Paul SchmelzerCrosscuts: Our Film/Video staff surveys the world of moving image art from classic to global, experimental to digital.
Snakes on a Plane!
Plot summary, title, marketing angle, all rolled into one: that’s the brilliance of the title of Samuel L. Jackson’s upcoming film. (Thanks, Dean.)
Plot summary, title, marketing angle, all rolled into one: that’s the brilliance of the title of Samuel L. Jackson’s upcoming film.
(Thanks, Dean.)
Seven.
Ang Lee will have something to talk about at tonight’s sold-out Regis Dialogue with James Schamus: Brokeback Mountain was nominated seven times for the Golden Globes this morning. Here’s the rundown: Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor (Heath Ledger), Best Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best [...]
Ang Lee will have something to talk about at tonight’s sold-out Regis Dialogue with James Schamus: Brokeback Mountain was nominated seven times for the Golden Globes this morning. Here’s the rundown: Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor (Heath Ledger), Best Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song. Also of note: two films presented in October as part of the Walker’s First Look series were nominated. George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck received four, and Paradise Now was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
More kudos for Brokeback
Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which made its sold-out Minneapolis debut at the Walker last night, is raking in just about every major film award, from a Golden Lion for Best Film at Venice to film-of-the-year honors from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and when Golden Globe [...]
Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which made its sold-out Minneapolis debut at the Walker last night, is raking in just about every major film award, from a Golden Lion for Best Film at Venice to film-of-the-year honors from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and when Golden Globe nominees are announced tomorrow morning, it’s expected to be a frontrunner. Minneapolis audiences seem to have their finger on the pulse: tickets to tomorrow night’s Regis Dialogue with Lee and longtime collaborator James Schamus have been sold out for two months already.
(Film curator Sheryl Mousley reports that several men showed up in cowboy gear last night. They all found seats in the back, a courtesy, apparently, to those who might’ve ended up seated right behind their ten-gallon hats. Rumor is that, because of the timing of our dialogue/retrospective and the Golden Globes announcement, Schamus and Lee may be fielding questions from international reporters right here tomorrow.)
The original: The New Yorker has published Annie Proulx’s original short story of “Brokeback Mountain,” and here’s a discussion on adapting it to a screenplay.
Star Wars: A Cremasterpiece?
Is Star Wars the greatest postmodern film ever? Aidan Wasley at Slate seems to think so. He writes: Star Wars, at its secret, spiky intellectual heart, has more in common with films like Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books or even Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle than with the countless cartoon blockbusters it spawned. Greenaway and Barney [...]
Is Star Wars the greatest postmodern film ever? Aidan Wasley at Slate seems to think so. He writes:
Star Wars, at its secret, spiky intellectual heart, has more in common with films like Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books or even Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle than with the countless cartoon blockbusters it spawned. Greenaway and Barney take the construction of their own work as a principal artistic subject, and Lucas does, too. “This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level,” one of John Ashbery’s works begins. Star Wars, we might say, is concerned with plot on a very plain level. Everything about the films, from the opening text crawls to the out-of-order production of the two trilogies, foregrounds the question of plot. As an audience, we grapple with not just the intricate clockwork of a complex and interwoven narrative, but, in postmodern fashion, with the fundamental mechanics of storytelling itself.
Agree? Disagree? Discuss (ahem, there is a comment function).
Via Greg.org, where you can also find musings on watching all five Cremaster films in order, including:
Best overheard comment after Cremaster 1, when a guy at a suddenly partially visible urinal complained that the mens room door was being propped open by the line: “We just spent 45 minutes in someone’s ovaries. I’m sure no one cares about seeing you take a piss.”
Cronenberg takes on Warhol in Walker show
The Globe and Mail confirms that filmmaker David Cronenberg will be “co-curating” the Canadian appearance of ANDY WARHOL/SUPERNOVA: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962-1964. The first Warhol show organized by the Walker, it opens in Minneapolis November 13 with 20 photo-silkscreens featuring images pulled from mass-media of Warhol’s day: tabloids, newspapers, and LIFE magazine. What distinguishes [...]
The Globe and Mail confirms that filmmaker David Cronenberg will be “co-curating” the Canadian appearance of ANDY WARHOL/SUPERNOVA: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962-1964. The first Warhol show organized by the Walker, it opens in Minneapolis November 13 with 20 photo-silkscreens featuring images pulled from mass-media of Warhol’s day: tabloids, newspapers, and LIFE magazine. What distinguishes it from other Warhol shows is the inclusion of darker imagery–electric chairs, gory car wrecks, and civil rights marchers attacked by police dogs–amid portraits of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. Which is maybe why Cronenberg is a fitting pick for its showing at the Art Gallery of Ontario next July: his last film was A History of Violence. In preparation for his work, he traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh to view some of the artist’s early films, including Sleep (which will be included in the Walker film series Factory Films, January 15–26). The exhibition was curated by former Walker curator Douglas Fogle, now curating the Carnegie International.
Digital independence
This morning’s New York Times highlights an innovation in film distribution, IndieFlix.com: independent filmmakers, at no risk, can submit their work to a website where visitors can log in and browse a catalogue of films, select which ones they like, and get a freshly burned DVD version mailed to them. And it’s cheap: $9.95 for [...]
