2000 Oscar Flubs

Unfortunately I don’t have time to write down 2,000 different Oscar flubs, so I’ll just focus on the year 2000.

I figured with 11 days until the Academy Awards, I would take a look at the past 11 years worth of Oscars over those 11 days.  I wanted to take a look at the past winners and see if we find those winners to be acceptable now that we’ve had some time to live with the decisions.  It’s funny, for example, how I thought at the time that American Beauty was a worthy winner in 2000.  Now, I don’t feel the same way.  So let’s take a look at the big categories and see what we’d do differently:

Best Picture

The nominees were: American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, and The Sixth Sense

Shoulda Been Nominated: Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut, The Straight Story, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Magnolia, Three Kings, Being John Malkovich, All About My Mother, Election, The Matrix, Mumford, and a whole host of other great films came out.  1999 was the strongest year for film in twenty years and yet these were the five nominees the Academy chose?

Based on the the rules of this game – which are arbitrary and made up – I have to choose a deserving winner among the actual nominees.  Under that rule, I think the winner has to be Michael Mann’s The Insider.  I think it has the best Russell Crowe performance ever – understated, complicated, fatigued – and the best Al Pacino performance of the decade, one where he doesn’t go over the top.  There are classic scenes (“Mike?  Miiiike?  Try Mr. Wallace.”), wonderful supporting turns by Christopher Plummer, Gina Gershon, and Bruce McGill, and a brilliant script by Eric Roth and Michael Mann that is a bit reminiscent of All The President’s Men.  It’s a film about journalism at a specific time in its history and it’s the defining film about television journalism, in the years before the internet took over.  It holds up remarkably well, much better than American Beauty which now seems trite, heavy-handed, and way too on-the-nose in its allusions.  American Beauty is still a fine film, but it’s not the classic we thought it was at the time.  The Insider, on the other hand, is ever better than we thought.

But neither of them are as good as Fight Club, Magnolia or Eyes Wide Shut.

Best Director

The nominees were: Sam Mendes for American Beauty, Spike Jonze for Being John Malkovich, Lasse Hallstrom for The Cider House Rules, Michael Mann for The Insider, and M. Night Shyamalan for The Sixth Sense.

Shoulda Been Nominated: Fincher, Kubrick, Lynch, Minghella, P.T. Anderson, Almodovar, David O. Russell,  etc. etc.

Mendes won the Oscar and for all the reasons I mentioned above, I think ever aspect of American Beauty was overrated at the time.  I think Mendes did a fine job handling the tone in that film, but his work isn’t as innovative as Jonze’s in Being John Malkovich.  Jonze also had to tame a particular and odd tone with his film and he hit it out of the park, finding the delicate balance between comedy and longing.  I think it’s a no-brainer that this should have been Jonze’s award.

Best Actor

The nominees were: Kevin Spacey for American Beauty (and he won), Russell Crowe for The Insider, Richard Farnsworth for The Straight Story, Sean Penn for Sweet and Lowdown, Denzel Washington for The Hurricane.

Shoulda Been Nominated: Matt Damon gave a brilliant performance in The Talented Mr. Ripley that was overlooked by everybody because of Jude Law’s flashier performance in the same movie.  Damon plays the difficult part in that film and he kills it.  No pun intended.

All of these are really strong performances, but for me this goes to Richard Farnsworth.  I think Farnsworth’s performance in The Straight Story is one of the top 20 performances I’ve ever seen.  His Alvin Straight is quiet, humble, wise, stubborn, and kind.  He’s a man with a lot of demons and we see them all, even the ones he doesn’t speak about.  We are invested in his story, in his quest, to find his brother because we believe in him and we believe in his moral compass – even if it’s different than our own.  He’s a man that has earned the right to do as he wishes and we see the respect he is given by those around him, but we don’t just have to take the movie’s word for it that he’s a man worthy of our respect – he earns it.  We respect this man.  Farnsworth is the reason for it and he’s the reason why this movie is one of the very few that makes me cry every single time I watch it.

