FilmStew.com

Holocaust Documentary Debuts in San Diego

2012-02-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

Tonight at the 2012 San Diego Jewish Film Festival, the remarkable Holocaust documentary I Will Not Die finally gets a U.S. premiere.

Completed in 2008, the 48-minute Canadian film took three years to make. Director Marion Rice-Oxley tackles the difficult subject of the thousands of children exterminated during World War II at Czechoslovakia's Terezin concentration camp by means of a symphonic tribute work composed by violinist Ruth Fazal.

Tragically, of the 15,000 children estimated to have been incarcerated at Terezin, less than 100 survived. The musical work was inspired by I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a 1994 collection of poems and drawings composed during that terrible time in Terezin by some of the camp's youngest prisoners.

Rice-Oxley tracked the entire creative process of Fazal's work, from original auditions to triumphant, emotional public performance. After being put together in Toronto, “Oratorio Terezin” was shared in Israel and staged at other international locales such as Prague, Vinenna and Bratislava.

I Will Not Die screens tonight at 7:00 p.m. and again on Friday February 17th at 1:30 p.m. It is paired with the short Amnons Journey, a look at how Israeli master violin-maker Amnon Weinstein has restored instruments played by Nazi death camp prisoners and used them at one point to power "Violins for Hope," an historic concert held in Jerusalem's Old City.

[I Never Saw Another Butterfly]

Book cover photo: Schocken.

Huggy Bear Narrates Vegas Riots Doc

2012-02-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

Antonio Fargas, who played Huggy Bear on the 1975-79 ABC-TV series Starsky and Hutch, has continued to do all sorts of acting. Everything from Flyguy in the 1988 Keenan Ivory Wayans send-up I'm Gonna Git You Sucka to a recurring role with Everybody Hates Chris.

Recently, there's also the intriguing documentary The Rancho High School Riots, for which Fargas provided the narration. The actor is currently based in Vegas, making it a whole lot easier for director Stan Armstrong to secure his participation.

There is another celebrity connection to the film, which retraces how the campus of Rancho High School in north Las Vegas was plagued by outbreaks of racially tinged violence at the end of the Vietnam War era. Armstrong frames his movie through the lens of the Class of 1971 and interviews, among others, a man who went on to become the current coach of NBA franchise the Memphis Grizzlies (Lionel Hollins).

Armstrong teaches African-American studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His other documentaries include Black Confederates: Forgotten Men in Grey and Invisible Las Vegas, a look at the history of predominantly black borough of west Las Vegas.

Additional students interviewed for the film by Armstrong, who also attended the school at that time, include star basketball player Lee Gray and one of Rancho's first black cheerleaders, Louise Randall.

[Stan Armstrong / Desert Rose Productions]

Cooking Up Some Margarine Mischief

2012-02-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

In the case of the 1960s-era comedy Margarine Wars, set to premiere March 21st in Royal Oak, Michigan, it all starts with the names of the principal character and small Wisconsin town where he finds himself stranded on his way from New York to California. This is the story of Howard Schmear (Ron G.), a “big city Afro Jew” who swerves off the road in order to avoid hitting a cow and must then try to pay for repairs to his VW bus by dealing in margarine, a product banned in the conservative Midwestern burgh of Butterfield.

To portray some of the colorful locals, producer-director David Rich was able to wrangle the recognizable names Doris Roberts, Robert Loggia and Dee Wallace. Fans of NBC's Last Comic Standing meanwhile may recall Ron G. from his run on the show in 2008.

The movie will also screen March 29th at the Arclight in Hollywood. This is Rich's first finished film product, with several others in development including the drama Through Maria's Eyes and the acting biz documentary Actor? Although Margarine Wars was filmed in the tax-incentive friendly locale of Macomb County, Michigan, his production company is based in Chandler, Arizona.

[Margarine Wars]

Slumdog Dance Crew

2012-01-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

For the past three years, San Francisco-based filmmaker Alvin Shen has been shooting weddings and music videos with company partner Brian Schwab under the moniker HD Video Inc. He's also working on his M.A. in Fine Arts in Producing at the Academy of Art and fundraising to complete an intriguing documentary called Kenya Boys.

Shen hosted a screening last weekend of a 15-minute rough short version of his documentary at Paddy's Coffee House in Union City, California. The movie chronicles the efforts of five Kenyan youths from Nairobi's Mathare Valley slum as they chase after the dream of a slot and eventual win on their country's version of America's Best Dance Crew. The show, called Sakata Dance Battle, airs on Kenya's Citizen TV.