This morning’s New York Times highlights an innovation in film distribution, IndieFlix.com: independent filmmakers, at no risk, can submit their work to a website where visitors can log in and browse a catalogue of films, select which ones they like, and get a freshly burned DVD version mailed to them. And it’s cheap: $9.95 for a feature-length film. Just prove you’re not infringing anyone’s copyright, and you can distribute your work, without having to produce or store inventory.
It’s another development that seems to bode well for filmmakers working geographically or thematically outside Hollywood’s sphere. Not only are DV cameras and editing software becoming more affordable, but demand for content is on its way up. Film Threat cites the release of the video iPod, the rise of videoblogging, and the recent acquisition of iFilm.com by MTV to back up that claim. And with popular, new peer-to-peer filesharing protocols like BitTorrent, maybe there’s hope for the continued health of truly independent cinema.
Blog-only offer: Free tickets to Darwin’s Nightmare
Cause and effect factors heavily into Hubert Sauper’s new documentary Darwin’s Nightmare (screening tomorrow through Sunday at the Walker Cinema), all the way down to its conception. In 1997 while working on the film Kisangani Diary, which tracked the plight of Rwandan refugees during the Congolese rebellion, he noticed an odd juxtaposition, two planes carrying [...]
Cause and effect factors heavily into Hubert Sauper’s new documentary Darwin’s Nightmare (screening tomorrow through Sunday at the Walker Cinema), all the way down to its conception. In 1997 while working on the film Kisangani Diary, which tracked the plight of Rwandan refugees during the Congolese rebellion, he noticed an odd juxtaposition, two planes carrying very different cargos. One, coming in, was loaded with 45 tons of yellow peas, sent from the US to feed refugees in UN camps. The other, departing the Congo, was filled with 50 tons of filleted fish heading to markets in wealthy European countries. “But soon it turned out that the rescue planes with yellow peas also carried arms to the same destinations,” he writes, “so that the same refugees that were benefiting from the yellow peas could be shot at later during the nights.”
This effect had an unlikely cause: as an experiment in the ’60s, Nile perch were introduced into Tanzania’s Lake Victoria and wiped out local fish populations. While people living near the lake languished on the brink of starvation, a booming export market for the fish emerged, bringing with it the byproducts of globalization–factories, guns, and corrupt trade officials. Sauper writes, “I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this ‘fittest’ animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil.” The winner of more than a dozen film prizes, including the 2004 European Film Award for Best Documentary, Darwin’s Nightmare was praised by New York Times critic A.O. Scott as “an extraordinary work of visual journalism, a richly illustrated report on a distant catastrophe that is also one of the central stories of our time.”
Now, if that all sounds too depressing, here’s something to cheer you up: We’re giving away five pairs of tickets to screenings of Darwin’s Nightmare. Just be among the first five people to email Joe Beres in the Walker Film/Video department (please mention which screening you’d like to see). View dates and times–or for those of you who are too slow, buy tickets–here.
Spike v. Katrina.
Longtime Walker friend Spike Lee–who was last here with Jim Brown to introduce his film on the NFL legend–is turning his lens toward New Orleans. Channeling Kanye, his documentary will reportedly look into how race and politics left so many people without adequate help for so long. But Lee promises “factual journalism, not creative narrative,” [...]
Longtime Walker friend Spike Lee–who was last here with Jim Brown to introduce his film on the NFL legend–is turning his lens toward New Orleans. Channeling Kanye, his documentary will reportedly look into how race and politics left so many people without adequate help for so long. But Lee promises “factual journalism, not creative narrative,” more in line with his documentary 4 Little Girls, which he screened at the Walker in ’97.
Aardman update
Aardman Animation gives the definitive word on what was and wasn’t lost in the Bristol fire–and announces the show must go on: …The facility used to store sets, awards, and historical artefacts, is not a part of the Aardman studio, and we are glad to report that no Aardman staff have been affected. However, we [...]
Aardman Animation gives the definitive word on what was and wasn’t lost in the Bristol fire–and announces the show must go on:
…The facility used to store sets, awards, and historical artefacts, is not a part of the Aardman studio, and we are glad to report that no Aardman staff have been affected. However, we have lost a number of irreplaceable storyboards, awards, props and pieces of film memorabilia from our 30 year history.None of the material from the new Wallace & Gromit film The Curse of the Wererabbit’ was in storage at the time, but we have lost many original sets from Chicken Run, Creature Comforts, and the three Wallace & Gromit short films, that were used for reference and toured around the world for exhibition.
This will not in any way affect existing or future Aardman productions as 100% of sets and props are purpose built for each production.
Wallace & Gromit HQ burns
Nick Park’s Aardman Animation offices in Bristol, England collapsed after a fire tore through it. The company’s “entire history,” including props and sets from the first three Wallace & Gromit films, have reportedly been destroyed. Aardman reps say that sets from the just-released film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit were spared.
Nick Park’s Aardman Animation offices in Bristol, England collapsed after a fire tore through it. The company’s “entire history,” including props and sets from the first three Wallace & Gromit films, have reportedly been destroyed. Aardman reps say that sets from the just-released film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit were spared.