All these wonderful things

What's Up with all the Hostility Toward SEX AND THE CITY?

Over the past few days, I've been reading a few posts on this weekend's blockbuster top grossing SEX AND THE CITY movie.  And for the life of me, I don't understand the rage in the writing that I've been seeing.

I wouldn't say a word if this were reserved for the likes of Jeffrey Wells, who has almost cornered the market on creepy in the film blogosphere (and make no mistake, he goes after SATC with pure unadulterated crazy - "a cultural snapshot showing everyone in the world how utterly shallow and culturally nowhere mainstream American women have become"), but even some of my favorite writers (and peeps for that matter) have joined in.  It's become de rigeur to hate SATC sight unseen, and to do so with a bizarre double standard that I thought was reserved for the Clinton campaign.

Karina Longworth even posted a handy guide to the 5 Ways to Dismiss the SEX AND THE CITY Movie, which was proffered as help for those looking to articulate their "semi-rational hatred" for the film.  Number one on the list?  "The women aren't attractive!" 

Karina even points to the illustration at left that accompanied a nasty New Yorker review from professional film crapper Anthony Lane (it's really useless to call him a critic at this point, since he only serves to write outrageously about films he despises these days).  Says Karina, "A masterpiece of grotesque caricature, it’s the only piece of critique of the film that this self-professed third (or is it fourth?) wave feminist considers to be truly, maliciously misogynist."

Karina's post even merits a love letter from "Stephen" in the comments section, who writes:

"I LOVE YOU!!!!

There, finally a sane woman speaks out! Phew… good to see there are STILL some alive and well...

You’re right, people moan about these women as if they are so hot. But the truth is, that they’re just old, and pathetic. Shallow and materialistic oh and horny.

Sadly a lot of young women and troubled women find this show amazing… I guess it’s because they’re simply disillusioned and have a very distorted view on reality."

Yes, thank God that Karina has provided a buffer for Stephen from the mass of people who have been proclaiming how "hot" the SATC ladies are.  (Update: This morning Karina expands on that "somewhat tongue-in-cheek post" and wonders what the film's success might mean.)

I was alerted to Karina's breakdown of reasons to hate SATC by another good pal, Mark Rabinowitz, who offered the following in a post titled "Thank God I Don't Have to Watch This Dreck....":

"Personally, I never had even a nanosecond's thought of seeing this culturally, politically, emotionally and cinematically bereft film. Save yourself the pain and re-watch season one of BSG or a Tracy-Hepburn movie. At least you'll be getting a full dose of strong, well-rounded and developed female characters and not four nauseating ersatz women."

Add to this the stories about how men would avoid the film as some sort of macho coding ritual.  Said Variety before the film was released:

"(T)here's no escaping the fact that the movie is a chick flick with strong appeal among an older femme demo but questionable interest among others. All the magazine coverage in the world -- 63 pages in the May 23 edition of Entertainment Weekly alone -- and "Sex and the City" TV marathons haven't really moved the needle among men, many of whom suggest they'd rather be shot than sit through the movie."

The LA Times was even more direct:

"It's easier to find $2-a-gallon gas than a straight man eager to see the movie."

Now I haven't seen the film (of course not, did I mention that I'm a MAN - all caps to underline the manliness of my manhood), but isn't this a TV series that was pretty much accepted by most right thinking people as a fine piece of entertainment?  I don't remember the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments when it aired every week on HBO after the Sopranos.  In fact, I seem to remember people watching it and thinking it to be kind of great.  And Sarah Jessica Parker was a nice little actress that we had all grown up with and wasn't she cute when she was on Square Pegs.

Now all of a sudden were offended that they like fancy shoes?  Really?  Why?  Because gas is $4 a gallon and because we're at war?  Did we suddenly get religion (or are we shamed by all the times we've secretly watched THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA on HBO)?  Did we get collective amnesia all of a sudden?

And now four perfectly respectable actresses (at least one who was considered a few years ago to be quite fetching) are too ugly to front a movie and SJP is the anti-Christ and has a horse face?

And if I'm wrong, why isn't everybody up in arms about Entourage?

Sight unseen, I'm gonna side with my pal Kim Voynar on this, who posts a fine riposte to Jeffrey Wells (along with Anne Thompson and Manohla Dargis) after his crazy-making post:

"I totally disagree with Thompson and Dargis on this one. I'm a fan of the series, loved the movie, and gave it a positive review. And while I understand the need of smart, intellectual women to bash this film (it's superficial! it's about fashion!), a lot of them are judging the movie in a way that's every bit as superficial as they assert the film and characters are.

SATC has never been about fashion or a credit card lifestyle if you look beneath its surface. It's about a group of smart, independent women who, successful as they are, still struggle with figuring out love and relationships and how to have and maintain a relationship with a man without losing who you are as an intelligent woman with a career and life of your own.

And frankly, I'm surprised that so many of these smart women don't seem to grasp that. I'd be willing to bet that most of the female film critics who bitch about SATC as being nothing more than a group of otherwise intelligent women who do nothing but talk about men do pretty much the exact same thing the SATC chicks do when they go out on girls' nights with their own friends.

The single hardest aspect of my own adult life has been figuring out how to be a wife and mother without losing myself in the process, and I know a lot of women who feel that way.

As for the male critics bashing the show -- (shrug) big surprise; why would anyone expect them to understand a movie that's not about them for a change?"

Besides, should anyone who yearns for something other than CGI-driven comic book action and post-adolescent targeted dick comedy be glad that a movie with four ugly (and don't forget old, bitterly, disgustingly old) women made a buttload of money this weekend?  Why isn't that cause for rejoicing?  And if the success of a HBO TV Show turned feature film means that someone this morning is gonna call for a Deadwood movie, well then someone buy Michael Patrick King a drink.

Internets Ablaze Over Exceedingly Fake WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE Clip

I love all my blogging brothers and sisters, but occasionally we (and I include myself in this) run with something that seems like breaking news to our heart, while our brains should be yelling, no, no, a thousand times no.

The latest is the somehow exclusive, somehow secret scene from Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' upcoming adaptation of the WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.  Even my dear pals Eugene and Dentler jumped into the act - but I give them an out, for reasons I'll explain shortly.

Seems that a publicist for the website Buzznet was contacting people, heralding their exclusive clip, only to later remove the clip -  the mystery over its origins and its removal unsolved.

Witness the resulting firestorm here and here and here and here and here.  In some cases, sites did raise doubts about the authenticity of the clip.  Others speculated that it might be a test scene (which I'll allow is possible).  And some commenters saw the same tip-off that I did which indicates the thing is, at best, a test clip, and at worst, a huge fake-o.

But at least these bloggers have the guts to let their posts hang out there in cyberspace.  Meanwhile, in yet another example of the MSM breaking the rules of blogging - Entertainment Weekly posted about the clip on its PopWatch blog, only to have taken the whole thing down by Sunday afternoon (maybe they too realized that it was a fake?).

Today, Jeffrey Wells links to another site that has the video up, and with just one look, it's clear to this Angleno that the things is a badly conceived fake.  If the video is still there, go to the 44 second mark.  That rounded thing in the upper right corner?  LA's Griffith Observatory! 

And where is the movie being shot?  Australia.

David Poland Writes on Brian De Palma's Faux-Doc Provocation, Redacted

Late last week, right wing blogs began beating the drum against Brian De Palma's latest film REDACTED, which premiered in Venice and had the nerve to show that very occasionally people do some pretty inhumane things.  I suppose that it's perfectly fine to show corrupt cops or corrupt pols or corrupt and evil school principals, but if you depict an actual event wherein the bad guys happen to be guys wearing the uniform of the United States, you are given an official "I hate the troops" club card. 

