Cinema, Literature, Theater, Music, Art.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A TALK WITH DIRECTOR SAM CULLMAN ON HIS DOCUMENTARY "ART AND CRAFT" COMING TO YOUR LOCAL ART HOUSE

A while back a story appeared about an art forger who'd pulled the proverbial wool over hundreds of art curator's eyes over a time period spanning several decades. The forger, Mark Landis, had been exposed, was still at it, and no legal body could jail him or force him to cease and desist because no transaction took place; Landis donated his forgeries, dressing up the con with a superbly crafted narrative about family inheritance, blue blooded ancestors wishing to give charitably to museums, and in many cases disguising himself as a (freakin!) priest to sell the lie. A fabulous moment in Art and Craft shows Landis blessing a passerby. We laugh and laugh some more. Anyway........cut to Brooklyn and a group (Sam Cullman ,  Mark Becker ,  Jennifer Grausman) of indie doc makers. There begins the longitudinal filmmaking process spanning - I believe - nearly three years. The resulting film, Art and Craft, is a must see. Mark Landis, as we learn, ha...

What to say about a man who comes to the US at twelve, wins a Pulitzer, ends up on the cover of Time, comes out as gay, and then announces he's been an illegal alien for 20 years? Whatever you may think of him you can't call him a bore. Vargas's manic energy seems to be fueled by a deep seated anger at the life he's been handed, which paradoxically gave him everything and more. His passion for a new immigration policy is clearly fueled by personal matters (like seeing his dad about 7 times in his life, and being away from his mom for 20 years). Vargas is a man on a mission. He's a reluctant leader but leads - and people follow a man who knows where he's going. We follow Vargas as he criss crosses the US, speaking up on immigration rights, finally ending up in Washington where he gets his 5 minutes in front of Senator Patrick Leahy (and Co., including the execrable Ted Cruz). Documented marries the personal and the political in a way many films wan...

A drop is a term used to connote a location designated by - usually - the mob as a place where illicit money is temporarily held until it can be picked up by the powers that be. Betting money, drug money, money of all kinds, it appears. In this case, the drop happens to be the bar run by Gandolfini and Hardy, cousins with a somewhat murky past and a even murkier future. The Drop is based on a short story by Boston-based Dennis LeHane who also penned the screenplay, now set in Brooklyn, (as the film's poster alludes to) because the film's producers felt there were too many Boston-based crime movies (and I suppose that's a good thing).  The film is a fairly straight ahead crime-based character study - mostly of Hardy and Gandolfini. It's not quite The Friends of Eddie Coyle or Mean Streets or On The Waterfront, but it shares ingredients from each of these films.  There's no doubt Hardy, Gandolfini, and Rapace can act. Hardy, in particular, disappears into this r...

Excited to share some secrets of independent film financing and production.  http://www.mightyvisual.com/FILM_FINANCING_AND_PRODUCTION.html

Let's begin with the posters. True to space opera form, heroes (and heroines, and animals) in crisis/action poses. Robots, spaceships, good vs. evil. Standard stuff. Moving to shot comparison, the inevitable, obvious one, referencing Raiders, clearly done less as plagiarism and much more as homage. Moving back to Star Wars, Han Solo and Star Lord are mercenaries. Both are - at first - in it for the money. Indiana Jones has a higher calling/purpose - which will end with him never knowing what's inside the box/ark - just like we don't learn (until the very end) the meaning of Kane's "Rosebud" (some claim it's not about the sled but about Marion's sex). The parallels between Raider's closing shot and Citizen Kane's closing shot have been well established. Here are the two closing shots, just in case. Which brings us back to Han and Star. Heroic. Ready. Gunslingers. In another era, say fifty eight years ago, J...

To compare the three products, movie, book, screenplay... When Teresa, Belfort's first wife, points out a want ad in a paper for a stockbroker, Scorsese visualizes it through a series of close up of the want ads; our eyes are led from ad to ad until we're glued to an extreme close up of the ad Teresa's seen. In the screenplay the phrase is: Sequence is also reinterpreted.  While the book tends to move - more or less - linearly, things aren't nearly as chronological in the screenplay and book.  And yet the leaps in time appear to - paradoxically - make the film feel more like the book's sequencing.  Example: Very early on, in chapter 2 in the book, shows the Duchess hurling water at Belfort for womanizing. In the screenplay, however, it's scene 116 located on page 58 (about an hour into the action), and in the film it's situated even later.  Absent from the screenplay and the film is the ensuing, more involved Steve Madden chapter. ...