Best Actress

The nominees were: Hilary Swank for Boys Don’t Cry (she won), Annette Bening for American Beauty, Janet McTeer for Tumbleweeds, Julianne Moore for The End of the Affair, Meryl Streep for Music of the Heart

Shoulda Been Nominated: It’s a real shame that Reese Witherspoon didn’t get any love from the Academy for her head-turning work in Election.  She imbued Tracy Flick with heart, soul, guile, heartlessness, and soullessness.  Wow.

Not the strongest crop of Best Actress nominees.  Even still, the Academy definitely got this one right.  Swank deservedly got the award for her stunning and heart-wrenching portrayal of Brandon Teena.  Just a fantastic performance that later made her one of the more overrated actresses of the last ten years.  Still, this one was perfect.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees were: Michael Caine for The Cider House Rules (he won), Michael Clarke Duncan for The Green Mile, Jude Law for The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom Cruise for Magnolia, Haley Joel Osment for The Sixth Sense

Shoulda Been Nominated: Sydney Pollack in Eyes Wide Shut, for the pool room scene alone.  The dude was commanding while giving an almost twenty minute monologue.  Pollack goes through about ten different shades of anger and doubt in that scene and we feel every single one.

Michael Caine is fine in The Cider House Rules because he’s Michael friggin’ Caine and he does a flawless New England accent, so he gets points for degree of difficulty.  But I think Tom Cruise was so charismatic and tortured and wonderful as Frank T.J. Mackey that he definitely deserved the award.  Just like Pollack deserved to be nominated for commanding the screen for twenty straight minutes, Cruise does that feat (for less time) at multiple points throughout Magnolia.  He’s filthy, sexist, and mean and yet when he cries at his father’s bed at the end of the movie, he redeems himself.  Cruise makes it work.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees were: Angelina Jolie for Girl, Interrupted (she won), Toni Collette for The Sixth Sense, Catherine Keener for Being John Malkovich, Samantha Morton for Sweet and Lowdown, and Chloe Sevigny for Boys Don’t Cry

Shoulda Been Nominated: Keener got a nom for Being John Malkovich but not Cameron Diaz?  Diaz has the more dramatically difficult part and she really kills it.  I mean, she’s an animal-loving, frizzy-haired, secret lesbian who owns a menagerie of pets and we believe every second of her journey.  I would have not only nominated her, but given her the award.

Of the nominees, it’s hard to find one that I disagree vehemently with.  I don’t know that I would give Jolie the award, though.  I’m a Jolie fan, I think she’s a really strong actresses, but this wasn’t my favorite of her performances.  For me, it’s a toss-up between Samantha Morton and Chloe Sevigny.  Morton’s face tells a thousand tales in Woody Allen’s underrated Sweet and Lowdown – and it has to, considering she plays a mute.  And yet, Sevigny is playing vulnerable, fragile, yet strong enough to be independent.  It’s tough, but I think I’d give it to Morton.

What about you guys?  What would you do?

Source: Movie City News Frenzy On Blog

SNL Recap – Russell Brand and Chris Brown

I first became aware of Russell Brand, like a lot of Americans, thanks to his appearance in the wonderful Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Since then, I’ve come to appreciate his presence – whether it’s in movies, on talk shows, or hosting events like the VMAs.  I just find his manner to be refreshing.  He’s thoughtful, erudite, and unbelievably crass.  But his vulgarity doesn’t come from a mean-spirited place.  Rather, there’s an innocence to him that makes him appealing even when he acts like a buffoon.  The movie Get Him to the Greek works so well because although Aldous Snow does some despicable things throughout the course of the movie, we sense that deep down he’s a sweet person.  And that’s all thanks to Brand because he brings that to the table.  He is lewd, but in the most lovable way, and it’s not something that can be learned.  It’s just something he was born with, a natural charisma that attracts people to him.  Although he hasn’t had a chance to really prove it, I think he might have a wonderful range that will extend far beyond comedy.  But for now, let’s see how he does on SNL.

As for Chris Brown…um, not too psyched about that part.

