randomWalks: cinema

Mr. Wright said in a statement: " `Deadline' is an exceptional, thought-provoking look at one man's struggle with controversial issues surrounding our criminal justice system. It's about life and death and the power of one decision." David Corvo, the executive director of "Dateline NBC," said he and Neal Shapiro, president of NBC News, agreed that "Dateline" was the best place for the documentary. Mr. Corvo said he could not recall a broadcast network purchasing a documentary and presenting it in its entirety, although there have been cases on "Dateline" where portions of documentaries have been used in news stories. Mr. Corvo said his staff saw independent documentary filmmakers not as competitors but as different voices for the program.

The big news this week is that JUON the Japanese horror sensation that sold out at the New York Asian Film Festival in a matter of minutes, is opening theatrically on July 23 at the Angelika. There's a Hollywood remake (produced by indie director Sam Raimi) coming out this October, but wouldn't you rather see the original?

NBC to Air Award-Winning Documentary "Deadline" on July 30

award-winning documentary "Deadline," which takes viewers directly into the emotional and legal storm surrounding former Illinois Governor George Ryan's extraordinary decision to commute the death sentences of all those on death row, will air on NBC during a special 2-hour "Dateline" program at 8 p.m. on July 30th.

Have all your friends over and host a viewing party!

Many are stunned by Matt Damon's tearful, hysterical display in 1997, when he admits that Ben Affleck single-handedly penned the entire script for Good Will Hunting, and only credited Damon with co-authorship because 'he printed it out on my fucking computer.'

The Morning News: Great Oscar Gaffes

This idea of leaving a great deal of open space for the spectator is not limited to the end of the film. I have always had the desire to have the kind of film where I have created a great deal of spaces inside the film, where, like a puzzle, the spectator has to fill in the spaces -- I like to create those kinds of spaces where the personalities in the film begin to engage with one another and at the same time leave room for their spectator to connect them in a way in which they would like to see them connected. Some people like their movies to be perfect as they describe it, but I don't seek that kind of perfection. To me perfection is defined by how much the spectator can engage in the movie, and so a good movie is one that involves the spectator as a part of it and not as a captive person.

From a 1998 interview with Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

For Albert, the film's casting directors are seeking a 17 to 18-year-old African-American male who is "stout-hearted as well as stout ...exuberant, funny and sweet." The actor should also be able to rap, sing and dance. For Old Weird Harold, the directors are seeking a 17-year-old African-American male who is very tall (around 6'5) and somewhat awkward.

Fat Albert Casting Call :washingtonpost.com

In January 2003, Republican Governor George Ryan granted blanket clemency to all 167 people on death row in Illinois, commuting their sentences to life without parole. With astounding access to special clemency hearings, the death row prisoners, exonerated men and Governor Ryan himself, directors Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson bring us directly into the emotional and legal storm surrounding Ryan’s extraordinary decision.

Deadline premiered at Sundance last week. The Chicago Tribue notes George Ryan's participation in the screenings of the film:

The Sundance Film Festival may be flush with charismatic yet troubled movie heroes, but only one is a gruff 69-year-old Republican Illinois ex-governor under federal indictment.

Yes, George Ryan is doing Sundance.

Ryan, who appeared at events Friday and Sunday, is the lead character/star of "Deadline," one of 16 feature-length documentaries in competition at this pre-eminent festival for American independent film. Directed by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson, the movie chronicles the three months from the ex-governor's call for a death penalty moratorium to his declaration of blanket clemency for 167 Death Row inmates just days before he left office last January.

(u/p: rwalks/rwalks)

Iranian Cinema 101 in the Washington Post, timed for the start of a festival at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Harold Ramis, the director of the film and one of its writers, said last week that since it came out he has heard from Jesuit priests, rabbis and Buddhists, and that the letters keep coming. "At first I would get mail saying, 'Oh, you must be a Christian, because the movie so beautifully expresses Christian belief,' " Mr. Ramis said during a conversation on his mobile phone as he was walking the streets of Los Angeles. "Then rabbis started calling from all over, saying they were preaching the film as their next sermon. And the Buddhists! Well, I knew they loved it, because my mother-in-law has lived in a Buddhist meditation center for 30 years and my wife lived there for 5 years."

New York Times story on the manifold spiritual resonances of the Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day.

We have managed to get our fix of lighter cinematic fare in theaters, where we have seen "Finding Nemo," "Intolerable Cruelty" and even "Down With Love" (that one was Jen's idea). But this means that we will not have those movies to vary our Netflix viewing in the future. Now we are debating whether to skip movies while they are in theaters so that we can mix them into our Netflix queue. (We could also simply update the queue, one friend pointed out, but so far we have not done that because we fear that we might never order the must-see movies.)

Friends who have subscribed to Netflix say they have encountered a similar problem, with the result that they cycle through the lighter movies quickly while the serious ones sit gathering dust for weeks or months. Indeed, I have a theory that Netflix's records would show that all of us tend to keep serious movies for much longer than we keep the lighter ones.

