Action

So I'm less than twenty-four hours from the start of principle photography on "Undone", the first short film in the collective that will be known as aFilmAbout.us

Hindsight being 20/20, I realize I should have documented the process of getting here more thoroughly. It's such a small production that I've ended up doing a lot of the legwork myself, and this blog hasn't been too high on the list of priorities.

But I had a good night's sleep, I'm working on the shot list, and I'm feeling as prepared as I could be given the limitations and the other crap going on that has nothing to do with this production (and how on earth did Easter end up in March this year? I'm not saying that the Christian religion is arbitrary or anything, but come on...)

Not much more to say about it than that at the moment. The last few weeks have been all about being concerned with what could go wrong, but this last run up to the shoot my job is to be worried about what I can make go right. The train has left the station, the cards have been dealt - choose your metaphor, it's all the same. I have fantastic actors to work with, a dedicated crew that has gone above and beyond to make this weekend happen.

Let the chips fall where they may.

It starts tomorrow.

My name has traveled further than I ever will...

My Italian is non-existent, and BabelFish isn't much better, but as far as I can tell they're saying nice things about me.

The future isn't what it used to be, fellas.

The Invisibles, or No Job Is Worth Having Your Earlobe Fondled By Skip Gates

I'm an assistant editor by trade, which makes me something between a janitor and nanny. I clean up the mess editors make, generally keep the equipment functioning, while doing the grunt work of data management and information tracking. At the same time I do a lot of the actual organizational thinking for handling the media elements, advise editors how to use the tools, and most often perform a post-production supervisory role where I'm doing the strategic planning for getting the show to online with the correct elements in the correct formats.

I mean, read that list again. I'm basically a producer, with the only material difference being that I'm not given a budget or any input into the creative process.

It drives me nuts.

I work on a lot of low budget broadcast documentaries, which by and large have longer production cycles from the bulk of the broadcast television you see. Some of the Food Network shows, for example, are turning out half hour shows in a matter of days, whereas the show I'm working on now has a ten week post production cycle for an hour long PBS show. So it could be worse for me, certainly. I get to choose, to a limited extent, the shows I work on, so while I'm not getting paid what I deserve, I at least get to be involved in some worthwhile or prestigious shows with some talented people.

But it's still a dead-end job.

It's possible I lack perspective, but there doesn't appear to be any opportunity for advancement when you make yourself indispensable as a support system. I don't get to learn anything about the craft of editing (which is basically storytelling through artful omission). I'm most often hired by people who are underfunded and uninformed about the post-production process, and my job is to prevent them from totally shooting themselves in the foot while rushing to get the show finished. (Lack of planning is a big handicap in post-production, surprise surprise). Not only don't I get to participate in the creative process, however, but by being branded 'assistant' I'm totally denied the credit due for getting some of these shows finished at all.

Humbug.

Believe me, I'm not about to get into some Chuck Palahniuk rant about how the downtrodden should rise up blah blah blah. But after engaging the business at this level for this long it becomes apparent that the system is unsustainable. There's no degree of 'apprenticeship' for assistants like there has been for generations of filmmakers before - I don't even get to interact with the editors most of the time. So where are the next generation of editors going to come from? Options for aspiring editors are few and far between. Assistant editing work just gets you more assistant work. Directors often cut their own movies, inspired by the likes of the Coen Bros and Soderberg. And other working editors are scrambling to get paid just like I am, so why would they help me get my first job when they have a mortgage and kids to feed? Is it alarmist to say editing is becoming a dying art? Um.. Probably, but I'm taking a pretty short-termist, myopic view here.

If producers could buy a version of Final Cut Pro that did the editing for them automatically (control/apple/Edit), we'd all be out of a job.