The goal is to return to the country once more, so as to fill out the individual back stories and expand the current 15-minute version to one hour. In a recent interview with Union City Patch, Shen hinted at some doc dramatics involving a car accident and confirmed that the “Black Blingers” did make it onto the show. The top prize on the program is the equivalent of $40,000 US.

Shen shot his original footage last July.

[Kenya Boys Kickstarter page]

A Great-Great George Clooney Tale

2012-01-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

To all George Clooney fans, consider this: had a certain Nicholas Clooney not been forced to leave Ireland for the United States in 1847, because he was worth a mere two pounds and two shillings, there might not be a George Clooney. Or, perhaps a variation of the dapper leading man would have risen through the BBC ranks rather than those of NBC.

There have long been local and often disputed rumors of Clooney's Irish ancestry, but now, thanks to an upcoming documentary by Kilkenny historian Gabriel Murray, it will all soon be laid out in confirmed, explicit detail. According to a recent report in Ireland's The Independent, Murray will be traveling to Kentucky in February to interview Clooney's father, Nicholas, and is aiming to have the documentary completed in time for a scheduled motorcycling excursion by the famous son to Ireland later this year. With much added local color:

Limerick band The Corrigan Brothers, who penned the hit “There's No One as Irish as Barack Obama,” have also jumped on the bandwagon. They released a song at the weekend dedicated to the Hollywood actor's looming visit to Ireland called “Welcome Home George Clooney.” "Oh the girls are feeling swooney; As they welcome home George Clooney; back to Ireland and Kilkenny on his great big motorbike," the chorus goes...

Meanwhile, a George and Rosemary Clooney look-a-like competition is being held in Kilkenny on January 20th. "The entire party will be filmed for the documentary," added Murray.

Incidentally, that look-a-like competition--held at Dylan's Whiskey Bar on John Street in Kilkenny--was organized by Murray himself. The winner, who will be flown out to the Oscars next month and filmed, is 27-year-old actor David James Glendon. Judging from the photo in this article, a couple of drinks may be required for anyone to mistake Glendon for Clooney. But that's just part of the charm of this whole enterprise.

The documentary will be narrated by RTE personality Mike Murphy. Also to be featured will be some of the still-in-Ireland relatives of the Hollywood actor's great-great-grandfather, currently to be found in not just Kilkenny but also Laois and Clonmel.

Absent Father Letters Continue to Roll In

2012-01-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

It really is one of the more remarkable sections you will find on any current documentary film website. Titled, simply, “Write Your Father,” it encourages viewers of the documentary Absent to share what they want to say to their departed, estranged dads.

Although the film is available on DVD, it continues to screen around the country. Up next is a January 20th showing in Canton, Ohio. Here is the first paragraph of a recent January 15th website visitor:

Dear Dad,

I hate you. I love you for no good reason, but I hate you more. It takes all of my being to admit to all out hate. But it is there, loud and clear, ringing in my ears and banging like a headache behind my eyes. I want to tell you so badly too. But somewhere deep inside, I have a strange amount of left over, or required love for you. I don’t want to hurt you physically, but I do want to damage your psyche for years to come if I can possibly do the damage you’ve done to me back. I spend way to much time thinking about when you are sick and dying, how I will lay into you. I want to wait until you are in pain so badly that you cannot speak back, and then I will let you know how I’ve always felt. I hate you.

Director (and single father) Justin Hunt interviewed a number of recognizable people for the film, including Metallica guitarist James Hetfield, Christian author John Eldredge and world-class boxer Johnny Tapia. Once an award-winning journalist, Hunt jumped into the documentary fray with his 2007 debut American Meth, narrated by Val Kilmer.

Absent has won Best Documentary prizes at the Marbella International Film Festival in Spain, England's Thanet International Film Festival, the TriMedia Film Festival in Fort Collins, Colorado and the Southern Winds Film Festival in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

[Absent]

Former Fleet Street Journo Debuts Newspaper Comedy

2012-01-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

Although the title of Tony Flood's newsroom comedy script is Hacking It, the movie is not about the recent scandal that shuttered London's scandalous News of the World and, presumably, led Rupert Murdoch to take to Twitter in this new year to try and repair his PR image. Rather, this group of UK journalists gain legitimate access to a deathbed confession, but then make a total mess of the resulting scoop.

