Monthly Archives: November 2005

Sundance Film Festival: Selection

13 (Tsmaeti)The official selection for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival is now public. There are 64 feature films in four categories. A total of 120 films will be shown at the festvial, 48 of those are done by first-time filmmakers.

What amazes me is the the competition. Indie producers should take note – there were 3,148 entries this year which is about TWICE the number form last year. I’m listing the movies by in the Dramatic category:

Dramatic (USA)

  • A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints directed and written by Dito Montiel
  • Come Early Morning directed and written by Joey Lauren Adams
  • Flannel Pajamas directed and written by Jeff Lipsky
  • Forgiven directed and written by Paul Fitzgerald
  • Half Nelson directed by Ryan Fleck; written by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
  • Hawk Is Dying directed by Julian Goldberger
  • In Between Days directed by So Yung Kim
  • Puccini For Beginners directed and written by Maria Maggenti
  • Quinceanera directed and written by Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland
  • Right At Your Door directed and written by Chris Gorak
  • Sherrybaby directed and written by Laurie Collyer
  • Somebodies directed and written by Hadjii
  • Stay directed and written by Bob Goldthwait
  • Steel City directed and written by Brian Jun
  • Stephanie Daley directed and written by Hilary Brougher
  • Wristcutters — A Love Story directed by Goran Dukic

Dramatic (Intl)

  • 13 Tzameti directed and written by Gela Babluani
  • Allegro directed by Christoffer Boe
  • The Aura directed by Fabian Bielinsky
  • The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros directed by Auraeus Solito
  • Eve & the Fire Horse directed and written by Julia Kwan
  • Grbavica directed and written by Jasmila Zbanic
  • The House of Sand directed by Andrucha Waddington
  • Kiss Me Not on the Eyes directed and written by Jocelyne Saab
  • Little Red Flowers directed by Zhang Yuan
  • Madeinusa directed and written by Claudia Llosa
  • No. 2 directed and written by Toa Fraser
  • One Last Dance directed and written by Max Makowski
  • The Peter Pan Formula directed and written by Cho Chang-Ho
  • Princesas directed and written by Fernando Leon de Aranoa
  • Solo Dios Sabe directed by Carlos Bolado
  • Son of Man directed by Mark Dornford-May

Enjoy! I know I will… despite Sundance not being that indie anymore. If it’s good cinema, I don’t care if it’s indie or not.

A day of infamy

You know how I know you’re famous? You get A LOT of SPAM. My first featured review at blogcritics made me the center of the uiverse for a handful of spammers.

You know how I know they are spammers? ‘Cos they liked EVERYTHING about my blog. I mean even I don’t like everything about my blog so that made me kinda suspicious. Sure enough, the praises are mixed with URLs, some too dirty even for an IP!

Anyway, I need to find a WordPress plugin that will keep at least some of them away. SPAM begone!

Update: I just installed Spam Karma 2.0. I set it to “mild”, let’s see if I need to crank it up.

Review: The Return (Возвращение)

I haven’t seen a Russian movie in ages. I was tempted to go see the Night Watch (Ночной Дозор) but after much deliberation I decided against the “Russian” Matrix. It’s a good thing Russian cinema moved away from the subject of the Great War though.

The Return is Andrey Zvyagintsev (Андрей Звягинцев) feature debut and has that authentic indie movie aura. He’s not the only debutante in the credits. In fact, this is a first feature for most of his crew.

The Return (Возвращение)

A ton of credit should go to Mikhail Krichman (Михаил Кричман) who does an amazing job as a first-time DP. The colors are very intense yet they lack saturation which contributes to overall mood.

In a recent interview Andrey Zvyagintsev said he chose “Misha” because of the vacation video he shot when in Spain. Same goes for the subdued and sombre soundtrack, courtesy of Andrei Dergachyov (Андрей Дергачëв), another first-timer.

I recently reviewed The Descent and I noted the movie is devoid of any allegory. Quite the opposite is true for The Return. The movie does work on it’s literal level quite well but there’s a deep undercurrent that puts these archetypes in a political and even religious context.

The story is that of two boys – Andrey, played by Vladimir Garin (Владимир Гарин), and Ivan, played by Ivan Dobronravov (Иван Добронравов). They’re growing up in a small Russian town and are taken care by their mother and grandmother. The inciting incident is that of their father coming back. He’s been missing for 12 years and the boys have to look for family photographs to recognize him.

“It’s him,” they both agree and the mother concurs. This doesn’t change the fact that a stranger has entered the boys’ lives. The father, Konstantin Lavronenko (Константин Лавроненко), is an ominous figure. He offers to take them fishing. They’re not really in a position to object.

Andrey is the hopeful and submissive one, he ends sentences with “papa” while Ivan is filled with doubts about this new authority figure. The road/boat trip follows an interesting path, exploring the interactions between the boys and the new person in their lives. It’s clear from the start their father’s word is the law and the consequences for not following it are always unpleasant.

The Return (Возвращение)

The movie ends as a tragedy but the tension it builds is not released at the end. Some people will complain they received no payoff. Others will praise it as a starting point for exploring a father-sons relationship and its allegorical nuances.

Since this is an allegory, there a plenty of interpretations around. The father figure is that of strong-hand Russian leadership, some say. It’s been missing for 12 years but now Putin is back and civil liberty watchdogs issue one warning after the other. Strong-arm tactics appear throughout the movie and I definitely feel such an interpretation is not only plausible, it’s a required second layer for this movie.