As another editor pointed out to me, if I really want to start editing professionally I need to get a job on one of those Food Network or Home Gardening shows, working for peanuts with no time to finesse the edits or grasp the 'story' (if you really want to call it that). Not sure if I want to commit those terms, frankly. For me, the most practical advice I've been given since moving to NYC was when Paola Gutierrez-Ortiz pointed out that I should stick to working on shows that I believe in. I've amended that to also include working with people I enjoy and respect, and so far that's worked out okay.

Apart from that glass ceiling.

So I'm developing my own material. Finally. The only way for people take take me seriously is for me to start taking myself seriously. I'm working on a collaborative project that is going to pull myself and a few other of my fellow 'invisibles' into the foreground. If only for a few moments. There's too much talent around to go unnoticed and unrealized. At least that's how I feel about it.

More as it happens.

The 'O' stands for nothing...

If I thought for a second anybody was actually reading this I'd update more often. Maybe I will anyway, but regardless, I read this article by Jeremy Smith today on www.chud.com. As a comment on how the public (as opposed to dysfunctional cineastes like myself) appreciate film, the piece struck me as incisive and timely. But maybe that's because I don't read other peoples' blogs.

"We're not commenting anymore; we're reinventing our populist masterpieces with a corporate mindset. And it's not about thrilling, but suckering. Hitchcock needed word of mouth; today's filmmakers just need an opening weekend."

http://chud.com/articles/articles/13485/1/FOR-NO-GOOD-REASON-ROGER-O-THORNHILL-YET-LIVES/Page1.html

CONTROL: or How Can You Lose Something That You Never Had In The First Place?

At best I'm ambivalent about the whole blog culture, the unnecessary compulsion to confess/opine/drivel on about this and that to an audience that is both invisible and probably non-existent. I'm already bored with this blog, because what I've been writing has that almost desperate "me too" kind of feel to it. Who cares what I think about movies anyway? It's not connecting to anything in my life anyway, except for the experiences that revolve around sitting in darkened rooms with a couple of hundred strangers. I'm not a critic. I'm not even a critical observer, or haven't been lately. If you want to call it an epiphany, be my guest, but that was the thought that presented itself to me this week.

I've been participating in a Directors' workshop this month, a harrowing group activity where I and other directing hopefuls workshop scenes together under the instructive gaze of Adrienne Weiss. After a director gives their performance, the kangeroo court is in session, and all and sundry give their feedback about the process, the delivery, and the overall impact on the audience. Except that my feedback always sucks, is rarely inciteful, and is often drawn out of me out of necessity, rather than real desire to contribute. I'm the one who says "well I enjoyed such-and-such doing this with that line" or "I enjoy so-and-so's take on this character" etc. It's more painful than I can set down here.

But the reason for this is the same as the reason for these indifferent and irrelevent blogs about movies I kind-of liked but sort-of didn't like. I miss, and apparently still cling to, the childlike experience of just enjoying a movie because someone put it out there for me to see. I pay my $10 (or whatever) and base my judgement on how much of a sucker this movie takes me for. Beyond that I'm ready to be entertained, and it takes a pretty bad movie to vent my ire.

So, in the context of the Directors' Workshop, I'm committed to change. All well and good. But how does that reflect itself in the everyday? Am I going to turn into one of those technically aware bores that I despise seeing movies with? (I mean, granted, "3:10 to Yuma" is not an amazing, nor relevent, nor even necessary film, but I enjoyed it for all of that. It was a refreshing change from the relentlessly predicatable and generally hateful movies I've seen lately)

Who knows, but I guess I'll find out...

Originally I'd intended this entry to be about how this blog wasn't just about movies I felt compelled to apologize for or defend, and that I could write unnecessary reviews about movies I disliked too. Which brings us to "Control", Anton Corbijn's feature debut based on the last few years of Ian Curtis' life, specifically his marriage and his experience in the band Joy Division. Now with the onset of the British Independent Film Awards loading the nominations with this film for multiple categories, I can't hold my tongue any longer.

It's not a good film. Pure and simple.

