SVA THESIS SCREENINGS

So the thesis film screenings for my old school in New York, SVA, are approaching. I'm beyond bummed that I can't be there to see all my friends' films, and a little sad that I'm not showing a film of my own along with them.

SVA recently took over and renovated the old Chelsea West Cinemas on 23rd street, and has transformed it into The Visual Arts Theater- an amazing new facility for showcasing student work, film screenings, public events and lectures. So it's pretty cool that my class is the first to break in the new and improved 20,000 square foot theater with their films.

Anyway, since I can't be there, I wanted to encourage everyone back home in NYC to go and check out some sure to be fantastic films. There are a ton of talented kids showing their work, but I wanted to point out three of my good buddies' films that cannot be missed:


THINGS TO DO ON A RAINY DAY
Written and Directed by Nick Chakwin
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Time: 9:30pm - 10:00pm


UNFOLDING ANIMALS
Written and Directed by Real Sprague & Jake R
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Time: 10:45pm - 12:10am


ANNE AND PETER
Written and Directed by Devan Mulvaney
Date: Friday, May 8, 2009
Time: 7:30pm - 8:30pm

Location:
Visual Arts Theatre
333 West 23rd St
New York, NY

FACES

This is one of the most amazing films I've ever seen.

HOLLYWOOD

"Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing."

- Michelangelo Antonioni

THE EXPLODING GIRL

I really really want to see this. But I can't find a trailer anywhere? Let me know if someone finds one.

Check out the website:
http://www.soandbrad.com/theexplodinggirl.htm

and the Hammer To Nail review:
http://www.hammertonail.com/genre/drama/exploding-girl-the/

LOL @ The Hollywood Philistine Review Weekly. Officially adopting that.

ZABRISKIE POINT

Sooooo... very exciting news for an Antonioni groupie like myself.

ZABRISKIE POINT is fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally getting a DVD release in America! June 30th, 2009.

I've heard it's the weakest of his three English language films (BLOW UP and THE PASSENGER are the other two), but I'm excited to finally get a chance to see it.

I'm far more desperate for RED DESERT to be honest though...

AMAZON.COM

SIMPLICITY PT. 2

"The first generation of filmmakers looked at life, and made films. The second generation watched the films of the first generation, looked at life, and made films. The third generation just watched the films of the first and second generations, and made films. The fourth generation, looks neither at life nor watches the films. We merely go through the catalogues and base our movies on technical capabilities. I don't think cinema needs all these technical tools. A camera, three lenses, and a couple of tripods will do- just like in the early days of cinema... They made their films, with so little."

- Abbas Kiarostami

SIMPLICITY

"We create by subtracting, not adding."
- Robert Bresson

AROUND THE WELL

On May 19, 2009 Iron and Wine will issue Around the Well (Sub Pop), a 2-CD/3-LP collection of rare tracks ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released. In support of Around the Well Iron and Wine will be performing ten intimate shows in five cities. Each individual show will be wholly unique, as Iron and Wine will turn the set list over to the fans to create. In addition, Iron and Wine have begun work on the follow-up to The Shepherd’s Dog and plan to release a new album in spring, 2010.

Around the Well
The tracks collected on Around the Well span from Iron and Wine’s earliest sessions which yielded the band’s debut (2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle) through material recorded for 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog. The double-disc collection is broken up into two sections. The first half is an assortment of hushed home recordings, unedited and raw, and the second highlights moments captured in the confines of proper studios with the help of other musicians, friends and engineers. The album’s title comes from a line in the song “The Trapeze Swinger,” a fan favorite which was written for and included in the movie In Good Company. Three more songs written and recorded for the film finally make their appearance here as well: “Belated Promise Ring,” “God Made the Automobile” and “Homeward, These Shoes.” Around the Well also brings together hard to find covers such as The Flaming Lips’ “Waitin’ for a Superman” and New Order’s “Love Vigilantes,” along with one of Iron and Wine’s earliest originals, “Sacred Vision,” which appeared on a compilation for Sound Collector magazine.

Iron and Wine . Around the Well
Disc 1
1. Dearest Forsaken
2. Morning
3. Loud as Hope
4. Peng! 33
5. Sacred Vision
6. Friends They Are Jewels
7. Hickory
8. Waitin' for a Superman
9. Swans and the Swimming
10. Call Your Boys
11. Such Great Heights
(Vinyl break occurs between “Friends” and “Hickory.”)

