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19th December 2009
21st May 2009
andreaknoll @ 1:41pm: Steven Soderbergh On Sex, Money, Movies, Baseball and The Girlfriend Experience:
Steven Soderbergh On Sex, Money, Movies, Baseball and The Girlfriend Experience:
From a SuicideGirls.com interview which just went live today:
Question: The culture certainly retains a hyper-sensitivity to the monetization of bodies, though. Actresses, in particular, will often feel that a nudity requirement corrupts their artistry. Julia Roberts is a good example -- she once said that any nude scene she did would be in a documentary.
Steven Soderbergh: Well, you're talking movies now, I'm talking about prostitutes. But I think she's right. You're talking about someone who has a certain persona and who is a brand, in a way, and she has a certain idea of what that brand is and it doesn't involve shedding her clothes on screen. And that's cool. There are other actresses who feel like its part of their brand to do so.
Question: Did you have these kinds of quasi-philosophical discussions with Sasha, or were most of your talks more practical?
Steven Soderbergh: Yeah, the stuff we talked about was more practical. I talked to her about method more than anything else. I knew that if I could just get her to be her, then we would be fine. I talked to her about how we do this, how big the crew is, what the pace is, stuff like that. We didn't really have a need to talk about it conceptually, and I knew from seeing her other work that she was fearless and that there wasn't anything I could think of that she would have a problem with. As it turns out there was nothing extreme, but it was good to know that if I needed her to do that, she would.
Question: When you watched some of the more extreme videos in her filmography, what was your reaction?
Steven Soderbergh: It made me feel pretty square! I don't need very much, so I guess my reaction was, "Why is there all this extra activity?" I'm still stuck in first gear as far as that stuff goes, and she's pushing the envelope really far. And that's cool, there are people out there who, that's what turns them on, but I'm still in that place where I'm just marveling that it exists at all. I don't need a lot.
Click HERE to read the full interview.
21st December 2008
arisingstarlet @ 10:23pm: Want to be in the Grammys! Hey guys, I work at Filmaka and thought you would be interested in this new competition. Filmaka is funding all the productions and the winners could be shown in part during the Grammy Awards! We have several songs that we've already cleared the rights to, which are posted on the competition page. All you have to do is write a 2 to 5 page pitch telling us the story and look of what your music video would be like. If we select your pitch, we'll give you $7500 to produce and direct your music video. If you have an idea for a great script, but not much directing experience, we can pair you with an experienced director who will bring your pitch to life.
PITCHES ARE DUE BY MIDNIGHT ON JANUARY 2, 2009. Go to Filmaka.com and look for the box about the Lincoln Grammy competition for more information. I hope you'll decide to submit!
13th November 2008
planetmatt @ 7:07am: ILLUSTRATION NATION Movie! Hey peeps, sorry it's been a while since I updated. I wanted to alert you to my new movie that premieres just one week from today: ILLUSTRATION NATION!
The film follows the my adventures around the world on a promotional tour for the New York Times Best-Seller 'You Can Draw Star Wars' from Lucasfilm and DK Publishing. From George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, through the heart of Hollywood, to the streets of fantastical Tokyo, ILLUSTRATION NATION is an uncensored look at fandom and the pop culture industry that drives it. The pulse-pounding documentary also features rare cameos ranging from Anthony Daniels (Star Wars) to Gene Simmons (KISS, Family Jewels) to adult film legend Seka. Check out the trailer below!
ILLUSTRATION NATION: Movie Trailer
The premiere will be an event hosted by myself at the Main Art in Royal Oak, MI on Thursday, November 20th. Admission is $9.25. Short films and animations will screen at 7 pm. I'll introduce the feature presentation at 7:30 pm, the running time being 1 hr 57 min. A Meet and Greet with the cast will commence after the screening in the side lobby, followed by an after-party at Mr. B's on Main St. All are welcome. Please note that ILLUSTRATION NATION is Not Rated by the MPAA, and is not suitable for children.
See you there!
28th July 2008
projecttwenty1 @ 10:07am: Film Directors!
Got Films? Want them distributed?
Submissions for undistributed films to the Philadelphia Film-A-Thon are still open! The Winner of "Best Feature" will receive a screening at the International House Philadelphia Theater, a copy of Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, the Official Philadelphia Film-A-Thon trophy, waived entry into next year's festival, and an international distribution offer by Polychrome Pictures through Warner Bros Worldwide Home Video/DVD. Visit www.ProjectTwenty1.com for more info.
Note: Short films & animations will also receive screenings & awards at year's Film-A-Thon, but we do not have a promise from PC/WB to distribute them BUT YOU NEVER KNOW! If you have something exceptional, please send it our way, and we will do the best we can it in front of the right eyeballs!
