The sweet irony of Paul Osborne’s documentary, Official Rejection, a backstage tell-all of American film festival culture, is that the film has gone on to be something of a fest favorite around the country. I first reviewed the film at last year’s Deadcenter Film Festival in Oklahoma City, where Paul and I agreed we would find time for an interview. Finally, we have come together to chat about his film, which is still running the festival circuit, and movies in general. As Sundance 2010 begins, we thought it would be a perfect time to discuss what festivals represent in the dreams of filmmakers and what they really are. Believe it or not, a lot has changed since Paul made the film, so listen in as he explains where we stand today. Other points of interest: my own bitching about Blu-Ray, the films Paul is most excited to see, and the two of us compare war stories on both sides of the critic-filmmaker lines.

 
Right-Click to Download • Subscribe in iTunes

Ed. Note: My microphone suffered some fits of serious crackling for this one. I’ve been trying to scrub it out but I’m finding it impossible. I’ll fix the problem by the next Candlercast. Sorry for the ear-strain.

Moving forward with our epic podcast of the Bests of the Decade, Sunrise Tippeconnie and myself attempt to tackle the category of actors. It’s the twenty-first century, we’ve decided to do away with the term actress and bring men an women under one big comfy “actor” blanket. Still, we’re not so progressive that we don’t look on the achievements of men and women separately. Listen in as we discuss some of the best performances of the last ten years. From relative unknowns at the outset of the aughts, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, coming into their own, to aging actors finding new footing in their golden years, like Dustin Hoffman, it truly has been an exciting decade for cinema acting. We go through a lot of the top roles, but of course we miss a few. Check it out for our full thoughts, and click through to see the bests as picked by your very own candler blog.

 
Right-Click to Download • Subscribe in iTunes Read on…

O’ Brother Where Art Thou, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, kicked the decade off with cinema’s first feature digital intermediate.

Recently, frequent candler blog collaborator Sunrise Tippeconnie and I sat down to record a podcast titled “Bests of the Decade”. Instead of making a list of the best films of the decade, we thought it would be interesting to decipher who and what were the most notable people and events in cinema of the last ten years. We would name a best writer, best actor and actress, and best director while discussing their competition as a means of justifying our picks. The plan was to get all of this recorded in one ninety minute show, but instead we ended up blabbing for over 3 hours. As a courtesy, I have gone to the trouble of cutting our conversation up into segments, the first of which covers the most notable developments in cinema during the 2000s. We also go over our methodology and reasoning for composing a list in this manner.

It was one hell of a decade for filmmaking. We saw the proliferation of high definition and the legitimization of video as a screening format. The digital intermediate was introduced, the comic book film re-exploded in Hollywood, the movement once called Mumblecore found a way to speak to an entirely new generation of art-house audiences and filmmakers the world over struggled to translate the nuance of a post-9/11 reality. When you lay out all of the advances and struggles of the last ten years, you might be amazed at how much has actually happened and changed while we were all busy at work. Sunrise and I discuss just a few of these changes in Part I of the Bests of the Decade Candlercast. Since we know we missed a few, we’d love it if you left some more in the comments.

 
Right-Click to Download • Subscribe in iTunes

Filmmaker Brian Lonan has a lot to say about Science Fiction movies, which is a good thing because his new film, Attackazoids, Deploy!!, is full of killer robots in the future. He joins the candler blog this week for a chat about all things movies. On Satruday, Deploy! will be making its world première at the Coney Island Film Festival and he has a booked docket from there on out. It will be a busy few months for Mr. Lonano, so it’s a good thing we nabbed him when we could.

Tune in and you will also a conversation about the persistence of aging filmmakers, a gaff involving two Reiners, Werner Herzog’s film school, and where to find the best pizza in New York City. This week’s candlercast is one not to be missed. Stream, download, or subscribe below.

 
Right-Click to Download • Subscribe in iTunes

For as long as I can remember, my father has listened to talk radio to fall asleep. As a boy, I tried to emulate this mannerism upon receiving my first clock radio. There was a certain charm to being lulled to sleep by people chatting non-sensically about politics, current events, and other issues of which I had no vested interest. But on Sunday nights, sleep would not come so easily. That was the night I actually listened to the radio; that was the night that Steve Friedman took the airwaves in Philadelphia.

Also known as Mr. Movie, Friedman, who passed away earlier this week, was a radio host with an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema. Part film critic, part historian, he was a man who very simply loved movies. Back in the days before IMDb, the forgetful viewer had a choice of unwieldy tomes such as Halliwells or Moviehound to keep one’s facts straight. For the unanswerable, or what I would now call the un-googleable, there was Mr. Movie. “It was the movie where there was a murder in it…”; “Who was that actor? He always played a bad guy, except this one time…”; “I think the director was  from Europe…” He always had an answer and a story to share with his eager listenership.

What is so baffling to a critic of my generation about Mr. Movie is that he managed to retain an incredible amount of information before the advent of home video. The bulk of the movies he would discuss, Hollywood classics, are films he would have seen in the theater, maybe only a handful of times. He was a film buff who never grew up. Up to his dying day (he passed away a few hours after a broadcast), Mr. Movie never lost that childish love of movies.

One memory that sticks out for me was listening to how fondly he spoke of the 1985 film Explorers. On it’s face, Explorers is a children’s film. Three friends build a spaceship out of an abandoned tilt-a-whirl car after they all experience the same dreams. Upon reaching the mothership that sent them the plans for the spacecraft, they find that their extraterrestrial pen pals are actually just kids, who are in trouble for making such a long distance call. Given that his favorite film, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s obituary, was Forbidden Planet, it is no wonder that he would lean so favorably towards a sci-fi flick for youngsters.

To the mind of someone like Mr. Movie, there is no distinction between a good arthouse movie and a good blockbuster. A good movie is a good movie. As viewers and critics, we can only strive to be as democratic in our approach as the man they called Mr. Movie. He will be missed.