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...
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...
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...
Early in Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart, we see Bad Blake, the middle aged country music star played by Jeff Bridges, doubled over a trash can puking his guts up. It is heartbreaking, until Blake reaches into the void to retrieve his sunglasses, wiping the mucus off as he picks them up. In a manner that only Mr. Bridges can conjure up, the move comes off as charming, witty almost. Bad Blake is a drunk in need of a wakeup call. but if not for the brilliant nuance Bridges brings to the role Crazy Heart would be an after school special, shown at SADD meetings across the country to keep kids off the bottle. Read on...
Late last night a press release from the 2010 South by Southwest (SXSW, duh) Film Coference and Festival dropped into my inbox. While we’re not usually in the business of delineating this kind of info, this particular document is just so chock full of goodies, I figured it was worth showing you the moment I could. This is the full list of shorts and panels for the eight day fest this year, and the panels in particular sound phenomenal. Quentin Tarantino, Michel Gondry and David Gordon Green are the headliners, but don’t forget there are tons of other amazing talks scheduled.
The panel featuring Tarantino, “Directing the Dead: Genre Directors Spill Their Guts” sounds particularly interesting. Actor Jeffrey Tambor will be teaching his trade in a talk that I hope will feel like something the Scared Straight talk on Arrested development. Gizmodo writer Joel Johnson will offer up some advice on music licensing for viral videos and friend of the candler blog Paul Harrill (whose award winning short Gina, an Actress, Age 29 recently landed on theauteurs.com) will be speaking about “Cinematography for Improvised Films”. For those in attendance, there certainly is a wide assortment of programming planned. I haven’t even mentioned the shorts, but check out the full list after the break (it’s a long one, be prepared). We still don’t know how much of the conference the candler blog will be following, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated with the news. Read on...
