Movie City Indie Archive for November, 2008

Indie is in festival world

Dardennes


Darts


Luc Dardenne[Back in a bit. Turn off the lights when you go.]

[PR] More movies going digital via Cinetic Rights Management

CINETIC RIGHTS MANAGEMENT ANNOUNCES DISTRIBUTION OF INDEPENDENT FILM CATALOGUE THROUGH AMAZON VIDEO ON DEMAND AND CREATESPACE
New York, NY (November 13, 2008) – Cinetic Rights Management (CRM) announced today that its catalogue of independent films will be available on Amazon Video on Demand and via CreateSpace DVD on Demand. Through this unique online film distribution effort, certain titles will be made available to consumers exclusively each month. In addition, both CRM and Amazon Video on Demand will curate a slate of approximately twenty independent films each month. These films will then be made available to consumers as digital downloads on Amazon’s Video On Demand and also as on-demand DVD’s via Amazon’s CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com group of companies which enables discs to be manufactured only after a customer places an order. This new venture launches today with an Amazon exclusive of writer/director milk_5898.jpgDave McLaughlin’s ON BROADWAY (2007) starring Joey McIntyre and Eliza Dushku which focuses on a Boston playwright who stages a production of his work in the back of an Irish pub. “We’re so excited about our partnership with Amazon Video On Demand,” said Matt Dentler of Cinetic Rights Management. “Audiences are no longer required to live in a specific city to see new and classic independent film. All they need now is an Internet connection.”
“Amazon customers love independent films,” said Roy Price, director, digital video, Amazon.com. “With Cinetic, we’re able to deliver them unique, exclusive and compelling movies that are not available anywhere else.” Among the other films being released on Amazon Video on Demand in November are:
THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK (1984), director Rob Epstein
This Oscar-winning documentary takes a look at the political rise and tragic slaying of the first openly gay city official in the United States, Harvey Milk.
YOUR MOMMY KILLS ANIMALS (2007), director Curt Johnson
A documentary about the battles of the government against extreme animal rights’ activists.
A MODERN AFFAIR (1995), director Vern Oakley
A man and woman fall in love after they meet following a visit to the fertility clinic. Starring Stanley Tucci.
All Cinetic titles will be made available to Amazon Video on Demand customers for rent or purchase. Movie rentals are $2.99 for a seven day rental, and movie purchases are $9.99. Amazon Video on Demand titles can be played instantly on PC’s or MAC’s, or downloaded and watched on PC’s, TIVO boxes, compatible Sony Bravia televisions, and portable video players. Customers can purchase titles by going to www.amazon.com/vod.

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Tilt-shifting San Francisco


Dawn and dusk in mini San Francisco from captin nod on Vimeo.


A sweet snip of homage. “Captin Nod” writes that this brief taste of homage had its “Inspiration drawn from Keith Loutit and his series of amazing time-lapsed, tilt-shifted videos of Sydney.

[LOOK] London: harder, better, faster, stronger


London (harder, better, faster, stronger) from David Hubert.


Danny Boyle used a digital SLR for the helicopter shots in Slumdog Millionaire; more about that later. But this piece is a swell look at London in public spaces, with bonus Guinness. Scored to Daft Punk. As Hubert writes on his Vimeo page, the effort took “a few weeks on my spare time, probably a total of 10 days of work to get the footage and do the edit,” and he worked with a Canon EOS Rebel [$700 retail] and edited it in Adobe After Effect and Premiere.”

[PR] Forget The Reader, WeinsteinCo's got The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie!

Smokin’! “THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY PARTNERING WITH CHEECH MARIN AND TOMMY CHONG ON A NEW CONCERT MOVIE TWC to Retain Worldwide Rights
NEW YORK, NY (November 11, 2008) The Weinstein Company (TWC) have partnered with Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, and their managers Ben Feigin and Josh Klein to produce a concert movie to memorialize the comic duo’s reunion and first tour together in 25 years. The announcement was made today by Barry Gordon, executive vice president of home entertainment at TWC. Unknownunknownunknownunknown.jpeg As part of the arrangement, TWC has worldwide theatrical, home video, digital and television rights. The feature-length program, which will portray a live concert experience of the “Cheech & Chong: Light Up America” tour, is expected to make a major TV premiere, followed by the DVD release. “The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie” will be an historic, must-experience event for the many fans that grew up listening to their recordings and watching their movies,” said Barry Gordon, EVP of Home Entertainment at TWC. “For the millions of new fans who have discovered Cheech and Chong over the years as cultural icons, this will be the first time many of them will be able to enjoy the artistry and one-of-kind magic that is Cheech and Chong live on stage. This is the comedy event of the decade.” “It’s great to get a chance to cap a long career with a show of where we are now,” said Marin. Chong stated, “I really like Harvey because he picked up my dinner tab.” Start of production and official release dates are to be announced.

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Closing night Roller Disco Cleidh at Sheffield Doc/Fest


Masterclasses with Nick Broomfield and D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus and documentary market activities left and right? Yes, plus events like this on Saturday night to close the five-day event.

Computer modeling Laurel & Hardy's Culver City


From a Dutch documentary on “The Shortest Main Street In the World.”

Get your war on: "New World Order"

Indie is heading into the Yorkshires

Power



Way out


Festival notes to follow…

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v o t e

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Reasons to vote, including canceling out your neighbors


A video for North Carolina voters, by Dave Willis (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Squidbillies) and Scott Jacobson (The Daily Show, SNL’s “TV Funhouse”).

Indie is festival-bound

W


Kodak Kodak


A journalist's grasp

Yma Sumac was 86; inspired the amazing "Yma Dream"


The Peruvian singer with the notorious multi-octave range has died at 86. Among her accomplishments was inspiring this sketch from Anne Bancroft’s 1970 television special, “Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man,” adapted from the New Yorker piece by Thomas Meehan.

Studs Terkel's red socks

Studs Terkel's red socks“With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, ‘Studs, you’re an optimist.’ I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what’s the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.”

Movie City Indie

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon