In consideration: Two denied, eleven pending

• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Toronto

Maine sent an e-mail rejection. Unlike Stony Brook, who simply sent me a generic postcard (addressed "Dear Filmmaker"), Maine had the courtesy to include both my name and the title of the film in their rejection.

Lip service: Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience

At first, I was surprised at the overwhelmingly-positive reviews of Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience. Granted, his prior HDnet film, Bubble, met with solid reviews, but, on paper, The Girlfriend Experience sounded like the experimental side of Soderbergh that would receive the sort of critical brush-off as, say, Full Frontal.

But, of course, the man is magic; the ultimate cinematic chameleon; who can beat me at my own goddamn game (shooting the film, allegedly, in under two weeks, while also serving as DP [aka Peter Andrews] and editor [aka Mary Ann Bernard]); who can make a 77-minute film that is comprised almost entirely of wide master shots with no camera movement, with a script comprised almost entirely of dialog scenes with no apparent action other than a few barely-seen rendezvous; a director who can take a porn star and, against most odds, pull out a multifaceted performance; and, most amazing of all, which comes off the back of the his Che epic, which is one of the most ambitious movies ever made.

Also remarkable is the fact that the film takes place before last year's election, and, only a few months after the fact and with the nation still mired in a recession, has a sort of clairvoyance that gives it the razor-sharp clarity of hindsight, like if this movie was written ten years from now. (I'm reminded of how this sort of period-authenticity worked wonders/terrors with Paul Greengrass's United 93.)

So, yes, while the unmoving camera and long-dialog scenes causes the mental illusion that the 77 minutes seem more like double that, and that the end of the movie gets caught a bit in a jumble of its own chronology and too many music montages (set to evocative David Holmes music instead of the bare drums peppering the film's start); well, all that said, as a filmmaker, I'm jealous of Soderbergh's seemingly-effortless ability to craft any kind of film and, as a viewer, was extremely entertained with something I expected to require an avant-garde, overtly-cerebral appreciation.

EDIT: Did I mention uniformly-positive reviews? Because I seem to have been recalling Rotten Tomatoes's Cream of the Crop rating above 80% as of a few days ago, which has now dropped to a rotten 57%.

In consideration (cont.)

• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Toronto

First rejection came in the mail last Saturday. Disappointed, absolutely, but this is why I didn't put all my eggs in one basket. There are several baskets with my precious eggs. And by eggs, I mean screeners of Transmissions.

On June 8, I hear from Sacramento, and on June 10, I hear from Maine. If I get up to more than half of my submissions rejected, then I'll start to get nervous and/or extremely depressed.

Now that I'm on the defensive, I remind myself that I never had the intention to get into any festivals when I made Transmissions. The important thing, ultimately, isn't that I get into festivals, but that I made a feature film. Festivals or not, not many people get to do that, and for film grads, that's a pretty big deal.

Today I'm spending some much-needed time proofing a draft of Project 2010 after finishing it a while back and not once looking at it. I was, for whatever reason, waiting to hear back from Stony Brook, as though getting into one festival would give me the confidence that something magically-inspiring would manifest and hint that I'd actually have a bit more money for my next project. But neither matter. As with Transmissions, Project 2010 is about making the sort of film that I want to make.

Additions to the best albums of 2009 (thus far)

A lot of great new music recently. New additions in bold.


Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion


Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career


Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains


Dan Deacon - Bromst


Fever Ray


Franz Ferdinand - Tonight


Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest


Japandroids - Post-Nothing


Sonic Youth - The Eternal


The Thermals - Now We Can See


Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship

Mux001 flashback

How strange of me to reference my first muxtape without supplying said muxtape? Here's the download link at drop.io. And here are the tracks:

1. Wolf Parade - Language City
2. Cut Copy - Saturdays
3. Ted Leo - La Costa Brava
4. My Bloody Valentine - Off Your Face
5. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
6. The National - Slow Show
7. Destroyer - My Favorite Year
8. The Joggers - Back To The Future
9. Pavement - Cut Your Hair
10. The Hold Steady - You Can Make Him Like You
11. Spoon - Finer Feelings
12. Dan Deacon - Pink Batman

That's a solid line-up. Probably because it was my return to mixes after moving out of Chicago, where I was the unofficial music guy at the Post-Production Center. (And, you know, having two years of new music to compile.) While I kept my still-current rule of never repeating a song on a series of mixtapes, back then my only restriction was that a mix came in under 1 hr. 20 mins. so I could burn it to CD and rip it on the work computer. That was in the dark ages before thumb drives - how novel!

I'm glad muxtape added the rule of a max of twelve tracks. For one thing, it weeds out anything not in the top tier of songs. And second, twelve tracks usually rounds out around forty-five minutes, and I usually don't do anything that requires continuous music for more than that time.

Mux022 / Re-examining The Red Album

Just in time for Mother's Day. And one year after my first mux, when Muxtape used to be worthy of creating muxes. I don't even know what they do now. Not even worth linking. Or checking.

Download the full mix via drop.io. The tracks:

1. Metric - Help, I'm Alive
2. Japandroids - Wet Hair
3. Rage Against The Machine - Guerrilla Radio
4. Franz Ferdinand - Ulysses
5. The Thermals - When I Died
6. The Sea And Cake - Car Alarm
7. Radiohead - Blow Out (Remix)
8. The Ting Tings - Be The One
9. Atlas Sound - Springtime Instrumental
10. Why? - The Hollows
11. Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You
12. Camera Obscura - French Navy

Also, I gave this neglected album an impromptu listen earlier:



Seriously, it's not that bad. Sure, it disappointed all post-Blue Album, post-Pinkerton expectations in which everyone expected it to be as good as The Blue Album or Pinkerton, but there are some good tracks here. And forget all the ridiculous stuff Rivers and the band said about how "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" was the best thing Weezer has ever recorded.

I listened to it as a reaction to Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown last night, which I think is a resounding Eh at best. I pinned it down pretty easily: even if some songs are catchy power-chord pop-rock, Green Day positions themselves as some saviors of everything, which comes off as condescending, obnoxious, and really pretentious. With regards to the latter, it doesn't help that the over-arcing "opera" is some impenetrable, impossible-to-follow-without-liner-notes narrative.

So here's why, at the root of things, I like the Red Album: it doesn't take too itself seriously. "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" isn't an unnecessary statement about the state of things; it's a huge, proggy, silly song. "Troublemaker" is fairly innocuous. "Porks and Beans" is downright solid. "Thought I Knew" is the only downright-bad track, mostly considering that a song not sung or written by Rivers, by definition, isn't a Weezer song. The rest are fairly mild on the ears.

I don't recall ever downright-trashing The Red Album, and now there's further reason not to: it's passably good.