At first glance director Lance Hammer’s debut film Ballast can easily be dismissed as a poverty level dirge of depression and bad luck for a lonely group of people who live on the Mississippi Delta. That would be a mistake. It’s more like a slow burn meditation on what it takes to survive when all life has given you is nothing in return for a life of suffering. It is the story of a fragmented family of three who try to figure out what will happen next after another member commits suicide. Immediate and pulsing with a Southern Gothic bloodline, the film deliberately ramps up into the desperate but dignified circumstances of this small collection of characters. The flat tone resembles the flat landscape but is never dull. Post-screening Hammer described his editing technique for this film as “using the moments in between” but he could have easily been speaking about his characters lives who seem to all too easily slip through the cracks.

Recent film news reveals that Hammer will look to go it alone when it comes to distribution and film rights.

Hammer says conventional distribution advances for a small film like “Ballast” range between $25,000-$50,000. “If you made a $50,000 project, that makes sense,” Hammer said. “If you happen to spend more money than that, it becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control.

After reading the news of the coming apocalypse for independent films it’s good to see an example of a filmmaker controlling his own destiny.

Related: For more inspiration read the interview with Lance Hammer at The Filmlot.

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Ballast screened Sunday, March 30th at the 2008 New Directors/New Films series for the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

This post can also be seen at Big Screen Little Screen where I’m guest blogging.

If you believe the film community has lost it’s individual voice for the offbeat, the dangerous or the button-pushing type of filmmaking that some may be hesitant to get behind go to this screening even if just to see what the buzz is all about and while you’re at it, support a true independent vision. It might make you angry, it might give you hope that films this weird and fucked up can still get made with a little persistence. At the least you will take away one simple fact; Juno it ain’t.

Related:

The New Yorker review.

An endorsement from Filmmaker Magazine.

The Village Voice review.

[This Savage Art] review of Frownland.

Jeremiah Kipp [ aka my AD on The Face of the Earth ] interviews Frownland writer/director Ronald Bronstein.

Minor spoilers present!

A number of images came to mind Saturday night after I saw the Danny Boyle directed film Sunshine. One that stood out was the archival footage of the Hindenburg going down in flames with the radio announcer’s tinny, crackling voice, the man in tears crying out, “Oh the humanity.” Even though those words have become more or less a punchline for many comedic films recently, they lent themselves to a different meaning when describing this tense sci-fi thriller.

Fifty years into the future a team of scientists are sent on a mission to re-ignite the sun in order to save the earth from freezing over. We aren’t burdened with a twenty minute expository speech from some douchey windbag explaining what got us to this point, it’s irrelevant for the scope of this film. Here we are. This is similar to the symbiotic relationship the team of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland had with their audience with 28 Days Later by throwing us into the worst possible scenario we can imagine. Done. Now deal with it.

Everyone is at risk in Sunshine. There is no hierarchy on screen or off. Each character and the actor who plays him or her can dissolve into vapors of stardust. You’re not dealing with an event movie where logistically the star has to remain alive by the time we get to the last frame. This is a stripped down, visually pulsating film that compacts many fresh elements while giving a nod to sci-fi films of the past. Sure, the filmmakers owe a lot to Alien, 2001 and the like but there’s no denying that in its language. Those films act as a jumping off point. The artifice is no where to be found and what we are left with is a clean slate that feels like an original new wave of genre filmmaking.

The film’s special effects had a hand crafted feel. Reflective surfaces, double imagery and geometric shapes fused together to bridge the action were beautiful to witness. In a lot of ways I found Sunshine to almost be some sort of cosmic companion piece to The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky’s gravely under appreciated film about how fragile man really is. The message that could be extracted here is no one man is greater than the good of mankind. The mission is everything. That’s quite a statement considering the state of the world we live in.

If Sunshine represents the shape of things to come it would be welcome. It was refreshing to be entertained and not talked down to at the same time. Imagine that.

Related: The Sunshine production blog.

They got all these bullshit stories they want to fill the air with, they want to give them some sense of reality, some fucking air of authenticity, don’t they? So they take some guy like you and stick him around the set to make the whole load of shit look real. Don’t you know that? You’re a prop.

Director Michael Corrente’s sentiments about why it took two years to get his film Brooklyn Rules to the screen hit a similar note:

It’s shot anamorphic by a cinematographer who’s the president of the ASC…you’ve got an amazing cast. You’ve got one of the better writers out there writing right now. And it’s a great story, but they will release piece of shit after piece of shit onto 1,000 to 2,000 screens. It’s disgusting. It’s sad…homogenized, rinsed-off, bullshit, formulaic fucking movies.

Well, you got me hooked. No, Corrente is not from New York but screenwriter and Sopranos staffer Terrence Winter is. The Reeler gives a fair and insightful review of what sounds like a solid coming-of-age in the borough crime drama that finally opens today in NYC.

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And in more “you can’t keep me down” news, Queens born James Gray comes out of the gate at Cannes [update 5.19: Columbia pick up at Cannes] with his new NYC crime thriller We Own The Night. I’m a big fan of Little Odessa and it’s great to hear he’s developing new work. Really looking forward to Alphabet City. From Gray:

I’m just not willing to give up on myself. If I’m going to fail, then I want to fail to the limits of my talent.

Gotta love it. Who here wants to go out and make a movie!?! Whose with me!?!

Spoilers don’t exist when reviewing Lynch’s films, they are bulletproof. There is nothing I or anyone could say that would give the film meaning for the meaning is in your head, your subconscious, your dreams and nightmares. Like Jean Cocteau the subliminal is all that exists. Inland Empire plays with similar themes as Mullholland Drive; parallel universes, doppelgängers and the Hollywood dream doubling as a nightmare. Multiple storylines overlap and come at you out of order. Like 21 Grams you ask? No, not like 21 Grams. The mind is in overdrive when putting the pieces together and then suddenly you realize it is pointless, just sit back and watch. The information will get to you through osmosis.

As was the case with Mann’s Miami Vice, all of a sudden every critic has an opinion about the aesthetics of digital video. On a technical level, I think Lynch’s use of a first generation mini-DV camera (Sony PD-150) actually benefited the film. For me the degraded, soft focus look added to the sense of voyeuristic terror. It doesn’t matter that you are watching a shot that takes place in the early half of the twentieth century or one in the modern world. You are in a constant hypnotic dream state where nothing is ever what it seams. No one can simulate the dream world like Lynch.

I salute David Lynch for drawing up his own blueprint for how the next twenty years could potentially play out. He bends and breaks film grammar and language to suit his own needs and if we ever needed deconstruction in film, the time is now. I know there are naysayers that are convinced that this is a step backwards but it is truly a step ahead. Taking control of your vision and putting it out there. Shit, we haven’t seen this much innovation and balls since the 70′s.

All this and I got to see Crispin Hellion Glover not once but twice in one day. He is in town to promote his film.