ARTHOUSE FILM NEWS - Cosmic Disco Detective Rene at Facets, Chicago 11/29/23

Here is the link for the indieWIRE page with the names of the critics (& their publications) who participated in iW's year end poll re: best films & performances, etc. (which is a feature imported from Village Voice). Filmmaker/distributors who are distributing a film next year may want to get a screener to the hands of some or all of the critics listed on the page. If a lot of them like your film, it will be another useful marketing thing. The list includes print & web critics.

Talented (if not & want to be, you can learn stuff by reading about it & doing it on a small scale - short films)? A filmmaker? Storyteller? Don't have a lot of money or access to a lot of money to blow on film production & distribution? Don't have any indiewood or Hollywood connections? If you said yes to all those questions then you can still launch a filmmaking career by doing the following things, now at a lower cost than ever before: 1) study filmmaking & story telling & life & history well & then write an awesome script for a feature length project that can be produced for no money or very little money. You have plenty of projects for inspiration (any early Jim Jarmusch film, any early Hal Hartley film, Clerks, Slacker, most Woody Allen movies, most Ed Burns movies, She's Gotta Have It, just to name a few), 2) shoot the film on DV or another affordable, high quality video format (& remember to keep your day job during this entire proces

Just finished watching Episodes 6 - 8 of HBO's mostly excellent series Rome . I say mostly excellent because in Episode 6 & 8 they glossed over 2 huge battles. The final battle between Caesar & Pompey (where Caesar was outnumbered 5 to 1 by Pompey's forces) was depicted in like 1 or 2 minutes using fuzzy, slow-mo soldiers fighting medium shots. Where is the attention to detail HBO? A gigantic battle that was the last obstacle in Caesar's path to turning the Roman republic into an empire depicted in fuzzy, slow-mo medium shots?????!!!!??? That battle alone should have been 1 whole episode, depicted in an epic manner. Also, in Episode 8 we get to see Cleopatra's Egypt. The relatively awesome production design that showed up on Episodes 1 - 3 are sadly absent when it comes to bringing Egypt to life. The main city (Alexandria?) where the Egyptian action takes place looks horribly underpopulated & it does not look like the rulers of Egypt had an army. The battle

David Lynch (center) working with actors. I just listened to Lance Weiler's interview with Absurda's (David Lynch's company) Eric Bassett re: distribution plans for INLAND EMPIRE. Very informative interview & it is encouraging to see a well known director embrace self-distribution. In the interview Bassett said that Lynch will not be working inside the Hollywood system again & that on his next film he will handle not just US distribution but also world distribution. On a more local note, Lynch is supposed to be in DC for INLAND EMPIRE premiere in January (exact date & venue info. coming as soon as I figure those out), looking forward to that. Maybe he'll bring the cow. Check out the Bassett interview here. - Sujewa

Sounds very exciting. Check it out here & hear all about how David Lynch & co. is gonna do their INLAND EMPIRE self-distribution magic. - Sujewa

Still a few time consuming things to do before I can start selling the Date Number One DVD. Hopefully by the end of this week all that stuff will be finished & I can at least make 100 DVDs available for sale. Grrrr. But it will be worth the wait, the film is looking & sounding a lot better. Also, much theatrical screening plans for '07 are being worked on. Will have more March '07 screening dates to announce very soon. In the meantime, & on the bright side, here is a segment of the Date Number One review from my favorite film blog GreenCine Daily (w/ some words made large by me): "... witty (I particularly like the recurring references to a band's unlikely popularity in Ohio), often inventive (the story in which the first date isn't really the first date at all is particularly well-written and performed) and, even better, airy : characters are given time and space to spell out their views on abortion, Buddhism, quantum physics or the ongoing war in Sr

I just watched the first two episodes of the HBO series Rome . Good stuff - as historical dramas go, probably the best production design of any of the movies or TV shows about the Roman old republic/empire that I've seen. Also HBO's take on Rome is more socially nuanced - with humor & greater attention to social & religious customs. In Episode 2 the Senate or whatever the political assembly in Rome is called takes a vote on declaring Julius Caesar an enemy of the republic BUT the whole procedure is treated as a religious event, with an old priest presiding over the whole affair & having the final word on what happened. So one of the main differences between old Rome and modern US & other European offshoot countries - governmentally speaking - is that the government is no longer intertwined with religion. I guess we have The Enlightenment to thank for that. Also, according to this Wikipedia entry, Enlightenment also led to liberalism & capitalism - not bad

One of the self-distributed indie films that I've blogged about this year - Four Eyed Monsters - is gonna get some additional help with distribution now that they've won a Sundance Channel award. Read all about it at indieWIRE . - Sujewa

Went to DC for a Positive Force benefit tonight. Soccer Team & The Evens played. $s from the show was to benefit The Washington Free Clinic . Got to hang out with Mark Andersen , Chad Clark (of Beauty Pill fame) & say hello to a person (dang, i do not remember her name, she had a nice jacket, a cool looking camera & a nice smile) who came to the 11/4 Date Number One screening/We Are Family benefit (& also finally delivered the $s raised at that event to Mark A. of We Are Family), & said hello to Ian MacKaye . It is nice to live in a city where a lot of the creative & activist people I dig are very accessible - or at least I can talk to them at shows. The Evens sounded a lot better than when I first heard/saw them live at the same church (St. Stephen's (sp?) at 16th & Newton, NW DC) a year or two ago. The sound was a lot more fuller & felt more confident. The two member band sounded like a four member or three member band - a lot fuller sound than a d

Had lunch with my mom & sister today - to celebrate my recent birthday. Mom told me that when I was born in Sri Lanka in the early 1970's the doctors said I would only live for 5 days because I had yellow fever. But a nurse told her to ignore the doctors & breastfeed her new baby & that it would survive. Thanks nurse! :) So obviously I did not die from yellow fever. Very cool. There is a hospital, a military hospital here in the DC area & it is called Walter Reed. According to Don, my boss/the owner of the bookstore, Walter Reed was a military doctor who figured out how to treat yellow fever. Reed figured out his yellow fever treatment when the Panama Canal was being built. Go Walter Reed! Good job. Childbirth in 1970's Sri Lanka sounded like very tough work. Mom said she was 22, knew very little about child birth, & that there were no drugs to numb the pain - & that giving birth to me was very painful. Apparently I came out with the umbilical cord wrapp

A lot of people are going to be making movies now that movie making is affordable, actually a lot of people are already making movies & of course a lot have already made movies in the past 100+ years. But it still costs a lot of money (& it is a lot of work) to distribute the finished movies theatrically. It costs less money or a far less amount of money in some cases to place a movie on DVD & make it available to customers all over the country - that's if you can convince various retailers to carry your DVD. Filmmakers can however stream their movies through a internet VOD (video-on-demand) service such as GreenCine VOD (note: according to GreenCine "for the moment, most Macs are not supported" by them so mostly only PCs can be used for their video-on-demand service, for now) or many other companies that offer the VOD service & get the film to the consumer's computer/to the consumers "hands" for a lower cost - both to the filmmaker & the