Disc 2
1. Communion Cups & Someone's Coat
2. Belated Promise Ring
3. God Made the Automobile
4. Homeward, These Shoes
5. Love Vigilantes
6. Sinning Hands
7. No Moon
8. Serpent Charmer
9. Carried Home
10. Kingdom of the Animals
11. Arms of a Thief
12. The Trapeze Swinger
(Vinyl break occurs between “Sinning” and “No Moon.” At nearly ten minutes, “The Trapeze Swinger” will stand alone on the third piece of vinyl.)

YES!!!

YES!!!



YES!!!



YES!!!

THE 503 - "THE ARCTIC BLAST"

The 503: Episode 6: "The Arctic Blast" from Thunderball Productions on Vimeo.

Episode 6:
The boys return to Portland for another holiday season, only to be met by the snowstorm of the century!

SUMMERTIME

PORTLAND HERE I COME!

GODARD/GORIN

"We were never panicked at the idea of not having means- the less means we had, the more inventive we would get! And, we'd look at the film and say, "my God are they going to accept this?" Well, you know, they didn't! They came and said "oh my God this is not a film"... and then we were very happy!"

- Jean-Pierre Gorin (on his collaborations with Jean-Luc Godard)

HARDCORE DESERT SHIT

Hardcore Desert Shit from Thunderball Productions on Vimeo.

On our road trip to Las Vegas, Cameron and I stopped in Joshua Tree and decided to shoot a little impromptu short film. This is what came of it. Please excuse our bad acting haha.

JEANNE DIELMAN

Ok.

So last night, I finally got to see Chantal Akerman's 1975 classic JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES.

Brand new 35 mm print, playing two nights only at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

I really don't think I can even serve this film justice by my words. I'm not articulate enough to accurately explain how amazing this film is.

JEANNE DIELMAN follows its title character (played by Delphine Seyrig, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD), through her daily routines as a widowed homemaker/part time prostitute. Jeanne has a specific rigorous routine every day- she wakes up, she opens her bedroom window, she prepares coffee, she shines her son's shoes, she wakes her son up, she serves him breakfast, she sees him off to school, she bathes herself, she shops for groceries, she makes herself lunch, she tidies the apartment, she looks after her neighbor's infant child, she begins to prepare dinner, while her vegetables cook, she has sex with a client. By the time the sex is over, her vegetables are done. She returns to cooking. She welcomes her son home, she serves him soup, they sit in silence, she serves him the main course, she knits and listens to the radio, and then goes to bed.

And so we follow this mundane routine in near real time over the course of three days. The focus becomes the rhythms of movement, the structure of the day. The first scene that really struck me was watching Jeanne and her son eat the soup... watching the offbeat rhythm of their spoons dipping into the bowl and then to their lips reminded me of how when you're walking alongside someone, for a few paces your steps are completely unconsciously in sync before finding their own separate paces. These kind of small moments are what the film is all about. Seeing these incredible intimate details calibrates our attention and allows us to pick up the subtle hints that display Jeanne's eventual internal unraveling as the days go on. The effect is a slow, harrowing and cumulative emotional portrait of isolation and the dark side of domesticity that is truly unlike anything I've ever seen before.

JEANNE DIELMAN was an EXPERIENCE. It NEEDS to be seen in a theater as it demands your full attention. The scene toward the end when the neighbor's baby is crying could honestly be one of the most amazing scenes I've ever seen in a film. The underlying psychological repercussion of that scene is totally unreal, and the whole audience collectively felt it. My jaw was literally hanging open.

After the film I got invited to a party, and I went, but was in zero mood to socialize or even be around other people. JEANNE DIELMAN is still lingering in my mind right now, and I have a feeling that in some way, it's probably going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

As I said, I'm not really capable to do the analysis/review that it deserves. So I'm going to post some links to a few good articles on the film.:

Slant Magazine

New York Times

IMDB

GOODBYE SOLO

Ramin Bahrani is a complete fucking master. At 33 years old.

I am still in total awe over his last film CHOP SHOP, which I have stated to people before that I believe is a near perfect film.

His latest, GOODBYE SOLO, forcefully asserts Bahrani as the most exciting and important new American filmmaker to anyone that couldn't already see that.

Like his previous films, SOLO is centered on a protagonist that is an outsider in society- someone that many of us cross paths with everyday but never follow home to see their life outside of work. The man that sells you coffee and donuts from his street cart, the kids that pedal candy on the subway, and in this case- your cab driver.

The film opens immediately with a bitter old white man named William offering $1000 to his infectiously optimistic Senegalese cab driver Solo, to drive him in a few days to a mountainous lookout point in North Carolina called Blowing Rock. He plans to jump from the cliff on that day, so basically he is asking Solo to be an accomplice in his suicide. But before then, Solo will chauffeur William around town as he ties up loose ends, and the unlikely relationship they build leading to the big day is the basis for the film's simple story.