But I'm more interested in REDACTED's form, as De Palma shoots on HD video, takes material from the internet (including grisly photos) and generally takes a faux-documentary approach to the story.  It's this that Movie City News' David Poland writes about in a salvo against the film and makes some interesting points comparing De Palma's work to that of Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein, James Longley, Laura Poitras, Andrew Berends and so many other nonfiction filmmakers who have literally risked their lives to get their films to audiences:

If the film didn’t steal so freely from the many quality documentaries that actually put documentarians in harms way to attempt to get a more accurate picture of what is happening on the ground in Iraq, I don’t think I would have found it so grating.

The line for a filmmaker making a simulated doc is very thin. Is there political value in a film that recreates what has already been shown in doc form, but adds 10% of material that polemicizes the reality by creating “simulated reality” that extends what the filmmaker would like to be the truth. If this film was an investigation, on some level, of the issue of where that line lives, I would be happy to watch that. But I would argue that what it does is to create evidence – even though we are watching an admittedly fictional film – to make a case that cannot be made with the actual facts.

Ironically, one of the films that Redacted seems to steal from – a house raid seems to be almost shot for shot the same – is Gunner Palace, which also had young soldiers who were in danger of going adrift and who were constantly facing the dichotomies of this war. The irony is that when the Gunner Palace filmmakers found a lose thread in their documentation of events in the person of a journalist who was taken into custody on the night of one of the house raids, they followed up with an entire documentary, The Prisoner, that told his rather horrifying story. And then, when one of the guards from Abu Gharib showed up at a screening of the film and was willing to go on record, they added more to that documentary until the story was as complete as they could make it.

Seems to me that they made the responsible choice.

Major Film Festivals July - Dec

Earlier this year, we previewed the major film festivals of the first half of 2007.  Now that we're almost into September, it's way past time to look forward (and backwards) to the last half of the year.  As always, if I miss anything (which seems inevitible), please send me a note in the comments.

July

Outfest          July 12-23
BritDoc          July 25-27

August

Locarno         August 1-11
Edinburgh          August 15-26
Venice          August 29 - September 8
Telluride          August 31-September 3

September

Toronto          September 6-15
San Sebastian          September 20-29
Vancouver          September 28-October 13
New York          September 28-October 14

October

Chicago          October 4-17
Woodstock       October 10-14
Austin          October 11-18
Mill Valley         October 4-14
London          October 17-November 1
Hamptons          October 17-21
Rome          October 18-27
Hot Springs Documentary     October 19-28

November

AFI           November 1-11
Sheffield Doc/Fest          November 7-11
Denver          November 8-18
St Louis          November 8-18
IDFA          November 22-December 2

December

MUMBLECORE SHOCKER: Mike Tully Booted From Acclaimed Indie Movement In Diverse Casting Scandal!

When we asked yesterday whether the new Mumblecore movement was too white and too straight, we had no idea of the fallout that could arise from the debate.  But apparently an internal investigation by Mumblecore Security revealed that filmmaker Michael Tully had actually cast black people in roles in his film, COCAINE ANGEL.  The reaction was swift:

Which leads me to some pretty bad news. I just got my official Mumblecore rejection letter in the mail today. The reason? COCAINE ANGEL had three black people in it. I tried to argue that it was only three, and that it was a very conscious decision to not cast an African-American in either of the two lead roles (or anyone else of color, for that matter--it was hard enough having to work with females every day), but that wasn't good enough for them. We broke the movement's number one rule. They concluded by informing me that until I make at least three features with heterosexual Caucasian males in every single role, then I needn't bother reapplying. I guess it's back to the drawing board. Oh well.

Somewhere, Craig Zobel is in hiding...

Is Mumblecore Too White? Too Straight?

In the midst of articles and reviews of Joe Swanberg's HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS and the much-touted/debated Mumblecore movement, a consistent theme appeared, as if it were included in the press notes:

Dennis Lim in the NY Times:

Hardly models of diversity, the films are set in mostly white, straight, middle-class worlds, and while female characters are often well drawn, the directors are overwhelmingly male.

J. Hoberman in the Voice:

Mumblecore is demographically self-contained. Straight, white, middle class.

And recently, Reyhan Harmanci in the San Francisco Chronicle:

(T)he mumblecore directors seem to be a pretty straight, white, male bunch...

Over the weekend, Sujewa Ekanayake, who had previously written several posts celebrating the DIY aspects of directors like Swanberg, Bujalski, Duplass, et al, took the gang to task on this very point:

I would think that it is reasonable to expect a movement that comes from "the people" to have some key players who are not "white". Yet, pretty much (if I recall correctly) all the Mumblecore movies I 've seen so far (Kissing On The Mouth, LOL, Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation, The Puffy Chair, Dance Party, USA, Hannah Takes the Stairs) have featured an all-"white" cast and all the celebrated Mumblecore directors who are on their way to Hollywood & indiewood fame & wealth are all-"white". Mumblecore may have aesthetic/film technique differences from mainstream American film & television, but, when it comes to not collaborating with minority talent, Mumblecore is like 1950's Hollywood or mainstream television from that era....

(H)ow come the indie film media does not seem to be at all concerned about the hottest new thing in our world -Mumblecore - being an all-"white" thing?

So is Mumblecore independent film by & for "white"people only? Or for people who do not have any non-"white" friends or acquaintances or business partners? Maybe it is, at least up to now. At least that seems to be the message in the casting decisions made in the films.

While I like and respect Sujewa, I have to disagree on this point.  While I can't speak to all of the films in question, I've long thought that Swanberg and Bujalski's work-to-date reflected a kind of forced insularity, the cocooning of the familiar that many embrace in their lives, immediately post-college.  The lack of diversity almost seemed to be partly the point.  Aren't all of these characters stunted in some way, stuck in between two parts of their lives?  It's not like they are models of self-confidence and/or knowing their way in the world.

In his piece last week, Tom Hall addressed this very issue:

The “straight white male” label in particular is grating to me, simply because it dismisses the superiority of the roles and films by women in this community (who serve on all creative levels, from producers and writers to actors and directors), it negates films like Craig Zobel's Great World Of Sound, Zack Godshall's Low And Behold and David Gordon Green's films, and also because that same level of scrutiny is never leveled at Godard, Truffaut or someone like Kenneth Anger (I guess we‘ll never see Truffaut’s ‘lesbian of color’ film). Instead, the criticism can, I think, be read as a coded dig at the class issues that are on full display in many of these films; The characters are primarily urban creative types who don’t do much in terms of work (and when they do, the work is generally artistic in nature), who spend a great deal of time partying and who almost never speak a political word (again, Zobel and and Godshall seem the exceptions.)

I'll add Woody Allen to Tom's list, and I agree with his points.  The discussion by Sujewa and others as it relates to Mumble's homogeny isn't an invalid debate (several commentators at Sujewa's blog offer a hardy Hear! Hear! to his comments), and it would be fascinating to see more diversity in these worlds, particularly considering that Swanberg is so bold about breaking sexual taboos in his work.  There's no doubt that this group's films do not reflect the diverse POV of the Killer '90s (in which I refer to the Sundance-debuting, often-Killer Films-produced gender-busting indies of the previous decade).

