Movie City Indie Archive for February, 2006
#167 with a Bubble
Video Business’ Susanne Ault does the math on the outskirts of Soderbergh, notching it at 167 in Rentrak’s Top 1,000. “Its first week rental revenue totaled $75,991… Although far out of the Top 10, Bubble’s rental haul did top the film’s $72,000 opening weekend box office gross.” And now, for the New Paradigm From The Bleeding Edge Of Math: “When counting revenues from all distribution platforms, Bubble has earned $5 million in revenue, say Magnolia officials.”
Spirit of Erice: Geoff Andrews calls a masterpiece
Time Out’s Geoff Andrew gets the scoop on the latest from not-prolific Spanish maestro Victor Erice: “Thanks to an extraordinary collaborative exhibition highlighting parallels in the work of… Erice and Iran’s Abbas Kiarostami, the former director… has made, very quickly and very cheaply, a half-hour film that ranks alongside his earlier The Spirit of the Beehive and The Quince Tree Sun…. There are four short digitally filmed ‘letters’- Erice made the first (about Lopez’s garden 15 years after he shot Quince Tree there) and sent it to Kiarostami, who replied with a short featuring a cow, Erice responded with a film about Spanish schoolkids being shown and discussing Kiarostami’s Where Is My Friend’s House, to which the Iranian replied with his own film about quinces. Two further letters are currently in the works…” Erice’s new short, La Morte Rouge, draws on memories of seeing The Scarlet Claw as a 5-year-old in San Sebastian. “Seen at the Kursaal Cinema, then a grand palace but now a modern, boxy arts centre – this small, simple, personal soliloquy covers a multitude of themes in a way that can only be described as exquisitely poetic. Music, image, narration all combine to create a profound and profoundly moving reverie on the relationship between cinema and memory, reality and fiction, place and time, history and art. In short, it may be a modest creation, but it’s far richer than almost anything else this writer’s seen in quite a while. A masterpiece, I’d say.”
Leigh way: We won't begin to have an idea
Time Out London reports on reports that Mike Leigh’s put his devising cap again. Sums Chris Tilly: “National treasure Mike Leigh is soon to start work on an as yet untitled new project [with] plans to cast in April, rehearse in autumn and shoot next spring, with the intention of getting the film into theatres before Christmas 2007… Even Leigh’s long-time producer Simon Channing Williams is in the dark: ‘It’s simply another Mike Leigh film,’ he told Screen Daily. ‘Beyond that, until the casting process starts and we see what mix of cast is available for Mike to work with, we won’t begin to have an idea of what it’s going to be about.'”
What the Blip?!: down the Rabbit Hole
A distribution source suggests that the mutant mash-up of an earlier theatrical success now known as What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole: Extended Director’s Cut has been “pulled from theatrical release,” although the production’s website lists a further national rollout for the recycled product. Last weekend’s release from IDP/Samuel Goldwyn/Roadside Attractions reportedly grossed $28,000 in 8 theaters. Must be more to do in Tempe and Boulder than anyone dreamed…
26,000 frames per film: shooting Munich
In the Digital Journalist, fotog Karen Ballard debriefs on being Munich‘s unit photographer: “In 2001, when I began my freelance career, [I wanted to] work as a photographer on a movie… Four years later… a friend in Los Angeles told me that Spielberg was looking specifically for a photojournalist to work as a unit photographer on his upcoming film… Although he did not remember our session in D.C., he liked my photos and offered me what would become one of the most demanding and exhilarating assignments of my life. I was blown away… “I want you to just shoot how you shoot” as a journalist. Those were key words from this master filmmaker. Yet at the same time, after being on the set for only a few hours, I quickly realized that to shoot stills for a motion picture, I would have to recalibrate how to apply one of the principal photojournalist’s professional standards: If the picture isn’t good enough, move closer. On a movie set this is equally true, but with one large caveat—just don’t dare get in the way of anybody or anything, particularly the film camera… Working on a movie set requires even more finesse and physical dexterity. On set, even slightly brushing the chief camera operator can cause a whole scene to be ruined. Getting in the way of the Director of Photography, Janusz Kaminski, was not a part I had any intention of playing. I don’t think he and I even spoke for the first the two weeks… By the end of the first month I had already shot over 10,000 frames… Not long after this a photo tech from Universal Studios came to visit to clear up some FTP issues and I inquired if that seemed like a lot of imagery. He said, “nah, you’re about right on target.”… most motion picture unit photographers average about 500-700 photos a day. When it was all over, I had taken more than 26,000 frames.” [Photo by Karen Ballard/Universal.]
