A series of great shorts that redefine the manner in which “kids work’ is compared with “professional,” one in which “kid/student” is simply an age level rather than a definition of cinematic ability of expression or articulation.

Amy Bench’s work In this Place at first glance suggest a rudimentary application of graphic compositing, as a young woman shifts through background layouts of bright and exotic locations. We come to learn that Jane, a young explorer, is simply finding the means of escape from the low contrast, and more realistically photographed, 35mm footage with her mind’s eye of exploration in bright HD imagery. While this juxtaposition in itself holds a fascinating approach towards these two mediums and their relationship with young filmmakers, it also provides a justification for these compositing techniques that imply this artifice is of the love and excitement of imagination. Jane’s boring conversations with her condescending older brothers further perpetuates her desires for escapism, but when she attempts to develop her imaginary travels through video distribution, the distributor tells her the material is unrealistic and overly amateurish. Jane focuses her skills as a dreamer and video-maker to delight and reconnect her family through a love video made specifically for them, as she brings them into the emotionally bright HD footage away from the oppressive and dreary 35mm realism, bridging the gap between the optimistic visions of youth and falsely-imposed definitions of cinematic quality. Read on…

Much like the film’s protagonist, Spork is a movie with a serious identity crisis. A veritable mashup of Napoleon Dynamite and Strictly Ballroom, director J.B. Ghuman, Jr. riffs on style but forgets to add the substance in this story a frizzy haired hermaphrodite who comes of age on the dance floor. It’s not quite a musical, a dance film or a hipster treasure trove, but instead a watered down version of all three at once.

Spork (Savannah Stehlin), so nicknamed because she isn’t quite a spoon or a fork (get it?), lives in a trailer park with her older brother. Her father left long ago and her mother is buried in the yard. Her best pal, Tootsie Roll (Sydney Park), lives in the trailer next door. Tootsie’s got a big mouth and the dance moves to back it up, but she rolls with a crowd of fly girls, which leaves Spork on her own once they get to school. Read on…

A 2007 New York Times article by Dennis Lim defined Mumblecore thusly: “Specimens of the genre share a low-key naturalism, low-fi production values and a stream of low-volume chatter often perceived as ineloquence.” All of the above qualifications could be applied to Aaron Katz’s new film, Cold Weather, but it isn’t your average twentysomethings-talking-about-stuff movie. It is a whodunnit thriller whose brilliance lies in its ability to keep you guessing what “kind” of a film you are watching.

Doug is a half-bearded college graduate bumming it on his sister Gail’s couch in Portland, working at an ice factory while he decides what to do with his degree in forensic science. When his ex-girlfriend Rachel comes to town for a visit, things start to get complicated. His coworker, Carlos, is absolutely smitten Rachel, which brings on a wonderfully set up love triangle. Just as you think the two friends might come to blows over the lovely lady in their lives, Rachel goes missing which forces Doug to use the skills he learned at school (and by reading Sherlock Holmes all day). That’s the short of it. Read on…

As Hollywood enjoys this latest wave of 3D filmmaking, I have long hoped that their innovations would eventually trickle down to benefit the independent filmmaking community. Noël Paul’s short film, Annie Goes Boating, which just had its world première here at SXSW, may be the film that proves indie directors are dying to get their hands on the technology. Gone are the flaming projectiles and the prickly protrusions that are commonly found in big budget 3D films. Instead, Noël gives us a gorgeous look at a day in the park.

I sat down with Noël to discuss how he was able to make this film on an indie budget. Once he realized he had access to two Red Digital Cinema cameras, the filmmaker went to work with his creative team to try to hack together a workable 3D rig. However, it wasn’t until he got in contact with Lightspeed Design, whose DepthQ technology is used in a number of 3D applications, that the pieces really began to come together. The result is a 10 minute short that is absolutely gorgeous.

 
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Annie Goes Boating feels like a painting, one you could get up and walk around in. The plot is simple by design: some friends go boating and play badminton; a love triangle appears and then it ends. The photography, by Michael Ragen, is reminiscent of impressionist painting. Your eye is free to wander around the woods throughout the film. The depth is astounding. Some shots of ducks on a pond make you feel almost as if you could touch the water, as if the ducks might fall off the screen. Perhaps I’m romanticizing it, but if you see the film in 3D you will understand my reaction.

It is great to listen to Noël talk about 3D technology and how he likes to use it. I can’t think of another independent filmmaker who has tried a hand at 3D, but I truly hope that it sticks. Noël doesn’t care to guess whether or not 3D will catch on, but he says that he has every intention of making more 3D films if he is able to get them off the ground. With this one under his belt, I don’t see how that could be a problem.

I have hardly scratched the surface here. Listen in to my conversation with Noël Paul, where he gets into some of the nitty gritty of 3D production as well as speaks on his artistic influences behind this film. It’s one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had on the subject. Enjoy.

“Beeswax” director Andrew Bujalski getting a trim. Photo by Cheree Franco. Courtesy of The Cinema Guild.

Earlier this week I had the good pleasure of sitting down and chatting with director Andrew Bujalski about his new film, Beeswax. A very humble and quiet person, you’d never expect this kindly character to survive the rigors and torments of the filmmaking process. However, if you are familiar with his previous two films, Funny Ha Ha from 2002 and Mutual Appreciation from 2005, and especially in this new film which opens today, it would become immediately clear that this bespectacled, anxious young man is the perfect candidate to make movies that deal with such emotional introspection. In other words, it is the burden of filmmaking that creates his most evocative work.