Let’s go to the videotape (or DVR)!  (Please let Stefon make an appearance…)

Cold Open – Jason Sudeikis playing Bill O’Reilly and Fred Armisen doing his bland Obama.  It’s a parody of the Super Bowl interview that O’Reilly did with Obama.  This whole sketch is built around the premise that O’Reilly is a pompous, egotistical blowhard.  Um, thanks for that info SNL, would have never guessed.  It’s definitely a skit that takes the easy and safe approach to the material.  The truth of the matter is that SNL has always been (and probably always will be) a left-leaning program that has done a pretty good job at taking shots at both the Dems and the GOP.  But, in this skit, the really interesting take would be to show Obama as the opportunist in this.  The real problem is that he sat down with O’Reilly to begin with, therefore legitimatizing this moron.  But what is Obama’s motivation in doing so?  And before the Super Bowl?  I think that’s the core idea that would have been funnier to explore than simply showing O’Reilly being condescending to a sitting President.  Anyway, it’s a middling skit that is mildly amusing.  5/10

Monologue – Brand is clean-shaven, looks different…almost respectable.  Did he wash his hair??  Jeez, I guess fame is getting to him.  Anyway, Brand mentions that he’s more famous in England than he is in the states.  Although, I’m not sure that’s really true anymore.  I mean, who doesn’t know Brand in the USA?  “In England, tight pants means you’re famous.”  Brand is really good at pointing out the differences between England and the US, but he’s never been as incisive as someone like Eddie Izzard when it comes to that topic.  He’s pretty much just blathering on.  It doesn’t feel like anybody actually wrote this monologue, but someone just said, ‘Hey Russell, just go up there and gab about whatever comes to mind for five minutes.’  He’s stumping for Colin Firth to win the Oscar, which makes me a little sad.  But at least he supports Portman for Best Actress.  He says Portman prepared for a few months, but he prepared for his sex-addicted, drug-addicted role in Get Him to the Greek for twenty years.  This monologue is all over the place.  This is why I prefer Brand in the movies or in his book than his stand-up.  He’s funny and all, but he’s way better when he’s given some limits because he can stretch the boundaries while staying on point rather than just being “long-winded” as Bill O’Reilly taught me.  Of course this monologue wouldn’t be complete without a Katy Perry reference.  It’s rare that stand-ups do well in the SNL monologues because they insist on doing their act.  Zach Galifiankis was the only one who did his routine during the monologue in recent years and knocked it out of the park.  I’ve written so much about this because I’m utterly bored by Brand’s monologue.  3/10

Gublin and Green, Attorney at Law - This was really not funny.  It’s a one-joke commercial about the Spider-man musical and how many injuries have occurred during the previews.  It’s really no different than countless fake ambulance-chasing ads they’ve done over the years, except with a few references to the Spider-man musical.  Again, this is an instance of SNL choosing the easy joke without going any deeper.  This show is off to a pretty terrible start.  3/10

Ultimate Vacation Giveaway – Kristen Wiig is playing an overly excited Travel Channel correspondent who is about to give away a vacation to a white trash dude played by Russell Brand.  She’s super stoked about giving it away and Brand is not excited at all, just sipping his beer.  Uh-oh, this is dying.  Brand’s accent is pretty good, but I’m almost embarrassed for Wiig right now.  She’s giving so much of herself to this part and this skit is going nowhere.  Where are the jokes here?  I like Wiig and Brand so much, but Brand is given nothing to do and Wiig is just overplaying this and hoping for laughs.  They show past winners going crazy.  Taran Killam pees his pants, that’s kinda funny.  I can’t believe that they have Russell Brand as the host and this is one of the skits they picked.  This made it out of dress?  Really, really bad.  1/10

Don’ You Go Rounin’ Roun to Re Ro – Finally something funny!  This is actually pretty brilliant on a few different levels.  This is a parody of hard-nosed British blue-collar crime dramas.  Hader and Armisen have accents so thick that you can’t understand a thing they say.  Hader is so great, saying each of his unintelligible lines with such conviction that it’s easy to believe he’s saying something even though it’s all gibberish.  Russell Brand shows up and he is the only one doing caricature in this skit, probably because he’s making fun of his own accent to a certain extent.  Nasim Predrad is great in this too, as Hader’s girlfriend.  But it’s also a pretty great commentary on how critics in the states go nuts for these kinds of films.  Really solid clip.  In lieu of a digital short?  My guess is yes.  8/10

Next Episode (March 5th) – THE STROKES!!!  They are my favorite band and one of the most important musical acts of my generation.  Their new album is coming out March 22nd and their new single is already out and it’s called Under Cover of Darkness and if you like the Strokes, you’ll like this song.  I absolutely cannot wait to see them on March 5th, I’m already counting down the days.  Oh yeah, Miley Cyrus is hosting…whatever.

