Movie City Indie Archive for October, 2009

Yes… feeding squirrel-like kitten with chopsticks

Good days? Bad days? Good days.


Week later, two million views, still a classic.

Charles and Ray Eames' Polaroid SX-70 promo film


Technology arrives…

Out of the box: Richard Kelly's 1996 The Goodbye Place

VIFF 2009 trailers: Sexuality and Subtitles


Vancouver’s fest trailers are always pretty swell.

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Picturing Chicago International Film Festival 45 award ceremonies

The Chicago International Film Festival’s 45th edition runs through Thursday, but juried awards were handed out Saturday night at the Pump Room of the Ambassador East Hotel. In the International Feature Film Competition, three prizes went to Tina Mabry’s Mississippi Damned, a Gold Hugo for Best Film, a Gold Plaque for Best Supporting Acress to Jossie Harris Thacker and another GP for Mabry’s screenplay. Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank took a Silver Hugo Special Jury Award for “esthetic boldness” along with a GP for Michael Fassbender for Best Supporting Actor. Vincere took Silver Hugos for Marco Bellocchio as Best Director, Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Best Actress and Filippo Timi for Best Actor, along with a Gold Plaque for Best Cinematography, Daniele Cipri. Hipsters took a Gold Plaque for Best Art Direction. Only a handful of winners were present: the Mississippi Damned crew was happy to be there. New Directors and Short Film nods listed in the festival press release after the jump, along with video (below) of Martin Landau accepting an Achievement Award in the Chicago hotel where North by Northwest was shot. [Ray Pride.]
John Russell Taylor's 39th Chicago International Film Festival


This is critic John Russell Taylor’s 39th consecutive CIFF, he says.


David Robinson


David Robinson served on the documentary jury.


Bruce Webb, director, The Be All And End ALL


Bruce Webb directed competition entry The Be All And End All.


Martin Landau


Martin Landau says the film industry has changed in 50 years.


Bisset signs


A scrum of autograph hunters outside the hotel sought a signature from jury president Jacqueline Bissett.



Remarks

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An hour of Hitchcock on the "Tomorrow" show


The wavy rainbows when the VHS recorder was restarted after commercial are a nice throwback as well. The other embeds are below on a single page. Via @Ebertchicago. And here’s sixteen or so hours for your iPod: the complete recordings of the Hitchcock-Truffaut interviews.

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Für Falcon: A fictional, non-hoax balloon ride gone wrong


Roger Michel’s beautifully edited opening scene of Enduring Love, dubbed in German, but it still looks swell.

Trailering Edge of Darkness

Oscar's got 65 foreign-language contenders

Sez the Academy:
Albania, “Alive!,” Artan Minarolli, director;
Argentina, “El Secreto de Sus Ojos,” Juan Jose Campanella, director;
Armenia, “Autumn of the Magician,” Rouben Kevorkov and Vaheh Kevorkov, directors;
Australia, “Samson & Delilah,” Warwick Thornton, director;
Austria, “For a Moment Freedom,” Arash T. Riahi, director;
Bangladesh, “Beyond the Circle,” Golam Rabbany Biplob, director;
Belgium, “The Misfortunates,” Felix van Groeningen, director;
Bolivia, “Zona Sur,” Juan Carlos Valdivia, director;
Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Nightguards,” Namik Kabil, director;
Brazil, “Time of Fear,” Sergio Rezende, director;
Bulgaria, “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner,” Stephan Komandarev, director;
oscahs2010.jpgCanada, “I Killed My Mother,” Xavier Dolan, director;
Chile, “Dawson, Isla 10,” Miguel Littin, director;
China, “Forever Enthralled,” Chen Kaige, director;
Colombia, “The Wind Journeys,” Ciro Guerra, director;
Croatia, “Donkey,” Antonio Nuic, director;
Cuba, “Fallen Gods,” Ernesto Daranas, director;
Czech Republic, “Protektor,” Marek Najbrt, director;
Denmark, “Terribly Happy,” Henrik Ruben Genz, director;

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#chaosreigns: IFC embraces viral goofing for Antichrist

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IFC’s circulating the link to Peter Debruge’s The Satanic Mr. Fox mashup: a warning that there’s footage from the thus-far most notorious scene from Antichrist. (But not involving human mutilation.) Here’s the YouTube link.

John Woo at U.S. premiere of Red Cliff at Chicago International Film Festival

John Woo
John Woo screened


Woo was late to a pre-premiere reception; journalists traded Hong Kong gangster film scenarios for the director’s non-appearance.

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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