Archive for the ‘Amateur Spotlight’ Category

  • 24 Jan

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    The Dark Turtle?

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    Every year, I make it a point to re-watch the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feature film – and every year, I come away wondering if they will ever make a family film that is quite as unique. The blend of child-friendly humor with adult thematic elements and absolutely masterful puppetry and martial arts. Unlike most fantastical films from the era, the original feature holds up surprisingly well. And I’ll be damned if Raphael isn’t just about as awesome as characters come.

    Despite my affinity for these biologically-altered ass-kicking turtles, it doesn’t mean I am a fan of all things Ninja Turtles. The first sequel fell prey to its concept’s silliness, the second sequel was an abomination, and the revamps of the franchise in cartoon form have been mediocre at best. Their latest dip in film territory – TMNT – was lackluster, despite the promising character riffs between Raphael and Leonardo.

    Since the release of TMNT, there have been calls for the heroes in a half-shell to return to their darker, more violent roots, something that certainly has been influenced by the successful transformation from campy-to-gritty for the Batman franchise. While I am not entirely on board with the idea (frankly, just leave me in peace with my 1990 flick and I’ll be happy) and think that there have been so many incarnations of the Turtles that it has just gotten plain confusing for kids, one filmmaker out there decided to make a three-minute short film to demonstrate what a gritter Ninja Turtles film might look like. It’s certainly shoddily done, but there is something to be said for an embittered-Raphael standing on a rooftop watching the New York sunset whilst score from Danny Boyle’s sunshine is playing. That something might be bemusement, but it’s something.

    Leave your thoughts in the comments.

  • 25 Oct

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    Shorts Program: Morgan and Destiny’s Eleventeeth Date

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    It looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and those awesome folks over at hitRECord have put together a sequel to the collaborative Sundance short film hit Morgansen’s Date with Destiny. It’s been finished for some time, but I just stumbled across it as it was posted on Joe’s official collaborative filmmaking site. This time, Morgan and Destiny are apparently on their eleventeenth date – and where else but the Zeppelin Zoo? Co-starring his Stop Loss co-star Channing Tatum, we see Morgan battle Lionel in the most gentlemanly of ways.

    These collaborative shorts are awesome – and both were received warmly at this past year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas. Let’s hope the continued success of Joe’s passion projects can help bring a smile to his face after the recent tragic death of his older brother, Burning Dan.

  • 05 Feb

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    Short film Terminus to get feature length adaptation.

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    Canadian director Trevor Cawood is probably ecstatic to know that a feature-length adaptation of his short film Terminus is being penned by District 9 screenwriter Terri Tatchell. I’m not sure how they’re going to get two-hours out of this concept, but the short film is pretty damn awesome. Check it out below and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments.

  • 05 Feb

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    Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hitRECord Short Film

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    If you have yet to check out Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s experimental filmmaking community, which he now says has evolved into a “full-fledged professional collaborative production company,” then you’re missing out. It’s been around a few years and I’ve been following it since the beginning, when it was little more than a few videos posted by Joe and a forum where others could post and discuss their work. For a while now, they’ve been collaboratively working on a short film titled Morgan M. Morgansen’s Date with Destiny, which Joe took to Sundance this year to screen as an example of the possibilities that the collaborative internet process of bringing minds from all over the world together creates.

    On his site where he posted the video, Joe talked about the experience:

    Albert proposed an off-kilter writing exercise, and then Metaphorest’s beautifully strange short story inspired it all. I read the story aloud, Jenyffer.Maria started drawing the characters, Tori animated Jen’s drawings, Lula and I did a live-action rendition, Lawrie Brewster took the project to soaring heights with his gorgeous visuals, and along the way there was the help, encouragement and roughly 180 contributions from throughout our community. We brought it to Sundance, and Nathan coaxed the lush and vast music out of the newly coined hitRECorchestra. (Good_Girl_Indie has written out a fabulously detailed timeline documenting what happened and when along this RECord’s progression.)

    Not only did we close our (two) official hitRECord screening(s) in the New Frontier Microcinema with this piece, but the next day, Sundance added it as a short film to play before the award-winning feature HOMEWRECKER on a much bigger screen.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Feb

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    An animated world where running and walking zombies co-exist.

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    Here’s a short teaser for a film titled AD that was put together by a handful of indie filmmakers who are hoping to make their zombie concept into a feature film. Blending a unique stylized animation with a world where some zombies walk and some run (“The unpredictability of who you’re dealing with makes it way more frightening”), these folks who grew up admiring George Romero (one had a chance to work with him on Land of the Dead as a producer) are looking to put their own stamp on the zombie genre, something that will stand apart from the over-saturated crowd. Read their interview with Zombieinfo here and check out the teaser below and see if you think this could be something that catches on with mainstream audiences or not.

  • 19 Dec

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    Panic Attack!

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    According to BBC News, Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez has been offered a $30 million contract to make a Hollywood film with Sam Raimi as one of the producers. Numerous studios took notice of the man after he uploaded a five minute sci-fi short on YouTube that reportedly only cost $300 to make.

    “I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios,” Alvarez said. “It was amazing, we were all shocked.”

