Well, my apologies for my absence. I have been dooooing things I swear.
1) My Sony F3 came in to Abel Cine early so I was buying that (and dealing with convincing the bank to let me have access to MY money. Ugh.) With many thanks to Mark Schwartzbard for tips and DBA/ EIN details. It is a fantastic camera and I am really really happy with it so far! I'm eager to keep playing with it so if you have any projects you wanna do LET ME KNOW!
2) The first part of July was spent navigating the 7 day short film I shot "TIED UP" with Jose Venutolo Directing, a project of Brady Kirchberg origins. We had a lot of, ahem, things thrown at us...an eastern European building super who started carting our equipment off premises and eventually cut the power to the apartment we were shooting in - a nice, reasonable man ha...lost actors and lost locations. Some of the wrenches thrown were par for the course, some seemed to require superhuman patience and ingenuity. Nonetheless there are always lessons learned, we persevered, and we wrapped at about 430am on a Friday morn with some really great stuff!
Brady and Jose are working on the editing already and the plan is to head to NICE DISSOLVE for post. The producer set up a demo session with them last week and their facilities are pretty great! They're tucked away in a rather booming side street of Bushwick. While the studio itself is small, the package is extensive. We'll be using their DaVinci Resolve suite with real-time playback. I'm looking forward to it. Here are some quick stills from the TIED UP footage:
3) Other updates include Beach going! My fantastic friends and I headed to Jacob Riis for a much needed cool off! Beach, snacks, beers and vodka slushies are good for the soul.
4) This is probably obvious, but I love Netflix. More specifically Netflix Instant Play. I watched "Carnal Knowledge" (1971) a few nights back and it is a gem I knew nothing about. The cast alone is reason enough for you to watch it. If you love relationship analysis and gender studies then you've got yourself a golden ticket here. Jack Nicholson, Arthur Garfunkel, Candice Bergen (Yes, she was a full blown sex symbol in her day. For those of us that only grew up watching her in Murphy Brown this is fun to see), Ann-Margaret (wowza), and Rita Moreno power pack this film. The style of Mike Nichols' direction (The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - so he has some experience with this genre :) adds an element of flash without taking away from a strong cast that can carry a heavy film and still come out as a bit of a comedy. Here's the original NY Times review from '71 (I also love the internet):
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=ee05e7df1731b52ca2484cc7b6799d8c6896
There are many great scenes, but this is definitely one of the best:
Another film I saw during my absence on the ol' blog was "Bad Timing" (1980) on a recommendation of a friend. Another astute, but slightly more abstract, relationship study starring Art (he lost the -hur by this point) Garfunkel (Some say this film might have helped end his acting career as his character is pretty dark here. I mean it's not like HE'S ACTING or anything here people. Guffaw.) and Theresa Russell. Harvey Keitel also plays a key role as a suspicious detective. This Nicolas Roeg flick needs 2 watches at least.
It's definitely not my favorite of Roeg's, but it's engrossing and fun to decipher. If you like Roeg's structure in general, it seems one would like this films as well. Theresa Russell gives a really great performance, but I grow tired of female characters (which is of course not her doing) that long to be free while having a connection with someone sans being controlled by them. Yet, they keep succumbing to the "need" to please said person and so do what they know they cannot sustain. They stay. I suppose this is one aspect that makes the film engaging, though many times it just seems a byproduct of the desires of the writer.
2) The first part of July was spent navigating the 7 day short film I shot "TIED UP" with Jose Venutolo Directing, a project of Brady Kirchberg origins. We had a lot of, ahem, things thrown at us...an eastern European building super who started carting our equipment off premises and eventually cut the power to the apartment we were shooting in - a nice, reasonable man ha...lost actors and lost locations. Some of the wrenches thrown were par for the course, some seemed to require superhuman patience and ingenuity. Nonetheless there are always lessons learned, we persevered, and we wrapped at about 430am on a Friday morn with some really great stuff!
Brady and Jose are working on the editing already and the plan is to head to NICE DISSOLVE for post. The producer set up a demo session with them last week and their facilities are pretty great! They're tucked away in a rather booming side street of Bushwick. While the studio itself is small, the package is extensive. We'll be using their DaVinci Resolve suite with real-time playback. I'm looking forward to it. Here are some quick stills from the TIED UP footage:
3) Other updates include Beach going! My fantastic friends and I headed to Jacob Riis for a much needed cool off! Beach, snacks, beers and vodka slushies are good for the soul.
4) This is probably obvious, but I love Netflix. More specifically Netflix Instant Play. I watched "Carnal Knowledge" (1971) a few nights back and it is a gem I knew nothing about. The cast alone is reason enough for you to watch it. If you love relationship analysis and gender studies then you've got yourself a golden ticket here. Jack Nicholson, Arthur Garfunkel, Candice Bergen (Yes, she was a full blown sex symbol in her day. For those of us that only grew up watching her in Murphy Brown this is fun to see), Ann-Margaret (wowza), and Rita Moreno power pack this film. The style of Mike Nichols' direction (The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - so he has some experience with this genre :) adds an element of flash without taking away from a strong cast that can carry a heavy film and still come out as a bit of a comedy. Here's the original NY Times review from '71 (I also love the internet):
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=ee05e7df1731b52ca2484cc7b6799d8c6896
There are many great scenes, but this is definitely one of the best:
Another film I saw during my absence on the ol' blog was "Bad Timing" (1980) on a recommendation of a friend. Another astute, but slightly more abstract, relationship study starring Art (he lost the -hur by this point) Garfunkel (Some say this film might have helped end his acting career as his character is pretty dark here. I mean it's not like HE'S ACTING or anything here people. Guffaw.) and Theresa Russell. Harvey Keitel also plays a key role as a suspicious detective. This Nicolas Roeg flick needs 2 watches at least.
It's definitely not my favorite of Roeg's, but it's engrossing and fun to decipher. If you like Roeg's structure in general, it seems one would like this films as well. Theresa Russell gives a really great performance, but I grow tired of female characters (which is of course not her doing) that long to be free while having a connection with someone sans being controlled by them. Yet, they keep succumbing to the "need" to please said person and so do what they know they cannot sustain. They stay. I suppose this is one aspect that makes the film engaging, though many times it just seems a byproduct of the desires of the writer.