The movie premieres on Sunday, January 15th in Eastbourne, along with a short documentary about its making. The cast consists mainly of actors from the Seaford Little Theatre, with proceeds from tomorrow's screening going to the The Friends of the Devonshire Park Theatre.

The director of Hacking It, Alan Baker, was once an actor featured in various London West End shows, while co-cameraman Harry Lederman is also Chairman of the above-referenced Devonshire organization. Flood meanwhile was recently a controller at BSkyB and now runs a book publishing company. On his LinkedIn page, here's how he describes his sideline creative efforts:

I am now the author of two books and a scriptwriter. The first book is The Secret Potion, a fantasy adventure story which has been recommended by actress June Whitfield and fellow authors as an ideal follow up to Harry Potter. The second book, My Life with the Stars--Best, Ali and Keys in Panties, is being published shortly and is packed with revelations and anecdotes about stars I have interviewed including Muhammad Ali, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Kenny Dalglish, Frankie Howerd, Petula Clark, Patsy Kensit, Britt Ekland and Erin Boag, who invited me to put my hand on her bare thigh!

Flood envisioned Hacking It as a sitcom pilot, with the intention of submitting it for consideration to both the BBC and Channel 4.

Rochester Director Unveils Sophomore Effort

2012-01-12T21:27:00.000-08:00

From pizza delivery drivers to a bunch of tenth graders. That's essentially the feature film comedic narrative trajectory so far for Rochester, New York writer-director T. Lee Beideck, whose debut Drivers Wanted is available on DVD and very appropriately named follow-up Sophomore premieres tomorrow night near the shores of Lake Ontario.

Beideck filmed most of his new film in Irondequoit, a suburb of Rochester abutting the water. The big difference this time around is that Beideck was able to wrangle a couple of “name” actors to go along with his group of young local performers. Christopher Plummer's daughter Amanda plays a teacher at Helen Keller High School, while Seinfeld straight man Patrick Warburton is a janitor with a son in the sophomore lead group.

It was something of a slow roll for Sophomore, wrapped back in 2009 but then followed by two years of fine-tuning. For Drivers Wanted, Beideck landed blurb quotes from skateboarder Tony Hawk and director John Landis, so there's no telling who might wind up on the DVD box of movie number two.

[Sophomore]

A Zombie Take on the Cold War

2012-01-11T23:06:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow night in Bayonne, New Jersey, some 300 moviegoers will get to enjoy the first official look at Red Scare, a low-budget zombie comedy written, co-produced by and co-starring native Samuel Platizky. Set during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, the send-up was filmed in black and white all over Hudson County.

Platizky plays the part of Rex Steel, one of several Americans who band together to fight an army of zombies unleashed by evil communist Vlad Sinisterski. Platizky, who previously wrote another zombie comedy called Blaming George Romero, is once again paired with William Dautrick Jr., assistant director on the first feature and director of this one.

One very unusual aspect of Red Scare is that a full classical orchestra score was live-recorded for use in the film. Platizky and co. gathered more than two dozen musicians at Temple Beth Am in Bayonne. Here's how he described watching the session come together:

This was the first time that this orchestra played together, and they were amazing. The best way I could describe it is somewhere between that feeling you get when you were a kid and you opened a present that you really wanted but didn't know you were going to get... and the feeling of being part of something that has become much bigger than you intended.

Indeed, it's extremely rare for a low-budget indie to put together a live orchestra soundtrack session. Snippets of the wondrous score, composed and conducted by Dan Granda, can be heard towards the end of the above trailer.

[Red Scare]

Surviving the Rialto Jinx

2012-01-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

Movie theaters named Rialto have been shuttered over the years all across New Jersey. Everywhere from Newark and Jersey City to Asbury Park and Hoboken.

But a Garden State Rialto that has managed to survive is the one in Westfield, on the cusp of its 90th anniversary later this year. Ahead of that September 6th celebration, local writer-director Ken Castellano is this month debuting his second feature Return to Start, with screenings this past Thursday and again next Thursday, January 12th.