It's not a terribly BAD film, either, but regardless it is a minor work brought to the screen by a noted stills photographer and music video director, who brings the same sense of superficiality to this more 'significant' work. It is as vaccuous as Corbijn's portraits of U2 for the Joshua Tree album, with rich, resonant images of stioc, majestic popsterism captured in the deeply textured grayscale of gritty 35mm. For sure, Corbijn squeezes every ounce of exposure latitude out of every frame, but in the effort to capture what? There's just no story here.

Okay, is it a love story? Well, not particularly. While the set up for the relationship between Curtis and his wife-to-be Deborah is touching, economic, and effective, once the marriage is in full swing, all we get are landmarks, and tritely displayed at that. It becomes like a coach tour of Italy - some of the sights, but none of the flavor or personalization. Where he should have referenced the very book this film was supposedly adapted from ("Touching From a Distance", Deborah's account of her relationship with Curtis and subsequently with Joy Division), Corbijn retreats to a safe distance and paints the picture with the broadest, most clumsily obvious of strokes. I have nothing but contempt for the tacky obviousness with which the score swells with "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and exactly the most painfully obvious and unrewarding moment of the film. Better to have never used the song again - I mean, how many people seeing this film HAVEN'T heard this song before?

So is it a biopic of an artist as musician and collaborator? Not even close. Embarassingly, Michael Winterbottom's interpretation of the same events, constituting the first half of "Twenty-Four Hour Party People" has more insight, simple information, and dramatic weight than the entire telling encompassed by 'Control'. And that was intended to be a satire, a cartoon. And it was half a movie. There's no sense of his relationship to the other band-members, there's no sense of how the music was created, nor how the dynamic within the band made these creative choices inevitable. Curtis is aloof and above all of this in 'Control', like it doesn't matter. And yet we're clearly supposed to believe that it does.

The greatest crime for a film that is supposedly adapted from an account by one of the central characters, is that Deborah is robbed of a voice in this film. In fact, there are only two female characters that have speaking parts - Deborah and Curtis' mistress Annik - and neither have ANYTHING to say of any material benefit to the story. The emotional presence of women have been sucked out of the universe Curtis inhabits in this film. This robs the narrative of any meaningful insight, because he never has anything to challenge his world view, not even the acknowledgement of the existence of another outside of his own. The audience is invited to accept his take on the world at face value (and given that this can only be an interpretation of Curtis' life up until his final moments, we're really talking about Corbijn's view of Curtis' world) and never question his artistic right to shit on everyone around him for no better reason than his vanity and his lack of vision.

So what we have then is a music video about a superficial interpretation of some selfish arsehole's life, leading up to his melodramatic suicide in the kitchen of a semi-detached in Manchester on the eve of his greatest success. Like the act itself, the film is self-involved, near-sighted, and ulitmately worthless. Using a man's life as a visual framework to play some great music over doesn't sound like such a terrible idea, but there's so little life in this film that the music itself often feels trite and innappropriate, and THAT, I'm afraid, is a crime I cannot forgive.

An absolute miss. Don't give these people your money.

Brian de Palma's righteous retread

I'm one of those hopeful romantics when it comes to Brian de Palma. Like Terry Gilliam, he has underdog cache and a track record of some noteable hits amongst his bloated misses that still fuel my optimism with every new film. I really liked 'Black Dahlia', and so, with cautious enthusiam, I bought my ticket for his New York Film Festival screening of 'Redacted' last Thursday.

'Redacted' is a competently told story about troops on the ground in Iraq, numbed by the daily grind, who incite a number of violent acts and are victim to exponential retribution from the locals. That's the plot, but what the film is actually about is how the news media and communication technology in general has merged with the act of war to the extent that the passive audience is as culpable as the soldiers in the field. Passivity is condemned, but positive action is futile.

