CMFH Massive Missives

ShortFest: Day 6

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:23:23 -0800

The awards have been announced, the drinks have been served and the photographers attacked. ShortFest 2008 comes to an end with the Best of the Fest extravaganza on Wednesday. Start working on those entries so that we may relive the chaos in 2009!

ShortFest: Day 5

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:23:23 -0800

ShortFest has been full of great films with great stories. There are the three Italians (and their hats) who came all the way to Palm Springs to volunteer (...and to push their marketplace film). There is Israeli filmmaker Khen Shalem ("On the Road to Tel Aviv") who, based on his work on this short, will be creating a film concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a United Nations conference in February. There is the Australian short that was a colaboration of Aussie filmmakers who met at last year's ShortFest ("Cane Cutter," whose actor-director Dustin Clare has been acting as roving party pirate). But as the fest comes to a close and the filmmakers have gotten to know one another, it's really about the dancing.

ShortFest: Day 4

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:23:23 -0800

Sunday found ShortFest going strong with a packed day of film. One of the evening programs was Boy Meets Girl, where it became apparent that the attending filmmakers had created a very supportive group based on the howling applause for each film (not that the rest of the audience wasn't lovin' the films, but you know how rowdy filmmakers get). Directors Casey Stangl ("CU@ED'S"), Chuck Rose ("Side Effects"), Jasmine Kosovic ("Kate Wakes") and a rep from "No Parking" entertained the audience with a Q&A following the show (pictured above). Rose revealed that his short raised money for a relief fund for those involved in the writer's strike. All services were donated (with hefty help from the "CSI:NY" crew) and the actors worked for free, and Rose reflected on the great community that this project created. The film and others will be available next month on StrikeTV. Stangl and Kosovic had also been part of a unique experience as graduates from the AFI's Directing Workshop for Women. Out of the 8 women selected to participate in the program, 5 were accepted to ShortFest. Quite impressive for few having any film experience outside of a 3-week crash course (granted, many work in theatre or production). Below are three of the talented women: Devi Snively ("Death in Charge"), Chris Sanagustin ("Fleece") & Casey Stangl ("CU@ED'S"). The filmmakers let loose at a party at Azul, and it was quickly discovered that Prince speaks the international language of filmmakers when the entertainers belted "Purple Rain" and everyone joined in. Cute directors Brian Crano ("Official Selection") and John Irwin ("Banditos") rocked the plaid vibe. Irwin just launched SmallDreamsTV, a site that develops original short films.

ShortFest: Day 3

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:23:23 -0800

The Camelot Theatre was packed for an evening of star-studded shorts on Saturday night. Jessica Beil and Kirsten Dunst garnered the spotlight before the show, with Beil's beau Justin Timberlake sneaking into his front row seat so as not to distract from her moment.CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS Dunst sat in the middle of the theatre, accompanied by the producer of her ghost story film, "Welcome," starring Winona Ryder and Jason Clarke (and featuring a nice little remake of "Happy Together" by pal Jason Schwartzman). Her first foray in the director's chair was compliments of the Glamour Reel Moments series, which brings readers' stories to film and allows actresses a new role in an attempt to up the minuscule 7% female population of the Directors' Guild. At last year's ShortFest, GRM put Bryce Dallas Howard behind the camera with "Orchids" and Jennifer Aniston co-directed "Room 10." This year also witnessed Kate Hudson's first writing and directing experience with the charming GRM film, "Cutlass" (co-starring dad Kurt Russell in a wicked 70s 'stache). Ric Halpern and Justin Wells, directors of the Tony Shaloub-staring short "LA Actors" about the fake world of Hollywood, revealed that it's a good idea to keep contacts close so that they may scratch your back later (Halpern helped Shaloub out with a previous project). Halpern plans to co-direct Commander and Chief, a film that allows a future George Bush to frustratingly reflect on how his presidency was ultimately written into history. Beil produced and co-starred in "Hole in the Paper Sky," a moving film about an intellectual introvert (Jason Clarke, again) whose shell is broken by a lab dog. Director Bill Purple revealed that all of the actors devoted their services for free, but the dog (previously seen in Bruce Almighty) had the only paying role. Proving once again that it's a dog's life.

ShortFest: Day 2

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:23:23 -0800

Today the fest began in full force, with more films, more filmmakers and more good times. One of the evening's unique programs was Odds & Endings, a batch that ranged from the final page to the final breath. Directors Kevin Acevedo ("The Last Page"), the Salto Brothers [Jesse & Louie] ("Finding"), producer & Ryan Goebel ("Confinement") •"The Last Page" comically teases about the drama of a tortured prisoner that is in fact taking place inside the mind of a tortured author attempting to find the perfect ending to his novel. In order to clear his head, our literary hero sets out for coffee, only to find himself in absurd situations that still fail to provide inspiration. The director, who made the short as his thesis film for Chapman University, attended with co-writer Matt Akey and actress Mekenna Melvin. When asked about his favorite director, Acevedo replied that it was himself, because otherwise no one else would root for him -- to which Jesse seconded the motion. •"A Small Silent Film about Death" plays off of a joke about the worst thing that could happen when an e-mail mistakenly gets sent to a widow. •"The Last Thing to Go through a Fly's Mind" follows the reincarnation of a crude Brit who never seems to get it right as he transforms from cat to crustacean. •"The Weight of Sunken Treasure" cleverly unfolds the memory of a man consumed by a life long past in such a way that all is far from what it seems. Tragedy finds no comfort in the passing of time. •"Confinement" won the local Palm Springs Student Film Fest and concerns a boy who finds himself part of a tragic countdown. The Corona High School filmmakers said they were inspired by a friend with the same affliction as the central character. •"Finding" is an impressively polished film that, like "Sunken Treasure," prefers to reveal the full picture pixel by pixel, building anticipation to the conclusion. Jesse said the secret was to make the film conclude just as the audience would prefer, yet without them being able to anticipate that desire. Tricky business. The directors revealed that they are working on creating a feature-length version that expands the short's ending. The internationally raised brothers with parents of Swedish, Polish and Dutch ancestry revealed the importance of language. When later speaking with Louie, he claimed that though the film takes place in Paris, it had to be in English, just as other comic videos they've made had to be in French. Expanding from dramatic sensibilities, each language expresses far more than a country's culture. He would love to do a film in Brazil or some other country where he didn't speak the language in order to tap into that unique state of mind. •"Lightborne" is a remarkably gentle telling of a mother's final night, as her son attends to her medically while her daughter-in-law recognizes the need for a peaceful release. The film focused on a very short period and yet alluded to an entire lifetime. An absolutely beautiful film, there were few dry eyes left in the house. Jesse complimented the film by stating that it takes a long time to start but rises like a soufflé.

