Movie City Indie Archive for October, 2011

Gerhard Richter Talks Work, Life On Eve Of Tate Retrospective (22m)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-hiBxnbjRI&feature=player_embedded

Cronenberg On Today’s Real-Life Video Nasties (cf. Gaddafi) 7’22” vid

Appropriately grisly images are shown. [From Newsnight, via “A Piece of Monologue.“]

Postering WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Postering INTO THE ABYSS

Launch Vid: GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO H&M Fashions (60-sec)

Leonard Cohen’s “Prince Of Asturias Award” Speech

Goodness has everything to do with it. October 11, 2011: “It is a great honour to stand here before you tonight. Perhaps, like the great maestro, Riccardo Muti, I’m not used to standing in front of an audience without an orchestra behind me, but I will do my best as a solo artist tonight. I stayed up all night last night wondering what I might say to this assembly. After I had eaten all the chocolate bars and peanuts from the minibar, I scribbled a few words. I don’t think I have to refer to them. Obviously, I’m deeply touched to be recognized by the Foundation. But I have come here tonight to express another dimension of gratitude; I think I can do it in three or four minutes. When I was packing in Los Angeles, I had a sense of unease because I’ve always felt some ambiguity about an award for poetry. Poetry comes from a place that no one commands, that no one conquers. So I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do not command. In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from I would go there more often.

“I was compelled in the midst of that ordeal of packing to go and open my guitar. I have a Conde guitar, which was made in Spain in the great workshop at number 7 Gravina Street. I pick up an instrument I acquired over 40 years ago. I took it out of the case, I lifted it, and it seemed to be filled with helium it was so light. And I brought it to my face and I put my face close to the beautifully designed rosette, and I inhaled the fragrance of the living wood. We know that wood never dies. I inhaled the fragrance of the cedar as fresh as the first day that I acquired the guitar. And a voice seemed to say to me, “You are an old man and you have not said thank you, you have not brought your gratitude back to the soil from which this fragrance arose. And so I come here tonight to thank the soil and the soul of this land that has given me so much.

Because I know that just as an identity card is not a man, a credit rating is not a country.

Now, you know of my deep association and confraternity with the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca. Read the full article »

John Hawkes’ Music Video for MMMM’s “Marcy’s Song”

As written by the late Jackson C. Frank. His Wikipedia entry opens with a most bountiful paragraph: “When Jackson Frank was 11, a furnace exploded at his school, sending a ball of flames down corridors until it ended up in Frank’s music classroom in the Cleveland Hill Elementary School in Cheektowaga,  New York. The fire killed fifteen of his fellow students and burned Frank over more than half his body. It was during his time in the hospital that he was first introduced to playing music, when a teacher, Charlie Castelli, brought in an acoustic guitar to keep Frank occupied during his recovery. When he was 21, he was awarded an insurance check of $110,500 for his injuries, giving him enough to “catch a boat to England.”

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A Thunderstorm Gathers (10:42 timelapse)

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Fritz Lang and Billy Friedkin have a chat (1975) (49 min.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpKV1HqEdIs&feature=player_embedded

[H/t David Hudson.]

David Lynch Photographs His “Silencio” Nightclub: “Time gets funny at night.”

At Nowness, an interview with his photographs as well as an audio interview on growing up in the woods and his first cigarette. “The mood and feel that exists in the club comes from great lighting… You think of colors and shapes and the way the light plays off those things. The club has no windows, so once you’re inside, you could be anywhere, or nowhere.” Are you a nighttime person?
“No. Well, I am, but I don’t like to go out. I like to stay home. I like to work. I’m not a dancer. But I like the mood at night. Time gets funny at night.”

Framed: The Gaddafi Capture-Pistol-Whipping Video

Jarring, jagged, Ali Algadi’s iPhone footage is up in the late dictator’s face as he’s dragged to a truck to be taken away, apparently already wounded. The FPS of the footage jumps, nothing’s smooth, making distinct frames into individual, horrific compositions. GlobalPost describes: “In this exclusive footage obtained on the scene by Tracey Shelton of GlobalPost, Col. Muammar Gaddafi is caught by fighters for the new Libyan government. The shock discovery of the former dictator, found cowering in a water drain on Thursday in his hometown of Sirte, was captured by Ali Algadi, a rebel fighter, with an iPhone just seconds after Gaddafi was dragged from the drain in which he was hiding. This is the earliest footage to emerge so far. Although clearly injured, Gaddafi is still alive during the capture. His captors can be heard shouting, “Dont’ kill him! Don’t kill him! We need him alive!” throughout the footage. According to an official statement by the National Transitional Council, Gaddafi was shot before his capture and died from his wounds on route to Misrata.” Global Post’s video is here. Three frame captures are below. It looks like nothing less than a PETA video shot by Derek Jarman.

Read the full article »

3 Filmmakers, Chicago Int’l at 47: Swanberg, King, Naranjo

Joe Swa

At the just-ended 47th Chicago International Film Festival, I moderated public conversations with prolific Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg [above] and Braden King, director of HERE [below], as well as interviewing Gerardo Naranjo (Miss Bala), Wim Wenders and others.
Braden King
Naranjo

David Lynch’s In-Studio “Crazy Clown Time” Film (1’25”)

Mr. Lynch offers a track-by-track guide to his musical adventure.

TRACK-BY-TRACK:

“Pinky’s Dream”
“The horror and sadness of losing someone to other dimensions.”

“Good Day Today”
“About being sick of negativity.”

“So Glad”
“This kind of feeling comes up from time to time in our lives. It doesn’t always have to do with people…”

“Noah’s Ark”
“About being saved by love.”

Read the full article »

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