The 38-year-old Castellano grew up watching movies at this Rialto, so getting to unveil his romantic drama there is extra sweet. He shared the following picture on Twitter before last week's showing, and it really is worth a thousand indie film words:

The Westfield Rialto came close to being no more, twice. In 1931, faulty wiring in an organ sparked a fire that caused a whopping $100,000 in Depression era dollars damage. Then, in 1996, with the locale earmarked for retail redevelopment, some 250 locals and a Main Street coalition stepped in. As a result, the theater was purchased from United Artists by Jesse Savegh, renovated, and refurbished yet again in 2009. A year later, ownership was transferred to Digiplex Destinations.

Back on September 6th, 1922, the admission price was just 30 cents. Five years later, the silent version of Ben-Hur marked the first time a major Hollywood feature was shown. Now, thanks to Castellano, the Rialto rolls have made room for a hometown boy's $10,000 sophomore effort.

[Return to Start]

A Confederate Zombie Rides Into Augusta

2012-01-04T22:45:00.000-08:00

There are all sorts of premieres slated for this weekend's fourth annual Poison Peach Film Festival at the Imperial Theatre in Augusta, Georgia. Among the Friday, January 6th opening night attractions is a rough cut of writer-director Stephen Gilliam's Confederate Zombie, with live soundtrack performed by the band Hellblinki Sextet.

Starring Robert Seawell, Christopher Bowman and Tommy Tanner, the film juxtaposes the tried and true device of a zombie outbreak with the final days of the American Civil War. Much of the film was shot on sets in Augusta and Fairfax, South Carolina previously used by Christopher Forbes for his indie film A Day in Hell. In that one, Gilliam played a bad guy character named Patches and got to work one of the cameras for scenes featuring Michael Madsen.

Below is the five-minute short that Gilliam completed as a proof-of-concept for his current feature debut. It made the rounds in 2011 at several festivals:

Gilliam previously made the shorts Pumpkin Knight and Sons of God. He hopes one day to expand the latter to feature-film length as well.

[Poison Peach Film Festival]

UK Quartet Get Their Ridley Scott On

2011-12-31T10:28:00.000-08:00

The very first film directed by Sir Ridley Scott, Boy and Bicycle, was a Royal College of Art short starring his brother Tony. He went on to do some TV episodes and commercials, before finally getting to his first feature, The Duellists, in 1977.

As Scott proved with that 1965 short and reminded in a recent YouTube exhortation, the key to DIY filmmaking remains to "just go and do it." That's the spark for What Would Ridley Do?, a no-budget UK indie featuring a movie poster created by New Zealand Facebook follower Kaan Hiini, with a tagline--“No Money. No Crew. No Clue.”--submitted by another social media follower, Nathan Shaw.

Twenty-nine-year-old director Ross Howieson is in the process of submitting the movie to film festivals while also looking to ideally raise 20,000 pounds for post-production. The cast and crew screening was held this past September, and some media coverage has begun, sparked mainly by the cheeky Ridley Scott derived title. In his Director's Statement, Howieson explains how the film was made:

As the actors live in London, we filmed there to begin with, whenever we could, in between shifts at various restaurants and bars! Then we took a holiday and filmed for five days in Newtonmore in Scotland where one of the actors had a holiday cottage...

I then spent the next six months editing the film to get it down to its current 97 minute length... The film still needs professionally finished with a sound dub, ADR and color grade and I am trying to find funding for this.

Music for the film comes from British band 6 Day Riot and Australian composer Ben Solo. Most of the dialogue was improvised, and certainly the plotline of a group of collaborators forced to make a film for no money should help anchor a long, fun run on the festival circuit in 2012. Not to mention pave the way for a DVD screener to eventually be viewed by Sir Ridley himself.

[What Would Ridley Do?]

The Very Busy Acting Schedule of Rance Howard

2011-12-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

In the just wrapped Barstow, California production Junction, Rance Howard plays the role of a clerk at a train station where two bank robbers show up. In the recently completed Santa Clarita indie thriller Huff, he is drug lord Scotty, with a girlfriend who likes to handle pythons and a roster of co-stars that includes son Clint.

Throw in four more low-budget flicks in various stages of post-production, including For Robbing the Dead with Margot Kidder, and you''ve got the latest string of credits for this still very busy 83-year-old. Not bad for a guy who collected his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Asheville Film Festival in 2004.

Howard as Scotty (©Real TV Films)

Huff is an intriguing re-working of the “Three Little Pigs,” wherein three daughters of abusive stepfather Virgil "Huff" Huffington (Charlie O'Connell) run off with his drug-deal money and are then pursued. The main selling point of Junction meanwhile is the use of Barstow's historic Harvey House Amtrak railway station as the central filming location.