ShortFest: Day 1

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:01:01 -0800

The dogs and ponies broke out of the ShortFest gates with an impressive award-winning lineup in the Opening Night ShortSplash. The energy was evident in the sold out theatre, as the audience dove into high comedy and beautiful imagery. •"Procrastination" got everyone in the mood with deceptively simple-looking art and stop-motion animation illustrating tactics for putting off anything and everything. The audience roared through examples such as color-coordinating book shelves, creating an elaborate teabag dipper and imagining playing a computer game with your furniture. •"Life's Hard" finds a thief choosing the wrong woman to carjack. As he becomes a backseat driver, she turns the tables. •"The Wednesdays" found fans through its hilarious story about an elderly couple who gets over Hump Day and onto Bingo Thursday with the help of "disco biscuits." It's actually a very sweet story about getting through the final day-to-days. •"Tadeo Jones and the Basement of Doom" spins an Average Joe Indy into an animated quest to save pets from becoming burger patties. •"Manon on the Asphalt" is a lovely film about a woman's final thoughts about friends and family as she lay dying in the street. A very careful reflection of moments past and the small details we associate with our loved ones. •"Sikumi (On the Ice)" is a visually arresting film about a seal hunter who happens upon a senseless murder, the blood bold against an endless snowy landscape. It is the perfect one-act, needing no more or less information to explain the hunter and murderer's relationship or the dilemma of divulging the situation to the community. According to the film's web site, it is the first film spoken entirely in the Iñupiaq language. Fans got their first introduction to the filmmakers at the Hilton party that followed. •Brian Crano returns to Palm Springs with his film, "Official Selection," after bringing his comedy hit, "Rubberheart" to last year's fest. •The fellas from "The Cousin" (producer Alex Castillo, actor Manny Montana & producer Stephen Mann above) were happy to add Palm Springs to their wild ride of 8 fests in 8 weeks. Manny recalled his excitement at first attending ShortFest two years ago. Alex teased that the film delivers 1 cup of gay in the closing credits...I'm curious to see what that measurement looks like. •Jeremy Brunjes, the Minnesota-by-way-of-New York director of "No Parking" laughed it up with "Premature" director Rashaad Ernesto Green (below at left with ShortFest staffers Emily and David), who stated that even though HBO's American Black Film Fest provided door-to-door transportation, they failed to serve food like ShortFest. So we win.

Viva la French Film!

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:23:17 -0800

This year I became the Educational Program Coordinator and webmaster for the Palm Springs International Film Society. It's been a trip to be behind the scenes, witnessing the controlled chaos that goes into this amazing fest. This year we highlighted French films, and below is a preview article I wrote in celebration of this choice. French directors François Truffaut (Day for Night) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie) first cut their cinematic teeth on short films. Who is to say the next great Gallic filmmaker will not make an appearance at the 2008 ShortFest? This year's French submissions created such a stir that the festival programmers chose to highlight the country's 30 best short films, second in representation only to the United States. The idea of French cinema may produce images of café romances, but recent offerings suggest that Cupid has taken a vacation. That does not stop mere mortals from seeking love on their own. Actress Virginie Peignien writes and directs her first short film, "Just One Hour" ("Juste Une Heure"). When a woman approaches a stranger and suggests they have anonymous sex, the proposition is intriguing. Some women lack such daring, for example the bookish beauty in the world premiere of "Original Sin" ("Péché Originel") and the desperate wallflower in Héléne Guétary's "Animal Bloom" ("Animal Singulier") who becomes a guinea pig for a hormone injection that drives men crazy. Man is more civilized but has yet to evolve from swinging amongst the branches in Vincent Vizioz's North American premiere, "Boy in the Tree" ("La Pomme de Newton"), as the titular boy becomes ruffled by the presence of a girl with her feet firmly on the ground. A young man cannot escape his personal oddity when it is attached squarely to his face. In Valentin Potier's "Tony Zear" ("Tony Zoreil"), Tony lives in a world too loud and judgmental for his massive auditory organs (Tony's ear, get it?), and love is a hard sell. In contrast, romance barely utters a whisper in Céline Novel's delightful, subtle comedy, "Ocean Boulevard" ("Boulevard L’Océan"). Two could-be lovers on holiday just miss each other when distracted by hobbies, but sparks ignite a careful flame. In darker tales, love earns an expiration date. In Ronan Moucheboeuf's "Orange Juice," a wife worries when her premonitory dreams suggest that her husband will decide the beverage is not just for breakfast. With a title like "The Gravedigger" ("Le Fossoyeur"), Sylvie Benavides' short suggests an ominous end for the girlfriend of the character's soon-to-be ex-wife. Such diverse topics find a welcome home in short films as feature films attempt to stretch French cinema and Hollywood boundaries. "Films take an important place in France, and we are lucky that lots of producers, film companies, distributors and associations are working hard to keep it that way even if it is getting more difficult with the surge of American blockbusters," said Benavides. "I am very happy to see that these efforts are rewarded, in particular at the Cannes Film Festival with the Palme d'Or which went to a French film this year." Other directors do not wholly share this sentiment. "Good French feature films are very rare nowadays," said Benoît Ameil. "This situation is at the same time scarring and motivating. For my short, 'A Juicy Turkey' ('La Dinde Marinée'), it helped me. There is a cinematographic area in short filmmaking that almost doesn't exist in feature films." Expanding upon such limitations, director Marc Alepee said, "All the stories I want to tell are fantasy stories, so the problem I have with French cinema is that it does not really produce genre movies. For producers in France, fantasy is not a serious way to tell stories and express ideas. However, I think that fantasy films are the perfect way to express my point of view on the world we are living in." Such fantasy films represent some of the more visually creative shorts of the festival. Award-winning Lorenzo Recio directs the disquieting film "Lisa" in its North American premiere, suggesting a world where Alice scurried down the wrong rabbit hole. In Alepee's film, "In the Rope" ("Dans La Corde"), a man finds himself alone on a cliff with only a rope leading to a sliver of hope. Solitude remains the theme in "Skhizein," Jérémy Clapin's 3D animated North American premiere. After colliding with a meteorite, Henry is beside himself -- exactly 91 centimeters beside himself. In a busy world, he becomes lost in the shifted shuffle. So take note. Palm Springs may be the stepping stone for future grands directeurs.

