The statues are all distributed, the corks are all popped, and now it is time to talk about the 82nd Academy Awards in the past tense. We’ll get to who won, but first off I’d like to talk about who lost: the viewing audience. This has to be one of the worst awards broadcasts in recent memory. Overlong and underwhelming, the only thing interesting in the show was actually finding out who won, which is weird because that often takes a backseat to the rest of the spectacle.
Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were charming, albeit neutered, hosts. They farmed the opening number out to Neil Patrick Harris, which was predictably fine, but it seemed like a complete redux of his bouts as Tony and Emmy host. On paper it sounds poignant, but in practice it felt stale. I long for the days when Billy Crystal would superimpose himself into the top nominated films. I can understand the new hosts wanting to move forward with an original spin, only this felt like a step backwards. Read on...
I’ve been mostly quiet on the subject of the Oscars this year. Instead of throw my hat into the race, I’d like to offer up what I’ve noticed of the ways my friends and colleagues have approached the subject. After all, it is basically the Super Bowl of film events. So insane has the madness surrounding the Oscars become, that there is an entire swath of calendar, getting longer and longer every year, known as “Awards Season”. In the end, I encounter a few interesting characters in real life and on the web every year surrounding the Oscar madness. Here’s a peek at who they are. Read on...
Certainly new media has changed the way we approach filmmaking, but how does that mentality actually manifest itself? To find out, I talked to Todd Tue of Milk Products Media this week. Where once makers would upload their work to the web in hopes of gaining exposure to head down a traditional distribution path, Todd is now finding that the internet may be the best outlet for his work, period.
The bulk of our conversation is about Milk Products’ latest documentary endeavor, a feature film about a family owned and operated dairy farm in Ohio. You can view the short documentary on Vimeo right now, then head on over to their Kickstarter page to learn more about the feature they plan to make. As Todd tells me in our interview, the fact that over 10,000 people have already viewed a short piece he made is pretty satisfying, but he hopes they will get to make the full length story. Listen in as we talk about making films on the cheap, bringing some creativity to paying gigs, and why it is such a great time to be making media.
How can I explain what the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is? It’s very name is so local and yet its scope is entirely global. I suppose I could start by explaining what is meant by “Sephardic.” Allow me to generalize. Here in New York City it is pretty common to boil Jews down to one of two stereotypes: the Orthodox and the nebbish. These are Ashkenazi Jews who, thanks to a sordid history of European emigration, took root here en masse around the turn of the 20th century. Ashkenazim are basically the shtetl Jews; the Fiddler on the Roof Jews.
That film is perhaps the ultimate Hollywood pontification on the Jew, an image of a people that is, for better or worse, an accepted truth. Sephardic Jewry, who hail from Spain, Northern Africa and the Fertile Crescent (among other places), have almost no image in American cinema. In fact, in America, little is known of this “other” kind of Jew outside the confines of the Jewish community. Sephardim observe different dietary laws (sometimes), speak a different dialect of Hebrew, observe different customs and have a rich history of art and literature that is speckled with influence from the various cultures in which they have existed. How fitting it is then, that there should be a New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, to both celebrate and educate us on these Jews who perhaps don’t fit the mold of the mainstream. A festival for the other other. Read on...
Cop Out confirms that Kevin Smith is a brilliant writer but a mediocre director. There are plenty of belly laughs in this wayward film, but the plot trickles out too slowly with an antagonist that is hardly worth the time. Tracy Morgan’s comic muscle flexes wildly, and Bruce Willis is delightful as the deadbeat straight man, so the laughs abound. When you’re not laughing, however, you’ll probably be looking around the theater wondering why everyone slapped down the price of popcorn in the first place.
Artistically, the film aims for Beverly Hills Cop but falls closer to Dragnet. The real problem is our bad guy, Poh Boy, a Mexican drug lord with a penchant for pricey sports memorobilia. His “tweak”, if you will, is that he speaks like Baby Huey and is named after a sandwich. Otherwise, he’s just a drug dealer like any other: heavily armed and cocksure. I’ll get to our ludicrous heroes in a moment, but I need to stress that this movie could have been saved with a better baddie. The jokes flow like beer at a bachelor party but nothing holds them together. There is no reason not to clip this movie up into a couple of YouTube replays. Read on...