On the pre-production side, Howard currently has several more movies on the docket including The Story of Bonnie and Clyde, in which he is set to play Henry Barrow. The man who got his acting start back in 1956 via some Kraft Theatre episodes and the western Frontier Woman was also recently tapped as one of the co-producers of son Ron's pilot for HBO about Doc Holliday.

[Huff]

Red Star Graphic Novelist Set to Direct Short Film

2011-12-18T08:51:00.000-08:00

Up until now, the cinematic signature of graphic novelist Christian Gossett has been the double-bladed lightsaber used by the Star Wars character Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. Gossett was just 23 when he first conceptualized this weapon design, working at the time for Lucasfilm Licensing.

This gleaming sword may one day be followed by a feature film version of The Red Star, the Gossett graphic novel that has--in video game form--sold over a million copies. But for now, Gossett's next movie effort is set to be Farewell My King, a short drama he wrote and will direct about an artist who is compelled to draw a portrait of his deceased father, bedside, before the body is taken away. It shoots in January.

Concept art of son reacting to hospital call

Unusually, the short will be shot on 35mm film with the help of cinematographer Michael Fimognari, whose credits include the Wim Wenders produced Au Revoir Tapei, the 2010 Michael Sheen-Maria Bello drama Beautiful Boy and the Emmy Rossum 2009 romantic drama Dare. For this project, Fimognari is re-teaming with two of his USC School of Cinematic Arts colleagues, producer Jhennifer Webberley and co-producer Jen Prince.

Farewell My King will include audio from conversations taped by Gossett's brother Adam with their father, before their real-life dad passed away in 2005. Playing the part of the son in the film, Peter, will be Paul Diaz.

[ChristianGossett.com]

The Slasher Film with a Questionable Guinness Certificate

2011-12-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

According to the wonderful website MovieBodyCounts.com, a feature film individual-kill total of 155 was achieved in 1999 by Universal's The Mummy. In 2011, that same body count mark was claimed by indie slasher The Summer of Massacre, which arrives on DVD and VOD January 10.

The big difference is that only the latter has a Guinness World Record certificate to go along with the 155 total. Earlier this year, Massacre was awarded a “highest body count in a slasher film” commendation for its anthology-driven mayhem. Among the eight killers featured in the the movie's connected tales are three serial murderers terrorizing downtown LA.

In recent years, the folks at Guinness have really been stretching the brand thin. Where once it was a matter of some dude with fingernails grown over a span of decades, today it seems that just about anything can be included. As a further proof, consider that Jay Leno was awarded a record this past St. Patrick's Day for largest number of Leprechauns gathered together in a single room, only to have that mark broken last month by an Irish radio host.

I have nothing against the Massacre tandem of writer-director Joe Castro and editor-co-producer Steven Escobar, who have been milking the Guinness angle for their DVD PR. But they should realize that in the grand (cinematic) scheme of things, their latest effort lags far behind the true champions of verified individual-victim movie body counts - Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (836), Kingdom of Heaven (610) and 300 (600).

[The Summer of Massacre]

A Man Responsible for Two Very Big Firsts

2011-12-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

Ernest Hogan worked up a song in 1896 that is considered by some to be the basis of the first rock 'n' roll record ever made. He would go on in 1907 to become the first African-American to produce and star in a Broadway show, The Oyster Man.

Throw in Hogan's crucial contributions to the creation of ragtime and some late-life regret over the fact that his aforementioned million-selling composition was titled “All Coons Look Alike to Me,” and it provides a fertile documentary canvas. Such an effort is now underway at the hands of Western Kentucky University students Ben Severance and Dillon Ward.

A Bowling Green native

The pair tell the Bowling Green News that they hope to complete their 20-minute film by next spring and will be traveling over the Christmas holidays to some of the Northeast locations once frequented by Hogan. On the project's website, they also explain how they came to know of Hogan's almost forgotten feats:

We first heard about Hogan in Dr. Pam Johnson’s journalism class at Western Kentucky University. From there we began to look for more information about this fascinating man who seemed to have been passed over by history. After a few late nights huddled in the library pouring over what references of Hogan we could find, we were hooked.

If all goes well, Severance and Ward hope to eventually turn the whole thing into a feature.