That's seems to be what the debate here is all about.  A feeling that a generation-defining indie film movement (a sentiment that is over-simplistic at best) has, in the Bush Aughts, shied away from the complexity and diversity of the urban lives of most Americans, backtracking on the cinematic statements of Lee, Arteta, Araki, Haynes and the rest.  Making a-political films in these most political times.

Yet, here are these characters.  Sheltered, yes, but also taking refuge within their own interconnected groups - both real and virtual - and hoping to find a way out.

In some ways, isn't that a view of America today that's all too real?

Addendum - Monday PM - Re-reading what I wrote above, I fear that I have not been as clear as I would like.  My points about "forced insularity" and "cocooning" are not about the films themselves or the filmmakers but about the characters within the films.  I find the characters' experiences and questioning to be as valid as any other to examine cinematically, even if it exists within contained environments.   

As Hannah Takes the Stairs Hits New York, A Mumblecore Primer (And What Joe Swanberg Can Teach Doc Filmmakers)

Tonight was a big night in the indie film world, as Joe Swanberg's HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS unspooled in New York and as everyone gathered at events and parties related to the IFC Center's kickoff of their THE NEW TALKIES: GENERATION DIY series.  As Karina Longworth so hilariously writes over at SpoutBlog,  tonight "is shaping up to be the event of the season for people like me who rarely leave the house."

You'd have to be avoiding film blogs entirely these past couple weeks not to have been inundated with all things HANNAH and Mumblecore-related, but in case you're a doc junkie who is curious as to what the hell is going on in Manhattan and why everyone is getting so excited about a bunch of kids in Chicago and Austin who've got DV cameras and friends who don't mind being naked or looking foolish, here's a mumblecore primer.

In many ways, I'd argue that HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, as well as Swanberg's previous films, KISSING ON THE MOUTH and LOL, stand just on the other side of the increasing blurred-line that separates narrative and nonfiction.  While there's no question that these stories are fictional (or at least fictionalized), in both style and in some ways content, they are coming closer to a new breed of nonfiction that also relies on digital video, moments of uncomfortable intimacy and an increasing number of close-ups.  Benefiting from the same pro-sumer equipment that has launched a thousand documentary filmmakers, filmmakers like Swanberg focus on life's intimate moments.  And much like Jennifer Venditti's BILLY THE KID, which also debuted at SXSW this year, the camera gets in close and the action happens in small increments.  In Swanberg's films, the sense of reality is heightened by actors who may be writing the script as they speak and who are always straddling a line of comfort between revealing too much and too little.

There's been a lot of press about HANNAH and the other films that have been loosely grouped together under the Mumblecore banner and what follows is a sampling:

First off, Matt Dentler, guru of the SXSW Film Festival and ground zero for all of the Mumblecore movement, asked several film bloggers (including yours truly) to feature his Q&A exchanges with the HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS cast and crew: 

• At Movie City Indie, Dentler talks to Todd Rohal
• Over at David Lowery's blog, it's Kent Osborne
• At Mike Tully's blog, there's Ry Russo-Young
• GreenCine Daily has his interview with Andrew Bujalski
• Kris Williams Swanberg gets interrogated at Cinephiliac
• SpoutBlog has Mark Duplass
• Self Reliant Film features Kevin Bewersdorf
• Here at All these wonderful things, there was the wonderful Greta Gerwig
• And finally, at Filmmaker Magazine was Swanberg himself

Dentler followed all of this up with a lengthy summary at indieWIRE:

In 2005, something was different, but we didn't know it at the time. People have asked why SXSW brought all these films together that year, as if the programmers did it on purpose. We simply programmed what we liked and the rest happened on its own. A new Andrew Bujalski film ("Mutual Appreciation")? We loved it and premiered it. A film from our old pals the Duplass Brothers ("The Puffy Chair")? Post-Sundance, it won a SXSW audience award. An odd, but highly enjoyable experimental narrative featuring hardly any dialogue ("Four Eyed Monsters")? After Slamdance, it won a SXSW audience award. And then, some kid from Chicago (Joe Swanberg) made a no-budget movie on video ("Kissing on the Mouth") where he and his friends get naked, talk, hang out, and explore intimacy? I think Joe's fearlessness about exploring intimacy (and his charismatic nature) made it easy to make friends with some of these other filmmakers when they attended SXSW 2005. After that year, they stayed in touch, and a community of artists from around the nation, started to grow. Thanks to MySpace, e-mail, and blogs, that was very easy. Thanks to MySpace, e-mail, and blogs, more collaboration and films were made.

A graphic view of "the tangled web of interconnectedness," in an image created by Aaron Hillis. Published with permission.  Quiet simply, the intimacy these filmmakers portrayed onscreen (a post-Y2K, post-9/11 "slacker" adulthood) felt all the more vital. This collective of filmmakers (which later included Aaron Katz, after meeting Swanberg during SXSW 2006), whether consciously or not, continued to make very personal films that had the immediacy and audacity of Web 2.0. Because, much like the vloggers or bloggers gaining momentum around the globe, these were films coming without filters and directly from the source. They were rough around the edges, but accessible and honest. Like blogs, some will take to "The New Talkies" films more than others. Most importantly, perhaps, is the realization that they are united by one theme: struggling for inter-personal communication during a telecommunications revolution. This subject would be examined most directly in Swanberg's 2006 sophomore feature, "LOL," also screening in the IFC series.

Over the weekend, lengthy pieces by Dennis Lim and J. Hoberman.  Lim nails one of the things that makes this "loose collective" of filmmakers, this vague movement, of such interest:

Mumblecore is the sole significant American indie film wave of the last 20 years to have emerged outside the ecosystem of the Sundance Film Festival. ("The Puffy Chair" is the only one to have screened there; Bujalski and Swanberg have had films rejected by the festival.)

Which highlights the fact that SXSW is the most important US film festival after Sundance, which is true for documentary films as much as for narratives.

Lim goes on to say:

It can seem like these movies, which star nonprofessional actors and feature quasi-improvised dialogue, seldom deal with matters more pressing than whether to return a phone call. When the heroine of "Funny Ha Ha" (2002), the film that kicked off the mumblecore wave, writes out a to-do list, the items include "Learn to play chess?" and "Fitness initiative!!"

But what these films understand all too well is that the tentative drift of the in-between years masks quietly seismic shifts that are apparent only in hindsight. Mumblecore narratives hinge less on plot points than on the tipping points in interpersonal relationships. A favorite setting is the party that goes subtly but disastrously astray. Events are often set in motion by an impulsive, ill-judged act of intimacy.

From Hoberman's piece in the Voice:

Typically running a compact 80 minutes, these movies are disarmingly pragmatic, full of abrupt cuts and choppy inserts. Acting is mainly a coping mechanism. The characters in Hannah alternate between unconscious and self-conscious and that’s the charm. Embarrassment rules: In one typical interaction, Hannah (Greta Gerwig) contrives to have her ostensive boss (the ever-creepy Bujalski) come up to her cramped apartment where, squeezed in with her roommate on the couch, she fixes him with her pale hazel eyes and asks, “Do you think I’m doing OK at work?”

Thriving on the modest truth of clumsy mishaps and incoherent riffs, fueled by a combination of narcissism and diffidence, Mumblecore reflects sensibilities formed by The Real World (our life is a movie) and Seinfeld (constant discourse), as well as The Blair Witch Project (DIY plus Internet). Of course, Mumblecorps members prefer to cite Dogma or Gus Van Sant, who cast his upcoming mega-Mumble Paranoid Park through MySpace. That the filmmakers often appear on screen gives their movies a psychodramatic edge. In his youthful Flesh of Morning, Stan Brakhage made a self-starring poem on masturbation; half a century later in Kissing on the Mouth, Swanberg presents himself ejaculating in the shower and brazenly flirts with porn. Kissing opens with its heroine (Kate Winterich) and her ex-boyfriend engaged in startlingly naturalistic intercourse—the movie’s premise is her inability to give up these afternoon trysts, much to the discomfort of an adoring male roommate (Swanberg).