Coens get serious

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:10:40 -0800

Hot on the heels of next month's release of Burn after Reading, the Coens will dig into another black comedy, A Serious Man. Variety describes it as,

Set in 1967, story centers on Larry Gopnik (the stage's Michael Stuhlbarg), a Midwestern professor whose life begins to unravel when his wife sets out to leave him and his socially inept brother ("Spin City's" Richard Kind) won't move out of the house.

The film departs from BAR's big names for lesser knowns and a simple sounding story. Though nothing is simple with the Coens. Let's just hope it's not another Intolerable Cruelty.

Mr. Chertoff, tear down this wall!

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:27:12 -0800

Wayne Ewing's film, The Border Wall, will premiere at the Starz Denver Film Fest in November. While folks in Washington spew fear about the US-Mexico border, folks who actually live along the border try to educate the country about the wall's detrimental effects on international relations, local economy and wildlife habitats. Check out the trailer.
Get an education from the No Border Wall Coalition.

The rabbit hole leads to Plymouth

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:27:28 -0800

It seemed inevitable that Tim Burton would direct an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, but who knew it would be in Plymouth (home of the Drake Circus Shopping Center)? Frankly, I would have gone North to Portmeirion. Rumored to have Johnny Depp act as Mad Hatter (of course), Aussie Mia Wasikowska as Alice, but unfortunately dropping stellar regular costume designer Colleen Atwood for Carrie Arakaki (who worked on Hairspray and Hancock, but may show promise with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and adapted by the same writer (Linda Woolverton) who helped out on a few animated Disney features along with eps of "Teen Wolf" and "Popples." Hmm. The film doesn't hit screens until 2010.

Getting under the skin of Norman Bates

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:03:06 -0800

Jay Poole digs up the origins of Psycho -- which sounds far more like Silence of the Lambs territory -- for the latest Bright Lights Film Journal issue, and explains that "queer" is defined as anything but everything. While you're there, revisit the beautiful disarray that is Barton Fink (forgiving Mr. Kuersten's tangents).

TCM: The Killer Shrews (1959)

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:45:34 -0800

"Does he bite?" "Only when he's hungry."
Shakespeare never looked so good as when The Tempest met The Taming of the Shrew and birthed The Killer Shrews (a precursor to Jurassic Park's don't-screw-with-nature warning). Scientists stranded (by design) on an island, a comely daughter desiring to escape with a comely sailor delivering supplies during a hurricane, giant mutant shrews -- it's all there. And who could resist after an intro that involves ominous skies and a narrator who lays it all out:

Those who hunt by night will tell you that the wildest and most vicious of all animals is the tiny shrew. The shrew feeds only by the dark of the moon. He must eat his own body weight every few hours or starve. And the shrew devours everything -- bones, flesh, marrow -- everything. In March -- first in Alaska and then invading steadily southward -- there were reports of a new species...the great killer shrew [thunder crack]!