A Series of Puppet Re-Enactments

2011-12-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Would you feel more comfortable sharing one of your most embarrassing experiences on screen if the episode was dramatized by means of a puppet, or puppets, mouthing your recorded words?

That's the simple but effective gimmick of Felt Up!, Albertan writer-director Simon Glassman's series of shorts screening Monday December 5th at Edmonton's Metro Cinema. The tagline - “Real Stories. Real People. Real Puppets” - says it all, as does sampling any one of the short story vignettes. In this one, a young man struggles with the mysterious, scatological vandalism of his parked pick-up truck:

It's an ongoing project for Glassman, who graduated from Grant MacEwen University with a design degree and currently makes a living as a street caricaturist for hire. Felt Up! was a recent first place-tie winner at local screening series “Metro Shorts,” and certainly reminds how a little ingenuity in the short film world can go a long way.

[Felt Up!]

Getting the Thumbs Up from Guy Maddin

2011-12-03T08:46:00.001-08:00

For aspiring filmmakers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, it's hard to beat an endorsement from the town's cinematic godfather Guy Maddin. In the case of Bevan Klassen, director and co-writer of Of Games and Escapes, that thumbs up came to him after the release of the movie's trailer.

Bevan, that looks wonderful! That shot of the planted man getting watered is perhaps the greatest shot in Winnipeg filmmaking history! I love it. Hope to catch it!!!! Congrats! xoxoGUY

The shot Maddin is referring to can be seen towards the very end of the trailer (below). The movie, completed earlier this year, premiered at the Gimli Film Festival in late July and is screening this weekend in Klassen's childhood home of Brandon.

This is Klassen's first feature. He previously made the shorts Retired (2007), On a Sunday (2005) and Wildlands (2003). In this 76-minute psychological drama, he presents a salesman trying to answer the meaning-of-life question by developing board games. From Klassen's Director's Statement:

What trigger's the protagonist's journey is a discrepancy between how he views the world and how he wants the world to be... Co-writer Andre Laplume and myself have struggled with this issue and have found some of the answers in the ideas of psychologist Clare Graves. His theory is called “Spiral Dynamics” and is a model of adult psychological development that helps explain the complexity in individuals and societies through human history.

Adding to the complexity of this weekend is the fact that Of Games is screening at the Evans Theatre, where Klassen watched formative classic films growing up. Many programmed by Brandon University professor Jim Skinner.

[Of Games and Escapes]

UK Teen Hopes to Cement His Comedy Reputation

2011-11-30T19:04:00.001-08:00

Nineteen-year-old British filmmaker Ben Derrick will surely have a bit of a lump in his throat when he debuts his sophomore effort on December 9th in Harrogate. That's because the event won't quite be the same now that his celebrity endorser Ken Russell has passed.

Back in January of 2008, Russell had very kind words for Derrick's debut, the drama Fashion Police, declaring the then-16-year-old to be part of the future of cinema. The young artist's 45-minute comedy follow-up, Trendi, continues in the fashion vein, only this time with more of Bill Forsyth feel. It's all about two Yorkshire visionaries (Jerry Harvey, Peter Buller) who decide the next big thing should be concrete clothes and concrete handbags.

This kid is definitely going places. The trailer is super slick, and at next week's Royal Hall black tie event, a music video which he directed for local band Purple Mafia will also be screened. Derrick got the rental fee waved for the auditorium, and on his previous film, he was able to wrangle some impressive grants as well as the participation of the local symphony and City Council.

The soundtrack for Trendi was done by American composer Ryan Paul, while the supporting cast includes local theater vet Nevin Ward as a "flamboyant" fashion designer. It took Derrick six months to make the film.

[Trendi]

Animal Murder Short Wins Pair of Prizes

2011-11-27T10:03:00.001-08:00

Thanks to the 2011 Bondi Short Film Festival, 21-year-old Aussie writer-director Madeleine Parry now has an interesting decision to make. One of two prizes she was awarded this weekend for Murder Mouth is the Showtime Best Film Award, which covers return air fare to a North American film festival event of her choice.

Parry's short has gotten a fair amount of media attention Down Under because it features her slaughtering a chicken and shooting a sheep onscreen as part of her examination of what it really takes to get carnivorous items to the dinner table. She consulted beforehand with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). In Australia, “home slaughter” is entirely legal, but for Parry personally this was the first time she had extinguished anything larger than a spider.

