This Savage Art

That’s me.

When I started this whole weblog thing back in May 2005 I was an film blogging animal. Three, sometimes four posts a day but here I am posting a measly one or two a month if I’m lucky. What can I say? The dynamics of my life have changed. You never realize how little time you have until you cut what you had in half. Now literally every moment of my life is more or less planned out. Everything from meals to writing to everything.

I used to read a lot of weblogs too. Post on them voraciously. That dropped off well before my son though. Now I find myself just lurking. Not posting. Just lurking. It’s not that there aren’t great sites out there. The problem is there are too many and I know I’m not the only one. The film writing is so astute it’s intimidating and inspiring at the same time. Take for instance this one post from Glenn Kenny’s site. Now, I like his site very much and have opinions about the new Raging Bull Blu-ray disc. Many opinions. It was a film that informed so much of what I do creatively and yet I can’t opinionate. I would love to give a well thought out breakdown of why this film is important for so many reasons. The key there is well thought out. That is time consuming and brain power is in demand. I feel like I’m just getting my brain back after close to one year after my son was born, a rough move from Manhattan to Brooklyn and an assault of all sorts of stresses that I won’t bore anyone with. You know, life and shit. So now it’s down to business. I have my creative time in the afternoons so it’s balls to the wall plotting, planning and writing. I still get my daily dose of film news and info on the interweb but now it’s different. Now the window is smaller and I mean that in every way. This week I get reacquainted with many past projects enough to make a decision about what I want to work on. Hopefully next week I can dive in. So wish me luck. I’m back to zero again.

And don’t think I missed the irony that I’m taking all this time writing this post when I could be commenting on the Raging Bull post.

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Check out not only this excellent post on the influence painting has had on film but the source of the post, The Hands Of Bresson, a new site I just came across. [Hat tip:Clive.]

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There are currently three film contests that I think some of you might want to check out [this isn't an endorsement, just posting notice.] With so many competitions out there why am I pulling these from the pile? The money. The prizes are a pretty impressive combination of cash and services. Take a look at all three and decide for yourself but don’t wait too long. Deadlines are approaching.

The Doorpost Film Project [Short Films]

The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition

Netflix Find Your Voice Competition

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AMC lists them here.

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Journalist, critic and author Marshall Fine has a web site. Check it out.

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Being a lazy Labor Day weekend I thought this was worth sharing for a laugh. I found this article on the Pro Video Coalition website on how to read between the lines and interpret crew listings on Craigslist.

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These are some of the films I will attempt to see this Fall, you know, the film release season that pushes all the crap aside and pulls out all the stops. I’m sure there are others that I will add as the season progresses. Am I missing something?

* denotes must sees.

September

Burn After Reading…9/12

Elite Squad…9/19

Choke…9/26

Miracle at St. Anna…9/26

October

Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist…10/3

Religulous…10/3

W….10/17

*Synecdoche, New York…10/24

Zack and Miri Make a Porno…10/31

November

Milk…11/26  and whatever I didn’t see in September and October.

December

*The Curious Case of Benjamin Button…12/25

Valkyrie…12/25

Note to self: take this number and cut it in half, add the remaining to Netflix queue.

More Fall coverage from New York Magazine.

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• Crack open the skull and look inside Bob Redford’s incubator: Behind the Scenes at the Sundance Lab [via The Houe Next Door.]
• David Milch talks shop on the blog The Idea of the Writer. [also THND]
• Godzilla, my childhood hero, turns 50.
• Dennis Farina is packing heat. Hey, it’s only a .22.

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Technology has upended everything from the music industry to shopping to how we get our news. Why should film festivals be any different? Scott Kirsner has a post announcing the first feature film, The Cult Of Sincerity, to debut on YouTube. That’s quite a feat and definitely raises some serious questions for any filmmaker creating content nowadays. New rules, more options, different workflows.

The film’s producers chose to just bypass the whole accept/reject process of the film festival and offer it up to whoever wants it for free. As compensation they will earn money if viewers sign up for a music service for a fee in order to watch the film online. It’s not the first film to set up this kind of structure but it’s obvious the distribution model is going in a different direction. One of the key questions that comes up is; will your film play better on the internet? Meaning, will it find its audience from online viewers versus a theatrical release? If you have a twenty-something post-college comedy [far from a new concept] like this one, your demographic is already sitting in the theater, their laptops. If you have an oddly sweeping, landscaped epic shot with anamorphic lenses on 35mm, maybe not.

Either way it seems that this new process of cutting out the festival middle man might have a serious trickle down effect. There are so many festivals right now, too many to even count [Okay, I'll look it up. Around 4,000 worldwide. Source: FilmFestivals.com.] Will online festivals and distribution put a crimp in real world film festival attendance? It seems that if festivals aren’t programming important, relevant films that need that exposure to push them into the stratosphere you might have an answer sooner than later.

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Projects great and small are all suffering a similar fate – ain’t nobody making nothin’ and they’re all working twice as hard to do it.

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