ONE - ARTHOUSE FILM NEWS - Cosmic Disco Detective Rene at Film Noir Cinema, NYC starting 7/12/24

Had some cold/fever type thing (almost fully recovered now) the last couple of days. So I slept a lot & when awake watched a lot of Battlestar Galactica episodes on DVD (didn't watch any episodes fully when they first aired). Pretty decent story telling & entertainment. About the show, from Wikipedia : "Ronald D. Moore tackled the reimagining with realism in mind, portraying the shows heroes as being part of a "flawed" humanity, and drawing inspiration from the September 11, 2001 attacks and their aftermath. In the reimagined series, many characters struggle with deep personal flaws; for example, Adama and his son have a profoundly dysfunctional relationship, while Colonel Tigh is an alcoholic. Their enemy is capable of living among them unnoticed and willing to carry out suicide attacks , allowing an exploration of moral and ethical issues brought up by the War on Terrorism . The show has dealt with Cylon and human suicide bombers, the torture of prisoners,...

Jenkins & Melancholy sounds like either a 60's or early 90's band. But what we are talking about here is filmmaker Barry Jenkins showing his movie Medicine for Melancholy at the Toronto International Film Festival. indieWIRE has a nice interview with Jenkins; apparently breaking up is good for indie film: (iW) "Please discuss how the idea for "Medicine For Melancholy" came about... (Jenkins) This film spun out of breakup (lame, I know) and a filmmaking drought in the four years after graduating college. I hadn't made a film, not even a single short, since leaving film school and this breakup brought me face to face with where I was in my life and where I was and wasn't heading. When you're in a relationship, that union serves as a sort of buffer to the world. It didn't matter that I was a filmmaker, yet wasn't making films. I was in love. Being tossed out of that shell was a wake up call. The film literally grew out of those two reali...

Atlanta is a sexy town, and of course the Atlanta Film Festival is run by some very cool people (many from Maryland, so you know that the chances of the ATL fest selections being eclectic & interesting are high), so, go explore the possibility of sending your new indie masterpiece south to the ATL . - Sujewa

More here . I think I'll try to get Indie Film Blogger Road Trip edited by then so I can submit it. - Sujewa

(note: whenever I say indie in this post I most likely mean real indie - low budget/no star/off-Hollywood/affordable-to-create-for-many-humans movies, not multi-million dollar indiewood stuff like Juno, thnx!) A film like Slacker or Stranger Than Paradise would be far more affordable to make now; on digital video - but, the likelihood of such unique/interesting off-Hollywood movies being made in great numbers is still slim, and the chances of such indie work getting wide distribution is still small. It is however far more easier now than in the early Jarmusch (late 70's) & even early Linklater (late 80's) days to get started with filmmaking due to digital video and the availability of filmmaking information on the web. So, what, if anything, guarantees success in the indie world? And is it easier to achieve now than, let's say, 20 years ago? Well, it depends on how you define success. It is far more easier to make a feature length film - using digital video (can be done...

Outside of cable - and by cable I mean HBO - NBC has some pretty good shows. Check out a full episode of 30 Rock:

Being non-"white" & concious of the artificiality of race theory & living in Europe - the home land of the current version of race theory (the one that helped out with European colonialism) popular in the world - must be, at the least, very interesting (when it doesn't totally suck). Looks like the new UK indie feature Bunch of Guys will touch on some of that reality: Bunch Of Guys

From Gabe's blog : "Bob Longino's coverage has centered on the film scene, interviews, and local coverage. Because of the seriousness with which he approached film culture, the Atlanta Film Festival has thrived in recent years. Coverage in the paper of record is invaluable to a non-profit event such as ours. Since we cannot afford to buy ads on par with a studio or commercial distributor. By running photos, stories, articles, interviews, and recommendations the AJC elevated a slate of "unknowns" to the level of commercial and studio releases. Without a full time critic with the history, knowledge, and critical acumen of a Bob Longino on staff, I fear that festival coverage will suffer mightily. Making it all the more difficult to reach out to the masses. Coverage in the paper lends credibility, respectability, and legitimacy to smaller indie works. Without it, such projects will suffer without mainstream coverage. On behalf of the Atlanta Film Festival, and as a ...

So, at long last, step 1 in the 2 step process of creating retail DVDs of Date Number One is done. More on that here . At this rate around mid-September I should have the DNO DVDs available for sale. At least a couple of years later than originally envisioned, but on the bright side, only a couple of years later :) - Sujewa