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

Although I am a big fan of several Jarmusch movies, I must say that I did not connect too greatly with Coffee and Cigarettes . There are a couple of excellent segments in that movie: the one with Alfred Molina, also the final one where an old man hears classical music while he shares a cup of coffee with a friend. Here are a couple of reviews of the movie, some loved it, some hated it: In Love with C & C: Time Peter "Rolling Stone" Travers Not So Crazy about C & C: Film Forward " Smug and Rather Pointless ", review from the World Socialist Web Site :: Now let's end this post with a link to a lengthy consideration of the movie (he likes it) by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Regardless of the reaction to the movie, it is inspiring to see a whole feature being built on a few simple things: usually a couple of people meeting for a conversation. In that regard C & C is a valuable film for indie filmmakers to think about. It may be possible to use the C & C "

I guess I am taking a little break from indie film news and reading up on world affairs. The latest find (or re-discovery, I've seen this site before): This website accuses Norway of supporting the Sri Lankan terrorist group LTTE . LTTE and the Sri Lankan government have been at war for close to 20 years. Recently , government forces have been achieving significant victories against the LTTE. Millions of people in Sri Lanka and around the world, myself included, eagerly await the return of peace to that island nation.

someone (perhaps Spike Lee or the next "Spike Lee"?) should make a movie about Philadelphia police bombing the MOVE house in '85 & killing 11 people, including children (of course the movie should show how things got to that point & the aftermath, some background can be found in this Wikipedia article). regardless of what MOVE members may have done to get the police & the local government to act against them (which do not include military style lethal assaults on people by MOVE members, as far as I know), getting shot at & bombed & killed by government employees that citizens pay to protect & serve the community must have sucked majorly. here is the link to an '05 USA TODAY article on the matter, 20 years later. here is a segment from the article: "Twenty years ago this Friday, city police dropped a bomb on this block and let it burn. Five children and six adults, members of a small radical collective called MOVE, died; 61 homes in a mid

the previous one did not look too good, after a while, i didn't like the dark background, so we are back to the old green & white template for this blog. still missing a lot of the links, those coming soon. - sujewa

if you look carefully, that's Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark) on the 3rd photo from top, on right hand side of the frame. if anyone sees a bigger version of that still out there on the web, let me know. If you've seen & liked Stranger Than Paradise, then you probably remember Aunt Lotte (played by Cecillia Stark ). The scenes with that character are very funny & also kind of sweet. In this Vue Weekly interview producer & filmmaker Jim Stark says that Aunt Lotte is played by his grandmother. Here is the relevant segment of the interview: " VUE WEEKLY: Your film career begins with Jim Jarmusch’s early features. Did you guys know each other from Ohio? JIM STARK: No, I was a corporate lawyer in New York and had met his girlfriend Sara Driver, who’s also a filmmaker. She approached me, and I got involved in Stranger Than Paradise, which starred my 86-year-old grandmother, among other people. She plays Aunt Lotte. Some people think she steals the movie." Read the e

The article is by Jay Craven, writer/director of Disappearances . Craven talks about how a very small team took the film to 100 small towns, here is a segment of the article: "That’s when I decided to launch a 100 Town Tour of the state. We needed cash, so while we waited for movie theaters to clear their schedules, we started playing town halls, granges and old opera houses. You can rent most of them for $50 and set up the show in less than an hour. And you take home all the cash at the end of the night. My two-person staff is no stranger to self-distribution. Immediately after playing the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, we cycled my first feature film, Where the Rivers Flow North, to 212 U.S. venues over 51 weeks, helping to stimulate a healthy video release. But we’d never gone so deep into our home state." Read the entire article here.

Day For Night blog quotes a few paragraphs from Jonathan Rosenbaum's book Dead Man, which is about the Jarmusch film Dead Man . The quoted segment deals with the notion of independence in filmmaking as it is played out through the careers of Jarmusch and Tarantino. Check it out here. And just a side thought from myself: if it isn't already, Dead Man will eventually be considered one of the best/most important/valuable American movies of the 20th century by important people who make such lists & collections: AFI, Time magazine, the Library of Congress, etc. That's what I'm feeling.