S. Korea to cut local film quotas; work stopped for a day
Donga reports that 2,000 or so actors and others protested a government plan to cut South Korea’s screen quota, a major component in that country’s filmmaking renaissance, hoping to “stop cultural invasion. Around 100 actors and actresses, including Choi Min-sik, Lee Byeong-hyun, Hwang Jeong-min, Jeon Do-yeon, Kim Seon-ah, Moon Geun-young and Hyeon Bin, and directors Lim Gwon-taek, Lee Joon-ik, Song Hae-seong, Hong Sang-soo, and Lee Jae-yong attended… Actors and directors suspended all film work yesterday in protest.” 
What’s the issue? As described by Yi Ch’ang-ho for the Korean Film Commission: “On January 26 the South Korean government announced the halving of the Screen Quota from July 1, 2006. The Screen Quota, which required cinemas to show domestic movies for 106-146 days a year (30-40% of the year), will be reduced to 73 days. The measure was [criticized by] the Korean film industry, with leaders from various groups supporting cultural diversity announcing that the Korean film industry will protest against the reducing of the Screen Quota. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced its commitment to help the Korean film industry in other ways, contributing [US$400 million] to the film industry in the coming five years. Half of this will be supplied by the government, and half will be covered by a 5% levy on film tickets, starting in 2007. France, Italy and other countries have chosen and are implementing various measures like the Korean Screen Quota to support their local film industries. In Korea the reduction took place as the country prepares to start negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States. US trade representatives have long argued for a reduction in the quota.”
Being Uncle Kimono: Mr. Malkovich dresses
In NY Observer, Sara Vilkomerson deciphers John Malkovich’s fashion lineage: “The name Uncle Kimono also came courtesy of a friend of Mr. Malkovich, one who had seen a box of photographs that had been sent to the Malkovich home. They contained negatives of a Japanese gentleman in California. “John thought they were attracting,” said [his business partner Francesco] Rulli. “He showed it to his friend, who was gay… who said, ‘Oh, those people are Uncle Kimono.’ When you have a lover, a gay lover, in the 40’s, you wouldn’t go around and tell everyone that he’s your boyfriend. You might call him your uncle. This guy, this guy was like … his posture was interesting. And he was wearing a kimono. So our line is called “Uncle Kimono.” Mr. Malkovich has other business concerns as well. For instance, he co-owns a disco in Portugal… Mr. Rulli said that they treat the collection like it is a film, or a play, with every design having a name. There is the Fucking Commie sweater, which is red. “You know, like you’re Italian and you have a cashmere sweater, but you tell everyone you’re a socialist…” There’s the Free Martha coat, which is what Mr. Malkovich believes Martha Stewart supporters might wear to protest her imprisonment. There is a Nervous Breakdown jacket, in leather. There is a jacket called Tito’s Parrot, which was inspired by a parrot owned by Marshal Tito, of Yugoslavia. That parrot, Mr. Rulli claimed, spoke in five different languages.” [More of Mr. Malkovich’s fashion excursions here.]
The Ken Burns move: it's fade-to-black
Reports Ed Symkus in Newton TAB, the Ken Burns move is kaput: “The Frame Shop, the Newton-based animation facility that’s brought historical photographs to life for filmmakers Ken Burns, Ric Burns and Errol Morris, as well as for countless editions of PBS’ “American Experience” and “Nova,” is closing its doors and auctioning its equipment. Ed Joyce started the operation in 1979, and Ed Searles joined in 1983. And though there’s still plenty of work going on—Searles is currently in the midst of World War II, the newest Ken Burns project—times and technology have caught up…. “It’s similar to what computers did to type houses… They shrunk the numbers of them down with desktop publishing. People didn’t have to go to printers anymore. And now there’s a program out there that has what they call a Ken Burns move,” he says of the style of moving a film camera around a still photograph that Frame Shop specialized in. “A lot of that work is now being done in-house.” Among equipment being auctioned off on February 15 are an Oxberry film camera, lighting equipment, editing supplies and digital Beta decks.