Enter our hero, Capn. Thorne Sherman, looking a bit Bob Crane à la "Hogan's Heroes" with his jaunty hat, but unmistakably Rosco P. Coltrane (20 years prior to "The Dukes of Hazzard") as soon as James Best whips out his drawl. The object of his desire is the Swedish Miss Universe, Ingrid Goude, as Ann, daughter of Dr. Marlowe Craigis -- Polish Baruch Lumet, dad to Sidney Lumet. Ann's drunken fiancé and all around screwup, Jerry, is played by "Gunsmoke's" Festus, Ken Curtis. Clashing accents fly fast and furious. The slim cast is horribly outnumbered by the guesstimated 200-300 mutant shrews, who look suspiciously like a pack of dogs (coon dogs, apparently) in ratty coats. Ray Kellogg only directed four features (including The Giant Gila Monster and the co-directed The Green Berets with John Wayne) but would become a prolific "special photographic effects" guy, with his work featured in many a Marilyn Monroe film, Rodgers and Hammerstein production and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Enough of the details, back to the body count: 1. Thorne's Dixieland loving buddy, Rook. Unaware of the menace, he walks the island at night, only to be chased up a tree by the hungry shrews. They can't climb, but they can knock over a tree. 2. The horse. The inhabitants have built a tall fence around their compound (remember, shrews can't climb), but have failed to get structures underground, despite knowing full well that shrews enjoy a good dig. So they make their way under the barn for a tasty meal. 3. Mario, the houseman. Speaking of digging, did we mention the house is made of adobe? And that it's raining? So after the shrews have dug under the fence, it's no trouble to push through the squishy walls and bite our friend. Here we also discover that whoops, that poison we fed them last week has stuck in their jaws so that now the slightest scratch they give us will kill us instantly. 4. Dr. Radford Baines, anal research assistant. Another scratch, but ol' Raddy is good enough to type out every symptom to his death as his last words. 5. Drunk, stupid Jerry. Good riddance. It was his fault the shrews got out in the first place. As the remaining three escape, Dr. Craigis rambles on about this being an excellent example of overpopulation, to which Thorne replies crudely while taking Ann in his arms, "I'm not gonna worry about overpopulation just yet." Nice. I'm thinkin' remake.

Get yer politics on

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:56:17 -0800

Focus Films asked 5 politicos about their 5 favorite politics-heavy movies (1 is MIA). Looks like Redford's The Candidate is the big winner. My personal fave is The Machurian Candidate -- heavy on the McCarthyism, easy on the brainwashing. Not so blunt and late to the party as the upcoming W. Rick Perlstein's picks: 1776 (1972) The Candidate (1972) The Earrings de Madame de (1953) Lumumba (2000) Punishment Park (1971) Katha Pollitt's picks: Bob Roberts (1992) The Contender (2000) Election (1999) The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Wag the Dog (1997) Dan Rather's picks: Advise & Consent (1962) All the King's Men (1949) The Candidate (1972) Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) The Last Hurrah (1958) David Sirota's picks: Brewster's Millions (1985) Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? (2006) The Candidate (1972) The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) Wag the Dog (1997)

Font becomes toothbrush

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:42:25 -0800

I have friends who swear by Helvetica, a doc about the popular but underappreciated font. Granted, they're journalists, and you never know about those guys. The film's maker, Gary Hustwit, has moved on from typeface to design with Objectified, a doc on industrial design. Thanks for not leting us forget about the little things, Gary.

Dubbya Part II

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:08:02 -0800

"Partying, chasing tail, driving drunk"...and runnin' America into the ground. Party on, W.