If you’re going to see one Russian movie this year, I recommend it’s this one. The only OTHER allegory I’ve seen all year is Guy Ritchie’s Revolver. The only reason Revolver is supposed to work as an allegory is that it’s not working as anything else.

Note for indie producers: The budget for The Return is a secret. In an interview for the Russian media, however, Andrei Zvyagintsev and Dmitri Lesnevsky hinted that it was well below $500,000. Andrei Zvyagintsev also pointed out that the producers turned a profit even before The Return was screened at Venice Film Festival. It also won 2 awards in Venice: Golden Lion, and Best First Film for Andrei Zvyagintsev. This can’t be bad for business either.

Info: The Return (Возвращение)
Russia, 2003
Running Length: 1:35
Cast: Vladimir Garin, Ivan Dobronravov, Konstantin Lavronenko
Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
Producer: Dmitri Lesnevsky
Screenplay: Vladimir Moiseyenko, Aleksandr Novototsky
Cinematography: Mikhail Krichman
Music: Andrei Dergachyov

Mesothelioma Lawsuit

Mesothelioma lawsuites are one of top searches at Google. To get a top position for mesothelioma lawsuit reportedly costs obscene amounts of money (via Google Adwords).

What’s the whole buzz about? Malignant mesothelioma is often attributed to asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma and and other asbestos related diseases (asbestos lung cancer) are driving people to their doctors followed immediately by their lawyers. That’s why mesothelioma lawsuites is quickly moving up in the public awareness. This is in no small measure due to the mesothelioma lawyers who have files tens of mesothelioma lawsuites on behalf of asbestos victims.

In order to file a mesothelioma lawsuit you should be someone who has mesothelioma. Most often this is due to exposure to asbestos, either at the workplace or at home. The majority of people who developed malignant mesothelioma spent a signicant amount of time on jobs where they inhaled asbestos-polluted air. A small number of mesothelioma cases (as per statistics from mesothelioma lawyers ) are due to exposure to asbestos in the household.

The reason for the “sudden” outburst of mesothelioma lawsuits is that mesothelioma has a latency of 30-40 years. Although even small asbestos particles could have caused it, the effects are not immediately obvious. In fact with most forms of mesothelioma symptoms are so general that the disease can go unnoticed.

In terms of the actual mesothelioma lawsuits associating the disease with the exposure to asbestos is only half the battle. The latency for mesothelioma means that there’s often a 30-year gap between the actual exposure and the diagnosis. This complicates the litigation process and creates real difficulties for mesothelioma lawyers who need to prove in an unambiguous way the cause-effect relationship. The compensation and liability in mesothelioma cases therefore requires a skilled lawyer and extensive research.

Quite a few screenwriters are working on mesothelioma-related scripts. The disease itself has a very poor prognosis which makes research difficult. Most patients die within 2-4 years of diagnosis.

To torrent or not to torrent

Bittorrent creator - Bram Cohen
You’ve all heard of Bittorrent which is by far the most popular tool for downloading (il)legal content online. The programmer behind it, Bram “Stoker” Cohen, just struck a deal with the MPAA, effectively refusing all links to illegal content.

OH MY GOD! Can he do this? Of cours, he can. He’s the programmer that wrote Bittorent (and gave us everything we’ve came to associate with it, like Miss Canada).

Would that have any impact on torrent users downloading illegal content? No way. There are many torrent clients now. I recently reviewed µTorrent – a lightweight torrent client. There are thousands of torrent trackers too…

Another blogger likened this to Bram Cohen going to the MPAA and selling them the Brooklyn bridge. Hope they paid him a pretty penny because I never donated to Bittorent and I feel guilty as hell.

Peter Jackson is off scuba diving…

If you follow Peter Jackson’s production diary for King Kong, you’ve probably seen the latest note:

With 3 weeks left until the film opens Peter and his crews are left with not much to do, Peter has decided to take a 2 and 1/2 week break and go scuba diving while he gives his entire crew time off to sleep and drink tequila…NOT! The crew are working DOUBLE-TIME to get the final 3 reels of film ready for mass production in facilities around the globe.

Production diary for King KongPeter Jackson may have lost 80 pounds (obvious in the King Kong movie trailer) but he definitely has some sense of humor left. I bet 7 months of shooting and 7 more for post production are tiring. Hope he finds time for scuba diving once the movie premiers (Dec 17?).

Update: I just did a review of King Kong. Enjoy!

Cronenberg to helm “I Kill”

David CronenbergDavid “Deprave” Cronenberg, the King of Venereal Horror is on a roll. I recently saw his A History of Violence starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, and William Hurt (in an amazing performance). The movie is a departure from the horror genre and his new project I Kill is probably going the same (mainstream) route.

I Kill (Io Uccido) will be based on the bestseller by Giorgio Faletti which sold over 5 million copies worldwide. I Kill seems like a literal translation of Io Uccido but maybe my Italian is misleading me. The author Giorgio Faletti is an actor, who spent some time in cabarets until he got his break on TV in 1982. Giorgio Faletti started writing in the 1990s and hit gold in 2002 when he published Io Uccido, his second book. The rights to the book were purchased by Aurelio De Laurentiis who paid (reportedly) 700,000 Euro for the movie rights.

Giorgio Faletti, the writer behind the I Kill bestsellerIn an interview Giorgio Faletti assured that the film production will have an adequate budget so that the production values remain high. An experienced writer and director, Davide Ferrario, is set to do the screenplay.

I’m eagerly anticipating Cronenberg’s new movie as I liked A History of Violence. The movie reminded me of Takeshi Kitano’s Fireworks which is definitely a compliment.