KGB Productions

It is with a very heavy heart that I report that Sydney Pollack passed away Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. Pollack was considered an actors director because Pollack started out as an actor. Pollack studied under the renowned Stanford Meisner, he then spent several years cutting his teeth in various areas of theater, eventually becoming Meisner's assistant. He worked on such shows as "Playhouse 90", and "Alfred Hitchcock presents". By the 1950's after appearing in several Broadway shows Pollack went into directing. He began on TV series such as "Naked City" and "The Fugitive," then moved to film. Pollack's first full-length feature was "The Slender Thread". Sydney Pollack went on to direct such films as: " The Way We Were ", Three Days of the Condor , Absence of Malice , Tootsie , which won best picture. In 1985 Pollack won an Oscar for best director for his film Out of Africa sta...

I recently read an essay about the Indiana Jones movies being responsible for the dumb box-office thrill ride films that preceded it . Carrie Rickey in Sundays Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that she wasn’t a fan of the films and hated what happened to films after the Indy films were released. I had to think for a moment and really wonder if this was true. Rickey says that “she cannot muster enthusiasm for a franchise that has done so much to dumb down movie scripts, ramp up movie tempos, perpetuate colonialist stereotypes, and marginalize women”. Does she have a point I wondered and so I went off and did a bit of research to see if she was right. Raiders was released in 1981, and I was still in high school. When it came out I thought it was one of the best films I had seen in a while. Of course I was 17 at the time, and my tastes for the cinema were that of action adventures and horror films. There were several other films in 1981 that fascinated me and entertained me such as Arthur, ...

How does one get better at ones craft? Easy. You learn by doing, and thereby is the crux of the problem. I haven't been doing as much as I should. Filmmaking isn't easy, but with the digital revolution it has gotten a bit easier to create something. All you need is a DV camera and a computer with a fire wire port. Yet the Internet is littered with all sorts of videos, and video clips. Has anyone taken a look at YouTube. The website contains a lot of interesting videos along with some (okay a lot) not interesting videos. Seems everyone has a web cam or a DV camera. But I'm more traditional. You have a story, you write a script, and you get your talent & start shooting. There's a process, and I like it. It can get complicated, and expensive, but it really isn't that hard. The hardest part in all of it is to get the people together at a particular time. You all know my thoughts on pay or non payment of talent. I've come to the conclusion of "...

On occasion I head on out and try to see what's new at the local video store. You know that building that has a lot of DVD's where you choose which movie your going to watch that evening. It seems like yesterday when there were so many of those mom & pop stores that had actual video cassettes of movies that you once saw or never heard of. In the 80's it was all about action adventure, horror videos & porn. Very few studios released their films onto tape as quick as they do know. Today it seems as though a film that was playing three months ago is easily available on DVD soon after its release. It's the nature of the beast. In todays marketplace there are companies now such as Netflix that deliver DVD's to your door. It has become a consumer orientated driven business. At one time you get a name actor in your film & have some exploitative elements in your film and you were guaranteed a release, but now it's different. The DV revolution kind of put a m...

Ever since hearing about the making of Iron Man I've been interested in what the filmmakers will do with one my favorite Marvel comics superhero. To say that I wasn't disappointed is an understatement. So it was with excitement and a little glee that I saw Iron Man today, and I wasn't disappointed. Directed by Jon Favre , the director who has brought you movies such as Made , Elf , and Zathura: A Space Adventure directed Iron Man. Favre does a great job, and gives his actors some real space to actually act. The screenplay is written by Mark Fergus , Hawk Ostby , Art Marcum and Matt Holloway who give Iron Man some very funny dialogue, and an interesting origin. Iron Man starts off with a bang, and it involves you the audience to invest in the character of Tony Stark who is played by Robert Downey Jr. Downey has fun with the character, and it shows. Downey is a top notch actor, and I hope this propels Downey into more juicer roles. I hear that he is in two other films th...

There have been a couple of blogs in recent time that have just recently stopped, or if you prefer gone off-air? I've mentioned one of them in my previous post about The House Next Door where it's creator Matt Zoller Seitz has gone on to concentrate more on filmmaking then journalism. Also Raymond Young of the blog Flickhead announced around the same time that his blogging days were over. I actually liked both blogs & hate to see them go, but understand whole heartily why they left. I've always been a proponent of getting off the computer and get into life. It's a dual edged sword this blogging. On one hand you sit at a computer alone, and type things about yourself, others, or opinions you or someone else has. By doing so you get involved with stat meters, and statistics on who is reading what. It winds up to be all about numbers sometimes and not content. That's the evil side of blogging. The good side of blogging, and yes there is a good side of blog...

Over at the House next door theres a conversation between Matt Zoller Seitz & Keith Uhlich . Matt is and was the creator of the blog The House Next Door ", which has been a blog of all things related to TV & film. It has many contributors, and it's a blog where you want to go to read some thoughtful reviews & opinions on film & television. It now seems as though Mr. Seitz is headed off to do other things after over 17 years as a journalist. In his conversation which you can hear here Matt and Keith go over their influences and memories of filmmaking as they were growing up. Being I guess around the same age as Mr. Seitz I have almost those same memories. He mentions two films that though aren't significant masterpieces they seemed to have a strong influence in us deciding what we wanted to do or were interested in. The mentioning of the magazine of " Famous Monsters " is also relevant. I wasn't too big of a fan of them, but I had a f...