The denizens of Mumblecordia are often failed musicians or would-be writers. Joblessness is rife. Hannah refers to her boyfriend’s newly unemployed status as “the step-up of him pursuing nothing.” Without apparent work or ambition (other than to appear in this movie), Kissing’s protagonist is the quintessential Swanberg character. In his 2006, largely-improvised follow-up, LOL, three guys are more involved with various cyber-relations than with any human at hand.

All of this attention has led Anthony Kaufman to caution that we should, perhaps, lower our expectations, and lower the volume on the hype:

If these films are hyped, they may be doomed. One of the joys of stumbling upon a charming or sophisticated or funny low-budget "mumblecore" film is just that, stumbling upon it, whether given to you on DVD by a friend or the filmmaker himself or walking into one of them unknowingly at a film festival. They are so lo-fi, so seemingly slapdash, and many of them so crude in appearance compared to what else people are expecting to see in a movie theater, I'd think they need to come at the average viewer like a pleasant surprise, with as little forethought or anticipation as possible.

All of this seemed impossible when I first met Joe Swanberg in the summer of 2002.  As I've written before, Joe was still a student at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale when he interviewed me for a piece on his then website Filmbrats.com.  Joe and I stayed in touch over the years and I saw an early cut of KISSING ON THE MOUTH.  Later, in February of 2006, as he prepared to unveil his second film, LOL, at a second consecutive SXSW Film Festival, I wrote a piece about Joe and his nonstop filmmaking method, entitled Joe Swanberg, DIY Distribution and the Wave of the Future. 

It's worth looking back at the post, both to see the things that we already knew and, more to the point the things we couldn't imagine.  For example, I don't think either Joe or I would've speculated this IFC Center series at that time, nor the mad press attention that has accompanied it.  But the heart of the post - the debate over how to get your art to an audience continues:

The whole question of "how do filmmakers, especially those of us who are unconnected or unwealthy, find ways to get around a structure that seems inherently poised against us" resonates continually. And at this digital crossroads, we often find ourselves in the crosshairs of a debate as to whether the new technology will be utilized by filmmakers like Joe or will be exploited by those already with some degree of power...

Four months earlier, in a series of posts about Landmark's Truly Indie initiative, I had written:

Perhaps what is truly needed is a nationwide network of venues, support groups (similar to myspace), radio stations and websites that are solely dedicated to films like Joe's. But like the indie rock bands of the 1980s (see Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life for the definitive look back), this isn't going to be created by Mark Cuban, Rainbow Media or the Weinsteins, it's going to be up to a grassroots network of filmmakers and film lovers, who want to support truly original and challenging work. I'm all for this kind of thing developing, but it's truly up to us to make it happen.

Strangely (or maybe not so strangely), it is Rainbow Media (and their various IFC brands) who are helping to make this series of DIY films and filmmakers, reach a wide(r) audience.  And of course it's people at those companies - the Ryan Werners and the John Vancos - who found something in these films worth supporting.

But as Mumblecore has its moment, I think there are lessons for those of us in nonfiction to learn from.  Here we are, in late August of 2007, with the current unstable state of nonfiction film distribution, and the same prescription that I called for in November of 2005 rings true again.

Particularly if it begins to fall upon us to find our own ways of getting our films to theatres - whether we are working on our own, with small mom-and-pop distribution companies or even with larger companies that may or may not be placing our releases at the front of their queue - it behooves us to find ways to learn from each other, to become our own small businessperson, to create new networks.

Can we be smart about finding new ways to reach an audience, by adapting to new technology and embracing creative solutions like Joe did to reach his audience (as I wrote in 02/06):

(U)tilizing the same technology he chronicles in LOL to get his film out to a growing community of people who aren't looking to the traditional structure for films. Whether it's podcasts of the film's music or myspace pages for the film and for many of the actors...

And perhaps the biggest thing that we should learn from these filmmakers is that we can and should work together.  And I mean that literally.  Although the doc community is a pretty tight-knit bunch, we should  continue to find ways of collaboration, on screen and off.  We should find new ways to build a truly interconnected community.

As Tom Hall, programmer of the Sarasota Film Festival, concluded in an expecially brilliant piece about this filmmaking movement (and some of the criticism it has received) wrote:

If you need to know one thing, know this; If, on any given night in America, there is room on the couch, if someone needs a camera operator or an actor, if a script needs reviewing or a computer crashes and footage needs to be edited, I know that all of these artists would be there to help one another out. In the end, the auteur theory lives on in a collaborative network of very talented people, but each is his or her own creative talent, instantly recognizable.

I think that's the biggest lesson of this day.  Because as talented as Joe is, as fine a film as HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS is, the celebration in New York is about a community.

We can, and should, learn from it.

Trailers for Todd Haynes' Dylan Biopic & Martin Scorsese's Stones Flick

It's a big fall for movies about musicians (Kurt Cobain, Joe Strummer, Ian Curtis) and two of the biggest are I'M NOT THERE, an inventive narrative film from Todd Haynes about Bob Dylan, and the latest music documentary from Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese, who this time takes on the Rolling Stones.  By the looks of the SHINE A LIGHT trailer, it seems that film will somewhat deconstruct the very making of a concert film, with Scorsese as a character in his own film. 

Here are trailers for both films:

Dentler Takes the Stairs: One on One with Greta Gerwig

When I saw HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS at SXSW, I wrote:

What I love about Joe (Swanberg)'s work is that he finds moments.  Incredible, intimate, directly real, undiscovered moments of human clarity.  And he discovers these moments inside a larger canvas that is in some ways just about an idea or an emotion...And lead actress Greta Gerwig (the first time Swanberg has really had a lead in what had been traditionally interwoven ensemble films) is a knockout.  She's the reason that Independent Spirit Awards were created.

Now, with HANNAH's theatrical premiere just around the corner (via IFC First Take), Matt Dentler is interviewing the film's principals and a number of film blogs, including my own, are handing over the reins for a moment to Dentler's HANNAH project.  So, without further delay, here's Matt Dentler's interview with lead actress Greta Gerwig:

On the eve of the theatrical debut of Joe Swanberg's SXSW 2007 hit, "Hannah Takes the Stairs," I wanted to check in with each of the film's principal collaborators. The film has been documented as a successful collaboration between acclaimed film artists from around the nation, each one offering their own trademark influence on the final film. "Hannah Takes the Stairs" will open at the IFC Center in New York, on August 22, as well as be available on IFC VOD the same day. As part of an ongoing series you can find throughout the film blogosphere, here is an interview with "Hannah" star Greta Gerwig (also the co-star and co-director of Swanberg's next project "Nights and Weekends"):

Dentler: How did you first get connected to "Hannah Takes the Stairs?"

Gerwig: Although I had appeared in "LOL," Joe and I didn't actually spend time together in person until the film premiered at SXSW in 2006. After that, we reconnected at a few other film festivals. When we were in Philly, he walked me to the bus stop, and right before I got on the New York bound Fung Wah, he officially asked me to be in "Hannah." I said "yes," and ran onto the bus. I was so excited that I cleared my entire summer. I was prepared to live in Chicago for four months.

