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

Check out the list at The Film Panel Notetaker .

Bill Maher interview about Religulous:

Looking forward to checking this one out:

A video about an Amazon tribe working with Google to try to save their lands:

Spent like 12 hours on Tue moving all my stuff from one place in Kensington, MD to another place in Kensington. Then got on the Amtrak (hanging out & working & snacking on a table in the cafe car while the land rolls by outside big train windows is the way to travel from DC area to NYC), came over to Brooklyn, picked up the keys to my 2 month sublet in Kosciuszko St ., hung out/dinner with a couple of film bloggers from Indie Film Blogger Road Trip - Brandon Harris & Brian Geldin , & afterwards met the new roommates; good times. And today, just had breakfast at a local diner near Kosci street (pretty cheap - $6.35 for 2 eggs, home fries, sausage, toast, & coffee - & good), met/talked with a few of people who live in the neighborhood/fellow diners at the diner. At a cyber cafe nearby at the moment. Nice to be in Brooklyn. Living in 2 places (NY & MD) for the next couple of months should be fun. Also am planning on shooting a new movie in NY & MD over the

Maybe post-World War II India is kind of the new old world, not quite the old old world, anyway, a clip from an interview with Satyajit Ray (look below the clip for a little bit about Ray, from the youtube page ): "Ray directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali, won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Document at Cannes film festival. Along with Aparajito and Apur Sansar, the film forms the Apu trilogy. Ray did scripting, casting, scoring, cinematography, art direction, editing and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. He was a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray received many major awards, including an Academy Honorary Award in 1992." From this youtube page . - Sujewa

For info. on Zombie Girl: The Movie , go here . Here's the trailer for ZG:

The new doc Gogol Bordello Non-Stop will play at the AFI Fest in LA on Nov. 1. Here's the trailer:

indieWIRE's got a new first person piece , text from a speech given by Ted Hope, kind of an anti-"the sky is falling" speech. From the article: "I can't talk about the "crisis" of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren't in crisis. The business is changing, but for us -- us who are called Indie Filmmakers -- that's good that the business is changing. Filmmaking is an incredible privilege and we need to accept it as such -- and accept the full responsibility that comes with that privilege." Read the rest of the article at iW . - Sujewa

At TrustMovies blog . Here's a little bit: "But is true film criticism in any more of a crisis now than at any earlier time? The panel seemed not all that concerned with the "crisis now" attitude." Read the rest of the post here . - Sujewa

"NEW YORK—Citing unsafe practices and potential toxic contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency shut down a small ghost- entrapment operation in downtown Manhattan today, and had four of the business' spectral-containment specialists arrested in the process." More here .

From the interview : " There are a lot of people speaking in their native languages in this movie. I could not make a WWII film with Nazis speaking English. I made the decision that everyone speak their native language. This film is about barriers, language, culture, all that stuff. So how you gonna have a scene where Train is teaching [Angelo] to communicate by tapping on his chest if they're both speaking English? Where is going to be the conflict, the drama, with these four black American soldiers stumbling into a small Tuscan village if everyone is speaking the same language?" Read the rest at Salon . - Sujewa

Cinematical 's got a nice review of Spike Lee's new movie Miracle at St. Anna . So far, since She's Gotta Have It, I've liked every Spike Lee joint that I've seen - I think I've seen most of them - perhaps all but 2 or 3, so I am looking forward to checking out Miracle, and I like it already. I like the idea of Miracle because the lead characters are four non-"white" World War II US soldiers. As far as I know hundreds of thousands of non-"white" soldiers (coming mostly from colonies in Asia & Africa, and of course the segregated US) fought on the side of the Allies but, over 60 years after the end of the war, their stories have barely begun to be told in fiction films. I enjoyed the recent French movie Indigenes , which dealt with a group of non-"white" soldiers from French colonies fighting for the Allies in WWII - even though the ending of that movie was kind of depressing (but then war in general is depressing & the movi

Kinda nice being too busy to blog 'cause I've been editing like 8-10 hours a day (& working at the bookstore when not editing or sleeping) for the last 5 days or so (better than the opposite situation; blogging too much & not putting enough time into filmmaking). But, very soon I should be done with both Indie Film Blogger Road Trip (IFBRT) editing & fest submission #1 & Date Number One DVD production (on that project just need to finalize the DVD cover design & order the DVDs), & then will be back for some blogging. Also nice to have '08 projects #1 (DNO DVD) & #2 (IFBRT) very near completion at this point, so that I can plan on starting work on '08 projects #3 & #4 (two feature length, ultra-ultra low budget & superdelicious comedies) in October in NYC. Until I get back to blogging, check out the blog links at IFBRT's blog , on the right side - scroll down - it's like a mini iW blogs page over there - headlines from about