I's get in your smoke: celebrating cigs in cinema
In the Observer, Lynn Barber “celebrates her filthy habit” as reflected in movies: “I thought I spotted a mistake in the new George Clooney film, Good Night, and Good Luck, which is set in an American television studio at the height of the McCarthy witch-hunt. Ed Murrow strides into his boss Bill Paley’s office with a lit cigarette in his hand. To me, this smacked of insolence. Surely you would always stub out your cigarette before going into your boss’s office, safe in the knowledge that he would offer you another one the moment you arrived. Or maybe Clooney was making a subtle point—that Murrow had little respect for his boss. Either way, the nuance will be lost on non-smoking audiences.” Aside from her own smoky indulgences, Barber describes what antismoking activists note down as “smoking events.” “A smoking ‘event’ is when someone lights a cigarette or when cigarette packets or advertisements are shown. Good Night, and Good Luck has about a thousand ‘events’ per hour—everyone is wreathed in smoke—but that is justified by historical authenticity. More surprising is a film such as, say, Brokeback Mountain where someone must have made the decision to let the leading characters smoke.”
Monkey business: the curious death of a "George" collaborator
CBC reports the murder of a collaborator on the “Curious George” books. His body was “found in the driveway of his home in Boynton Beach, Fla. Alan Shalleck, 76, was writer and director of 104 episodes of the Curious George TV series… He also co-wrote a series of books with Margret Rey, who created Curious George more than 60 years ago. The body lay under garbage bags for more than 24 hours until it was found early Tuesday morning…. Shalleck lived in a seniors’ retirement village in South Florida and worked at Borders Books & Music but had not turned up for work in two days… The original Curious George books were written by Margret Rey and illustrated by her husband, H.A. Rey, beginning in 1941… “I got $500 per Curious George story, no royalties, no residuals,” Shalleck told the Palm Beach Post in 1997. The experience of working with Margret Rey was the high point of his life, he said. Rey died in 1996 at age 90.”
Bear and grin it: the Reporter from Berlin
File away among idiot ledes as effective (and intelligent) as a brick wall, from The Reporter’s Scott Roxborough: “About midway through last year’s Berlin International Film Festival, it was business as usual: A black-clad art house crowd milled about the swank lobby of the Grand Hyatt, lattes in hand, discussing the mise-en-scene or Weltanschauung of whatever “important” European art film had just premiered.” Black-clad? Swank? Lattes? “‘Important'”? Warum die Herablassung, Mann? Jeebus. [A dithering overview appears to follow.]
Why actors, why not New World?: Manohla digests
Manohla Dargis opines directly in a blunt reader Q&A in the NY Times: “There are a few variables that determine how I respond to an actor’s performance, some admittedly irrational. There are some actors, for instance, that I just don’t like – I don’t like the way they look, the way they talk, the way they take up space. And there are other actors who I like but who I can’t make any claims for; I just like watching them. I’ve almost always liked Heath Ledger, but I didn’t think he had anything going on… until Monster’s Ball. [But] I wasn’t prepared for “Brokeback,” where he creates a world of pain with a tight mouth and a body so terribly self-contained it’s a wonder he can wrap his arms around another person. But here’s the thing – and this is the part that’s hard to explain—I don’t just admire the performance on the level of craft, I am also deeply moved by it, just as I am by the film. By contrast, while I think Philip Seymour Hoffman is really good in Capote, both the performance and the film leave me cold. I don’t care about either… While I greatly enjoy watching the beautiful Terrence Howard… both his character in Hustle & Flow and the film itself are too laughable for me to take into consideration.” As for actresses? “Have you seen Junebug, Mrs. Henderson Presents and Transamerica? All three are bad in degree, with the last being the worst, and their lead female performances pale next to those of Sibel Kekilli in Head-On, Ziyi Zhang in 2046 and Juliette Binoche in Caché… As to Mrs. Henderson Presents… isn’t it time Dame Judi started working for a living? … only in a year so profoundly devoid of juicy female performances… could Felicity Huffman’s graceless, unpersuasive turn in Transamerica be in contention…” 
More withering at the link, but also this priceless explanation of why The New World didn’t get the Oscar noms it deserves, a simplified rendition of the valuable ongoing cogitation over at Matt Zoller Seitz’s house: “There is only one possible explanation for why Terrence Malick’s glorious film, one of the most aesthetically and intellectually ambitious, emotionally devastating and politically resonant works of American art in recent memory, was overlooked by the Academy: with the exception of my few dear friends in that august body, they are idiots.”
