This week I got to sit in on both hours of Sound on Sight & in the second hour I became the first woman in this history of Sound on Sight to lead into a show.
Episode 148 - Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola special): Rick, Simon and I discuss Coppola’s most recent film, the visually lavish “Tetro,” starring Vincent Gallo, the rather confused “Youth Without Youth” and the masterful “The Conversation.” Listen to me say the word “penis” over and over and over again…
Episode 149 - The Cove: The boys and I are back to talk about the Sundance award winning documentary “The Cove,” about dophin activist Richard O’Barry and the annual slaughter of 23,000 dolphins in a secluded cove in Taiji, Japan, as well as Canadian Rob Stewart’s somewhat less successful attempt to shed light on the slaughter of sharks, “Sharkwater.”
And if you do listen to these podcasts and you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate the show on iTunes, give us some feedback on our website and if you’re really feeling generous, give us a PayPal donation to help send Rick and Simon to TIFF. We’d really appreciate it.
Next week: The “Halloween” franchise and one of my favourite directors, Kathryn Bigelow.
Posted by Matthew Sorrento in Writer's Corner at 8:48 AM
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“In a Dream,” the documentary on Philadelphia mural artist Isaiah Zagar, will screen for free today at the Brooklyn Museum. A unique study of a near-outsider artist and a profound personal history, this film is not one to be missed. Isaiah and the filmmakers will be in attendance at the free screening. If you are out of the area, you can check out the film on HBO2 on Monday, August 24th @ 6:30pm and Friday, August 28th @ 1:30am. The film is also available on HBO On Demand. Get more info here.
For those following along with the progress of the new Butcher Brothers film “The Violent Kind” who wondered what the hell happened once we wrapped, I apologize. Basically, there’s not a whole lot of exciting news. We all took a much need seven day or so detox….err….break from the film, one another, staying up all night and neglecting our loved ones to pull our lives back together after the insanity that was the shoot. Seeing as this is technically my first “real” movie shoot, I never really knew that you didn’t shoot features in 18 days. Apparently, that’s just frigging insane. Lesson learned.
While I knew we were all burning the candle at both ends, I didn’t know until I had a second to sit and reflect that most features- especially ones with a plot, special effects and great actors- take closer to 30 days to shoot. But figuring in this funky financial climate with the impending due dates for several major film festivals and time was (and is) of the essence. So, after taking a quick week off to reintroduce ourselves to our family and daylight, we’re right back at it.
Mitch and Phil have spent the week pulling 12-14 hour days in the editing bay which is essentially their office out here in Marin County. We had some great people digitizing and logging footage throughout shooting so now comes the rough cut. I’m not sure if I mentioned it previously, but I’m shooting the behind-the-scenes footage which will hopefully become a featurette on the eventual DVD release so all this post-production stuff is fascinating to me. Hopefully you’ll find it cool as well.
So the basic plan right now is to get something together we can show our investors, producers and festival programmers. I won’t lie- we want to go theatrical with this twisted mind fuck of a film and we all feel pretty good about the films chances seeing as “The Hamiltons” made the rounds in theaters when it was completed a few years ago. However “The Violent Kind” is already shaping up to be something freaky, creepy, bloody and sure to attract attention. But first, we gotta get it looking like a movie!
“The Violent Kind” is a horror film being directed by The Butcher Brothers. Film Threat writer Don R. Lewis is co-producing the film and this blog is serving as a journal of sorts to mark progress on the film. You can also follow “The Violent Kind” on twitter
Posted by Matthew Sorrento in Writer's Corner at 8:56 AM
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I cannot even review this for fear that it will haunt me. If formula can kill a piece of celluloid, it has done it here. The story of a college grad not getting all she wants in profession and love is barely existent, and hence the film stuffs itself with kooky side characters. Weird little brother? Check. Start-up-biz-obsessed dad? Check. Lively Grandma ready for death? Check. When screenwriter Kelly Fremon reaches hell (I think she’s sealed the deal for herself with this), for her it will be Robert McKee thumping her head forever with a copy of Story. It’s my guess that director Vicky Jenson (yes, she of “Shrek”) has blinded herself for a good year. Poor Michael Keaton as the pops needs some career resuscitation. I know times are hard and money talks, but he may have to account for this when he heads to the pearly gates. And Carol Burnett’s overconstructed Frankenface just shouldn’t be casted across the big screen. (We love you, Car, but come on, be kind.) And Alexis Bledel, the cute “Gilmore Girl” now grown up, has talent, which we can see convulsing and turning blue from this film’s Strychnine.
