film review: SAINT JOHN OF LAS VEGAS

What is it about first time filmmakers? It's all the same, especially when the director, also writer of SAINT JOHN OF LAS VEGAS, Hue Rhodes "has a circuitous path to filmmaking, following many interests and careers before deciding to focus on becoming a director in his late twenties" (taken from the production notes). What I saw was a bunch of poorly shot scenes totally unrelated within a very small story. It's like going off on tangents while telling an overly-long bad joke. Typical of the first time writer/director is the character's bland narration, inconsistently placed, lacking originality and freshness with the obligatory opening: a start-in-the-bathroom scene staring in the mirror, doing some personal hygiene, standing in front of the closet in underwear, getting dressed. The rest of the movie takes place in badly lit convenience stores (three), gas stations/office bathrooms (three), cheap hotel rooms (two), very long car rides, harsh blinding desert light into total blackness of a strip club, strippers parading around to obnoxiously audio-mixed music, naked militants reassessing their philosophy. None of the characters with their trite one-liners are funny, surprising or add anything to a weak script.

What is surprising is that Steve Buschemi is starring in this lowly, low budget class exercise coming out of the film-related extension courses taken by the director because that is the reason why I went to see this film in the first place. Buschemi consistently takes an odd-ball character to new heights, midtones and ranges as shown in so many excellent films and his attempt to do so in this film is commendable. Recently, THE MESSENGER was screened at the Hamptons Film Festival and I saw him at different social gatherings deeply engrossed in conversation with producers and filmmakers who probably pitch him left and right. Perhaps after reading the script about a down-on-his-luck character -the trials and tribulations of a former gambler trying to change his luck- made an impression on him and I could understand what may have drawn him to the project. It makes sense especially seeing a credit "in association with" Olive Productions where he and partners Stan Tucci and Wren Arthur have various film and television projects in development and signed a first look deal with Lionsgate Television. On the other hand, a very talented Peter Dinklage who has not had a role that outshines the one in THE STATION AGENT (then named as one of the "breakout stars" of the year) should have been more selective. The character he plays in the film is especially offensive.

This type of film and filmmaking may be what's in store for years to come since the end of the indie film distribution model as we know it where films are submitted to festivals, screened competively with audience awards as a kind of focus group, picked up by a distributor and theatrically exhibited. Not that there weren't problems with that and often unfair to first-time filmmakers, but the filters have been removed and in place of film aficionados there are financiers, lawyers and acquisition coordinators turned producers raising funds up front to cover low budget production through investors, product placement and video game development and then financing an independent theatrical release. Oh yeah, don't forget a drop dead great trailer with rearranged scenes and dialogue to make this look like a funny, exciting film is a must. A case for false advertising if ever there is one where so many features are guilty of this ruse. While it's still true that filmmaking itself takes a "circuitous path" once made until theatrically released, this one goes straight downhill from the start.

Film Review: THE LOVELY BONES

On Wednesday, December 2, the red carpet rolled out in front of the Paris Theatre in New York City to welcome cast and crew who all came out for the film to celebrate the special screening event of THE LOVELY BONES directed by Peter Jackson. Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Rachel Weisz, Michael Imperioli, Susan Sarandon (who looked absolutely stunning at the premiere), the acting including Sairse Ronan and Rose McIver was excellent, the entire cast was outstanding as was the film production and special effects.

The drama takes us through the afterlife of Susie Salmon, a small-town Pennsylvania girl who was murdered by her neighbor, a local serial killer. She looks down on her shattered family from her place in limbo seeing her mother abandon the family and her father becoming increasingly obsessed with finding her killer on the verge of a mental and emotional breakdown. From this celestial vantage point, she starts to fear for the safety of her little sister who may become the next target of this seemingly innocuous neighbor.

The trailer is awesome. I didn't read the book but read how great the book was in the production notes and why everyone was so excited about it. It is intriguing and challenging. Just as other great books turn into movies, some translate well, others do not. Since the film premiere, I have been watching the trailer over and over again. It's a great trailer that makes me want to see the film and then I asked myself - what happened with the movie?

