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.
Having seen District 9, I can attest that this one truly does live up to the hype, which means if you’re looking for a playfully allegorical movie about oppressed aliens in South Africa that both mirrors apartheid and delivers the sci-fi/action goods, this one’s for you. Here’s my review for Moving Pictures.
But I’d like to take up a small amount of this space to point out that the alternate reality game (ARG) designed to build buzz for the movie over the last several months is almost as interesting as its actual plot. Take a look at this Wiki page outlining the complex network of websites set up to reflect various facets of the District 9 universe. This sly online marketing technique has been employed at least since Blair Witch (although you can find traces of it in earlier instances), and The Matrix movies took it to an extreme that alienated casual viewers, but the approach has nevertheless gradually developed into an art form in its own right. Last year, The Dark Knight had a fascinating cross-media promotional scheme that stretched its plot across various media; District 9 seems to have followed in Batman’s footsteps. I am still waiting to see this kind of transmedia experience applied to a non-genre movie, something with plenty of drama but closer to real life. Documentaries have done this quite well, but a naturalistic work of fiction (such as The Hurt Locker) stands to benefit tremendously from such an approach.
It’s not an impossible task, but somebody will have to actually care about the process of extending the story to these outer limits. As Scott Kirsner recently pointed out, audiences responsive to web content don’t like insincere promotional campaigns.
Needless to say, District 9, a reasonably low budget movie with a built-in genre-loving audience, has nothing to worry about.
SnagFilms celebrates its first anniversary today with a freshly designed website and a slew of announcements pertaining to upcoming releases and new partnerships. Here’s my indieWIRE report.
Speaking of indieWIRE: Happy thirteenth birthday, guys! I am happy to be a contributing member of the team, and remain in awe of your ongoing success in the digital age, not to mention the pedigree you’ve cultivated over the years.
Finally, I would like to highlight two particularly interesting smaller releases in theaters this weekend. Both deal with immature males obsessing over impossible romantic fixations. The difference between these characters is that one of them should be immature — that would be Tomo (Thomas Turgoose), the adolescent star of Shane Meadows’s appropriately cutesy Somers Town — and the other one, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the heartbroken lead of Marc Webb’s breezily enjoyable (500) Days of Summer, just needs to grow up. Here’s my (500) review from Sundance.
Take my word on Somers Town, which doesn’t outdo Meadows’s flat-out masterpieceThis is England, but still marches to a delightful little rhythm that you simply can’t dismiss. (500) does that, too, but it starts to get grating after awhile. Take my word for that, too.
Filmmaker David Kaplan‘s shorts, including the expressionistic masterpiece Little Red Riding Hood, recently became available on DVD. I reviewed the new collection in NY Press and dropped a line to Kaplan via e-mail to get some additional thoughts out of him. Check out the trailer for the collection above. It’s a fascinating survey of Kaplan’s distinctive interests. His first feature, the Cinderella-inspired Year of the Fish, comes out on DVD in a few weeks.
To the larger public, fairy tales are generally associated squeaky clean Disney narratives. Your work explores the darker side of these stories. Given the Disney pedigree, do you find that it’s difficult for audiences to see what you’re getting at?
One of the fun things about adapting these stories is that an audience approaches them with so many preconceptions. It appeals to my mischievous side to subvert those expectations. The DVD version of “Little Red Riding Hood” includes a commentary from folklore scholar Jack Zipes, who talks about the very old roots of the story, before the Brothers Grimm and Disney effectively bowdlerized it, and how this film’s darker, playful take on Riding Hood is probably truer to the original story.
On the DVD, you discuss the ways that you regard “The Frog Prince” as an “interesting failure,” but you’ve re-edited it. What was the impetus for including it on the DVD?
I always find it interesting to see the early works of directors, even if the works are flawed and unpolished. It’s insight into the development of their artistic voice.
I noticed that Lodge Kerrigan worked on “Little Suck-a-Thumb.” Do you identify with a particular filmmaker community?
I have some close friends here in New York who work in film (such as Frank Keraudren who edited “Little Red Riding Hood” and is also a director) and it’s nice to have that support – plus, there’s much inspiration to be found here: good voices, faces, stories. Last summer I shot an Indian Food-themed feature in Jackson Heights, and for “Year of the Fish” (which is out on DVD later this month) I worked in hot, bustling Chinatown. But to be honest, I would work anywhere. I would happily work in LA if the opportunity arose.
Now that you’re making features, would you ever consider returning to making short form narratives?
Actually, the next film I’m going to make is a short! It’s going to be a 15-minute science-fiction story called “Play.” I’m working on it with independent game designer Eric Zimmerman.
It seems like the Internet is a great place for distributing shorts. Do you agree?
Yes, the 3 short films on the DVD “Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories” will be available to a much wider audience through Amazon [VOD] and other web venues. However, I’m still partial to the old-fashioned theatrical experience – a dark room filled with people having a shared happening.
Your first feature, “Year of the Fish,” starred a name actor from television. Now you’ve made another movie with TV actors. Any connection here?