While that theme is not so terrible in itself, I was viewing 'Redacted' in the context of having recently subjected myself to Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" (1997). Rendered with all the subtlety of a ransom note, 'Games' is an obnoxiously smug rumination on the audience's guilt by association with violence as depicted in film (and presumably, by extension, in other media). The film is weighed down by its own belligerent arrogance, and by a moral self-righteousness that is utterly counter-productive. Haneke here is a filmmaker on the offensive, with the audience as the object of his contempt.

De Palma, on the other hand, is more interested in the characters in his story (not to mention the actors portraying them), and with the new communication technologies that permeate the world so very distant from that of the first telling of this combat rape story, his Vietnam centered 'Casualties of War' (1989). As one of the weaker aspects of the story, de Palma's use of the internet (news media video streaming, insurgent snuff movies, YouTube diatribe from self-righteous teenager) is a brute-force insertion of contextual information that doesn't always add to the core narrative. Without the window dressing, 'Redacted' is not so much an inspired re-interpretation of his Vietnam text, but a digitally re-packaged rehash of old, familiar material. Worse, the horrific events portrayed in the film never resonated more than they shocked. The fact that the troops themselves are at best 'archetypal' and at worst, ethnic stereotypes (and I consider good-old-boys from the mid-west an ethnic minority), brings nothing new to the scenario. The audience is instead encouraged to make cozy assumptions about how soldiers who lack formal education and economic opportunity are the cause of aggravated sexual assault and pre-meditated murder in foreign territories.

Regardless, the audience's patience is rewarded by a brutal closing montage of Iraqi civilian war casualties, themselves redacted (allegedly because of legal panic from the executive producers at 2929 - see the YouTube clip and decide for yourself if this is honest disagreement or viral marketing at its most insidious). Except for the final image - the teenage girl whose rape and murder is the centerpiece of the film. The censored pictures leading up to this aggressively placed and beautifully photographed fresh corpse is nothing short of assault on the audience. On that level it's a very effective film.

But as sensational and trite as de Palma might be considered as a storyteller, he is not the self-righteous goon Haneke is. De Palma sincerely wants you to feel the same outrage he does, and, in this allegedly censored version he himself decries, that very shock and outrage could not possibly be more effectively communicated.

Blade Runner 2007: More Human Than Human

So what exactly is new in the latest release of "Blade Runner"?

Well, not a whole lot.

I'm not really interested in sparking yet another debate about whether directors should go back to their films decades later for a nip and a tuck. There are examples of when this kind of behavior was a bad, or at least an unnecessary, idea ("Star Wars," "E.T. The Extraterrestrial," "Apocalypse Now"), just as there are examples of when it was a really good idea ("THX:1138"). "Blade Runner", however, is unique in that at the time of its original release it was considered a critical and financial failure, and yet over the years has accumulated such a loyal fan base that the expectations for a new, remastered, "definitive" release are incredibly high.

But after seeing the film at the Rose Theater last night I don't believe Ridley Scott had any intention of meeting those expectations. What we saw last night was not a grand Coppola-esque reimagining of the original narrative material, or even the digital retooling of antique visual effects that Lucas executed on his blockbuster trilogy. All Scott has done with "Blade Runner" is one hell of a final polish, leaving the original material basically alone. Douglas Trumbell's visual effects, for example, are unaltered, but remastered digitally with dazzling clarity. (Nothing makes me wish people still worked with optical effects more than this film, and this is no less true in this version)

The real technical achievements appear in aspects of the film that first-time viewers would never notice, but that are the kind of details that will make people who are familiar with the existing iterations of this movie sit up. You don't get new flying car or cityscape shots, or the inclusion of previously deleted scenes, or even alternate cuts of existing scenes. What you do get is arguably a perfect version of Ridley Scott's 1982 film, and another chance to experience the story with a fresh eye and a new context.

The biggest surprise, and perhaps the greatest revelation of the entire evening for me, was that, for all the hype, this is still a great movie.

So maybe it wasn't all hype after all.