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Showing posts from March, 2006

A frustrating Obsession

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So I finally uploaded a clip of a trailer for the film in the hopes to attract more people to the site and the film. I've even entered the film in two other festivals. My reason being is that I'd just like the movie to get seen. Times have changed, and it seems as though there are a lot more content out there since the explosion of the digital age. I won't make excuses on why or why not the film is a success, but I still remain upbeat about the film. In my earlier days I worked on a lot of low-budget horror films, and I guess I sort of burned out on them. I'm not saying that I don't like the genre, but there are few films of late that I seem to have enjoyed. There is a lot of content out there, and as I've said before niche filmmaking seems all the rage. I just want to do films that I like to look at, and films that I would be proud of. I'm sure the world can do without another horror film, so I guess I'm going against the tide. Reality holds my attentio

Tsotsi

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I recently went to see this film, and this is long before it won an Oscar for best foreign film. Tsotsi is a really well made, and moving piece of cinema. The film is from South Africa, and it is about a young street kids life in the ghettos of south Africa. "Tsotsi" in South African means "gangster", and as I said the film is about this one boy who lives a life of crime in the streets. Through this film we see a world that is almost alien to us, yet familiar. There have been several films about gangs, and/or boys running in the streets of America, and all have their place, but what Tsotsi has is heart. In the film we meet a un-redeemable boy who does bad things, and at the end you are rooting for him. The ending is somewhat filled with some hope. The filmmaker did say they shot two endings, but when the film was finished the ending that is in the film seem to be warranted. The film is moving, and engrossing. It sucks you in, and you may think you know where the mo

MYSpace the Movie

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Meet David Lehre . His short little film that he posted on his web site was picked up by other's on the web and distributed around. Because of this David's web page gets more then 1 million hits a day. To be precise I believe it's 1.8 million, but whose counting. David and his buddies made a film based on MySpace , and had a little fun with it. Well he posted it on his web site, and in time he crashed his server. Traffic came pouring in, and soon after that he found himself with a deal with MTV entertainment to produce a film for them. Talk about light speed An article in the LA Times describes the circumstances and what happened to David almost overnight. You see David and his buddies have produced over 50 short films together since high school, and because of his body of work, and the popularity of his latest film he was offered to produce for MTV entertainment. This is the kind of thing that we'll all see more of. As the web and TV & cable collide more and more

Film School 101 (Hollywood style)

While perusing Filmmaker's Magazine website they had a post about M. Night Shamalayan's budget for his last film " The Village ". This is courtesy of the people at Smoking Gun's web site. It's no surprise on where the money went, but it's interesting to see how Hollywood produces their mega-hits. Can Hollywood be called the American version of a sweat shop? All the above the line money as compared to all the below the line expenditures. I'm sure everyone was paid handsomely for their services, but having worked on some low budget films, and seeing how the pie is divided one can make an argument that Hollywood certainly pays for it's stars, and that one can say that there is a lot of fat one can cut from the budget. But that's Hollywood. Glitz, glamour, sex. It's what they sell, and they pay for it. Is it any wonder that Hollywood keeps re-making old films or re-inventing them instead of coming up with more original material. It's too da

Martin

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I've talked about this film before, and how much I admire George Romero as a filmmaker & storyteller, so after looking at it again and hearing the commentary which is on the DVD I seem to have found a fondness for the film that I didn't have before. Long ago Romero once talked about "regional filmmaking", and that more and more of it would happen in the future. No one could have predicted that the tools to film-making would become less and less expensive thereby empowering a whole new generation of film-makers. But instead of it becoming a regional phenomenon, it has become a world wide phenomenon based largely on the internet. In the 60's the portable cameras such as the Eclair ushered in a wave of in-the-street film-making that was not seen ever. Film-makers were not tethered to the studio, and instead they had more portability thereby making the outside world their own studio. Today film-making has become much more portable, and less expensive. No longer do