Executives step in to defend Da Vinci Code film at Cannes Film Festival

Via the New Zealand Herald today: "Senior movie industry executives went on the offensive yesterday in defence of The Da Vinci Code after its mauling by the critics at the Cannes Film Festival. Executives took the almost unheard-of step of speaking personally to the press to deliver initial box office results that indicate a strong public appetite for more Dan Brown, despite criticisms that the adaptation of his bestselling book is boring and baffling."

Full story +

Kenneth Anger in Bremen

Those who happen to be visiting the German town of Bremen until 25 June (as you do) should take the opportunity to see a show of Kenneth Anger's films at the Künstlerhaus Bremen under the title Pleased to Meet You (ed: a reference to the Stones' Sympathy for the Devil, which rock and roll legend says was inspired by Mr Anger).

The text that accompanies the show gives us a brief introduction to Mr Anger's life and times:

"At the Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz in 1949 a group of young cinéastes came together. With their challenge to established cinema, they incorporated the new generation, the later Nouvelle Vague. The winner of the festival in the category Poetic Film was the 19-year-old American Kenneth Anger with his film Fireworks. One weekend in 1947 – Mr. and Mrs. Anger had gone to a funeral – 17-year-old Kenneth had availed himself of the opportunity and made an experimental film in his parents' apartment; it was to become a milestone in the history of the genre. While the Nouvelle Vague attempted to oppose the bourgeois traditions of the cinema, Anger's films constituted a critique of the dream factory Hollywood. He had his own, very different approach to collective dreams, myths and desire. Anger's films are not narrative, they present images of magic rituals in which each sign points to some unknown transcendence. The heightened sensuality resulting from the intensely opulent colours and the way individual images are blended imbue these films with a baroque splendour. Anger's technique of linking image and sound and his borrowings from popular culture were formative and would later impact the genre of the music video. Anger inspired the Rolling Stones to their hit song Sympathy for the Devil and greatly influenced film directors such as David Lynch, Donald Cammell, Roger Corman, R. W. Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese, who called Anger “an artist of exceptional imagination”."

This exhibition of Kenneth Anger's oeuvre at the Künstlerhaus Bremen is his first solo exhibition in Germany.

Teaser: Wal-Mart the Movie

Watch it +
©American Rights at Work www.americanrightsatwork.org/walmart

Cannes 2006

Cahier du Cinema's May issue has a special section on Cannes.

The magazine gave the cover to Sophia Coppola's Marie-Antoienette, starred by Kirsten Dunst (the rest of the cast includes god and his wife). The same issue has a French language review of Almodovar's new film 'Volver', which apparently is due out in the UK in August.

Documentary on Jack Smith

Having been a fan of director/performer/artist/writer underground pioneer Jack Smith since I discovered him in 1999 thanks to the now defunct cinema in Hoxton Square, London, I was pleased to find out about Mary Jordan's debut feature on Smith called Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis - those familiar with Smith's work will know what the reference in the title is all about (he was obsessed with Atlantis, The Thousand and One Nights and Maria Montez).

Jack Smith (left) in action

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis screened at the Tribeca film festival which folded last weekend (7/5; a review of the festival is being uploaded tonight) and hopefully will be arriving in the UK in the near future.

Meanwhile, the film's website contains clips and all sorts of Flash animations. It also gives the uninitiated a good introduction to Smith's legacy.

Hi-Beam's page on Jack Smith +

It's Cannes time...again

Is it me or it seems like yesterday since the last edition of the Cannes Festival? The arrival of the festival always catches me by surprise, like a preying feline suddenly jumping on the road. Indiewire has filed a good overview of the independent corner of Cannes 06:

"Italy, Australia and Romania are the hotbeds of world cinema, with Spain and Mexico not far behind, while Middle Eastern and Asian movies have lost their luster. That is, of course, if you believe the films chosen to screen at next week's Cannes Film Festival can be taken as a sign of cinematic prosperity."

Full article +

European Media Art Festival

EMAF, Europe's leading media art festival, starts tomorrow in the town of Osnabrück in Germany and I'll be there during the coming weekend as a guest and exhibitor. My video 'Job Interview' was selected for this year's programme. I'll be filing a dispatch early next week.

The objective of the festival is to offer comprehensive overview over the latest tendencies and developments of media art. This year's programme includes 200 new experimental films and videos plus 50 installations, performances, lectures and discussions.

Under the motto "Smart Art" the EMAF's organisers are promising to show "current works that question social conventions, take familiar things out of their context and subtly track down the absurdities of individual and social everyday life. The approaches range from popular subjects to
provocative statements that go down new paths of artistic debate in film, installation and expanded media, making playful and intelligent use of various media."

Check out the festival's site to see more details of the programme.

24 in London

The film version of the hit TV programme '24' will be shot in London, wrote the Telegraph.

Full story+

So bad it's good

Via the Guardian: a feature article about what it takes for a bad movie to be promoted to the 'so-bad-it's good' category.

Full article +

Online viewing...

See how the internet is adding possibilities to the world of film. Online film site Clickflicks.net is hosting the online voting for candidate short films, spec commercials and music videos for the 2006 Gotham City International Film & Video Festival, to be held between 29 October and 5 November in New York City.

Voting started yesterday and goes on until 15 June. The candidate films, commercials and music videos will be available for online viewing and voting in a special festival section of the site. The top two films from each of nine categories will become finalists in the festival.

Clickflicks +

Gotham Festival +

Congratulations

Kamera arrived back from its Labour Day break to find out that our regular contributor Calum Waddell is a semi-finalist in the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

Congratulations Calum!

Lists

For those of you who like best director lists, here's the latest.

Arrested development

As far as attempts to call media attention go, this press release that arrived this afternoon at Kamera's newswires takes the (dog's) biscuit. Cashing in on Snoop Dogg's Heathrow arrest, who arrived in the country yesterday to promote his new film, the PR people promoting the film issued a note to tell the media "the film is ironically told from Snoop’s prisons cell, telling the story of his life in the fast lane as a pimp. Unlike the golden prison bars and diamond crusted locks shown in the film, Snoop will be held in a West London police station. Let’s hope that his lawyer will be as good- looking as the honey in the film! Snoop’s DVD will be released on Monday, let's hope that he will be too!".

The world is getting smaller...

The San Francisco International Film Festival dedicated part of its programme to 20 films made for mobile devices with 2-inch-by-3-inch screens as part of its Pocket Cinema section.

Read full story.

Vertigo then and now

Fans of Hitchcock, which I think the whole of the Kamera fraternity are, will love this website which constrasts stills of San Francisco from the film Vertigo with images of same spots now. The places chosen looked much better on the film, I thought...

Let me see it.

DeNiro's Tribeca festival opens

The Tribeca film festival, founded by Robert De Niro, opens today with the world premiere of a movie about the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Full story

The Return of a Legend - Herschell Gordon Lewis

Recently my good friend Andy Lalino at 51st State Productions announced that he was going into business with a true legend - the exploitation director Herschell Gordon Lewis ("Blood Feast", "Two Thousand Maniacs!", "She Devils on Wheels", "The Wizard of Gore"... need I go on?). Mr Lalino was kind enough to include me on his press releases and below is the response to the HG Lewis/ 51st State Productions team-up, which will begin with a film entitled "Herschell Gordon Lewis's Grim Fairy Tales"...

Cheers!
Calum Waddell



We've experienced a tremendous reaction to the Grim Fairy Tales/Back in Blood press release sent out March 7th:
- Major horror-themed trade magazines, Fangoria and Rue Morgue, personally contacted us, with RM requesting an interview with H.G. Lewis.
- We have received inquiries from actors, crew people, and distributors. Correspondence is currently being reviewed.
- Hits on the Film State 51 website skyrocketed to over 2,000.
- Bloggers and "boardies" (message board fanatics) from all over the U.S. and the world have been writing with excitement about our projects.
- Fangoria.com, The Horror Channel, Creature-Corner and many other horror-themed websites have publicized the press release on their news pages.