I was immediately struck by how quickly our conversation would turn from discussing the characters in his films to talking about himself. It would seem that Bujalski and his creative work are woven together. Beeswax is a story of two twin sisters living in Austin, Texas, one of whom is the co-owner of a vintage clothing store. Jeannie, the wheel-chair bound (hardly bound is more like it) twin who runs the shop, learns early on that there is the possibility of a lawsuit coming from her business partner, Amanda, a close friend who has drifted away towards her fiancée.

Does this legal dispute come from something in real life? Something close to you?

It comes from fears that I have. What’s the nightmare version of a daydream? Knock wood, I’ve never been involved in a lawsuit like that. Every time I’ve ever signed a document, I get this terrible anxiety about it because if you look at the language of a contract, it’s not the way that human beings commuicate with one another. It’s written in this other language which is designed…You know, I just watched Nashville again recently and there’s a line where the Hal Phillip Walker trucker is driving around Nashville and he says “The Lord’s job is to do one of two things: to clarify and…” the only word that is coming to mind now is obfuscate. What’s the other word that means obfuscate? Anyway…

I keep hearing the the phrase “legal thriller” being applied to this film.

I’ll cop to responsibility on that. Read on…

As a blogger, I don’t actually have an office in which to conduct business and interviews. So when the opportunity arose to meet with multi-hyphenate John-Luke Montias, the first sport that came to mind was Central Park near the Upper West Side. Being the sport that he is, Mr. Montias trucked over to meet me. Waiting on the corner by a hot dog stand on a warm July day, I began to wonder if so serene a spot was proper for meeting a man whose film deals in sex-slavery, gangsterism, money laundering, and grand theft auto. Then I remembered, this is New York City; we’re all in the soup.

John-Luke studied acting at New York University. After school he did what he refers to as the whole actor-bartender thing: “I got tired of waiting for the phone to ring, I was working at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen that had some really crazy ass characters. I would hear a lot of crazy stories whether I wanted to or not. Then it dawned on me that this was a great opportunity, so I started writing.” That compilation of stories would eventually become the director’s first film, Bobby G Can’t Swim, but he admits that those stories still permeate his work. From listening to him, you can tell that his ears were well-chewed during his days serving drinks. Read on…

There are many kinds of war films. Those that celebrate the heroism of men and women who rise to the occasion and those that examine the absurd event that is conflict; those that glorify the gory action on the ground and those that question the human event in its bloodiest hour. The Hurt Locker manages, quite impressively, to check off all of the above and then some. It is a heart-stopping thriller set amidst the modern quagmire that is Baghdad that never lingers long enough to feel preachy yet manages to suspend you in moments of extreme tension for what seems like eternity. In other words, it’s a bad ass good time.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, probably most well known for the 1991 surf action film Point Break, decided to stem the intellectual deconstruction of the war in Iraq that has hampered most recent attempts to bring the conflict to the big screen. Instead, she has no bones about making a first rate action thriller. The opening scene alone, in which a radio controlled robot breaks just before it can detonate an IED, is worth the price of popcorn. If you can’t handle it straight away, leave the theater.

In need of a new Bomb Tech on their team, Sergeant JT Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge find themselves under the command of Staff Sergeant William James. James is a reckless cowboy who rarely lets the others in on his half-cocked plans as they traverse Iraq in search of bombs. The relationship that the three form is complicated to say the least. In Sanborn we find a rationalist who offers us a moral grounding. Eldridge is more complex, a man-child thrown into the war probably trying to prove his strength.

But the most interesting character is certainly Sergeant James, played with boyish bravado by Jeremy Renner. Acting as if he is an army of one, James always seems to come out in one piece no matter how stupid his plans seem to be. As soon as we feel we know him and understand his motivation, he goes and does something even crazier. Not quite a patriot nor a mercenary, his character slowly unravels and we begin to see an incredibly strong deconstruction of modern masculinity. I don’t want to get into the details because it is the little things in this movie that become shocking to you as it progresses.

Ms. Bigelow has done what many of Hollywood’s biggest guns have failed to do: make an interesting film about Iraq that people will actually watch. Steering clear of political statements, she has crafted a solid character study amidst the most important international issue our nation is embroiled in. It’s the Iraq movie we have been waiting for, but we hardly notice that fact as we wipe the sweat from our brow and stand up from the edge of our seat.

A solid if unoriginal indie flick with moving performances and a tight, quirky script is what I had hoped to see at the movies. Instead, I saw Sunshine Cleaning, which plays like an idea trying desperately hard to find a story.

The film follows Rose Lorkowski, played by Amy Adams, a down on her luck single mother in Albuquerque who makes ends meat by cleaning houses. Rose’s sister, Norah, is a former punk-kid who never grew up, can’t hold down a job, and lives with their idiosyncratic father, played with respectable charm by Alan Arkin. When Rose’s police officer boyfriend, who is married, tells her how much money there is to be made in cleaning up messy crime scenes, a lightbulb goes off and the tiny glint of a plot begins to form. Of course, the two sisters start a business cleaning up crime scenes while dealing with their own emotional hangups. Read on…