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

HBO continues to put the rest of the filmed entertainment making industry to shame with their awesome shows (Rome, Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc.). How does HBO keep coming up with hit after hit (actually, i am not sure if the HBO shows i dig are really "hits", but HBO does keep cranking out some very excellent work, as far as my eyes & brain are concerned)? Anyway, if you are an Entourage fan and you want to see more along those lines but perhaps with characters with less access to Hollywood success & more struggle, then check out HBO's show Unscripted . It is out on DVD (probably has been for some time, i just saw 10 or 12 episodes for the first time yesterday). Unscripted follows a young actor & his friends, all actors (unlike in Entourage), as they tackle Hollywood. The tone is less light, more dramatic. There is a lot of fun & funny moments in the show also. But generally, Unscripted is darker than Entourage. But very good, check it out

About James Lyons (1960 - 2007), from Filmmaker Magazine's blog : "If you didn’t know Jim personally and just recognize his name from movie credits, then you most probably remember him as an editor. His credits include four films by Todd Haynes – Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine and Far from Heaven – as well as Spring Forward, The Virgin Suicides, Silver Lake Life, and, most recently, A Walk into the Sea: The Danny Williams Story. The latter, a documentary by Esther Robinson about her uncle’s relationship with Andy Warhol and The Factory, won the Teddy at Berlin this year and receives its U.S. premiere at Tribeca this month. He was also an AIDS activist and educator." Here is the link to indieWIRE's tribute page to Lyons . Here is a paragraph from Spring Forward's director Tom Gilroy's entry regarding Lyons, from the indieWIRE tribute page: "Although Jim was a dear friend and peer, he was, in many ways, the closest thing I ever had to a mentor. To me, he was

Long before I became a DIY filmmaker, around 1990-91, I checked out a book by Rick Schmidt called Feature Filmmaking At Used Car Prices from the Gaithersburg, MD library. In it was a mention of one Jon Jost - super independent & self-reliant filmmaker. And of course by the time I first read about Jost he had been making real indie/DIY movies for probably longer than I had been alive. So, after all this time, it is great to hear that Jost is still going strong; selling lots of DVDs at well attended screenings full of passionate audience members and tackling complicated and important topics with his movies (most recently Homecoming, and La Lunga Ombra - read about both at this LA Weekly article ). Read about the experience of attending a recent Jost screening at Jerry Lentz's blog. Here is a sample from the post: "Jon Jost was everything I expected and more. He looks like a Social Studies teacher I had, but acts like the Wood Shop teacher we all loved because he wasn't

A number of people larger than half of the total US population, about 160 million people, are forced to live in sub-human/less than second class citizenship (both legally and in all other areas of life) conditions in India right now. Get all the sad and enraging news at this Human Rights Watch document: India's Dalits: between atrocity and protest . The same article can be found at the website Open Democracy , with comments and related links. - Sujewa

As everyone in the country and probably the world must know by now, a horrible tragedy happened earlier today at Virginia Tech ; just a couple of hours from where I write this, at a college with many connections to families & individuals throughout the DC area. 33 people are dead, a senseless loss, and thousands of others are deeply affected by the shootings today. It is difficult to come up with words that seem sufficient, words that are able to properly deal with the magnitude of the loss experienced today by the Virginia Tech community. I am sure that millions of us throughout the country and the world grieve with you tonight Virginia Tech. We wish you the best in dealing with today's tragic events, and many of us will no doubt gladly do what we can to try to make things even a little better for you. :: LINKS Here is the link to a blog by filmmaker and Virginia Tech professor Paul Harrill. Virginia Tech's website Google search with links to many stories re: Virginia Tec

Check it out here . Very interesting. Even though most people in America may not have heard about it, lots more Native American indie films are being made than ever before. Thanks GreenCine Daily for the link! - Sujewa

For all you DC area readers: my favorite video store - Potomac Video near Chevy Chase Circle in DC - now has DIY/real indie filmmaker Jon Moritsugu's excellent & accessible flick Fame Whore for rent on DVD. Here's the link to the store . Below is the review of the film that I wrote & published in this blog last year. FAME WHORE Review Review originally published 9/27/06 Jon Moritsugu's 1997 comedy-drama Fame Whore (due out soon on DVD) tells 3 stories: 1) about a tennis pro, #1 in the world - as he often tells everyone, or rather yells at everyone, one of the most annoying characters in cinema, and the turn his wealthy & successful life takes when a French newspaper outs him as being gay, 2) about an artist with very little talent, with I would say anti-talent, for singing attempting to master & create careers in music, video, photography, film and several other mediums of expression, played well & hilariously by Amy Davis, 3) about a lonely & frie