There were individual, separate vignettes of characters, all well presented but they didn't gel. Where one story begins, another becomes attached and then forgotten as another becomes introduced and takes over the film. From a crime ripped out of the headlines, followed by grandmother and grandson stealing scenes from one another for comic relief, then the marriage that inevitably falls apart without really knowing the cause culminating with the tense, horror film genre where the young heroine puts herself in harms way only to be saved at the last minute. Finally, the suspicious neighbor seems to get away with murder. Tough story for the big screen. I still like the trailer best.

film review: NEIL YOUNG'S TRUNK SHOW

Ten years ago at the first Woodstock Film Festival, Jonathan Demme screened his Talking Heads performance film STOP MAKING SENSE, so it makes perfect sense to screen his latest film, NEIL YOUNG'S TRUNK SHOW, at this year's Woodstock Film Festival tenth anniversary. Demme's enthusiasm is contagious, spreading over the audience like wildfire during the introduction, saying he wanted to capture the "energy of the rock and roll show" starting from scratch in making art and putting it on film that would create a satisfying emotional experience. And that's exactly what happens watching Neil Young rock away on tour through his direction.

Demme's earlier film with Neil Young was HEART OF GOLD, a tightly coordinated collaboration with Young providing his own creative insights into the filmmaking process. This time around, the directorial undertaking unfolds with Demme focusing on all aspects of the staging during a tour stop at the Tower Theatre in Upper Darby, PA. Built in 1927, the theater was a vaudeville house one of the area's first movie houses and since the 1970s has been a venue for music concerts. It is known for its natural acoustic properties and used in the past for recording live albums. Neil Young booked many theaters like this on his tour paying homage to the spirits of past performers and theatrical performances that linger among the collection of equipment and items that sometimes have no meaning other than they come out of Neil Young's trunk. It feels like a painting, a still life set up with appropriate lighting, elements making up the scene, an artist ready to capture it all on canvas. And then the music explodes.

As part of the intro, Demme warned the audience that if they don't like Neil Young, electric guitars, a 22-minute electric guitar rendition or very loud rock music, they should leave the theater before the start of the film. And then it begins, rocking hard and loud, later the acoustic guitar is brought in, harmonic sounds as Neil Young communes with the past and the present. His music is an emotional journey through the epic, long distance, hard core blaring electric guitar, then back down into the acoustics all along resonating that satisfying, draining, emotional experience.

NEIL YOUNG'S TRUNK SHOW embodies the musician heart, mind and soul with an astute filmmaker's eye that mixes sight and sound with a combination of cameras, digital and stock footage into a blend- some grainy, hi def, full of lighting and shadow design adding to the performance itself and highlighting rarely-heard selections from Neil Young's proverbial "trunk". Great stuff. Long live rock!

film review: 2B: THE ERA OF FLESH IS OVER

Even the logline is a statement that cannot be dismissed merely as exaggerated fiction: New York, soon. Technology's exponential growth is fast and furious. Human life is in the process of being transformed. Mia 2.0, the world's first "Transbeman" and her creator, "father" Dr. Tom Mortlake make a shocking, global political statement "designed to prove that human reliance on the fragile, human body is over and eternal life is at hand". It sends a spine tingling chill down my own fragile, flesh body.

The story is not a new one with well known science fiction authors as well as Mary Shelley's foreboding message in Frankenstein - that we ought not to dabble with Nature by playing God. There are consequences. And there are scientific and medical advances that humans are accepting into their lives at a remarkable level of technological expansion despite expressing discomfort at the pace and what is predicted as what will be.