What I love so much about the film is that Solo and William only speak about the real subject once after their initial meeting. William's impending fate serves to set the tone for how conversations about everything BUT that unfold. The odd couple pairing is a more archetypal relationship depiction what we're used to from Bahrani, but it more than works due to the realism of the performances.

Bahrani's aesthetic is classical and designed to not draw attention to itself. The cinematography is beautiful, but you really don't spend any time marveling over composition, light and color. Like Ozu or Bresson, the idea here is a pure visual presentation that the viewer will not even notice.

I promise you will be moved immensely by the nearly wordless ending on the mountain. When Bahrani escapes the urban landscape that all three of his films are set against at the end of GOODBYE SOLO, it is truly something transcendental. I can't recall a scene from any recent film that is nearly as mysterious. I would love to see Bahrani shoot something entirely in a nature setting and see what kind of story he would develop.

You really, honestly can't afford to miss this great film.

By the way, I just read in an interview that Bahrani is starting to teach at the film school in New York I just transfered out of.

FML.

JEFF STAPLE x JOHN JAY

John Jay 1-2-1 w/jeffstaple. from jeffstaple on Vimeo.

Jeff Staple sat down with my dad at some conference recently for an interview about... well, everything. His early life, growing up a minority, how he ended up working in design, fashion, and then ultimately advertising at Wieden & Kennedy.

It's an hour long, but I think it's pretty interesting stuff (not just because it's my dad). Me and my brother get a little shout out in there too lol.

A WOMAN IS A WOMAN

Godard always makes me smile, frequently makes me crack up, but I laughed continuously through out A WOMAN IS A WOMAN. It is his funniest film.

The conversation about the overcooked roast beef, Alfred and Emile's absurd competition over who can do "the most extraordinary thing", Angela and Emile's quarrel using book titles, flipping the egg, the self referential New Wave shout outs... fantastically memorable scenes one after another.

A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is simultaneously playful and subversive, and endlessly endearing.

"I don't know if this is a comedy, or a tragedy... but it is a masterpiece."

(How great is that poster, by the way?)

TREELESS MOUNTAIN

Last summer I watched a great little film called IN BETWEEN DAYS, a quiet and dreamy film about the lonely existence of a young Korean girl transplanted to North America, trying not to get swallowed by a culture she struggles to understand. The filmmaker was So Yong Kim, a Brooklyn based filmmaker, originally transplanted from Korea herself.

I admired the unsentimental perspective of her film, the simple construction, and Kim's unwillingness to fall back on a predictable "coming of age" structure. I am now greatly looking forward to her new feature TREELESS MOUNTAIN. The new film was produced by Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy, who also did Kelly Reichardt's OLD JOY, Cam Archer's WILD TIGERS I HAVE KNOWN, and Aaron Katz's upcoming COLD WEATHER.

When their mother needs to leave in order to find their stranged father, seven year-old Jin and her younger sister, Bin, are left to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother's promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to acclimate to changes in their family life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed young girls eagerly anticipate their mother's homecoming. But when the bank fills up, and with their mother still not back, Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children. Taken to live on their grandparent's farm, it is here that Jin comes to learn the importance of family bonds in this beautiful, meditative, and thought-provoking second feature from So Yong Kim, the acclaimed director of IN BETWEEN DAYS.

I doubt this will be one to miss, so make sure you check it out when it comes to your town:

New York, NY – Film Forum – 4/22/09
Los Angeles, CA – Music Hall; M Park – 5/8/09
San Francisco, CA – Landmark Theatres – 5/15/09
Dallas, TX – Angelika – 5/15/09
San Diego – Gaslamp – 5/29/09
Rochester, NY – George Eastman House – 5/30/09
Atlanta, GA – Regal Tara – 6/5/09
Kahala, HI – City Cinemas – 6/5/09
Boston, MA – Kendall Square – 6/19/09
Seattle, WA – NW Film Forum – 6/26/09

VAN SANT ON WARHOL

Check out this interview Amy Taubin conducted with Gus Van Sant about Andy Warhol.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49388

PARISIAN STEAK SANDWICH

So Giada on the Food Network just made a sandwich out of all my favorite fucking foods in the world and it blew my mind.

- Croissant
- Brie
- Steak
- Arugula
- Roasted red peppers

I want.

VIVRE SA VIE

Someone plz re-release this on DVD- thx.

ORIGINALITY

Interesting- whether you agree or not.

COMPLICATED

Keegan Dewitt performing one my favorite songs off his "Islands" album.