[x-posted to find the best film possible!]
10th June 2008
22nd May 2008
projecttwenty1 @ 5:01pm:
Last year, Teams from Hawaii, Japan, Michigan, Miami, Philadelphia and all over the US signed up to create an original animation or film based on one common secret "Element" in just 21 Days. Do you Directors need an excuse to make a movie, a venue to screen your film, or a deadline to help make sure that your talent, locations, and crew stay on schedule? Look no further - Project Twenty1 is here!
14th May 2008
chidder @ 7:57pm: Delirious Revisited
Last August, Deb and I had the opportunity to attend a special screening of director Tom DiCillo's Delirious. I wrote about the film the next day (which, if you check out the comments, generated a response from DiCillo himself). In subsequent weeks, due to lousy distribution (think Katrina-relief-effort lousy) and despite a rave review from Roger Ebert, Delirious came and went, lasting only a month in New York, a week in Los Angeles, and appearing on less than two-dozen screens in the entire U.S.
Last week Delirious was released on DVD. I encourage you to run out and buy, rent, or steal a copy immediately. You won't be disappointed (especially if you're a fan of the great character-study films of the Seventies). Rewatching the film today, I was once again blown away. Not only does it boast fantastic performances (by Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, and Gina Gershon, to name the obvious few), it's also a stunning piece of cinema.
Fortunately, the DVD transfer captures the movie's rich colors; scenes like the one where the Pitt character, walking through the streets of New York and realizing he's in love, are nothing short of visual poetry. Plus, there's a great commentary track by DiCillo, who has crafted a film, despite all third-party efforts to the contrary, worth remembering.
27th March 2008
chidder @ 1:24pm: What the Hell? This morning, in The New York Sun, there's an article about how Manhattan's Anthology Film Archives (according to its website, "the first museum devoted to film as an art form") is reviving the early movies of Albert Brooks; specifically, his first two features, the wonderful and exquisite Real Life and Modern Love (the former, made in 1979, an extremely prescient commentary
Regarding Brooks's third movie, Lost in America, the article mentions that "'there's no print of it anywhere.' An apparent victim of indifference on the part of Warner Bros., which owns the film, Lost in America has fallen through the distribution cracks."
No print of it anywhere?! It's not unusual in this day of film restoration awareness (thanks to the efforts of directors like Martin Scorsese) to hear how 90 percent of American silent movies have been lost, as well as half of all the films made in the U.S. before 1950. But we're talking about a movie that was made in 1985, for Chrissake! As well, Lost in America took in more at the box office than Brooks's first two films combined. And nobody thought to preserve a single print?
I don't know about you, but that really grinds my gears.
26th February 2008
indiefilmpage @ 10:38am: indiefilmpage.com and Coney Island USA present the 8th annual Coney Island Film Festival September 26- 28, 2008 at Sideshows by the Seashore and The Coney Island Museum in the historic Brooklyn neighborhood Coney Island, New York!
Regular Deadline April 25th, 2008 (postmarked) $25 entry fee.
Late deadline June 25th, 2008 (postmarked)
Extended late deadline July 3rd, 2008 (postmarked)
Enter early and save on the entry fee.
The Coney Island Film Festival is open to filmmakers working in ALL GENRES, SUBJECTS AND FORMATS.
Coney Island Film Fest website, click here
Enter through Withoutabox.com, click here
31st January 2008
lars_lover @ 12:03am: Hello I'm new to livejournal and am an actress getting started. I take interest in your films so I hope you don't mind journal friendship.
Thank you,
Jan
26th December 2007
shinjiteiru @ 6:11pm: New Film Website! Hey all!
I just recently put up a website for the production group that I'm part of called Vestige Productions. There's a whole slew of films and videos up on the website and I would greatly appreciate any comments/questions/etc. that you may have. So please check out the films and let me know what you think!
9th September 2007
dirtstar @ 12:13am: Visuals for the next Oakenfold tour Hey everyone - I am working with the well known DJ/producer/artist Paul Oakenfold on a pretty cool opportunity I thought I would tell y'all about.
Paul's shows always have a lot of visuals to go along with the music. For the next tour, we're looking for people who have developed interesting original video footage or animations or even still art that can be edited together for the on-stage show.
Here are the details if you or anyone you know might be interested in getting their visual art shown to thousands of people (and you will find this same info at myspace.com/pauloakenfold).
15th August 2007
chidder @ 11:00am: Delirious
I've got this camera click, click, clickin' in my head.
