Movie City Indie Archive for May, 2012

Beasts of the Southern Apprenticeship: Benh Zeitlin’s First Film, GLORY AT SEA (25’48”)

While the short’s been online for over three years, advancing publicity for the summer release of Beasts of the Southern Wild make Glory At Sea worth a second (or first!) look.  [Via Wholphin.]

A Single-Take Steadicam Shot Behind Scenes Of HUGO

Steadicam by Larry McConkey, who also shot the club sequence in Goodfellas.

Paul Schrader posts on his Bret Easton Ellis project, THE CANYONS

THE CANYONS. “The material is classic BEE. Character driven, dialogue driven, explicit in word if not action. Two visual poles are emerging in the low budget world: on one side, Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels. On the other Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats. Both styles mix approaches, use hand held, work economically. Both are composed as opposed to faux vérité. You could distinquish them by saying Fallen Angels aspires to the characters’ POV, Heartbeat to the director’s. A third path? Better examples from the microbudget world?”

John DeFazio will be the DP for The Canyons. John and I are now discussing possible approaches. Many things are possible on a microbudget. Some things are not. For example, you have to plug in for power rather than bring a generator. That limits the amount of artifical light you can use. Which means in turn that post-prod color effects may be more practical than onset gels. And so on. “Undoing” is just one style of cinematography we are dicussing. Any thoughts what the “look” of Canyons should be. Hard or soft? Back or front? Hand held or tripod? There are no longer any rules in cinematography, only choices.” (The project has 11 days left in its Kickstarter campaign, but is already 50% over its funding goal.)

 

Clipping MOONRISE KINGDOM: “Were you followed?”

“PRADA Presents A THERAPY” by Roman Polanski 3’31”

Clipping ON THE ROAD: Kirsten Dances; Kristen Drives

 

Lurhmann’s Eckleburg

[Click twice.]

And his “Zeigfeld.”

Holy HOLY MOTORS!! 9 images, video, press kit extracts

  The tweets after the first screening: c’est incroyable!

Epigraph to the press kit: “History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: “I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself.” The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: “Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.”

— Jorge Luis Borges, “Everything and Nothing”

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Teasing THE MASTER

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Trailering Bond 23: Hello Roger Deakins!

56 Seconds Of THE SOUNDS OF ARONOFSKY

[Kottke.]

Aaron Sorkin’s Syracuse Commencement Speech (16’27”)

“Thank you very much. Madam Chancellor, members of the Board of Trustees, members of the faculty and administration, parents and friends, honored guests and graduates, thank you for inviting me to speak today at this magnificent Commencement ceremony.

There’s a story about a man and a woman who have been married for forty years. One evening at dinner the woman turns to her husband and says, “You know, forty years ago on our wedding day you told me that you loved me and you haven’t said those words since.” They sit in silence for a long moment before the husband says “If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

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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