The writing staff of The Office shot on the picket line this informative and funny YouTube piece explaining why they’re part of the WGA strike.
You may recall a few months ago a blog post by Benjamin Crossley-Marra on the 46-year-old Ann Arbor Film Festival‘s loss of state funding due to their non-compliance with state regulations. To continue the festival, AAFF must raise $75,000 in less than 3 months. Since that time they’ve asked for small donations and have conducted a Endangered fundraising campaign, where staff and volunteers perform creative bits (they’ve pegged them Acts of Audacity) on the streets of Ann Arbor, voted online by campaign donors. Their first, called “glam rock karaoke,” put them past their goal of $10,000 for that event. Now […]
Like I said, I’m behind in my blogging (and a little annoyed to be sitting here realizing that now “blogging” is yet another thing I can be late in doing), so here’s a quick round-up of some links I had meant to blog about on time. The Writers Strike. The WGA strike is the story of the moment, not least because of the obvious possibility that the finances of scores of entertainment industry workers could be severely impacted in the weeks ahead. But the strike is also forcing to the forefront complicated issues involving the future of digital delivery and […]
I’m a bit behind in my blogging and web coolhunting, so I missed this gorgeous short film Wong Kar-Wai made to promote the new Philips Aurea television. In case you missed it too you can see it on the Philips Aurea site, Seduced by Light or via YouTube, below.
According to Variety moments ago, the WGA announced that it will go on strike Monday.
Unless the latest round of dueling press releases between the AMPTP and the WGA represents a last spasm of contentiousness before a final reconciliation, which I really doubt, it looks like the WGA could be striking by the end of the week or Monday. (The WGA agreement expires at midnight tonight, but it originally looked like writers would work while negotiations continued post-expiration.) On her Deadline Hollywood Daily Nikkie Finke posts a statement issued by AMPTP President Nick Counter. (He’s the guy repping the studios and producers). In it, Counter says not only that the WGA-desired revision of the DVD […]
Stephen M. Duesner at the always reliable Pitchfork reviews the soundtrack to Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There. (It gets an 8.0.) Here’s the lede: I’m Not There is director Todd Haynes’ third music biopic, after Superstar in 1987 and Velvet Goldmine in 1998. In each of those films, the main subject– the celebrity at the center– has been altered or is somehow absent: Superstar recounted Karen Carpenter’s death from anorexia with only Barbie dolls, which continually prevents it from being officially released. Velvet Goldmine traces David Bowie’s rise and fall throughout the 1970s, but the singer threatened to sue and […]
Steve Buscemi’s Interview, which Filmmaker featured on its cover last issue, opened in London this week and there’s been some U.K. press about the movie and its American shoot. And while I don’t consider myself a reflexive stars-and-stripes-forever rah-rah’er, I found the comments in this Guardian piece entitled “The Final Cut” by the slain Dutch director Theo Van Gogh’s “creative consultant” Doesjka van Hoogdalem about shooting in American both naive and annoying. Much of the piece is devoted to van Hoogdalem’s wide-eyed wonder at the wacky wastefulness of U.S. filmmaking. From the piece: However, maintaining the authenticity of the Van […]
The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting today issued proposed new rules for the permitting of film shoots in the city of New York. If you remember back several dozen internet news cycles (like around late July), an outcry arose when the Mayor’s Office issued specific new shooting rules that seemed to many to disregard First Amendment rights, legitimate news gathering needs, the needs of tourists, and the working practices of artisanal street photographers and experimental filmmakers. Protests were had, everyone from no-budget filmmakers to Keith Olbermann chimed in, and a grass roots group, Picture NY, organized the opposition. […]
Jan Kounen is a French music video and feature film director who has specialized in bringing the spiritual world to the screen. On locations in Peru and Mexico to film the psychedelic spaghetti western, Renegade (2004, released as Blueberry outside the U.S.), an adaptation of the French comic book by renowned visionary artist Moebius, he discovered Shamanism, fell in love with the indigenous Shipibo-Conibos culture and later spent several months learning the ways of their plant medicine, ayahuasca. He even filmed a documentary about it, Other Worlds, which will be re-released as a DVD box set in October. His latest […]