Hooray! We were able to recover much of the previously thought lost Tarantino show. Listen to Rick, Al and Mariko debate, sometimes heatedly, the work of everyone’s “favorite” ex-video store geek:
And I know I promised everyone a Tarantino show, but that will not be podcasted due to “technical difficulties.” We’re gonna try to give it another go next week, so stay tuned.
Next week: Francis Ford Coppolla & documentaries “Shark Water” and “The Cove.”
A last minute programming change meant that our Toronto After Dark coverage will be pushed to next week (when the fest actually starts) so that we could take a moment a remember a director that had a profound influence on folks of, well, my generation:
Episode 144: Remembering John Hughes - Mariko makes her debut as a co-host as she, Rick & Simon talk about “16 Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” Which films stood the test of time? Is The Donger really that offensive? Tune in to find out.
Episode 145: A Real American Hero, Steven Sommers - Rick, Simon & glutton for punishment Al take on the rather thankless task of reviewing the recent “G.I. Joe” movie, as well as several other offerings from director Steven Sommers’ oeuvre, namely “Deep Rising” and “The Mummy.”
Next week, Mariko and the boys discuss “Black,” “Trick R Treat” and part three in our continuing series on Quentin Tarantino.
Why John Hughes? Why the tremendous outpouring of remembrance and grief for a director who directed only eight movies in not even a decade (1984-1991), and of those eight, only three (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles) are truly beloved. The list balloons to five if you count Pretty In Pink (written by but not directed) and, if you’re Roger Ebert, who counted Planes, Trains and Automobiles among his “Great Movies”. But I’m not Roger Ebert, and I don’t count it. I also don’t count the “lesser” Hughes like She’s Having A Baby, Some Kind Of Wonderful (also written by but not directed) and the charming but monodimensional Weird Science. But this is not an essay where a highfalutin hipster shows off what a refined and discerning snob she is about the overlooked oevure of the recently deceased, and so I’ll stop. John Hughes made at minimum three great - GREAT - films that surpassed their bright and funny surface sheen and cut deep to the marrow of the adolescent experience.
Left: Hughes and his most famous creation, Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick.
“The adolescent experience”: it sounds noble, doesn’t it? Mostly it was awful, if you’re honest, but some parts shone bright and hot with a pitch-perfect clarity that adulthood has never matched. If, like L.P. Hartley observed, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” then teenagers are the newest arrivals to the New World of adulthood, the nervous immigrants waving their flags and hoping not to be misunderstood by the locals. Of course they are. They always are. To be misunderstood is the defining characteristic of adolescence, in art and in life. Jim Stark (James Dean) in Rebel Without A Cause was misunderstood. The rampaging kids of New Grenada in Over The Edge were misunderstood. Everyone pretty much understood Frankie and Annette in Beach Blanket Bingo, but that’s because their characters were morons. What’s not to get about singing, dancing, and wearing a bathing suit? Or for that matter, the motivations of the piggish cast of Porky’s, adding “getting laid” to the pantheon of appropriate obsessions.
That was how Hollywood understood, and misunderstood teenagers for decades - as either easily swayed consumers motivated by alien and unchecked desires, or angst ridden dangers to the community or themselves. They might as well have been vampires, or zombies, or the pod people in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers — they look like us, they sound like us, they walk and breathe among us while we sleep! What makes John Hughes’ characters unique among all movie teenagers, from Blackboard Jungle to the neo-Frankie and Annettes of High School Musical is not only that they are smart, complex, and interesting (was your date to the prom as unforgettable as Duckie?) but that they are not THE OTHER. They are not the harbinger of the downfall of civilization. Sometimes they have sex, sometimes they use drugs. Sometimes they are mean and do wrong things. But many times they do not. They are not merely the jock, the priss, the weird girl of The Breakfast Club. They have a conscience, and a soul. They are human. They are us.
Above: Rebel without a cause, and rebel with.