The setting in a gritty New York is familiar with the lights and huge screens in Times Square streaming breaking news from around the world. James Remar (THE WARRIORS, COTTON CLUB, 48 HOURS) plays Dr. Tom Mortlake (mort=death, lake=water,birth), an eccentric technology inventor and billionaire who lives in a cavernous mansion echoing medieval great halls and labyrinths and is surrounded by and immersed in media that plays throughout the environs. His genius/madness brought into being Mia, played by Jane Kim (WEST 32ND STREET, FEEL), a beautiful, naive creation, who is summoned to participate in Mortlake's showdown with leaders of the "Fleshists" movement. The Fleshists are the political power ready to take Mortlake down before MINDFILE (a software that downloads human consciousness) becomes available to the public. During a news blast, the entire world, including down and out journalist Clay Konroy, played by Kevin Corrigan (THE DEPARTED, GOODFELLAS), as Mia executes Mortlake, shooting him in the head in cold blood. She leaves the scene with Mortlake's cerebral/soul essence in a box, escaping human homicide detective, Vicky Borano's (Florencia Lozano) hot pursuit. Following Mortlake's direction, Mia finds Clay and asks for his help in uploading the first MINDFILE, thus resurrecting Mortlake back for his eternal life. The white light spreads all over. All are welcome.

Visual effects and production design with technological graphics delivers a synthesis between the digitized and filmic styles. Everything could be going on either now or the very near right now, especially the gritty neighborhoods that camouflage the ultra cool tech bar where the fugitive Mia meets with Clay for her side of the story. But it's the music that gives it the human touch and composer Michael Galasso's score is beautifully poignant throughout this film adding sentiment into an otherwise biotecho engrossing and a seriously palatable course in science fiction entertainment.

Watch the streaming video from the Woodstock Film Festival panel Redesigning Humanity- The New Frontier on www.2bmovie.com

film review: AGAINST THE CURRENT

AGAINST THE CURRENT, written and directed by Peter Callahan, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year. As most filmmakers already know, the audience there is an eclectic sampling of demographics representing Sudance festival lovers while the recent screening at the Woodstock Film Festival has the hometown crowd welcoming the hometown filmmaker son of the Hudson Valley.

The film's premise sets the tone where the main character, Paul (Joseph Fiennes) is still grieving after five years over the loss of his wife and unborn child. A date is marked on the calendar in memory of that fateful day and plans are set into motion to swim the length of the Hudson River starting from Troy all the way to the Verazzano Bridge where the ocean begins. He enlists his best friend, Jeff (Justin Kirk), a wisecracking actor/bartender who invites Liz (Elizabeth Reaser) to come along on the boat that will escort Paul on his mission. During the first leg of the swim, Paul reminds Jeff of his promise five years earlier and Liz gets the story from Jeff on Paul's plan to commit suicide. From that point, Liz tries to change Paul's mind and despite the stopover at her mother's (superbly played by Mary Tyler Moore) with other eccentric family members and a night together, Paul's course and destiny is apparently set.

Justin Kirk (WEEDS) and Elizabeth Reaser still have the onscreen chemistry first seen in PUCCINI FOR BEGINNERS and, as the supporting cast, their banter moves the film along with the swimmer. Mary Tyler Moore's character, an exggerated, blissfully ignorant suburbabite living in her own glossed-over bubble, is reminiscent of the mother character in ORDINARY PEOPLE who couldn't deal with her younger son's attempted suicide. Joseph Fiennes understands the tortured soul character from ELIZABETH and SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE where as a young Shakespeare, he was prodded into writing a play about pirates, clowns and "a bit with a dog" then, surrounded by actors, eager with anticipation, he describes the scene where Romeo takes the poison and Juliet, upon seeing him dead, kills herself. Unresolved grief is just as strong as true love in its purest form. At times, there are no words that can comfort.

The setting and scenery along the Hudson Valley is beautiful and these moments are skillfully interwoven by editor Michael Taylor (ORDER OF MYTHS). While not always in the order except for the beginning (Troy, New York) and the end (Atlantic Ocean), the film is deftly handled along with music composr Anton Sanko's lyrical calling to our primordial emotions, capturing the alluring mystique that the Hudson River evokes. It's one that the local population have known for a long time.

AGAINST THE CURRENT will be playing at the local theaters in and around Hudson Valley.

film review: WOODSTOCK: NOW AND THEN

The tenth annual Woodstock Film Festival Opening Night event promised and delivered a communal experience exemplified a generation ago by showing on a big screen WOODSTOCK: NOW AND THEN produced and directed by Barbara Kopple with executive producer, Michael Lang who produced the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in 1969. The Q&A following the film was led by WFF founder and executive director Meira Baustein whose film arts community is an inviting environment for such collaborations.

