Excited to share some secrets of independent film financing and production.

Excited to share some secrets of independent film financing and production.

http://www.mightyvisual.com/FILM_FINANCING_AND_PRODUCTION.html

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Alejandro Jodorowsky

From El Topo (1970). Alejandro Jodorowsky (right). The idea of a western as something more than a good guy (white hat) / bad guy (black hat) showdown had been pioneered by John Ford as far back as Stagecoach (1939), but few if any - filmmakers can turn a genre piece into a quest for spiritual enlightenment. Infused with iconic and surreal imagery, El Topo is considered the grandaddy of midnight cult movies, and deservedly so. Jodorowsky has said his goal with regard to cinema is to re-create the experience of taking LSD, without taking the hallucinogenic. He wants to re-write the book on how humans perceive life and themselves. Highly ambitious, his films shatter every preconceived notion we have about what cinema is supposed to be. Imagine Luis Bunuel, Quentin Tarantino, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez rolled into one and you'd probably get Alejandro Jodorowsky. He has called himself the "father of the midnight movie" and he's probably right. Throughout his c...

Art and Craft documents forger's fictions

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...

Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and more.

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...

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