—ELVIS COSTELLO,
"I'm Not Angry"
Although it doesn't appear until the end credits, Elvis Costello's classic 1977 spitfire anthem serves as one of the best movie theme songs—theme in every sense of the word—of recent years. Jealousy, voyeurism, paranoia, acceptance, rejection, denial, the potential for violence, the recognition that it's all so damn unfunny that it becomes funny—Costello's song has it all, and so does the fine film to which it's now been wed.
Director and writer Tom DiCillo's Delirious, which had a special screening last night in Manhattan at the Angelika, works effectively on so many different levels that it gives new meaning to the term cross-genre. At once a comedic and dramatic _Midnight Cowboy_ish character study of downtrodden friendship, it's also a love story, a meditation on fame (those who have it vs. those who want it), and a potential stalker flick. Despite its vastly disparate characters, shifts in tone, and wildly divergent plot lines, the movie hangs together remarkably well. Its debts to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver aside, Delirious is the best movie about wanting to be famous since that other great Scorsese paean to obsessive behavior, 1983's The King of Comedy. (Both Scorsese films starred Robert De Niro, who receives mention several times in Delirious.)
"Sometimes I see too much," says Steve Buscemi's Les Gallantine (even his name is a worthy successor to Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle) to Michael Pitt's Toby Grace. What he doesn't see is how his chosen profession—that of paparazzi—with each click of his shutter takes something away from his subjects. He proudly displays on his apartment wall two long-range photos of Elvis Costello (who effectively appears as himself in the movie) as if they were big-game trophies.
Following last night's screening, Tom DiCillo spoke about the making of Delirious, which he spent the last six years bringing to fruition. He couldn't say enough good things about his star Steve Buscemi, who delivers what might well be the best performance of his career (right up there with his starring role in DiCillo's 1995 indie classic, Living in Oblivion).
One thing DiCillo couldn't stress enough about his new film and whether or not it succeeds: "Tell your friends about it." Indeed, in a movie marketplace where big-name films boast advertising budgets larger than what it cost DiCillo to make his movie (he had to reduce his budget from five million dollars down to three million), word of mouth is more important than ever.
DiCillo told The New York Times last week: "'Look at the movies people are watching.... They’re about nothing. You invest nothing.'"
Not so with Delirious.
14th August 2007
ladyholmwood @ 7:45pm: Casting Call for S1NGLE in Southern NJ this weekend
S1NGLE can be best described as a an experimental short that will not exceed 10 minutes in length. It will be filmed the weekend of August 25th. Please refer to the production website in regards to any questions about the film or audition process. The below establishments are only graciously offering a place for us to hold the auditions, nothing more.
Saturday August 18th 2-4pm
BRENNER'S BREW
21 East Commerce Street,
Bridgeton, NJ 08302
Monday August 20th 7-8pm
MILLVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY
210 Buck Street
Millville, NJ 08332
26th April 2007
chidder @ 10:23am: Gun Crazy
I'm not sure how this one escaped me for so many years. Directed in 1949 by Joseph H. Lewis from a screenplay by MacKinlay Kantor (based on his 1940 Saturday Evening Post short story) and blacklisted Dalton Trumbo masquerading as Millard Kaufman, Gun Crazy reset the standard for film noir and paved the way for the attractive, sympathetic -- albeit sometimes psychotic -- antiheroes that showed up two decades later in movies like Bonnie and Clyde (whose real-life characters inspired Gun Crazy's lovin' couple on the run) and The Getaway.
Cinematically, the film's often expressionistic; its startling and (then) innovative use of extended "backseat driver" takes, shot from within the getaway car, and get the viewer caught up not only in the characters' predicament but the sexual excitement their larceny generates. And Russell Harlan's black-and-white cinematography is right up there with his work on Red River, The Thing from Another World, and Blackboard Jungle.
Not again until Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway would the screen see crooks as charismatic as Peggy Cummins and John Dall. Director Lewis told critic Danny Peary in 1981: "I told John, 'Your cock's never been so hard,' and I told Peggy, 'You're a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don't let him have it in a hurry. Keep him waiting.' That's exactly how I talked to them and I turned them loose. I didn't have to give them more directions."
25th April 2007
planetmatt @ 6:34pm: How To Draw STAR WARS Preview on YouTube! There seemed to be a glitch with my post yesterday- trying to embed the YouTube file directly here... Not sure why it didn't work... So Let me try this again- linking directly to the page... :)
There's a brand new 2 minute preview of the How To Draw STAR WARS video series on YouTube, hosted by yours truly!
And you can see it right now, by clicking HERE!
Have a wonderful day! :)
23rd April 2007
chidder @ 11:44am: Everything Is an Afterthought
I recently sold my first book. In conjunction, I've established another LiveJournal to report on the project's progress, occasionally provide links about, and writings by, its subject, the journalist and critic Paul Nelson, and share snippets of information or parts of interviews that may or may not be covered further in the final product.