H.G. Lewis is All the Rage: 2 new major studio remakes:
In addition to FS51's Back in Blood, other studios have been busily producing and releasing remakes of H.G. Lewis's films. Even more reason to begin production on our films!
- March 2006 is the release date for 2001 Maniacs, a sequel/remake of Lewis's famed horror film Two-Thousand Maniacs! on DVD. 2001 Maniacs stars Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street) and was produced by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel).
- A remake of Lewis's 1970 horror hit The Wizard of Gore is in production starring Crispin Glover as Montag the Magnificent. Montag is the lead character in Back in Blood, and FS51 feels that Glover's film will garner us an untold amount of free publicity and will familiarize the general public with the character of Montag. We can't stress how important this development is.
Carnevil kicks off pre-production
What promises to be FS51's first horror feature - Carnevil - officially kicked-off pre-production in Atlanta, Georgia this past weekend. Director/Producer/Screenwriter Andrew Allan, Producer Andy Lalino, Director of Photography Wes Pratt and Lighting Director Jeff Scolaro ventured to the site where Carnevil will be shot - a working carnival on the outskirts of the city, where the team scouted the area and shot some test footage. The weekend was a huge success as the crew prepares for production, which is slated for summer '06. Carnevil is a new feature horror film from FS51 about a cursed amusement park that seeks bloody revenge on its hellraising guests.

Grim... & Back in Blood mentioned in Fangoria magazine:
Hot off the presses! If you pick up the latest issue of Fangoria magazine (#253), the world's most popular horror trade magazine, and turn to page 20 you'll see both Grim Fairy Tales and Back in Blood listed as two H.G. Lewis features that are coming soon (look under the Terror Teletype section)! Filmmakers/FS51 partners Andrew Allan and Andy Lalino are also prominently mentioned.

For more info about FS51, please visit our official website:
www.filmstate51.com

Stage fright

New York Magazine has published an interesting article about Julia Roberts's debut on Broadway, but I beg to disagree with the author when he calls her the 'ultimate film star'. I know she's the highest paid smile in the world, but...

Read the full article.

Masters of Horror gets UK box set

About time too!

Originally the plan from Anchor Bay was to release the Masters of Horror episodes as double discs - 2 installments every couple of months. The first of these was a really impressive double helping, featuring "Dreams in the Witchhouse" by "Re-Animator" director Stuart Gordon and "Cigarette Burns" by John Carpenter. Although the Gordon installment is, arguably, a little bit creepier than the already first class Carpenter one - this made for a fantastic release. Then the news came that the next two in the set would feature Don Coscarelli's "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" (not seen this one yet, sorry folks!) and "Chocolate" - the offering from series producer Mick Garris (this one is brilliant and features regular Garris actor Henry Thomas of "ET" fame).

This has now been cancelled, however, in favour of a box set of all the one hour television episodes - including the uncut helping from Japan's Takehsi Miike (which UK viewers were treated to on cable channel Bravo in early April). Cannot say I am complaining as, so far, this series has yet to offer a dud installment (Tobe Hooper's "Dance of the Dead" seems to be the one that splits opinion, although I found it to be one of the best things the director has done over the past two decades - and certainly much better than his latest feature "Mortuary").

Right now season 2 is shooting in Vancouver, Canada, with such new names as George Romero, Wes Craven and Tom "Fright Night" Holland back onboard.

Anyway, as a wee treat, here's a few words from Stuart Gordon on how the Masters of Horror circle began.


"How it started was that Mick Garris organised a dinner for us which was a couple of years ago and there had been a documentary made by Universal called The Masters of Horror. It interviewed each of us and we didn’t get a chance to meet each other, so Mick said, ‘Let’s all have dinner together.’ It was one of the funniest dinners and everyone showed up – it was at a restaurant out in the valley and Guillermo Del Toro was there and there were some people at the next table and someone brought out a birthday cake to them. So Guillermo started singing Happy Birthday to them and he got us all to join in at the table and when we finished Guillermo said, ‘The Masters of Horror wish you a happy birthday’ (laughs) and right afterwards he said, ‘We did pretty good – maybe we should do a Christmas album.’ So we kept getting together every couple of months and new people would come each time – David Cronenberg came along once, Bryan Singer and Rob Zombie and it expanded and got crazier and crazier. Out of that came the idea of doing a series of movies and it evolved from there. It turned out everyone had a pet project that they wanted to do – so here was the opportunity. We always have fun when we get together."


Calum Waddell

Crashing out

You would have thought that being an Oscar winner translates into piles of cash, but apparently not. Entertainment Weekly magazine has written that Cathy Schulman, awarded for her production role in Crash, is 'broke' due to the legal wrangling between her and producer Bob Yari.

Full story.