    It’s shaping up to be a story similar to that of District 9‘s Neill Bloomkamp, whom Peter Jackson championed on the strength of Bloomkamp’s short Alive in Jorburg. Hopefully this story will have similar positive results, because the short, which you can watch below, is pretty impressive.

  • 19 Dec

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    Beautifully heart-wrenching.

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    Simple, but something that many of us have experienced at one point in our lives. If you’ve ever called yourself a “dog person,” prepare for some raw emotion to get you all misty eyed.

  • 04 Jan

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    Colore Non Vedenti Trailer

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    colorenvThe full trailer for Jay Cheel‘s horror-comedy short Colore Non Vedenti is embedded below and it is a good one, most especially if you like old school genre flicks along the lines of Mario Bava and Larry Cohen. The short follows a beleaguered day in the life of a cable guy as a body snatcher outbreak is in progress via creepy desert product. Are you a fan of The Stuff? Well this might be up your alley. The director is a friend of Row Three and we collaborate with him and his fellow Film Junk-ies for the regular Movie Club Podcast. I was a pretty bing fan of Cheel’s previous short mock-doc The Goblin Man of Norway which features a few of the same actors (notably treknobabble columnist, Reed Farrington). The full 30 minute short film will hopefully be appearing in short film festivals, or be streamed off the internet some time in the not-too-distant future. For now, enjoy the particularly delightful vector graphics and great soundtrack choices featured therein.

    Full Colore Non Vedenti production Blog is here.

  • 19 Nov

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    Masters in the Making

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    It was September, 2000 – my first premeditated attempt at the Toronto International Film Festival. At this early date the internet was, at least to me, still a rumour, and with nary a blog nor Wikipedia to consult, the collection of films that filled my program book were unknown commodities waiting to be discovered. Left to my own devices, feeling my way through the sweet con of synopsis hell, I found myself drawn to one page in particular: poised in the still was a tattooed man with cryptic phrases across his chest and arms, of whose blurb promised stylish, suspenseful and even philosophical qualities. I bought my ticket for the film mere days before reading an unfavorable review in the local free press (NOW magazine, I think), and by the time I had entered the cramped basement theater of the now defunct Uptown Cinema, my expectations for the film were pretty low, I knew none of the talent, heard nothing positive about the film, and the very venue reeked of a sense of failure. By the time I had left, however, I was a devout believer in the greatness of the then little known director, Christopher Nolan, and his little known soon-to-be modern classic, Memento.

    A big part of why I bother writing at all about film is because of such eureka encounters, going in blind and being caught in the maelstrom of new talent. It would happen again the first time I saw Paul Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday and Todd Field’s In the Bedroom (oddly enough in the same theater, and in the same far-too-close first row). The internet being what it is today, it becomes perhaps harder to get to this point of intimate contact with unfiltered greatness, but it is of course still possible. Cinema needs its heroes, these auteurs, whether or not such a thing can realistically be said to occur in the creation of a film, the mythic importance overrides reason, and this cult of celebrity, when oriented towards proven talent rather than passing fancy, is nearly as important as what happens inside the screen.

    The passing of Stanley Kubrick has left a sizable hole in the mythic world of film auteurs; Spielberg, Coppola, Herzog, Scorsese, are not getting any younger, and with the departure of Antonioni, Kurosawa, Kieslowski, and Fellini, the hole is getting wider. The contenders for Kubrick’s mantle need to make themselves known, and where better to look then at the budding filmmakers who put their heart and soul into their first features, the eventful out of left field introductions to new ways of seeing which boldly diverge from the familiar talent-for-hire fare.

    This collaborative post is an attempt to pinpoint the masters in the making of recent years, to find filmmakers who demonstrate unique visions that have yet to breakthrough into the Christopher Nolan stratosphere, but who clearly have the ability to get there. Such masters tend to be writer/directors able to fashion an auteur-like imprint on the films they contribute to. Our list is short and open-ended, so wherever obviously lacking please add your own considerations to the comment section.

    See our picks under the seat » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 29 Feb

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    Short Film Spotlight: Whatever We Do

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    Here is a cool short film called Whatever We Do that I stumbled upon that was directed by Kevin Connelly (of Entourage fame) back in 2003 for Sundance. It stars the Row Three favorite Robert Downey Jr., as well as Tim Roth, Amanda Peet, and the always lovely Zooey Deschanel. It’s about a newly engaged couple who plan to spend a romantic day together, but those plans quickly change when the man’s childhood friend and girlfriend show up to have a little drunken celebration.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 18 Feb

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    Amateur Spotlight: Cops & Robbers

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    When it comes to amateur filmmaking on the internet, whether through YouTube or MySpace Filmmakers or Funny or Die or whatever, I’m a hard man to please. I’m not impressed too easily nor do I laugh as often as most – but every once in a while I’ll come across a short film on the internet that hits my ol’ funny bone just right and this is one of those cases. I’m not sure what about this made me chuckle so much (“Got real… got really real”) besides the fact that we’ve all been there at one point in our lives. They’re just some dudes into making short comedy sketches (you can check out the creators Chad, Matt & Rob’s MySpace for more), and this is pretty silly, but after watching this more than a few times, my friends and I were still laughing so I thought I’d share it here.

    Feel free to share some of your favorites in the comments.

    You can check out the video behind the cut.

    » Read the rest of the entry..