KGB Productions

I've been working on a film about my dad for some time now, and it's also encompassed my mom too. I felt I could not talk about one without talking about the other one. Of course not having dad here and relying on memory can be a tricky thing. Facts and events sometimes get distorted, so I've been painstakingly trying to piece together past family history. This includes me as well, and no matter how uncomfortable I am in front of the camera I need to record fragments of memory so that hopefully in the end it will all piece together. I got the idea from Scorsese's film "Italian American" where the filmmaker interviews his mom & dad. If you get a chance to see it it's pretty funny and touching. Way back in 1996 I interviewed my mom. My dad had passed away a year earlier, and so with 16mm camera in hand I sat down mom and shot about two rolls of 16mm film. I basically set up a light and shot it. Took the film to DuArt Lab and had it transferred to videota...

So I've been interested in seeing this movie for awhile. I'm a big fan of the Terminator franchise, and I really loved the original one, so I was looking forward to seeing this when I got the chance. Well it's a good thing I didn't see it in the theaters. Picked it up on DVD as a rental and to tell you the truth the buck that I spent on the rental even seems too much. To put it more bluntly this movie is soulless. I even was surprised at Christian Bales performance. He seemed like he was phoning it in, and as for the directing I really can't say anything nice. I even recognized some shots or sequences that were done in the original movie. The one sequence I remember was when the Terminator was chasing Conner through the Terminator factory. It seemed like a direct lift from the first movie when Sarah is being chased through the factory by the Terminator. I had to play back the sequence, but I'm sure it was a direct lift from the first movie. What? Is McG (the dir...

This last Tuesday the movie "Moon" was released on DVD, and so this week-end I picked it up. I had wanted to see the film when it hit theaters but it only got a limited release, and so I never got around to it. Moon is directed by Duncan Jones, and stars Sam Rockwell in a sort of dual role. More on that in a minute. The plot of the film is this: "Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems" It's Sam Rockwell's movie since he is in it almost 99% of the time. It is no small feat to do this also. If you have one main character in your movie the story better be interesting, and the character identifiable, or you loose your audience. Fortunately Rockwell's performance elicits our interest and our sympathies. The film reminded me of films back in ...

1977 Interview with Eric Rohmer from zenfoolio on Vimeo . Eric Rohmer died on Monday at the age of 89. He was considered one of the pioneers of the French New Wave, and a film maker I admired. His films are a bit difficult to get into. They are more conversation, and dialogue. But it is through these elements in his films that Rohmer did some pretty impressive work. I remember my first introduction to Rohmer in film class. The film was "My Night at Maud's", and after that it was films such as "Chloe in the Afternoon", "Pauline at the Beach", and "Claire's Knee" that cemented in my mind that Rohmer was an extraordinary artist. The best thing though is that Rohmer left us with a lot of really good films to watch and learn from. Adieu Mr. Rohmer. You will always be missed.

When one has children, and they're home on winter break one needs to do something that the kids like to do. One solution was to take them to the movies. For entertainment for children this movie hits all the right buttons. For me it was a bit more slapstick then I cared for, but the kids loved it. The plot is lame, and the story is weak, but that's not the point in this movie. It's all about the site gags, and the funny situations our three main characters get into. Even I at times enjoyed the movie. Especially when I heard my two boys laugh at the antics on the screen. If you have little ones you can't miss with this. I even heard the wife laugh a couple of times at some jokes, so it does appeal to a wide variety of people. Even I wasn't immune to the sophomore jokes ad antics. It's fun for the family, and the kids will like it too. So I won't go into detail about the movie because there isn't much to say about the film. It's meant to be a distrac...