Weekend Update

New York Film Festival

The lineup for the New York Film Festival got released a couple of days ago, and it's quite impressive. There's some Cannes favorites, like Pan's Labyrinth and The Host, but the real highlight for me is David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE. I became a Lynch fan back in 2002 and since then I've seen everything he's done. So, I'm really looking forward to a new David Lynch feature. I'm hoping they do at least one weekend screening, but even if it's only a week night, I'll make the trek down from Wesleyan to see it. It's supposedly a very unconventional film, so it could be a while before we see a regular theatrical release, making it all the more imperative that I see it at the festival. I'm hoping that I'll also be able to see Marie Antoinette there, Sofia Coppola's one of those directors who really understands how to make a compelling film, not just tell a good story. Even though Marie Antoinette got some harsh reviews, the critiques all made it sound like I'd like the film even more. A film that isn't worried about narrative and instead spends a lot of time in music sequences is great. Who cares that you don't see her head getting cut off, traditional biopics invariably suck.

Respect! Films Update

I've spent the past week cutting Out of This World, the film I did with the LMC-TV summer film workshop. This year's bunch of kids was not good, but the film turned out pretty well. We've definitely got a formula with these workshop films, but it's fun to be able to just focus on trying to make something entertaining and not worry about larger thematic significance. That film will be online next Monday, so check out www.respectfilms.com, and you can download it. We're debuting that one Monday, and on the same day I'll be debuting the trailer for my new film, All Good Things. That'll be up on the site as well, give it a look. The other project going forward now is the Nepo video, which is still in editing.

Film Surplus

I bought the Manderlay DVD a few days ago, but I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet. That's in the docket along with the R2 version of Gregg Araki's Nowhere, which I just got in the mail yesterday. I've got to clear some time to watch those, I feel like a bad cinephile letting them sit unwatched. Oh well, I'll get to them soon.

End of Carnivale

I finished watching Carnivale yesterday. I'm going to do a review of the last couple of episodes, touching on the series as a whole, soon. I wouldn't call it a great series, but it had a lot of really good stuff and I feel like it might have really improved in later seasons. It was funny to watch the Museum of TV and Radio panel discussion they had on the DVD, where Daniel Knauf says something like "A lot of people are wary about getting into a major TV series because you wouldn't want to be at page 450 of a 900 page novel and have some clown in a suit grab the book and throw it away." Alas, that's exactly what happened.

Veronica Mars

So, with Carnivale over, I'll be moving on to the second season of Veronica Mars, which is out on DVD this Tuesday. I really enjoyed the first season, even though I don't think the show comes close to the rarefied level of something like Buffy or Six Feet Under. Still, not many shows do. The major issue is that I'm a huge fan of watching massively unfolding character arcs, so the show could reach Buffy level in later seasons, but it's still in the early stages. After one season of Six Feet Under, I really liked it, but it wasn't until the end of the third season that I saw the show as a masterpiece. Then, as everything came together in the final season, my love of the show went way up. So, hopefully Veronica will take a similar path. However, I don't think the show has as far reaching an emotional agenda as SFU.

Upcoming Dates of Notes

8/22 - Veronica Mars Season 2 on DVD
8/25 - Idlewild Released
8/29 - Arrested Development Season 3 on DVD
8/29 - Michel Gondry @ Apple Store
8/31 - North @ Trash Bar
9/22 - Science of Sleep Releated
9/24 - The Flaming Lips at Hammerstein
10/20 - Marie Antoinette Released
10/25 - Seven Soldiers #1 Released
11/22 - The Fountain Released