Blog-o-STIFF

He Was A Quiet Man

The Best Feature Film winner from STIFF 2007 opens at the Galleria 11 today before its world-wide DVD release in few weeks.  I actually took a bit of heat for screening this film last year because of the cast (Christian Slater, William H Macy, and Elisha Cuthbert).  Several people wanted to know how that qualified as a “True Independent” film.  Director Frank Cappello had mentioned that he got some of the same kind of flack when he screened at a few film festivals and called it “reverse snobbery”. 

It’s funny because Frank had told me when I first met him that he had tried to make the movie in the studio system for quite some time, but could never quite find the right people to make it happen.  Out of sheer frustration, he just woke up one day and decided to finance and make the movie himself.  During a party at his house, Christian Slater showed up uninvited and started telling everyone at the party that he “was Bob”.  Slater believed in the project so much that he basically worked for free on it and brought his friend (Macy) along.  Frank did many of the effects himself and shot much of it guerrilla style without permits, etc. 

I have heard horror stories about festivals that charge submit to their festivals and turn around to fill their program slots up with movies that play the major fests.  This is something that I am always conscious of and want to make sure never happens with STIFF, but I am also aware of the fact that some members of the press only care about movies with celebrities that they know.  So, the last couple years while visiting fests like SXSW, Sundance and Slamdance for my day-job, I reached out to a few films that I thought might generate some interest about playing at STIFF.  I found that it is actually pretty hard to pull off.  Many of these films have so many layers of bureaucracy that it is almost impossible to talk to a real decision maker. When you finally run across one, they are often only interested in talking if you can come up with a hefty screening fee and first class travel and accommodations for the cast and crew – something that our small fest just can’t afford.  He Was a Quiet Man is the only film that I have ever approached about screening where everything just worked out.  I think a lot of it had to do with Frank Cappello and I almost never even saw this movie or met Frank to begin with.

I was at SXSW with my friend Dave and I had a break from work.  We were planning to catch a certain film (I can’t remember which one) and went to the wrong theater by accident.  Dave and I read the description for He Was a Quiet Man and almost didn’t go.  Dave wasn’t very excited about Christian Slater.  I remember him saying that Christian Slater hadn’t been in a good movie since Kuffs (and even then…).  We decided to give it a try since Elisha Cuthbert was in it though and I am so glad we did.  I really loved the movie and I think that it is going to put Slater back on the map.  His acting was incredible.  He really nailed it. 

I have linked some reviews from a few papers.  Like most of my favorite movies, people seem to either love it or hate it.  Moira McDonald from the Seattle Times gave it 3 out of 4 stars, William Arnold from the PI agrees that Slater kicks ass, Annie Wagner at the Stranger didn’t seem to care for it, but Scott Foundas at the Seattle Weekly loved it and they made it a SW Pick, so go figure… I say, go see it now and decide for yourself, or go pick up a DVD in a few weeks.  You’ll be glad you did.  He Was a Quiet Man is AWESOME!

http://edb.seattletimes.nwsource.com/ae/scr/edb_ed.cfm?s=st&evt=273677

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/345932_quiet04q.html

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=474248

http://seattleweekly.com/2008-01-02/film/pick-he-was-a-quiet-man-christian-slater-goes-on-a-rampage.php

Another Classic British Romance

I am in the middle of a big move right now, so I didn’t take any screeners to watch at last night’s planning meeting because I don’t want to risk losing any of them in the shuffle.  I took the advice of the Stranger’s film editor Annie Wagner and decided to head out to see Atonement at the theater.  This isn’t normally what I would consider my type of film.  I’m usually not crazy about period pieces.  The payoff almost never lives up to the investment of time necessary to get into the story.  And, as much as I enjoy looking at Keira Knightly, I just couldn’t get too excited about seeing her in another classic British romance.  Atonement sucked me in surprisingly quick though.  The acting was excellent and I kept finding myself wondering what would happen next.  The pacing of the first hour actually held my interest quite well, but the apex of the film came when Robbie Turner and two other soldiers reconnected with the battalion they had been separated from.  The one long take that follows them as they make their way from one end of the beach to the next is one of the best I have ever seen.  I have a hard time imagining the planning and execution that went into pulling it off and it truly inspired me as a filmmaker.

Going Out With a Bang!

The early bird deadline for submissions just passed yesterday and DVD’s have been rolling in for the past month. This is just about the time of year where we begin to hunker down with indie movies and I rarely get to see Hollywood films until the summer. So, I decided to go out with a bang last weekend and went to see three movies in the theater.

Beowulf was the first movie I saw. A lot of people have been dumping on it for the use of computer animation. This is obviously still a new technology and there are still some rough edges to knock off of it, but overall I was pretty impressed. I think it has come a long way since the creepy eyed little kids in the Polar Express. It was especially interesting to see how they completely re-imagined the bodies of Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins. I’m very interested in seeing them improve on it, but am admittedly a little weirded out by any non-surgical option that can take 10 years or 30 pounds off an actor. I was most impressed to see how far 3-D glasses have come since I was a kid though. They used to be those cardboard red and blue things that gave you a headache, and now they could almost pass for really cheap, nerdy sunglasses. Almost.

My wife really wanted to see No Country for Old Men, but I talked her into seeing Southland Tales instead. In retrospect, this is kind of like talking someone out of a 4-star restaurant so you can drop acid and hike to McDonalds. Just like a big portion of America, I fell in love with Donnie Darko. I even had the opportunity to meet Richard Kelly at a film event that I was volunteering for a few years ago. I wanted to like it so much, but this movie was such a mess. It really showed what happens when someone has too much success too fast. Name actors had lined up to be part of the project (I read later that many of them still don’t understand it) and it was as if people couldn’t throw enough money at it. The result was a self-indulgent, bloated, wandering film that couldn’t figure out what it was doing. The best part, was Justin Timberlake’s lip synch and dance number, but I’d look for it on Youtube somewhere instead of wasting 2 and a half hours of my life waiting for a good 2 minute part. If Dwayne Johnson wasn’t such a good looking guy, I don’t know if my wife would have forgiven me for making her sit through it.

So, we decided to finish with No Country for Old Men. It was a plotline that felt like it had been done a few times before, but nobody has ever made it work like the Cohen brothers. Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, a rugged hunter who wanders onto the scene of a drug deal gone bad. He finds a briefcase full of money and hightails it out of town with an airgun weilding psycho in tow (played brilliantly by Javier Bardem). Almost everything seemed to hit in this movie. The casting was fantastic, the suspense was riveting, the details of each scene were incredible. The only thing that left me wanting was the ending, but the rest of the movie was so good that I was willing to let it slide. All in all a great way to cap off the weekend.

Now, to this stack of indie screeners. If one of them is yours, thanks for sending it in. If you haven’t sent one to us yet, please do!