This Savage Art

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Jamie Stuart revels with Kubrickian glee as he interviews Leon Vitali, the director’s assistant for 25 years, at the recently sold out run of Barry Lyndon.

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Everyone has a favorite DVD that takes it to the next level and offers up some good commentary and/or extra features. Some that come to mind for me are The Limey, Three Kings, Seven and just about anything from Michael Mann. I just watched Matchstick Men, pretty good film, ended up watching the featurettes that came with it. Ridley Scott is all about process and you can see it from these little PR shorts.

So what’s yours? What is your favorite DVD that has the writer, director, producer etc. waxing poetic and inspirationally about how they do the thing they do? [added] Or a DVD that you learned a great deal from beyond the film itself?

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J. Ott blogs about his experience with the Panasonic Varicam on his short film Stull.

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Writer, director and wanted man in Hollywood Judd Apatow appeared on Howard today. Just goes to show, failure will get you everywhere.

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Fuck yeah!

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What makes a film “work” is as mysterious as the art form itself. It’s personal and special to the individual audience member but a failure isn’t necessarily as mysterious, it is selective though. Does anyone consider the publicly flogged and misguided Heaven’s Gate a heartbreaking work of staggering genius? Yes, it is too beautiful for words to look at and has incredible talent behind it but…well, you know how that panned out.

By nature most films could be considered. Much blood, sweat and tears go into more productions than not. What separates a film for the sake of this blog-a-thon though is a film that’s scope goes beyond the confines of simplistic entertainment. The ambitious failure should theoretically work on every or most levels given the elements involved, the great care it was given, the outrageous runaway budget, the talent associated or just pure man hours put in but it just doesn’t. The definition of failure is purposefully vague and not necessarily a negative¹ but can be considered financial, critical, artistic or maybe all three. This will hopefully create much debate and probably the occasional mob rules pile on but so be it. Just keep it civil.

To participate there is only one requirement: write a convincing essay that will provoke thought on why your chosen film is considered an ambitious failure, deserved or otherwise, and some thoughts on what went wrong, if hindsight worked in the film’s favor and/or what was the fate of the film’s creators etc.

The Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon runs from June 20th – 24th, 2007. To participate just e-mail me your essay or preferably a link to it from your site if you have one. You can also link by way of the comments section of this post. I’m looking forward to some great contributions so pass the news along to anyone who you think would be interested. Thanks in advance to all who participate.

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1. My Ambitious Failure Pick: At the time of its production, Apocalypse Now suffered from a boatload of career killing rumors but went on to be what many consider the definitive war epic.[↩]

A dozen screenwriters are taking control of their careers by forming this new co-op.

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The ups and downs of being a die-hard Abel Ferrara enthusiast.

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With the summer blockbuster season upon us expect to be inundated. Regardless of how good it actually is or isn’t, with enough marketing muscle behind it a film can be horrendous and yet make incredible opening weekend numbers. Is it the audience? Is it the studios?

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