Dentler: What do you remember most about the shoot in Chicago?

Gerwig: One moment. All of us dancing to Hall and Oates in the living room on a brutally hot day. I think it was a historic heat wave. We had no air conditioning and were dancing in a way that avoided air mattresses and lighting equipment. I didn't really know what I had done right in my life to lead me to that moment, but I felt such overwhelming joy watching Andrew Bujalski bust a move. And then Mark Duplass said "you can just HEAR their beards."

Dentler: How did the production process differ from your own other projects, or projects you've acted in before or since?

Gerwig: Joe and I have talked about the fact that you only get to not know what you're doing once. And what a uniquely special experience that is. As far as acting in film, I gave that experience to Hannah. Not that I'm some sort of jaded professional now, but I truly was without a net when we started to make Hannah. The second day we were there, Joe and Kevin set up the equipment outside and told Kent and me to start talking. And that scene made it into the movie. It was naive in the best way. Since then, I've worked with Joe again, the Duplass brothers, and Paul Harrill, and each one has stood out in a different way. Paul's movie ("Quick Feet, Soft Hands") was the most structured, the Duplass movie ("Baghead") was somewhere in between, and the second movie Joe and I made ("Nights and Weekends") was terrifying. Terrifying in that I was aware how much courage it takes to plunge into something without knowing what outcome we are striving for or even what the process should be. If I had been aware of that during the making of "Hannah," I don't think I would have been able to contribute in the way that I did. I said to Paul Harrill, it's like writing a free verse poem versus a sonnet. Both are valid and difficult and creative, but they tap into different abilities. And in case it wasn't obvious, "Hannah" = free verse.

Dentler: What are your thoughts on the issues of sex and relationships that come to the forefront of the film?

Gerwig: I think that the film is difficult for a lot of women to watch, mostly because it highlights the uglier parts of what women, or particular kinds of women - I don't mean to generalize - can do to gain power over other people in order to fill a need in themselves. I've gone through incarnations of feeling either positively or negatively about issues of sex and relationships in the film. At first I was charmed by it, focusing on it's comedy and it's sweetness. Then it became very difficult for me to watch because all I could see was a girl who was always manipulatively performing. Now I'm somewhere in the middle. Relationships and sex and figuring out yourself can be both deeply endearing or deeply unattractive. I think the movie deals with both, and depending on the state that I'm in, I can see both.

Dentler: Ever been in a love triangle?

Gerwig: Um, yes.

Dentler: Did you ever work with "the stairs?" Any thoughts on why they didn't make the cut?

Gerwig: Actually, Ry Russo Young and I made a short film on Super 8mm on the stairs. That is, the back stairs of the house we lived in. It's awesome, and I'm naked (of course). DVD extras, maybe? 

Olbermann's Worst Persons: Julianne Cho and the NYC Mayor's Office

Although I've been out of the country, I've been following the controversy over the new photography and permit regulations proposed by the NYC Mayor's Office.  Congrats to Jem Cohen for leading this charge and to Anthony Kaufman, Eugene Hernandez and Agnes Varnum for their reporting and advocacy on the issue.  (And here's a NY Times piece from a few days ago.)  But as much as this issue means to filmmakers (particularly docmakers), I was kind of shocked to see that it made it to Keith Olbermann's left of center nightly news and opinion program, Countdown, with the Mayor's Office being named tonight's "Worst Persons in the World":

But our winner, Julianne Cho, Associate Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting for New York City. 

She's written an email indicating the city's pushing for new rules that would require any group of two or more people who want to film, videotape or take still pictures in a public place in New York for 30 minutes or more have to get a city permit and have to get a million dollars in liability insurance.

If it is a group of 5 people and a tripod, the time frame drops to ten minutes.

And even though the new regulations don't mention any exemptions, the city claims this would not affect amateurs or tourists.

Of course it won't.

There's still a Constitution of the United States, Miss Cho, and these rules are so obviously in violation oof so much of it, Alberto Gonzales wouldn't try to sneak them past anybody.

Julianne Cho and the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting for the City of New York - today's Worst Persons in the World!

IFC First Takes The Stairs

indieWIRE and Matt Dentler reported yesterday that Joe Swanberg's SXSW sensation HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS will be coming out in August via IFC's First Take banner, which seems a great home for the film and a smart move for the nascent day-and-date arm of IFC Films.

My own take on Hannah from its world premiere at SXSW is here and my thoughts from February 2006 on Joe and his DIY indie film world can be found here (yes, read about the amazing 2002 summit between Swanberg and Schnack!).

Street Thief Premieres Tonight on A&E

A&E IndieFilms' STREET THIEF, the "is it real, is it fiction" verite story of Kaspar Carr - one of Chicago's most prolific burglers - premieres tonight on the cable network, a little more than one year after the film debuted at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.  The NY Post calls the film riveting:

This crazy, crafty film never reveals whether it is the real thing or - as in the tradition of "Blair Witch" - it's only supposed to look real. Even the credits don't give it up, and neither will I.

I can only tell you this: if it's real, Carr is out of his mind to let them film him. (Then again who can resist the lure of the camera?)

And if it's fake, then Carr deserves an Oscar.

Here's the trailer:

Paul Harrill: First Person at Virginia Tech and the Fallout From NBC's Lack of Context

I want to make special note of my pal Paul Harrill's recent posts on his blog, which is normally one of my favorite reads about film.  Paul, who participated in the film blogger panel at SXSW, is also a professor at Virginia Tech and has, over the past couple of weeks since the tragic shootings there, written a number of thoughtful and passionate posts about the situation in Blacksburg.  He also has become - I think largely to his dismay - a small part of the story.  Paul felt that some of the photographs of the killer, which were sent to NBC and later disseminated by numerous media sources, bore a resemblance to images in Chan-Wook Park's recent South Korean film OldBoy.  And in the midst of the decision by these media outlets to immediately make public - without any kind of context - the killer's photos, videos and writings, Paul hoped to give some kind of reference.   Says Harrill:

For others, the image might have suggested something else, but I am a filmmaker and I suppose I am inclined to make comparisons between images of cinematic texts, if one can use such coolly academic terminology for a killer’s self-taped imagery. Both images feature people looking into a camera’s eye brandishing a hammer and, importantly for me, both images are “revenge texts.” The fact that both images are of Asian males was largely inconsequential to me; if either person had been of a difference race, nationality, etc. I would have, I feel, made the same connection.

Paul's observation made it into several news accounts and - as is the media's wont - it suddenly became the defacto link: MOVIE INSPIRES KILLER.

More from Paul:

I thought, some readers and viewers would be perplexed by such an image, and I wanted to suggest a possible reference. Mainly, though, I wanted to use this opportunity of having the Times’ attention to tell them how I would prefer that they did not show such images in the first place. This message was included in my email to them though, perhaps not surprisingly, they chose not to acknowledge that comment. I believe that giving airtime to a killer’s ramblings does a disservice to those of us here in Blacksburg who are deeply, actively grieving; I also believe that it likely gives the killer the attention he so desperately desired. For me, sharing these images publicly goes beyond pornography.

How misguided and naive can a person be, particularly in light of the comments in my last post? I should have said nothing, done nothing, and ignored it all. I made the mistake of attempting to make sense of the nonsensical, assuming that my comment could be a simple footnote to a single still image, and above all, presuming that a person can have any control over any comment he feeds to the Media Machine.

Last weekend in the Baltimore Sun, film critic Michael Sragow tried to discount the link between the perennially popular film and the Virginia Tech massacre:

Despite that one image of Cho with a two-fisted grip on a hammer, and another self-portrait of him holding a gun to his own temple, there appeared to be no clear connection between Oldboy and Cho.

