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WEEKEND LINKS, 5/2/2010
Most of the time when I come across interesting articles or video on the web I clip them to my Evernote reader and check them out later on my Blackberry or iPad. Here, then, are a few things I’ve clipped that might interest you too.
From CNN Money: “One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010.” What are the implications for online content creators?
In Spring 2008 I wrote about Alix Lambert’s Crime book for Filmmaker. (The piece is not online, but you can check it out on her site.) Here, at The Graveyard Shift, she discusses taking the book and three actors on the road to “think tank the idea of crime as theater.”
The making of Brent Green’s Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then is chronicled by the artist himself in the new issue of Filmmaker. I hope you check out the article as well as the film, which opens this Friday at the IFC Center. In the meantime, limited editions of artwork from the film are available from Art We Love. And, below, is a visit to Green’s studio.
Ask me what I am most proud of last year in Filmmaker and it might have been my exclusive interview with Mark Region, director of the uncategorizable After Last Season. So I was thrilled to get an email from Joseph Childers who writes for the site True/Slant, which I’ve been a reader of, telling me that he quoted from my interview throughout this review of the After Last Season DVD. From Childers’ review:
But as craptastic as the film is, it’s more than mere incompetence that makes the film fascinating. Most incredibly lame works of almost-art are compelling and sadly comic because of a massive gap between highfalutin intent and piss-poor execution. But like The Room and Troll 2, it’s incredibly hard to even begin to fathom the intent behind After Last Season. In other words, it’s so weird, I don’t even what they were going for – and that’s strangely admirable. It may not be, by any measure on any Earth, well shot, written, acted or directed, but it is highly, highly, original. And, personally, I’d much rather see some loony goofball flame out like a roman candle trying some nutty stunt than watch yet another by-the-numbers piece of boring Oscar bait aimed straight at a complacent middlebrow audience. I’m looking at you, Eastwood.
Cinereach, which gives fellowships to filmmakers making artful, socially relevant short films, has a deadline of July 12.
Fans of no-budget sci-fi and guerilla filmmaking in general should check out the blog launched by the filmmakers behind Night of the Alien. Writes one of the producers, Louis Iacoviello:
Its a true indie comedy with tons of heart, Wes Anderson meets Jim Jarmusch with a touch of John Waters thrown in for nasty measure. The story takes place over the course of one evening, and centers around several oddball characters and their chance encounter with an alien from the planet Zoltran. I like to describe the film as an Existential Extraterrestrial Romp. Our team is based in Los Angeles, though we are working well outside the realms of the studio system. Our writer/directors name is Vaughn Verdi. His other films Smack and A Couple Of Days and Nights, have been in several film festivals and the latter was sold to video.
This is a couple of weeks old, but you may have missed it: director Ryan Fleck on the movie that changed his life: Do the Right Thing.
Finally, to take note of the viral video sensation of the week…. when I received a link to this video from James Ponsoldt, I assumed it was a Marc Klasfeld parody. I didn’t buy it. The Smoking Gun, however, has done the research and confirmed: this video truly is the work of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, Aaron Melcher. Melcher and his fellow soldiers team up for their take on Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video, a version which Ponsoldt said reminded him of the final dance sequence in Claire Denis’s Beau Travail. Apparently the soldiers are saying that don’t want any more media coverage for this, but while I am generally endorsing of the thoughts of internet theorist Danah Boyd on privacy online, these guys did start by asking friends to “share it with the world.” And, it’s already over 2 million views, so I wouldn’t want Filmmaker readers to miss out.
