Stains, Clooney, poetry
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains will be showing as part of the Punk GrrrL (sic) Triple Feature at the Castro Theatre
next month.
This is the last print in existence from Paramount of this subversive and utterly devastating look at personal revolutions and selling-out to the mainstream and may be the final theatrical screening. Miss this… and cry.
Go
here to see a documentary (co-directed by
Sarah Jacobson and
Sam Green, no less) about the long and storied history of this forgotten gem.
Trudell the film about Native American poet John Trudell showed at Sundance last year is starting its theater exhibition run this month in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. The documentary, directed by Heather Rae (an
Evergreen State College alum!) traces the activist/poet's life (including the occupation of
Alcatraz Island in the late 60's) set to his own spoken word performances. Trudell was
reportedly courted by Ted Turner and D.A. Pennebaker for the rights to his life story but chose Rae because her 'youth' would enable her to make a more relevant film.
Yet another reason why I love George Clooney (aka professional dreamboat): he
won't cross picketlines.
Workers went on strike when the hotel's management refused to recognize an August 2004 vote to join the union. When Lowdown sought comment from the hotel, an executive demanded: "Why do you care? Who told you this? Yes it's true, they're not filming here. They changed their schedule, so what? I don't want to talk to you," and then hung up.
WWAGD? (What Would Alan Greenspan Do?)
There's been a lot of film press quick to declare the Clooney/Cuban/Soderbergh new model of distribution a failure based on the first week of
Bubble's performance. But these writers are just too accepting of the
doomsday scenarios being perpetuated by the studio system.
$70,644 on 32 screens (and those are
Landmark screens, which are only present in niche markets as it is) is actually a pretty good opening week for a film with no A-list actors (considered the driving force in indie film financing these days) and a marketing campaign that consisted of a trailer being shown in some theaters and Soderbergh making an appearance in Ohio. It's no
Ocean's 12 but if
Bubble only cost $1.2M to make it's not hard to see that films made and distributed in this model are way less of a risk investment than the indies getting made for upwards of $10M that have to play the festival crapshoot game and more often than not wind up sitting on shelves for years (or ever).
The film industry, even moreso than the music industry (and isn't that a wading pool that is getting smaller by the day), has been too defensive and afraid to embrace new techologies and even when they have (with AMC's
deal to do a digital wide release of indie film
Evergreen) they tend to half-ass it (in
Evergreen's case, completely flake out). It's an understandable fear because to these old guys the mediums and formats probably seem super-alien (uhh, Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD, anyone? Anyone at all?) or fly by night (see: Disney's DivX disaster) but the current system hemmorages money, produces almost nothing but crap and is rapidly losing the interest of American film-goers. As the saying goes, innovate or die.
Moira Shearer, 1926 - 2006
Famous British ballerina and actress Moira Shearer passed away Monday at age 80. From the
Bloomberg obituary:
Choreographers from Frederick Ashton to Robert Helpmann clamored to make ballets for her. Shearer originated the principal roles in Ashton's ``Symphonic Variations'' and his full-length, evening-long 1948 ``Cinderella,'' revived last season on both sides of the Atlantic, for his centennial.
``The Red Shoes'' was seen by Shearer as a complication in her life as it coincided with an injury to Fonteyn and a consequently heavier work schedule for the company's other lead dancers. She always said she was ``pestered'' into the production by the filmmakers and was worried that it would adversely affect her Sadler's Wells career.
Shearer's coloring alone made her stand out; her dancing was more modern and less lyrical than the other principal dancers of the time, and she was criticized for ``flashiness.'' She was better suited to the new ballets, which showed off her technique, her lightness and her intelligence.
See also: Ballerina Gallery and Wikipedia
a kind of gay Crash moment
The
LA Times report that when
Joaquin Phoenix (
Walk the Line,
Ladder 49, your mom) flipped his SUV on a windy road last week he was rescued by none other than German film-maker
Werner Herzog.
According to police, the accident occurred about 3 p.m. when Phoenix's brakes gave out. The actor said he was forced to swerve into the mountainside to avoid hitting another car, and the driver's side air bag deployed.
Phoenix said he was thrown into the passenger seat when his vehicle rolled onto its roof. In the aftermath, the actor said he felt "a bit confused."
"I remember this knocking on the passenger window," said Phoenix. "There was this German voice saying, 'Just relax.' There's the air bag, I can't see and I'm saying, 'I'm fine. I am relaxed.'
"Finally, I rolled down the window and this head pops inside. And he said, 'No, you're not.' And suddenly I said to myself, 'That's Werner Herzog!' There's something so calming and beautiful about Werner Herzog's voice. I felt completely fine and safe. I climbed out."
Herzog, 63, the temperamental auteur responsible for such strange but fascinating films as Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God — who won best documentary for 2005's Grizzly Man at the Directors Guild Awards on Jan. 28 — has a home near the accident scene.
Oscar anger begins
John Anderson at the New York Times is quite unhappy with the
Oscar nominations for Best Documentary. He tries to
shed some light on the nomination process and how it tends to conflict with how documentaries (domestic and foreign) are financed and seen.
We here at Steady Diet are pleased as punch to see that two first-timers are nominated for
Best Director. And that
Sophie Scholl: Final Days was recognized in the Foreign Film category.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains will be showing as part of the Punk GrrrL (sic) Triple Feature at the Castro Theatre next month.
Yet another reason why I love George Clooney (aka professional dreamboat): he won't cross picketlines.