Paul Harrill, who teaches film and video at Virginia Tech, initially drew attention to the similarities between Oldboy and Cho. London's Evening Standard first announced the link, reporting yesterday that, "Police believe Cho Seung-Hui repeatedly watched the movie." But no subsequent report has confirmed that theory or suspicion. Harrill, in an e-mailed statement, expressed dismay over the snowballing story, and said he was simply making an observation. His point, he wrote, was to "initiate a conversation" about "news outlets using a mass murderer's fantasies as sick spectacle and - let us never forget - as a source of revenue."

Harrill wrote on his blog about the fall-out:

This morning I awoke to several emails and blog comments accusing me of everything from racism against South Koreans to blaming cinema for the carnage on Monday. And all day I have been courted by several major media outlets salivating for an interview with me, as if I could somehow explain the events of Monday to them by way of a movie. How sad. How absurd. The answer to all of these individuals has been “No.”

Let me be clear: My comparison of these two images was not meant to suggest in ANY way that movies, any movie, “made him do it.” Likewise, my comparison of these two images is IN NO WAY an attempt to make ANY generalizations based on racial, nationalistic, or any other sorts of lines.

The unfortunate thing is that this sideshow lost focus from Harrill's initial intent, which he outlined in a previous piece that referenced Jill Godmilow's theory of "The Pornography of the Real":

I think of storytelling as a kind of citizenship, so I don’t blame people for wanting to know the stories unfolding in Blacksburg, nor do I blame journalists for telling those stories. Still, how one gathers the facts, why you gather them, and the way you tell them can’t be separated from the story you’re telling. Sadly I’ve been witnessing firsthand how many journalists, particularly those from out of town, seem to have forgotten that common decency is also facet of citizenship. My main consolation, and it isn’t much, is knowing that the members of the media will move on to another spectacle in very short time.

There should be an intelligent conversation in this country about how the media responded to the Virginia Tech story, particularly the decision by NBC and other media outlets to air (immediately, without context and seemingly without limit) the killer's photos and videos.  There's a legitimate question to be asked here.  Did the public at large gain anything from seeing - on their television screens and splashed across the front page of the morning papers - what amounted to a publicity shot of a madman, arms splayed open, guns cocked?  Would NBC have been justified in merely describing what they had received and saying that they saw no public good in rewarding the killer's evil by publishing his manifesto (despite comparisons to the Unabomber, in which the killer at the time was on the loose)?

Slate's Jack Shafer argues that NBC and the other media were somewhat in the right but questions the filtering of images:

NBC News needn't apologize to anybody for originally airing the Cho videos and pictures. The Virginia Tech slaughter is an ugly story, but the five W's of journalism—who, what, where, when, and why—demand that journalists ask the question "why?" even if they can't adequately answer it. If you're interested in knowing why Cho did what he did, you want to see the videos and photos and read from the transcripts. If you're not interested, you should feel free to avert your eyes.

The real story here is the odd restraint NBC News showed. Cho mailed NBC News about two dozen QuickTime videos, of which the network has aired only a handful. NBC anchor Brian Williams said last night that the network is also holding back Cho photos, as well as Cho writings it deems incoherent and obscene. It seems to think that it's protecting viewers by rationing Cho material while at the same time it reruns the already released video indiscriminately.

I think Shafer's view that "you should feel free to avert your eyes" is simplistic and intellectually dishonest.  I got off the plane in Tampa last Thursday morning and there was no averting my eyes - the photograph in question was everywhere you looked - on newspaper boxes, on hanging televisions in the terminal and in gift shops.  It was impossible not to see it.

The conservative blog Hot Air agrees with Shafer, perhaps surprisingly given that NBC seems to be the current big media villain in right-leaning circles:

I tip slightly in favor of airing it because (a) I hate when the media plays paterfamilias in deciding what is and isn’t “appropriate news” for the public to see, and (b) I was honestly curious. (The National Review's Stephen) Spruiell’s** been grasping for some grander justification, like bringing the power of collective intelligence to bear on the evidence, but I think he’s just dressing up natural curiosity about the psychology of a mass murderer in some nobler utilitarian faux purpose. Which is not to say the media should be showing us crime-scene photos and pornography, etc., pursuant to point (a); obviously the feelings of the victims’ families do matter and just as obviously there are experiences so mortal and private that we recoil instinctively from images that exploit them in the interest of news. As unsatisfying an answer as this may be, I think ultimately it’s just a gut reaction about where to draw the line of decency, and so long as NBC didn’t/doesn’t show any crime scenes, I’m willing to cut them a break.

[**Note from AJ - Bringing the conversation full circle, Spruiell's post at NRO reference's Harrill's Oldboy observation.]

NBC's Brian Williams later wrote on his blog that the worst of the videos will never be made public:

I do not know of a reputable news organization that would have stopped after that first step ... and put the contents into a drawer. We chose to air but a small portion of the sociopathic rants, writings and recordings of a murderer.  It was shocking material ... beyond disturbing.  However unpleasant it might have been for us all to watch, we are journalists and it was inarguably a huge news development.  In consultation with law enforcement, and with all of our senior and standards executives and producers present, we then set about heavily editing some of the material -- enough to convey the mindset of the troubled gunman....

A critical piece of information in a huge national news story was dropped on our doorstep.  While I love my work, our task yesterday was extremely unpleasant.  Yesterday was an awful day. There was no joy in this for any of us. To the contrary: opening each computer video snippet for the first time was a sickening and harrowing experience -- and it's good to know that the worst of them -- all now in the hands of investigators -- will never see the light of day.  As I said on the air last evening: we are aware that this puts words in the mouth of a murderer.  We are also aware that this danger, represented by this sick young man, lives among us ... and lives on our campuses and in our schools with our children ... and to see it and hear it is to understand the consequences.  We are fellow citizens, parents and television viewers -- we understand why families are upset -- and this continues to be an awful chapter in American life.

While I appreciate the position that NBC was in, I don't think that there was enough time between NBC's receiving the package and their releasing of images.  While NBC News claimed in a statement that "we did not rush the material onto air", there was little to be gained from running it the  same day that they received it.  It could have been put into context in a larger piece, rather than as wallpaper behind the yammering Chris Matthews on MSNBC.  If NBC has made judgments that some of the material - which no doubt would also give insight into what happened - should never be seen, I don't entirely buy the notion that the other material had to make it on the air in time for the evening news.

Further, NBC's excuse that their judgment has been validated by other news organizations...

The decision to run this video was reached by virtually every news organization in the world, as evidenced by coverage on television, on websites and in newspapers

...rings hollow to me.  The other organizations could claim that they were just following NBC's lead and that once the photos were out there, they had no choice but to run with them (I don't agree with this either but it's not an unlikely explanation).

This has me reflecting on two films I saw at Full Frame - The Devil Came on Horseback as well as Taxi to the Dark Side.  Both show extremely graphic images about major news events that no major news organization would touch.  And the images in both films are essential to the viewer's understanding of the stories, which may help explain why so many are still in the dark about Darfur and Abu Ghraib.

So why do I support the use of these images in these films while I think NBC erred in its use of the photos and videos from the Virginia Tech killer?  One word:  Context.  The thing that Paul Harrill was trying to provide and the thing that more time considering would have brought.  And more and more, it's the thing that nonfiction filmmakers seem to be able to provide with much more success than traditional journalists.