While there are numerous docs and books on the now mind numbing, legendary gathering of the masses for a weekend of music and human connection, Barbara Kopple used the archival footage from early documentary filmmakers (including a young, seriously-focused Thelma Schoonmaker) intertwined with recently-discovered treasure trove of memories, personal photo stashes and artistic renditions.

It's the sights and sounds that have the most impact; however, as there were many in the audience who were participants reliving the event that so many (including myself) could only wish they could have been. Barbara Kopple goes beyond the obvious and finds elements that connect and enliven the main event presented- from a Craigslist posting, an attendee who had just arrived in the U.S. and found himself on the road to Woodstock, a new generation of student musicians from the School of Rock, framed Woodstock admission tickets numbers 1 & 2, a high school student's assignment who wrote for and received a press pass, led to amazing photographs never seen before, a couple who met at Woodstock frolick with their grandchildren forty years later, an artist from another country, who like so many, heard about the event but couldn't be there, has a comic book version highlighting the now-famous stories.

While I was on the way to Woodstock, I had the soundtrack blasting, taking me back on a long strange trip through my own turbulent adolescent years. From the opening scene, the music took me in and didn't let go. Watching the performances that the Woodstock audience themselves had missed is a wonderful experience interspersed with behind-the-scenes backstories and how things turned out through sheer willpower (NO RAIN). The final day (Monday morning) with Jimi Hendrix (scheduled to be on stage Sunday afternoon) who performed before the remaining 40,000 proving the adage that the best things come to those who don't (or can't) get up on time. True in this case and I stayed with this film until the last credits roll. Truly a fitting way to open the Woodstock Film Festival going on from Wednesday, September 30 through Sunday, October 4, 2009.

IFP Week and the State of Film Festivals as Emerging Technology Takes Over the World

Independent Film Week, running from September 19-24, 2009 in New York City and formerly known as the IFP Market, was always the place to be whether you had a film in your pocket or just happy to see other filmmakers networking their hearts out, hanging on to every word industry professionals expound on revised business models and film festival philosophy. The film festival landscape is shifting out from under our feet just like continental shelves groaning under geological pressures as film festivals revert into individual altered states and the top tier directors/programmers check out of the executive positions. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

Historically, film festivals started out as a means of extending the tourist season in seaside regions producing revenue for the local economies in the off-season months. While there are festivals that still play that card, others that started out as such blossomed (or bloated) into a huge festival business eventually spinning off into year-round, entertaining target-marketed enclaves. Submissions, acceptance, rejections and awards often have been held over filmmakers' heads, overshadowing good filmmaking with the coveted brass ring of getting a distribution deal for theatrical exhibition. Just as the shake out of festival directors and programmers have left us pondering how this is going to affect the way things work for the continuously streaming influx of new and emerging filmmakers, emerging technology is stepping in, automating processes faster, more efficiently and environmentally sound, taking over and touting online festivals and submissions.

Sitting in the audience. I braced myself for another onslaught of streaming video, online distribution platforms, mobile phone screenings, etc. Sean Farnel, festival programmer for Hot Docs, Jarod Neece, SxSW, Erick Opeka, New Video and Christian Gaines, formerly festival director AFI West and currently film festival director for Withoutabox (WAB), all brought out points for expanding the film community, platforms and acquisitions. The IFP staff recorded this panel and it would be a good idea to check it out, particularly on how Christian Gaines sees film festival programmers becoming "curatorial attention managers" providing recommendations for audiences of what they would like to see, therefore, "assuring a strong, provocative, curatorial experience" for audiences who still want to watch films on the big screen and in a communal, film festival setting.

During the Q&A, someone asked the panel their opinion on the recent shake up at Film Society of Lincoln Center New York's Film Festival (going on from September 25-October 11, 2009) without Kent Jones, ten year veteran, associate director of programming and editor-at-large at Film Comment, whose high-profile resignation and departure had the indie film community buzzing. The panel members shrugged and said they knew nothing about it. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

Check out an earlier podcast conversation with Kent Jones at www.filmfestivalreviews.com