Parry also won the Getty Images Best Cinematography Award, which comes with a $3,000 AU pre-paid Visa card and a 30% discount period on the firm's image license fees. It's been a good run so far for Parry. Her success began in the spring when she won an Audience Award at the South Australian Shorts Awards. Since then, she has screened the film previously in Sydney as well as in St. Kilda and at the Eden Docs festival in Scotland.

Expect to hear a lot about this film stateside in 2012. The tagline, “You can't eat a steak without killing a cow,” is as provocative as the synopsis:

Madeleine loves her Greek family’s traditional lamb souvlaki but her friends claim that meat is murder. Well, Maddie's never killed anything bigger than a spider, so she decides to reconnect the animal and the meal or never eat meat again. After talking to the people who slaughter animals for their livelihood Maddie is encouraged to do it herself, but, even if she can kill an animal, will she want to eat it afterwards?

[Murder Mouth]

Bringing Barracuda Back Home to Kentucky

2011-11-24T09:30:00.001-08:00

Because independent film is driven more crucially by story than stars, it all starts with the synopsis. And on that count, Shane Woodson's drama Barracuda is a slam dunk.

The LA based actor-writer-director is back home in Louisville, Kentucky for the Thanksgiving holiday and is taking advantage of that fact to locally premiere his latest directorial effort with a couple of Friday night showings at a the Village 8 Theatres, where he ushered as a teen. Here's the plot summary:

When we first meet Summer (Chrissy Oldham), a sensitive yet cynical portrait artist who supplements her income as a phone sex operator from her rickety old houseboat in Venice, she is at the end of her emotional rope. The callers, whom she began recording as proof of how normal, professional men can also be pedophiles and rapist, have entered her dreams at night.

When no one will believe or listen to the taped phone conversations with these otherwise ordinary men, Summer take matters into her own hands and drives her vintage Plymouth Barracuda across the country, surprising and exposing these deviants at their homes.

Woodson and Oldham have been partnered for ten years under the banner of Mercury Rising Films. They co-wrote their initial 2002 collaboration Joseph and ClairBell; Woodson scripted 2006's Cain and Abel; now it is Oldham's turn to get sole screenwriting credit with Barraduca, which has had a nice festival run this year.

Separaetely, Woodson has a range of additional Hollywood film credits as an actor such as Zodiac and Resident Evil: Extinction. He also, prior to relocating to LA in 1999, directed the play The Dodge. The production was an original written by his dad, Joseph Woodson Oglesby, which went on to garner a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

[Mercury Rising Films]

Blue Velvet Doc Finally Screens in Wilmington

2011-11-22T21:37:00.001-08:00

The U.S. screening schedule for German experimental documentary No Frank in Lumberton has turned out to be as weird as its subject, David Lynch. There was one in the 1980s, after the film was completed, and another three decades later at the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, North Carolina.

It was back in 1985 that film student Peter Braatz was granted unconditional access to the set of Blue Velvet. Remarkably, the recent November 11th screening was the first time the movie has been screened in its genesis location. Adding to the the occasion was a simultaneous exhibit of black and white stills shot on set by Braatz, displayed at an apartment building formerly occupied and owned by film co-star Dennis Hopper.

The mid-morning Cucalorus showing of No Frank failed to attract a sellout crowd. Still, the prelude to Braatz's belated screening sounds like it was in line with Lynch's sensibilities:

Filmmaker Ben Fancy showed a few scenes from his doc-in-progress, It’s a Strange World, weaving some fascinating tales from the shooting of the film at the Carolina Apartments and at the Barbary Coast, where they found a woman who could light her own nipples on fire.

Braatz's film was shot on Super 8 and then transferred onto 16mm. However, after the documentary was shown on German television in 1988, he wound up with a video copy that had no sound. It wasn't until the Cucalorus Festival booking that he was finally able to enlist a countryman to synch up the sound and re-insert it into the print.

In attendance at the Wilmington screening along with the Braatz, who was back in town for the first time since 1985, was local resident Fred Pickler, who played Yellow Man in Blue Velvet.

The Birth of the One-on-One Interview

2011-11-20T07:32:00.001-08:00

There's a rather remarkable celebration of journalism on the docket of today's closing screenings at the St. Louis International Film Festival. Along with Our Newspaper, a 2010 Russian documentary about crusading reporter Andrei Shkolny, the Cinema St. Louis event is also showing Australian filmmaker Dennis Tupicoff's short The First Interview.

