oh boy...

so long overdue I am back here. where to begin? December was a great month. I always tend to sort of downshift due to habit through the years that my birthday is a week before Christmas, then Christmas, then New Year’s. This year was even better with 2 screenings of films I shot in one week prior to the birthday. Talk about celebration time!

A short film I shot “Tied Up”, which I posted about before, had it’s premiere at the Helen Mills Theater in NYC. It was a fairly mad dash to get it color timed and sweetened in time, but as usually happens it all worked out. We used Nice Dissolve in Bushwick which was a great experience. Jason DeSimone and Brady Kirchberg did a great job organizing the night. There were 2 sold out screenings and an after party. There’s always something nice about meeting up with crew that you may not have seen since the shoot with a sort of, “well…we did it” atmosphere. Ha. Dave Milone did a BTS of the shoot as well, which normally I hate because who wants a camera on then when you’re the camera person?, but he was great and in the end it’s fun to have. 

http://vimeo.com/28834482

A few days later was the premiere of “Die the Good Death”, which we were shooting about a year ago to the date in Varanasi, India. What an experience and what an amazing feat that it has been synced, mixed, edited, color timed and shown in less than a year. It really is. This project was a little closer to home, both in the crew…there were 3 of us in true doc style…and subject matter. Death and living life is more relatable to me (and most others I presume) than drug deals gone awry. :) I am so very proud of what co-directors Silvia Fernandez Campos and Beatriz Calleja did with all the fantastic footage we were able to get in the mere 11 days we were there. 

Ohhh, and I can’t forget about the limo night. Yes, my wonderful friend Bea was in town for the screening and the time bookcased our birthdays. We opted for a limo rental around the city. If anyone is in need of an excellent and patient stretch limo driver, I got one for you. We party hopped and had general debauchery picking up friends along the way. There is definitely GoPro footage, ahem Spaniards, and photos, ahem Shula, that exists of this evening, but I am still waiting for it. Ahem. :)

Then came my birthday. Due to Bettie being out of commission to drive up to a cabin I opted to keep birthday time more local this year. My birthday time is always busy so I gave everyone a chance to join by starting the day at brunch. :) It was fantastic. I never knew who was going to be at the next spot on the itinerary. We came back to the apartment and played on my miniature pool table (thanks Bea!) and somehow ended up at The Jane after all was said and done. Whew, eating, drinking, pooling, dancing…not a bad way to spend a birthday with old and new friends.

There was Christmas in MO, where it’s always a little strange since none of my family lives in the place where I grew up…just in nearby towns and cities. So going home still feels nice, but always a little tilted. It was the first Christmas with a child around old enough to enjoy the present opening and excitement of it all. The adults were definitely up late on Christmas Eve eating Santa’s cookies, drinking his Egg Nog, and nibbling on the reindeers’ carrots. It was magical and very fun. :) We came back a little too early, but vacation has to end at some point I suppose. 

I mean HOW adorable is this?

Things, Movies, and Updates

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.