When Blogs Attack: Did 300 Really Get Booed in Berlin?

It's becoming a oft-reported tale by now.  High profile film appears at major European film festival, reports soon circulate the film is roundly booed, followed by further reports that question whether the booing was universal or was conducted by a small, yet vocal, minority of members of the press, likely (wait for it) the FRENCH!

So here we have Cinematical's Erik Davis filing a somewhat breathless report last week that Zack Snyder's upcoming theatrical version of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 (based on the famous Battle of Thermopylae, waged between the vast Persian army and a small number of well-trained Spartan warriors) had received a "chorus of boos" in Berlin:

It started shortly after the opening credits; small groups of folks began heading for the door. It got worse when the main villain appeared on screen and all the audience could do was laugh. And, yes, it ended when whatever was left of a packed house booed Zack Snyder's 300 as the end credits scrolled up the screen

More than just reporting what he says he witnessed, Davis summed up what the screening was sure to mean for 300's potential when it opens in the US next month:

"(O)nce and for all squashing all rumors that this film would sparkle, dazzle and unite moviegoers from around the globe in the belief that 300 would be the first great flick of 2007..."

"Sure, Europeans might not gobble up Snyder's vision in quite the same way us Americans will, but I feel pretty confident in saying this flick will hit the States with a huge thud ... and not even the 300 muscles of its cast will be able to save it from the imminent death handed out by a slew of eager critics."

The problem?  Some pretty big critics and film writers were already weighing in.  And they liked 300.  From Todd McCarthy at Variety:

The Spartans fight to the last manly man in "300," a blustery, bombastic, visually arresting account of the Battle of Thermopylae as channeled through the rabid imagination of graphic novelist Frank Miller. Rendered by director Zack Snyder in a manner very similar to last year's Miller adaptation "Sin City," except in full color, this is a steroid-fueled fever dream about self-realization through extreme violence. In the larger picture, the cartoonish history lesson inescapably describes a monumental East vs. West conflagration, which might be greeted with muted enthusiasm in the Middle East. Action addicts in general and carnivorous fanboys in particular will chow down on this bloody feast.

Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter:

Those turned off by the sex-and-violence cartoonery of "Sin City" can embrace "300," which screened Out of Competition here. In epic battle scenes where he combines breathtaking and fluid choreography, gorgeous 3-D drawings and hundreds of visual effects, director Zack Snyder puts onscreen the seemingly impossible heroism and gore of which Homer sang in "The Iliad." A raging hero mowing down multitudes with sword, shield and spear suddenly seems plausible.

Anne Thompson at the Hollywood Reporter in a profile of producer Mark Canton:

This hugely entertaining, over-the-top action adventure uses the latest technology to bring a comic book to visceral life -- from Butler's star-making role as the heroic (and half-naked) Leonidas to bloody, hacking swordplay, a grossly deformed hunchback and a deadly shower of arrows that blots out the sky. This highly stylized graphic technique inevitably will be widely imitated.

Emmanuel Levy:

The new film is as visionary as the (mostly) black-and-white "Sin City," which was co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Miller, but it's also more engaging and entertaining; some critics felt that the 2004 neo-noir pulp fiction was dull, despite the visual pizzazz. In contrast, Snyder's "300" translates colorfully Miller’s graphic novel of the ancient historic tale by combining inventive live action with virtual backgrounds.

Epic in scale and visual effects, “300” is a thrilling adventure about passion, courage, freedom and sacrifice, embodied by the Spartan warriors who fought one of the greatest battles in history. As such, the picture should be especially popular among teenagers and young viewers.

So it's not exactly a Da Vinci Code drubbing.  Hell, it's not even akin to the reaction to Marie Antoinette, which was reportedly booed at Cannes but which later was defended by a handful of US critics, who added that it was that aforementioned small minority of French who did the booing. 

Davis' first post, which initially failed to note that the screening in question was a press screening (he added this information in a later update), was soon followed by a scathing review of 300, and both posts quickly attracted the wrath of fan boys or Warner Bros. employees in disguise, depending on which side you seem to take in the argument.  Among the responses to the posts:

"How can the audience in Berlin be right and ALL the raving reviews be wrong? Something doesn't seem right."

"This tells me these people were morons..If they were walking out shortly after the opening credits. Too many reviews, especially from fantasy/scifi/graphic novel fans and others are showing up raving about this movie....Makes me seriously question and doubt the validity of this review."

"(C)onsider the source. There are likely to be a lot of reviewers out there who think themselves all self-important and all knowing when it comes to this. I think they are fools."

"Alright, you're obviously a douche of a reviewer, Erik Davis, with no appreciation for the source material and therefor no credentials for writing this review. You write that the dialogue "felt as if it were written by a seven year-old, and not the great Frank Miller," and then you proceed to mock dialogue FROM the graphic novel. Have you even read it? It sounds to me like someone got a little too caught up in the moment and forgot how to do their job. Remember, this review is coming from a guy who earlier today declared, on the weight of ONE industry screening, "I feel pretty confident in saying this flick will hit the States with a huge thud," disregarding the overwhelmingly positive response it's gotten in test screenings."

"Thanks to Google alerts, I have read over 100 reviews of this movie and your's is the only negative review. You kept saying the audience did not like it. The truth is that you did not like it, and that is OK."

In response, Davis first dismissed any previous positive reviews:

Oh, and those "rave reviews" are coming after one screening for a bunch of fanboys at Harry Knowles' little 24 hour festival. I wouldn't exactly count them as the majority.

But later, expressed concern and confusion over the vitriolic response:

"Wow, never in my life have I received so many hurtful comments after a review. Look folks, I always enter a film with an open mind, and really want to pick out the good versus the bad. I was looking forward to 300 just as much as the next guy, but it did not sit well with me. Was I a little bit too harsh after watching 17 films and not sleeping here in Berlin? Perhaps. I think most around me are a bit jaded by now, covering a major festival like this is pretty tough stuff.

"Is it tough watching a movie amongst people who do not like it right from the start, who block your view every five seconds as they exit the theater, laugh throughout and boo at the end? Very."

Later, on another website, Davis said that he regretted not stipulating that this was a press screening:

"What I said happened at the screening, happened at the screening. Yes, it was my fault for not specficially stating it was a press screening early on — but I did add it in later — frankly, I had a deadline and another movie to catch and was asked to write the story up real fast."

In the same comment, Davis points to a post on David Hudson's blue chip film site, GreenCine Daily, for confirmation of what he saw:

If you look online (I believe GreenCine also has a review from the same screening I was at), the boos, folks leaving the theater and the laughter are all mentioned. So, I was not imagining anything, it happened.

Problem is, while the GreenCine review, written by Adrienne Hudson (which is a sort of mixed "I hated the first half but the battle scenes were pretty great" summary), does mention booing at the press screening, it also mentions cheering:

"(F)or every cheerer at the press screening there was at least one booer, and the battle was on as the credits rolled."

Wait, there was cheering at the screening too?  And the cheering press was battling against the booing press during the end credits?  Well, where is that in Davis' reporting?

In the hours that followed, a number of blogs spread the story of a disastrous reaction to the film.  Then, suddenly, out of the blue, came these headlines:

300 gets a standing ovation in Berlin

and

300's Berlin Premiere Reported as Amazing

There is a bit of an odd thing happening over at the Berlin Film Fest. Zack Snyder's 300, the epic Spartan movie, had its world premiere there. At the world premiere the apparent reaction was incredible, with a report from Warner Brothers publicity stating that, “the screening was interrupted again and again by spontaneous applause and cheers from the 1700 strong audience.” I really want to help support this film with as much buzz as possible, because it really was incredible.

