile Liaison, Soldier Girls and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.
Unfortunately I’m going miss them all because (fortunately) I’ll be at True/False this weekend. Whoo hoo! (I can’t believe WaMu co-opted that expression by the way. Bastards!)
Punishment Park, Dir Peter Watkins, 1971
This could have saved me 2 hours and 59 minutes in front of the telly last night!
It’s always long and a little bit silly but I found last night’s Oscars more exhausting than usual. I liked that Diablo Cody was so genuinely choked up and Marion Cotillard’s speech was lovely but everything else left me a little cold. Although it was nice to see Euro-folk win so many awards. Tilda Swinton is beyond cool (even in that bizarre dress).
Amusing titbit from the Guardian Film Blog:
“Every year it’s the same thing. The five nominees for best foreign language film and best documentary are four war movies and one about dance.”
I am pleased for Alex Gibney and Taxi to the Dark Side even though I put No End in Sight on my ballot. I think they’re both excellent documentaries but Gibney is a smart, experienced director and deserves his Oscar.
You can see the full list of Spirit Award winners on indieWIRE. Congrats to all, both winners and nominees. I have to confess that I hadn’t seen a few of the narrative nominees until quite recently and had to do some cramming so I could cast my vote (as a member of IFP). It was really gobsmacking to think that there is so much talent out there that just doesn’t get seen - even when you really love films and live in a city like NYC where it is fairly easy to see most stuff. I don’t really know where I’m going with this except to acknowledge what a herculean task it is to make a film and get it out to an audience so well done to everybody who does it!
This article in The Guardian is rather amusing. Except it cost 30 people their jobs so it isn’t. The gist: a cockroach crawled across the news desk during Turkmenistan’s 9pm news show, Vatan. This went unnoticed by the news staff and the show was repeated at 11pm. Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the country’s president, didn’t see the funny side and fired 30 people from the main state news channel. At least it wasn’t a cooking show!
The Guardian includes this lovely bit of information:
“A cockroach will live after decapitation for several weeks before starving to death; the severed head survives several hours.”
I’m going to be attending the True/False Film Fest for the very first time next weekend. I can’t wait to discover why everybody loves this fest so much although I do know David and Paul, the fest founders, and they’re both thoroughly lovely people which must have a lot to do with it.
I’m really looking forward to finally getting a chance to see Hold Me Tight Let Me Go and Please Vote for Me, both of which I hear are very good. Kim Longinotto is one of my favorite documentary filmmakers so I’m especially excited to see Hold Me Tight. And Stranded is also screening which I missed countless times at Sundance due to illness and exceptionally poor time management!
The full schedule is up on their website. I’ll report back on the joys of Columbia, Missouri next week.
There’s so much going on at the moment I feel rather gleefully overwhelmed. The Spirit Awards will be broadcast live on IFC tomorrow at 5pmET but I’m also going to be watching a webcast of the red carpet on IFC.com at 2.30pmET with commentary from SXSW’s Matt Dentler and IFC’s Alison Willmore.
And then of course on Sunday there’s some Oscar something or other happening. I’m going to find a friend with a bigger TV than mine and make some careless financial bets. It makes it more fun when “stakes is high.”
On a smaller scale but no less enjoyable, earlier in the week I went to the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series night that Michael Tully guest-curated with aplomb. He chose some films that I already know and love (The Zellner’s Foxy and the Weight of the World and the Duplass’s The Intervention) but it’s always a pleasure to watch old favorites with an audience. I finally got a chance to see Matthew Lessner’s clever and rather heartbreaking By Modern Measure and Josh Safdie’s beautiful We’re Going to the Zoo - and I reveled in the wonderful Weekend by Henrik Andersson, a film that makes me want to move to Scandinavia and wear a lot of beige. Check out upcoming screenings from the series - Barbes is always a fun place to drink beer and watch films on a Monday night.
On Tuesday I moderated an IFP Industry Connect panel on alternative distribution options which was very useful for me as I’m currently writing an article on that very subject. There was healthy debate amongst the panelists who brought a wealth of experience working on everything from: new models for theatrical (IFC Films with their day and date strategy), aggregating for iTunes (New Video), digital cinema ventures (Emerging Cinema), new web fundraising strategies (IndieGoGo), and online film sites (IndiePix). I’ll post more feedback in here shortly as the article comes together. It’s a subject I have been thinking about somewhat obsessively of late - for now there’s more discussion on this on the TOOLS blog.
Enjoy the film-tastic weekend!
Some people want to do the trailer voice. You know the one I mean, that impossibly deep, always slightly hilarious voice saying stupid things like: “In a world without love, without hope, without chocolate, one man never gave up.” I never wanted to do the trailer voice but I did want to make montages. I love me a good montage. They always make me goose-bumpy even if they’re awful. I’m going to do a blog post one of these days that is just “montages I have known and loved.” Until then this piece from MTV will have to do. MTV Movies editor Josh Horowitz gets an Oscar wish granted by Kurt Loder:
As a card carrying feminist (except they don’t give us cards which is very unfortunate!) I am embarrassed to admit that I’m not half the geek I would like to be. I can’t code much more than an html link and I don’t really understand what the Semantic Web is although I like the sound of it very much. I got a bit obsessed with solid-state drives over the weekend but am still not really sure what is so good about them to justify the $1,300 price difference between the MacBook Air with a regular hard drive and the one with a smaller but no doubt fabulous solid-state drive.
Despite these shortcomings I have been getting very excited about the line-up for the Interactive Festival at SXSW this year although I will be too busy attending the Film Festival to actually go to any interactive panels. I hope that they podcast lots of them because I finally got around to listening to the podcasts from 2007 recently and found them fascinating - and very amusing to see how of-the-moment so much of this stuff is, there’s lots of excited talk about what the super-secret iPhone oooooooh will be like for example. I think it’s a shame that there isn’t more film/interactive crossover in the panels because there are so many business and marketing panels in the interactive fest that are increasingly relevant to filmmakers as they pursue new distribution strategies. I found out about so many amazing websites, projects and ideas from the 2007 Interactive podcasts and that was a mere smidgeon of what was covered at the event itself.
Speaking of distribution, I’ll be moderating a panel for IFP Industry Connect tomorrow to talk about alternative distribution options with Ryan Werner from IFC Films, Slava Rubin from IndieGoGo and Jordan Mattos and Bob Alexander from IndiePix. Will be interesting to hear what they’re all up to and where they see things heading in 2008.