I always thought of Ken Leung [star of “Fish”] as a film actor because I knew him as the bad guy in “Rush Hour,” and now he’s probably even better known for his role on “Lost.” Last summer I directed Aasif Mandvi from “The Daily
Show” and Dean Winters from “Oz” and “30 Rock.” I’ve noticed that there is more crossover with good film actors doing TV, and vice versa. It used to be that TV actors weren’t taken quite as seriously, but today there is really some top-notch work being done in that medium. Hugh Laurie (“House”) comes to mind.
Does your upcoming film contain fairy tale elements?
Well, it’s a pretty mainstream comedy about Indian food and family – but yes, in the sense that it’s a hero’s journey into a strange land, and there’s a magical helper, and an enchanted potion of sorts.
You mention on the DVD commentary that you have written a “Hansel and Gretl” screenplay. Any plans to move forward on that one?
I would love to! It would be a wonderful, scary, delightful movie, similar in atmosphere to “Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories.”
In general, how do you feel about the state of independent film? Are you getting the opportunities you think you deserve?
I think it’s always been tough. To be sure, I would love to be making a new feature film every year, but it’s always a struggle.
I covered the Cannes Film Festival this year for several outlets, giving me the opportunity to record my thoughts on pretty much everything I encountered there. Here’s the first in a series of posts recapping my experience.
The 3-D glasses handed out for viewing ‘Up’ at Cannes.
Cannes’s opening night film, Up, predictably left no one dissatisfied. As opening night films go, this one was a rare crowd-pleaser. I reviewed it for Moving Pictures:
Complex by way of simplicity, the latest narrative marvel from the immaculate factory of Pixar Animation Studios is the ideal choice to open the Cannes Film Festival. Considering its palatial façade as a beacon to cinema in all its capacities, Cannes can easily rely on Up to illustrate the range of pleasures associated with the art form (unlike previous opening night offenders such as Blindness and The Da Vinci Code). Guided by an insightful screenplay co-written by director Peter Docter (Monsters, Inc.), the movie wraps a sensational magic realism around authentic characters. That remarkable duality has long served as the Pixar touch. While hardly perfect, Up remains utterly satisfying on the level of the smart entertainment expected of its creators.
The next day, I caught Francis Ford Coppola’s latest independent effort, Tetro, which wound up as the opening film of the festival’s Directors Fortnight sidebar. While not blown away by it, I do think there’s plenty admire about this expressive, quasi-autobiographic family drama.
From my indieWIRE review:
Neither complete misfire nor triumphant return to form, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro” works as a competent family drama right up until the messy final act. If a first-time filmmaker had directed this stylish black-and-white-and-sometimes-color melodrama, it might gain some notice for suggesting great things to come. Instead, on its own terms, the movie is only a mildly interesting entry in Coppola’s thirty-plus years of work.
Bobcat and ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ star Robin Williams at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
Last week, I broke the news that Magnolia Pictures had purchased World’s Greatest Dad, a joyfully dark and vulgar comedy that premiered at Sundance in January. It’s not a perfect movie, but people who decried Bobcat Goldthwait’s rather blunt directorial skills seem to miss the point: Goldthwait’s not a flawless filmmaker, but he mostly succeeds as an amusing storyteller, and his self-involved, seriously dysfunctional characters are refreshingly easy to watch. There’s a a delightful wide-eyed innocence to his movies, so that you only feel that “oh-no-he-didn’t” wave of discomfort only after the fact. Approaching middle age, Goldthwait has plenty of potential as a writer-director, but much time will pass before most people stop identifying him mainly as the crazy dude from the seemingly endless run of Police Academy movies.
And, much as I hate to admit it, I’m still one of those people. I admitted that to Goldthwait when he called me to share the Magnolia news, and he seems to have made peace with this reality — but that doesn’t mean he plans to return to it.
IMDb lists Goldthwait as playing Zed in a “rumored” production of Police Academy 8, set for release in 2011. Bobcat tells me that’s bunk: “The only place Police Academy 8 exists is on IMDB,” he says. “No one has ever spoken to me about it. If they do make another Police Academy, I think it would be wise of them to do a remake, seeing as a couple of us are dead now.”
Fair enough, but if you take a look at the fallacious page on IMDb, there’s really nothing to distinguish this essentially non-existent movie from the countless real ones listed on the site. In the early days of IMDb, it was a lot easier to submit fake movies to the database, but inaccurate entries still frequently slip through the cracks. This raises a larger epistemological question: What makes a movie a movie? If it gets an IMDb page, and fans start posting their reactions to the movie’s potential ingredients (as they have in this case), has some element of Police Academy 8 snuck into existence?
I think there’s a real value to asking this question. Web tools have enabled a number of ways for the seeds of film production to take root before any substantial part of a movie comes together. On IndieGoGo, users simply need to post the idea for a movie in order to start raising money for it. The new partnership between Massify and Killer Films suggests a similar situation, where movies begin their lifespans as “free form pitch videos and screenplays” that ultimately develop into full length features. If someone makes a pitch video for a great movie, should that movie get an IMDb page? How much does an idea have to form before it yields an actual product?
The easy answer? A lot. But it has become insanely simple to get the gears rolling.
Syndicate this site