Screen Rush is the blog of film critic and journalist Eric Kohn, whose work regularly appears in indieWIRE, New York Press, Filmmaker, Moviemaker, Heeb Magazine and a half dozen other outlets. A true twenty-first century movie buff, his writing centers around the impact of new media on the moving image, the changing face of film criticism, and the tempestuous relationship between pop culture and independent artistry. This site includes links to his recently published work and allows for additional thoughts on cinema's modern state. E-mail Eric at erichkohn(at)gmail(dot)com.
It was great to read about the success of Brett Gaylor’s open source cinema project, Rip: A Remix Manifesto, in recent indieWIRE dispatches from Peter Knegt and Eugene Hernandez. The movie, which deals with the absurdities of modern intellectual copyright laws, was produced with the help of a newly formed online community that Gaylor allowed to access his project during production. It’s a highly ambitious concept that many filmmakers have expressed reservations about, but the warm response the movie has received on the festival circuit may change that. When I attended the Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT last weekend, many people expressed hesitation about the ramifications of collaborative filmmaking over the net. In theory, the idea sounds like a cold reprimand to individualistic creative expression. But Gaylor’s project shows that this doesn’t have to be the case. We’ve all had the troublesome experience of watching a movie and thinking, “Well, it’s pretty good, but it would have been better if this or that was changed.” At the site for Gaylor’s film, you can realize such thoughts by remixing the film to your liking, without disabusing the director of his own creative impulses.
I was very happy to have attended the Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT. This two day event tackled nearly every major issue of convergence culture facing the entertainment industry today, and it did so through the opinions of some extraordinarily wise people from the industry and academia alike. I found that bringing these two perspectives into the same room generated a refreshingly coherent dialogue. You can read about it in my indieWIRE dispatch, and also check out the FoE site, where MIT students live-blogged all the panels. Thanks to Daniel Pereira, Ana Domb Krauskopf, Professor Henry Jenkins, and everyone else who helped make the trip to Cambridge worthwhile.
On an unrelated note, Cinetic’s Matt Dentler recently wrote to let me know that, in addition to One Day Like Rain (which, after recently blogging about Cinetic’s strong promotional tactic for the film, I have rented on Amazon VOD), the company has made several other titles available on Amazon. One of them is The Cult of Sincerity, an ultra-sentimental story about some Brooklyn hipsters trying to do good deeds.
Actually, I’m not trying to sound facetious: The sappiness of this film mostly works, and so has its unique distribution strategy: Cult of Sincerity made history earlier this year when it became the first feature-length film to officially premiere on YouTube (Four Eyed Monsters often gets credited for this, but that film officially premiered at Slamdance; Cult skipped the festival circuit). Now that’s it’s available for rent or purchase on Amazon, the movie has been pulled from YouTube, where the filmmakers were making a profit from an exclusive deal with Amie Street. (And how did that arrangement work out? Anybody know?)
I originally spoke with directors Adam Browne and Brendan Choisnet, as well as screenwriter/producer Daniel Nayeri, a few days before the premiere. You can read that interview, from Stream, here.
My favorite part of the discussion is Brendan’s response when I ask him if the indie film scene allows room for everyone:
We want to have a dialog with our audience, which is something a big studio movie probably can’t do. Anybody can interact with us. That’s hopefully the way movies are going. They’re creating a shared experience.
It’s this mentality that will allow filmmakers to keep expanding the possibilities of the medium — not only from a promotional perspective, but from a narrative one as well. To wit: Video games have become more potent objects of creative investigation than they ever were before. I’m especially intrigued by the news Terra Nova brings today about a rehab center for video game addicts in Amsterdam closing down because researchers there have concluding that gaming itself is not an addiction. Interesting. I’m still under the impression that gaming can BECOME an addiction if those who are susceptible to addictive behavior don’t take certain precautions. But you could say the same thing about movies, and you don’t see any rehab centers for those. Thankfully.
Gus Van Sant’s Milk is a strongly developed narrative about the role of community organizing in progressive American consciousness (eat that, Giuliani). For that reason, the parallels between the heartfelt protests of San Fransisco’s gay community against Proposition 6 in the film and the current protests again Proposition 8 are not remotely forced. In fact, that the movie offers hope to the contemporary gay community serves as the least sentimental aspect of it (the most sentimental being Sean Penn locking lips with James Franco in a slo-mo crane shot). It’s actually a kind of shrewd realism when story draws subtle comparisons between two historical periods when one of them is our own, and for that reason Milk often works as an modern day editorial in addition to a gripping account of tumultuous times.
But some people might want to gather hope with hyperbole, not realism. For those Proposition 8 warriors seeking to marry their passion with escapism, I must recommend Were the World Mine. Tom Gustafson’s clever gay comedy focuses on an alienated teen (Tanner Cohen) whose daydreams of a life filled with blithe dance numbers become a reality when he gets cast as Puck in his high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And creates a love potion. Which makes everyone in town totally gay for each other. Chaos ensues.
Off the hook with ridiculous plot twists and mushy romanticism, Were the World Mine doesn’t give a flip about nuanced characterizations. But it casts a spell not unlike that of the aforementioned elixir. The movie sweetly embraces free love with an upbeat spirit rarely seen in recent romantic comedies. It’s out now…but so’s Milk. So choose your potion wisely.
Well done, Cinetic. This music video for a song featured in the film One Day Like Rain, recently posted on YouTube by Cinetic Rights Management, does such a swell job of piquing my curiosity about the actual movie that I might actually seek it out. A sweet, ethereal melody coupled with like-minded visuals? Check. A synopsis, provided on the right hand side of the page, about a teen girl’s ill-fated plan to conquer the world? Check. Jesse Eisenberg? Check. All potent ingredients that suggest an original work I wouldn’t mind on my dinner plate. And since this sales strategy is undeniably smart, I have no qualms about letting it work me over.
James Bond is a drug. He, it, this suavely hyperbolic object of cinematic momentum, has been one of the most powerfully consistent opiates in the history of the medium. Why, then, should anyone dilute the formula? Let’s be clear: Casino Royale refined the ingredients. All its nifty pieces were in place with such persistent, authentically intelligent alignment than even 007 newbies had to exclaim that this was some good shit, man. But once you fuck with the inherent elements that make Bond into the satisfying high he has become time after time, the result is a sleek, empty vehicle with plenty of velocity, but no satisfying charge.
Such is the case with Quantum of Solace: No steady female coupling; just two elusive ladies and a dead one whose absence haunts the plot (an earlier Bond character, unless its M, should not reoccur in Bondland, an adrenaline-baked universe of continual forward-motion). No diabolical madman with obscenely inefficient schemes for conquering the world; just a wimpy thief named Dominique Green. And no catchphrases! No “shaken…not stirred.” No “Bond…James Bond.” Um, why the hell not? Is it somehow perceived to be an act of countercultural subversion to reject the aspects of the character that have always made him innately cool? Without this essence intact, Solace feels like an empty coffin for a Bond that never existed in the first place. “There’s something strangely efficient about you,” he’s told after another unmemorable sequence where the bad guys get blandly taken out. “Is that a compliment?” he shoots back. No, dude, it’s not.
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