NYT: Catching Up on the Classics? Bring Tissues.

"The new group is called the Groonies, because they happen to live in a town where [Data], the Chinese kid, lives ... and he's got an electronics repair shop and all the kids hang out at his shop. He has this Chinese accent and he calls the Goonies the Groonies, and so the new kids call themselves the Groonies, until they get into a situation where the old Goonies have to save the new Groonies, or vice versa."

The 'Goonies' sequel is certainly off on the wrong foot.

That's a loaded question. What I was listening to on the car ride to my office. I was listening to . . . oh, my god. I'm turning red. I don't know why that is. This is why I had to get out of psychoanalysis, because my analyst after three years was like, you know, after coming here three days a week for three years, I still don't know anything about you. I have this fear of being specific.

Someone said this question is for both Jesse and for the co-producer and asked, ''What is the movie about?'' And we both looked at each other and were both equally kind of dumbfounded. There's no real easy way to put in one sentence what this movie's about.

New York Times: Questions for Jesse Friedman, of Capturing the Friedmans.

I saw the film in an air-conditioned, pitch-black press screening room at Sundance earlier this year and when the first frames started rolling, I realized I only vaguely knew who the Weather Underground were-a hazy memory from high school history class, a faint recollection of a Bob Dylan song. As I watched, I kept asking myself how had I not known about this splinter student group that emerged in the late 60s, went underground in 1970, and by the time it disbanded in 1976 had taken credit for bombing two dozen public buildings, including a bathroom in the State Department? They even busted Timothy Leary out of jail!

If you want to see a real movie that takes up difficult questions about revolution, skip Matrix: Reloaded and take in The Weather Underground.

Here's Guerrilla News Network's interesting take on the movie as well as a Village Voice review and another one.

The notion that some human beings are not really human but, rather, mere slaves, nonhuman ciphers, and therefore expendable, is exactly the vision of the revolutionary hero and also of the mass terrorist. The Matrix is where all violent fanatics insist that they are living, even when they are not.
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The only thing setting Zion apart from the good-guy planets in The Phantom Menace or Star Trek is that it seems to have been redlined at some moment in the mythic past and is heavily populated by people of color. They are all, like Morpheus, grave, orotund, and articulate to the point of prosiness, so that official exchanges in Zion put one in mind of what it must have been like at a meeting at the Afro-American Studies department at Harvard before Larry Summers got to it. (And no sooner has this thought crossed one's mind when lo! there is Professor Cornel West himself, playing one of the Councillors.)

Terry was the person who said, 'Look, screw ethics. Just shoot. Tell the story. Document what's going on.' His justification was: 'Your film might be the only record of 150 people's hard work. And if I'm not going to make a film out of this, you guys better get one.'

First go vegan pointed out that Gandalf is anti-death penalty, now the actor playing Aragorn in the Lord of the Ring movies has come out against the U.S.'s pending war on Iraq, comparing the U.S. to Mordor.

Pop Culture Junk Mail (Dec. 1) sez:

If you enjoyed the film, you've got to watch the DVD with the commentary turned on. Not only are director Chris Smith and producer Sarah Price on the commentary, but Mark and his familiar buddy, the perennially out-of-it Mike Schank, comment right along with them. Mark and Mike are just as goofy as they were in the first go-round, and really, watching the commentary is like getting a whole new "American Movie" sequel.

Elvis Mitchell on Velocity, starring crufty pagan Fairuza Balk.

At Transom.org, Errol Morris discusses his work with photographer Nubar Alexanian, and answers questions from readers.

As exhilarating as most of his films are, Brakhage's work can also be impenetrable, and if viewers don't happen to be in the mood to use those parts of their brains that Brakhage is interested in engaging, then his films can be maddeningly opaque, hermetic, obscure, academic. Of course, these are the terms most often used -- usually in tandem with "elitist" -- to dismiss abstract art, whether it's on the wall or on the page. Such epithets are meant to flatter and glorify the un-curious and the anti-intellectual at the expense of viewers -- or readers or listeners -- who aren't afraid to have their curiosity rewarded with occasional moments of frustration or confusion. Those who prefer their art safely representational have the security of knowing they'll rarely be confounded; on the other hand, they may not get to experience those occasional moments of connection, clarity and even bliss that occur when one encounters an artist's pure, if abstract, effort to communicate the ineffable.

After 35 years, the fabled movie cut from hours and hours of film and audio tape recorded on the Merry Pranksters' bus is being released on video in 10 or so episodes. I found out this morning and ordered a copy of the first episode right away. I've been wanting to see this ever since I read Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the $29 tape includes footage of Neal Cassady's famous rants -- the same Neal Cassady who became Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's On The Road -- which makes it priceless, if you ask me.

Apple is hosting the first trailer for the upcoming Lord of the Rings movies.