This week we’re delving back into the world of tech for a nice chat with Andrew Kippen, VP of Marketing for Boxee. For those who are unaware of Boxee, it is a free piece of software that allows you to experience any kind of digital content, be it local or streaming, from the comfort of your couch. It is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and AppleTV, and they will soon be releasing the Boxee Box in conjunction with D-Link. If it is still unclear what Boxee is, first go to boxee.tv and click around, maybe install the app. Then listen to the podcast to hear why this scrappy little company is on the front lines of a major media distribution revolution.
This summer, Boxee plans to roll out a payments system. Imagine, if you will, paying only for the channels you actually watch instead of dishing out around $70 per month for hundreds of channels you don’t watch. Better still, given the openness of the web and Boxee, almost any content maker can get in on the fun. As has become painfully honest to networks and studios over the years, you know longer need to be a major corporation to create content that people want. With the advent of digital workflows, content creation is already democratized. Boxee is working to even the playing field for content distribution.
I’ve said too much already. Click and listen, and tell us your thoughts on Boxee, streaming video, and the media revolution in the comments.
I am excited to announce that the candler blog is going to cover the 2010 SXSW (South by Southwest, for the uninitiated) Film Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. With a shiny press badge and a dream in tow, I’ll be bringing you all the news and reviews from Austin, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Of course, trips like these are quite an expensive endeavor for a blog, so I’m asking for your help in getting to Austin. Please click through to my Kickstarter Project, where I am trying to raise $500 to defray the costs of the trip. You will find a longer explanation over at kickstarter (and in the video above), but this money will essentially cover approximately half of the expenses for the trip. The candler blog is (and shall remain) a free publication, but as you may guess it’s not free to operate. Any help you can offer is extremely appreciated.
I don’t expect you to give me something for nothing. Besides the coverage on the candler blog you’ll be getting, there are also some pretty nice rewards for different levels of giving. Everyone who donates $5 or more will be included in a “Thank You” post listing his/her name and a link to the website/charity of his/her choosing. Up the donation to $10 and you will get your name and link put in the candler blog’s blogroll, which runs up the side of the home page, for 6 months. For $50 or more, you can get a 30-day 200×200 ad on the candler blog that will run during SXSW. I can tell you that traffic will be significantly higher than usual during the festival, so this is a great opportunity to reach an extremely diverse, motivated audience.
I skipped a price on purpose. For $25 or more, you get a 2 DVD collection of all 8 published Candlercasts at CD Quality (I’ll mail you the discs with the files on them). When the podcast goes on the site it is in a highly compressed audio format so it can stream easily and download straight to your iPod/iPhone with ease. These master recordings are crystal clear, and really sound nothing like what is on the web. Maybe that’s not enough for you? On the second disc, you will get the full, unedited, epic Bests of the Decade podcast that I recorded with Sunrise Tippeconnie. Originally published as 4 trimmed down podcasts, this lengthy discussion features clips that were never broadcast online. Please check out the full roster of Candlercasts on the site to see what you’ll be getting.
Nothing has been more exciting for me than watching the candler blog grow over the last year. At this time last year, I never would have dreamed I’d be able to waltz into a fest like SXSW with a press pass in tow. But here I am. None of it could have been possible without you, the readers. I thank you for your visits, your comments, and your support. 2010 is off to an exciting start, and I can’t wait to bring all kinds of great content this year.
Lee Daniels’ Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire is difficult to talk about, let alone sit through. Part memoir, part fantasy and part social deconstruction, the film deals in a grab bag of hot button social mores: poverty, racism, rape, incest, epidemics and education reform to name only a few. The director is literally playing with fire, yet, somehow, he has managed to make a feel-good movie. You heard me right.
Clarice Precious Jones lives in Harlem with her abusive mother. The year is 1987 and she is pregnant with her second child by her father. At 16, Precious is still in junior high school, until her pro-active principal recommends her for an alternative schooling program called Each One Teach One. It is here, with the help of a self-assured teacher and a hood-bred cadre of girls, that her journey of self-discovery begins. What does she discover? The same thing we know about ten minutes into the film: that her mother is a big ol’ B-word. Read on...