Ferris Bueller was misunderstood, just like Jim Stark. But unlike Jim Stark, it didn’t concern him in the least. Ferris Bueller understood, on a deep and omnipotent level that eluded even the adults around him. He understood that high school - and youth, and the Zen perfection of the “day off” — were fleeting and elusive, and that to spend a day coaxing his reluctant friend Cameron out of his shell was well worth more than a detention slip. When the kids in most movies cut school, they sniff glue and suck face. Ferris takes his friends on an elucidary field trip to the stock exchange, the art museum, and a restaurant where they eat pancreas for the first time. He has imagination, wit, verve, charm, a sage’s sense of the big picture, and a mentor’s agape love to spell it out in joyous and unexpected ways for those who don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. In short, Ferris is John Hughes, and watching his movies are everyone’s Day Off.
What day is it, Thursday? I seriously have no clue. I do know “The Violent Kind” wrapped on Sunday morning at around 10:00 a.m. after a literally whirlwind 18 day shooting schedule. Seeing as this is my first time producing, I didn’t realize 18 days is like, really short. It is. And as I noted previously, I wasn’t doing anywhere near as much as everyone else on set and I was still wiped out by the time we cracked beers at 11:00 Sunday morning to celebrate. I’m still all turned around and can’t seem to get enough sleep once I finally doze off.
The key positions on this film were working 12 hour days with maybe an hour or two of “official” breaks every night. Then there were unpaid PA’s and interns working the same schedule. Yet through it all no one was complaining. There was a sense of camaraderie that was like summer camp and I can honestly say, everyone got along. It was quite a sight to see and it made me feel really proud to be a part of such a great group and amazing experience. I can’t help but feel every shoot I’m on will suffer in comparison to this one.
Throughout shooting we’ve been taking the hard drives back to the dorms where we had an editor and his PA going through it and making some very, very rough assemblages. Each night after things got rolling, producer Michael Gibson and I would venture over to the dorms to feed the cave-dwelling editing trolls some food and look at the footage and each night it became very clear that “The Violent Kind” is going to be a freaky, trippy, beautiful little horror flick coupled with some amazing acting and effects. At the wrap party, there was a 3-minute reel shown and I’ll be honest, I got a little teary eyed after watching it. It just looks so damn…good. The Butcher Brothers, our DP James Laxton and all of the cast and crew really did an amazing job. Now I’m welling up again! Must be lack of sleep.
So we’re all taking a week off from the film (and let’s face it, one another) before diving headlong into editing. The film festival season is upon us and we need an edit as soon as possible in order to hit up some of the bigger fests. I am really excited to sit in on the editing process as it’s something I enjoy, but really don’t know much about. Plus, editing a feature is a much bigger undertaking than editing the little documentaries I make. Stay tuned as we’ve only just begun!
“The Violent Kind” is a horror film being directed by The Butcher Brothers. Film Threat writer Don R. Lewis is co-producing the film and this blog is serving as a journal of sorts to mark progress on the film. You can also follow “The Violent Kind” on twitter
Posted by Matthew Sorrento in Writer's Corner at 9:29 AM
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Long in hiding, Peter Jackson unveils the first sighting of his chronicle of a death in retrospect, his adaptation of Alice Sebold’s ”The Lovely Bones.” The visual master appears to revisit his tragedy-cum-fantasy technique in “Heavenly Creatures,” post “Lord of the Rings” wizardry, to present a dead girl’s look back to her life. The story is widely thought to be unfilmable; Jackson seems unflappable.
Check out the trailer at Apple.com. (I’d embed the video, but it looks like such links are disappearing as if Jackson were waving a wand.)
Why John Hughes? Why the tremendous outpouring of remembrance and grief for a director who directed only eight movies in not even a decade (1984-1991), and of those eight, only three (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles) are truly beloved. The list balloons to five if you count Pretty In Pink (written by but not directed) and, if you’re Roger Ebert, who counted Planes, Trains and Automobiles among his “Great Movies”. But I’m not Roger Ebert, and I don’t count it. I also don’t count the “lesser” Hughes like She’s Having A Baby, Some Kind Of Wonderful (also written by but not directed) and the charming but monodimensional Weird Science. But this is not an essay where a highfalutin hipster shows off what a refined and discerning snob she is about the overlooked oevure of the recently deceased, and so I’ll stop. John Hughes made at minimum three great - GREAT - films that surpassed their bright and funny surface sheen and cut deep to the marrow of the adolescent experience.