Tired of hearing about Japanese financed, indiewood distributed Jim Jarmusch movies at this blog? Wanna hear about some ultra-low budget, self-distributed and excellent films? Then take a look at this long review I wrote of the yet-largely-undiscovered but well made & entertaining indie mockumentary The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah . Flick's director Chris Hansen just announced that the DVD is available through Customflix . Check out the review! Buy the DVD! And we'll be back with more Jarmusch posts soon :), got 3 days left on the JJ blog-a-thon! :: And in other DIY DVD news, my well received (by the 500 or so audience members so far, including a half a dozen reviewers) flick Date Number One will definitely be available on DVD starting at some point in February (just a half a dozen more hours of work left on the DVD portion of the project) from the Wild Diner Store & a few other places, more on that DVD & the film very soon. Screening of DNO

Read all about it here . Farmer speaks after a screening of Dead Man. Here is a segment of the press release: "Gary Farmer, a cultural activist, musician, citizen of the Cayuga Nation and an actor who has performed in more than 75 films and television shows -- including director Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man and the highly successful Smoke Signals -- will speak next Thursday (Feb. 1) at the opening night of the Native Film Series at Indiana University Bloomington." Read the rest here .

So how's that for an interesting blog name? Complex name aside, The Film Vituperatem has an enthusiastic review of Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man , written for the Jarmusch blog-a-thon happening now. Here is a segment from the review: "Aftertaste: I have no idea what happened to Jim Jarmusch in the four years between Night On Earth and this. It's like he became an entirely different director. From two films about short stories with very little plot, to this deep tale of fate, rebirth, and spirituality. I have two more films to watch of his to complete my study of his works, and after having seen this and Ghost Dog , I'll tell you I'm completely stoked." Read the entire review here .

Check out the quote from a Dead Man review & a few excellent stills that illustrate the point at the Esoteric Rabbit Blog .

5 cabs, 5 cities, 1 night. Night On Earth is perhaps the last film in the initial mostly comedy wave that Jarmusch rode starting with Stranger Than Paradise. After this movie, Jarmusch movies became more serious, with Dead Man & Broken Flowers (not counting Coffee & Cigarettes, which I consider to be a long term side project, a B-sides type thing, but still funny & good at points, more on that flick later). Night On Earth is the first Jarmusch movie that I saw in a movie theater. It was a grand experience. I think some of the people in attendance at a theater in Chicago (I think, maybe DC, memory fuzzy on that item) clapped when they saw a tracking shot that looked like one of Jarmusch's famous sidewalk/road tracking shots from Down By Law or Mystery Train. This Wikipedia entry is a good introduction or a re-introduction to Night On Earth. The Brooklyn & Rome sections of that movie were truly hilarious. Being stuck in a cab for a long time is tiring at times, but st

google's adsense was placing some undesirable ads in this blog (namely, an ad for what looked like an escort service) so i disabled the ads (yeah, we're wild, but not THAT wild :), which messed up the template, so i am going with this new template (i was getting tired of the old template anyway). will have to add the old links to this blog, be back later today or early tomorrow with more Jim Jarmusch posts & the links where they should be. thanks!

In the YouTube clip (not sure what show or doc this clip is from, if anyone knows, let me know, i wanna buy it or rent it) Screamin ' Jay Hawkins ( pictured - from Mystery Train. a song of his, i think the title is I Put A Spell On You, was introduced to a whole new audience through Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise, and of course Hawkins acted in Mystery Train ) talks about being a POW in WWII, being tortured by the Japanese (is this a true story or a Tom Waits like act/made up story?). Also in the clip: Jarmusch talking about how Hawkins had a hard time, at first, working with the Japanese actors in Mystery Train. Very interesting clip. Check it out here . - Sujewa

Read it here . Another JJ blog-a-thon post!