Incremental reasons why movies cost $10.75 in Manhattan: Brad Grey's hints of cardamom and cedar
“Grey’s office is a study in detailed elegance, like a page out of a Restoration Hardware catalog,” coos Laura G. Holson of NY Times over Paramount capo Brad Grey‘s Melrose Ave furnishings, “but the David Smith paintings are real and the furniture more expensive. In his office one morning last week, Norah Jones was playing on his stereo and he served coffee with half-and-half on the side. (Other Paramount executives offer packets of Coffee-mate.) There were hints of cardamom and cedar in the air, and chopped wood was artfully displayed in an unused fireplace.”
Digital destiny and net profits
In the The Nation, Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, says your tasty surfing days are numbered, fella. “The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online,” he writes. “Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority… while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out…. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing “platinum,” “gold” and “silver” levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.” How are they making this happen? Lobbyists, who funnel tiny amounts of contributions to politicians in return for millions and billions of potential revenue for the corporations making the purchase… Without proactive intervention, the values and issues that we care about–civil rights, economic justice, the environment and fair elections–will be further threatened by this push for corporate control. Imagine how the next presidential election would unfold if major political advertisers could make strategic payments to Comcast so that ads from Democratic and Republican candidates were more visible and user-friendly than ads of third-party candidates with less funds. Consider what would happen if an online advertisement promoting nuclear power prominently popped up on a cable broadband page, while a competing message from an environmental group was relegated to the margins. It is possible that all forms of civic and noncommercial online programming would be pushed to the end of a commercial digital queue…. Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively advancing such plans? With the arrival of the long-awaited “convergence” of communications, our media system is undergoing a major transformation. Telephone and cable giants envision a potential lucrative “triple play,” as they impose near-monopoly control over the residential broadband services that send video, voice and data communications flowing into our televisions, home computers, cell phones and iPods. All of these many billions of bits will be delivered over the telephone and cable lines… At the core of the new power held by phone and cable companies are tools delivering what is known as “deep packet inspection.” With these tools, AT&T and others can readily know the packets of information you are receiving online–from e-mail, to websites, to sharing of music, video and software downloads.” [More scary bits and bytes, including names of the guilty, at the link.]
How in the name of Pauline Kael's haunted panties?: John Rogers inquires
John Rogers, screenwriter, blogger and newly anointed rantmeister, goes all divinely manly upside an anti-Oscar political diatribe that’s been flecking the internets, and the read is lively and lovely. Samples: “Sweet God. Sweet. God. Are you honestly, shamelessly a.) claiming to know how to write a film and b.) can’t see the enormous structural and thematic parallels between Lawrence of Arabia and Syriana? Are you actually claiming to be a filmmaker but you don’t realize… that you picked the two most similar films in your rant list to set up your dichotomy? How in the name of Pauline Kael’s Haunted Panties do you critically analyze cinema? By film stock? By the number of tracking shots? By counting the number of words in the script without the letter “e”?! HOW? Okay. Okay. Deep breaths. He’s got to pull it out somehow. For chrissake, the man’s got a PhD from Stanford and a philosophy degree from Yale. It cannot get worse. Sure, [this writer, name at the link] has shown he is ignorant of how Hollywood business works; completely clueless on recent film and Oscar history; either an idiot or a hypocrite when it comes to the purpose of the very foundation he has set up; and revealed with, I must admit, breathtaking efficiency, he has no critical film analysis skills whatsoever. There is no way this can get any uglier.” Rogers quotes the blogger: “Star Wars Episode III got one nomination this morning, for Best Makeup. Lucas wasn’t nominated for Best Director, although George Clooney was for Good Night, and Good Luck. Star Wars’ Ian McDiarmid, playing the deliciously wicked Chancellor Palpatine, wasn’t even nominated for Best Supporting Actor… We’re now in the era of film as social activism, The New Triviality.” Rogers notes, “It’s … sublime. It’s like looking into the solar corona of hackery, eclipsed only by the lunar body of cluelessness. Even when you go into the comments on his own right-wing site, you read things like: “I too believe Hollywood is filled with perverts and socialists. But an Oscar for Episode III? Are you high?” [More riotous tough-love at the link.]