In addition to being a critic and screenwriter, Nelson co-wrote the fine book: 701 Toughest Movie Trivia Questions of All Time (about which Martin Scorsese said, "Some of the sections were so tough I could only guess at the answers, but the book taught me a lot I was happy to learn").
The new journal shares the book's working title, Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. Just follow the link.
Anybody interested in learning more about this brilliant writer, whose own life proved just as mysterious and fascinating as the artists' about whom he wrote, is welcome to join. As well, tracking the process of how a book goes from sale to publication should prove interesting. I'm rather curious about that part myself...
chidder @ 11:43am: Year of the Dog
For his directorial debut, Mike White chose to make a movie (based on his own original screenplay) that's a treatise about loneliness and people who have love but can't find a place to put it. Like many of the characters in White's previous scripts (to name a notable few: Chuck and Buck, School of Rock, Orange County, three episodes of Freaks and Geeks,and one of my all-time favorite films, The Good Girl), Year of the Dog's Peggy (played by Molly Shannon) doesn't quite have a sense of herself; her strong feelings and opinions locate her a little outside of the mainstream. The thing is, the people in the orbit of her life who don't get her, whose eyebrows and judgment she raises, are no less idiosyncratic.
Following the surprising but inevitable course that Peggy's life takes, Shannon is excellent, as is the rest of the cast, with the ever-dependable John C. Reilly, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Pais particularly outstanding.
As exemplified by a user comment at IMDb, the film is far from the chick flick that its plot and advertising suggests: " I thought I was going to see a funny movie. I came home feeling suicidal. If I wanted to see a pathetic over-40 woman who has bad dates and lives alone with the pets she dotes on too much, I woulda stayed home and stared in the mirror!" Year of the Dog -- the chick flick from hell?
Regardless, by movie's end, as in all of White's work, he manages to humanize his offbeat characters so that we, too, can understand and perhaps even identify with them -- if we hadn't already all along.
2nd April 2007
planetmatt @ 6:12pm: How To Draw STAR WARS Video Episode V: WASH PAINTING! Well, a new episode of How To Draw STAR WARS is now up. I thought that today I'd share with you some behind-the-scenes images of what goes into making an episode...
It's been a wonderful ride so far- only three episodes left. It's kind of neat, because the overall arc of the episodes is to show the full creation of a 30th Anniversary STAR WARS poster, yet when you break down each individual episode structure, it has it's own beginning, middle, and end.
It's making me have a newfound respect for TV shows. While I can't compare these 7 minute Episodes to a show like LOST, I'm really intrigued at the effort that goes into making each Episode its own little mini movie. There's a larger story going on, yet each Episode is a satisfying piece of the puzzle. I'm finding so much inspiration with that.
Here I am playing director for this Episode,
shot at the Moscone Center in downtown SanFrancisco.
So, Episode 5, WASH PAINTING, finally begins the color painting stage on the poster. It's the first half of my process, and shows how I make my under-painting with acrylic washes. The Episode also touches on PROCRASTINATION, and even covers using an AIRBRUSH!
You'd be surprised how much work goes into a single shot-
which just ends up being seconds of the final product.
Did I say that this Episode has Stormtroopers?! "Nothing to see here... Move Along... Move along..."
You can download the latest Episode HERE right now... FOR FREE!
8th February 2007
planetmatt @ 12:01am: The MATT BUSCH CHANNEL on YouTube! I've been a busy little beaver. I've just completed Episode 2 of the HOW TO DRAW STAR WARS video shorts, and have just begun on the third, which should be the most entertaining to date... I'm so excited for you guys to see them.
They should be debuting at DK's site very soon, with a few episodes also running on Amazon.com... Eventually they'll make their way to StarWars.com once a healthy portion of Episodes are complete. After that, they'll make their way to YouTube, MySpace Videos, and everything else.
Speaking of YouTube, I've finally uploaded some older videos for anyone to see. Some of these are on my Fantastic Visions DVD that was released in 2003, though some are newer and haven't been released yet.
There are a couple STAR WARS animated galleries, as well as one for BATTLESTAR GALACTICA... Both Episodes of the CRAZY MARK TV Show I was on... Two music videos featuring my pin-up work... Animated trailers for both CRISIS and ALIZARIN'S JOURNAL... Me rockin' out on stage with the band EVEN THE ODD, and even my bloody cameo in the zombie movie BERSERKERS!
Anyway, check some of these out. You can rate the videos, leave comments, and even subscribe to the Channel to be notified of when I put new videos up.
You can enjoy all the fun by going to www.YouTube.com/MattBusch , or just click HERE to go to the MATT BUSCH CHANNEL directly!
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