Back in August of 1886, celebrated photographer Nadar sat down in Paris to interview scientist Chevreul, on the occasion of the latter's 100th birthday. Narrated by Agnès Varda, Tupicoff's film reconstructs what is billed as “the world's first media interview.”

An historic sit-down (Copyright Dennis Tupicoff)

Among the topics discussed that day were Molière, the scientific method, how to reach the century mark and daredevil balloonists. The short is based on a short-hand account of the interview published on September 5th, 1886 in Le Journal Illustré. Tupicoff shot his recreation in Melbourne and Paris, relying on prosthetic make-up to ensure that his actors closely resembled the images captured by Nadar.

Tupicoff has been making films since the mid-1970s, winning a number of prizes recently for his 2007 animated short Chainsaw. The First Interview has been submitted to various other festivals and is also due to screen on Australia's ABC-TV network.

[Dennis Tupicoff]

Cecil B. DeMille Doc Robbed of Its Close-Up

2011-11-19T07:47:00.001-08:00

The genesis for the excavation of this long-lost Hollywood film set dates back to 1983, when central California filmmaker Peter Brosnan deciphered a cryptic mention in a Cecil B. DeMille autobiography and tracked down the beach remains site for a pivotal portion of DeMille's 1923 silent epic The Ten Commandments. However, per the Santa Maria Times' latest article about this matter, a permitting snafu may have caused irreparable harm.

Brosnan had hoped to dig up the plaster film set remains in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes through this past Friday, November 18th. But because of the September 30th permitting goof and the fact that excavation work cannot be done in the winter (storms) or spring-summer (endangered species habitat), he must wait until the fall of 2012. While Santa Barbara County officials went ahead and expedited the erroneously exempted permits for December, Brosnan had already decided this would not leave enough time to beat the winter rains.

Brosnan lost his lead archeologist over the delay and told reporter Marga K. Cooley, with whom he visited the site yesterday, that the North County bureaucratic glitch may have cost him dearly in other ways as well:

“I wanted to see what’s out there now, and see if it made any sense to go back next year,” Brosnan said. “What we found was what we were afraid of ... most of that sand has moved. Everything is now on the surface being sand blasted. The last six weeks may have been our last chance to rescue anything.”

Brosnan said the level of the sand has dropped, in his estimation, by ten feet. “What had been a large empty area of sand now has two piles of plaster in the middle of it,” he said. “It’s possible that underneath that there’s some well preserved material.”

Brosnan says he plans to finish his documentary about the long-ago local shoot no matter what. But depending on what the Dunes site looks like next spring, the final product may not include the dramatic element of a "big reveal" oceanfront dig.

Wayne Newton Headlines Vegas Independent Film Festival

2011-11-14T20:45:00.001-08:00

On Thursday night, west of the Strip, the Vegas Independent Film Festival (VIFF) will kick off at the Century Orleans 18 with a gala screening of the indie thriller 40 West. A big bonus is that one of the bad guys in the movie is played by Wayne Newton, who will be in attendance.

After October screenings in New York City and Lucerne, Switzerland, it's hard to imagine a better place for an indie featuring “Mr. Las Vegas” than a new Sin City event that is attempting to pick up after the much loved CineVegas. The movie was shot in Buxton, Maine, where Newton spent three days playing the part of crime boss Bud Sankey alongside a group of local actors from the area and nearby Boston.

Nearly all of the film's action takes place in a single motel room, where Sankey's fearsome character finally arrives. 40 West was directed by Dana Packard and written, scored by, and co-stars his partner Jennifer Nichole Porter. Together, they also run a small theater in Buxton. Their previous feature, under the banner of Honey Tree Films, was 2003's Mr. Barrington.

In a recent interview on Patty Fantasia's Filmmakers Notebook podcast, Packard explained how they managed to snag Newton:

"An ICM actor was on board for one of Jennifer's other screenplays, and it was that actor's agent that suggested Wayne Newton to us. It took us a few minutes to wrap our heads around the idea, but we quickly decided it was brilliant. The agent submitted the script to Wayne, he loved it, and that was that."

"He showed up as an actor, not as Wayne Newton. He came up working with the likes of Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason, and he takes his craft very seriously. He was a joy to work with."

The film will have its Maine premiere in Portland on January 19th.

[40 West]