Now, I'm not trying to be a stickler, but Cinematical is reporting that at a press screening the film was booed. Although I don't think Erik is flat out lying, I think that reaction is just a bit ridiculous and not the realistic reaction of the interested movie going audience - so don't be at all swayed.

Meanwhile, Like Anna Karina's Sweater weighed in:

Finally, a few words about 300, mostly to come to the defense of Erik Davis, who is taking quite a beating for his negative review. Remember that scene in David Lynch's Dune where Sting, at his overacting worst, screams "I will kill him!"? Now imagine a film where every single line is uttered with the same bombastic fervor, whether deserved or not. This is what 300 delivers, and ridiculous doesn't begin to describe it. With laughable attempts at Shakespearian dialog, this is a film that will appeal only to adolescent fanboys or enthusiasts of greased, half-naked men fighting each other. Forty minutes was all I could manage. 300 might just be the new Showgirls.

So what are we left with?  That some critics will love 300 and some will hate it?  What's so new about that?

My problem with Davis' initial post (not his review) is that he leaves out two important facts.  First, that this took place during a press screening (which he later corrected) and second, that there was cheering to go along with the boos.  Further, that he extrapolates from this somewhat varnished reporting that the film is destined to bomb.  Call it quick on deadline, call it feeling jaded, call it "I'm positive that everyone had the same reaction I did and I know it because I talked to two other internet reporters who hated it", just don't call it good film reporting.

But what has followed is of almost equal interest and insanity - the notion from Erik's detractors that he must be "biased against the film" or be on some kind of vendetta (which he has exhaustively countered by saying that he has been hyping the film as much as the next guy - which might be part of the problem, actually) paired against the notion that those "calling bullshit" are either deluded fan boys, AICN-refugees or employees of the Burbank studio that is releasing the film.  Davis has already lodged "who are you working for?" against some of his detractors, which is childish and silly.  You went after a film with full gusto, take your lumps.

The truth about press screenings at film festivals?  You can't gauge a single thing from them.  I went to the Pan's Labyrinth press screening in Toronto and guess what.  A bunch of people left during the screening.  Some after just ten minutes, some halfway through.  By the time it was over, maybe 2/3 of the audience was left.  The applause?  Tepid and maybe from 15 people.  Should I have launched a blog post predicting that Pan's was DOA?  No, cause that's what a press screening is like.

And so we should apparently now add the notion that the press, particularly at major European festivals, like to boo films, particularly big budget Hollywood films.  And perhaps we should stop reporting that reaction as if it were the final judgment handed down from the Oracle at Delphi.

Scorsese Finally Gets the DGA Award, Arunas Natelis (Before Flying Back to the Earth) Wins for Documentary

THR's Risky Business Blog has the news:

Martin Scorsese finally won his first DGA award, for The Departed, for directing the right movie at the right time. And because he didn't think it was an award season movie, and didn't wear his Oscar hopes on his sleeve, the master auteur is easing on down the road to an Oscar win.

Also, according to THR, filmmaker Arunas Natelis takes the DGA Award for Documentary for Before Flying Back to the Earth, a Lithuanian film that had its US premiere at last year's Silverdocs (here is their description for the Silverdocs film guide).  Also nominated in the category were Oscar nominees Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil) and James Longley (Iraq in Fragments).

2007 Preview: Major Film Festivals Jan-Jun

As we embark on the new year (without even having finished our look back at the old), it's time to preview the major film festivals on tap for the first half of 2007.  While there may be sins of omission in this list (feel free to post others in the comments), it's a good starting point of the most important festivals of the year, particularly for folks interested in nonfiction:

January
Palm Springs    January 4 -15
Sundance        January 18 - 28, 2007
Rotterdam        January 24 - February 4
Santa Barbara    January 25 - February 4

February
Berlin           February 8 - 18
Cinequest        February 28 - March 11

March
True/False        March 1 - 4
Miami            March 2 - 11
SXSW            March 9 - 17
Mar del Plata        March 8 - 18
Cleveland        March 15 - 25
Thessaloniki Documentary        March 16 - 25
New Directors New Films     March 21 - April 1
AFI Dallas        March 22 - April 1
Chicago Docu    March 30 - April 8

April
Philadelphia        April 5 - 18
Full Frame          April 12 - 15
Sarasota        April 13 - 22
Hotdocs        April 19 - 29
Tribeca        April 25 - May 6
IFF Boston        April 25 - 30
San Francisco    April 26 - May 10

May
Emerging Talent    May 12 -15
Cannes        May 16 - 27
Seattle        May 24 - June 17

June
Newport        June 5 - 10
Cinevegas        June 8 - 16
AFI Silverdocs        June 12 - 17
Provincetown    June 13 - 17
Los Angeles        June 21 - July 1

Robert Altman: Somebody Sing

News of the death Monday, at 81, of the great American film director Robert Altman, left me with a great sense of sadness.

Recently, I've been asked a lot about why I've made movies about musicians, who have been my influences.  Some, of course, are obvious - the shot of Mick Jagger sitting in front of an editing machine watching a man get stabbed at Altamont.  Bob Dylan answering Donovan with It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.  David Byrne in an oversized suit jacket.  For these I can thank three of my cinematic heroes - the Maysles Brothers, D.A. Pennebaker and Jonathan Demme.

But as big as these were and as large as they loom still today, they are matched by the fictional musical creations of Nashville, a film that destroyed my set ideas of what a film could be.   

It was noted by the LA film critic Andy Klein that Altman may have been the narrative filmmaker most at home with the language of music, and it was true that music played a central role in a number of his films.  But Altman also created a filmic language that was all his own, and it was a language that often seemed to be like a symphony, sometimes cacophonous, sometimes still, sometimes like a great Spectorian wall of sound.

But for me it was, and will always be, about Nashville.  About Keith Carradine's womanizing and struggling musician Tom Frank.  About Ronee Blakley's fragile and doomed country queen.  About Lily Tomlin's searching gospel choir singer.  About full takes of songs, mostly by average singers and sometimes by awful ones.  About a wannabe country singer taking the mic and the stage to sing It Don't Worry Me.  Indelible, unforgetable cinematic moments where music and the people who sing and play it are the focus of the sweeping gaze of Altman's lens.

It should also be noted, as we find ourselves in the midst of the release of numerous mocku and fauxcumentaries, that Altman's collaboration with Garry Trudeau, the political satire Tanner '88, which mixed narrative and nonfiction styles, real people with clearly fictionalized characters and situations, was perhaps the best thing that Altman did in the 1980s.

Celebrating Altman's receiving a special Oscar in March, Matt Zoller Seitz launched a blog-a-thon weekend asking folks to contribute their own thoughts about the filmmaker.  It began here and is an essential review of the many stages of Altman's career.

David Hudson at GreenCine has an excellent and extensive round-up of today's reactions to Altman's passing.

Here are obits and appreciations from Indiewire, the AP, the NY Times and the LA Times.  And here is Altman's IMDb page.

The Small Pleasures of Old Joy

Eight and a half months into 2006 and my favorite film of the year is still Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy, which premiered quietly in January at the Sundance Film Festival.  Although many missed the film in the festival's Frontier section, word-of-mouth spread and in the weeks and months that followed, it was one of the few films that people were still talking about or wished that they had seen.

Old Joy was one of those films that a lot of people seemed to love but that distributors had no idea what to do with.  Now, Kino has released the film, starting with an exclusive run at the