Royal Taster – Taran Killam is playing the king’s taster.  The king is played by Russell Brand.  The king assures the taster that he’s safe within these walls, despite the fact that he’s had death threats.  The chef then comes in to be berated by the king, who had just killed the chef’s whole family for making the beef too tough.  Also, the chef is next in line to be king if the king dies.  Needless to say, the taster is worried.  Hader is the chef.  Everybody is ridiculously over the top in the skit, trying to be as loud as possible to cover up for the fact that the writing is pretty weak.  I think the premise of the sketch is ripe for lots of possibilities, but the writers have gone a more simple route.  The only funny part is Hader getting close to Brand’s face and poking at him with his nose, causing Brand to nearly lose it.  And the ending, which is fairly close to brilliant.  Wow.  That ending really saves that skit and makes it something subversive and worthwhile.  6.5/10

Chris Brown – As with last week’s performer (Linkin Park), this is just not my thing.  To me, Chris Brown is like the homeless man’s Usher.  He can dance well, which makes his performances easy to watch, but the music is the worst kind of pop.  It’s derivative and boring.  It sounds like he hired Ke$ha’s producer.  But I gotta give him props for his dancing.  3/10

Weekend Update – Starts off with a strong joke about Hosni Mubarak taking over for Regis.  Seth Meyers makes a great point about pictures of yourself with the camera in the picture.  A nice joke about Christina Aguilera’s Super Bowl performance.  Fred Armisen comes on as Mubarak.  “30 years in power and all I have to show for it is 70 billion dollars of the Egyptian people’s money.”  “Basically, I was trying the old Jedi mind trick.”  I like Armisen’s take on Mubarak.  Now that he’s stepped down and Patterson is no longer governor, I’m sad that Armisen’s takes on these guys will no longer be necessary.  He really comes from the Dana Carvey school of impressions, which means that he doesn’t get the voices note-perfect or anything, he just finds one trait that he can hang on to and bases it on that, building an entirely original and new character out of it.  Solid joke about the AOL/Huffpost merger, although that whole saga has been over-reported.  Bottom line about that merger: I DON’T CARE.  A joke about a woman who returned her dog because it clashed with her curtains doesn’t go over too well, but I thought was pretty funny.  Wow, I actually thought Jay Pharoah WAS Lil’ Wayne for a second.  Taran Killam – who is getting a lot of airtime – comes out with him as Eminem to perform a  really inappropriate Valentine’s Day song.  Pharoah gets everything right about Lil’ Wayne, except for the rapping part.  It’s hard to rap exactly like someone else, but Pharoah misses the mark slightly there.  Then again, he’s so good ordinarily that I’m probably holding him to a higher standard.  Killam is a little closer to the mark with Eminem, but still doesn’t quite get there.  Still, it’s a funny idea and a sign of the changing musical landscape.  Meyers: “There’s no nice thing you can say to a woman that ends in ‘knife.’”  Nice joke about Lady Gaga: “I think the most surprising part of this story is that she has sex in a bed.  Oh my lord, Stefon is coming on!  WOO HOO!!!  He deserves his own section.  The score for update is 7/10

Stefon – YES YES YES.  Best character on SNL right now.  He needs his own movie, I would totally watch it.  I can’t even keep up with all these classic Stefon-isms.  Let’s see if Hader loses it this time.  “New York’s hottest club is BOOOOOOOOOF.”  “Pugs, geezers, do-wop groups, a wise old turtle that looks like Quincy Jones.”  “Giz-blow the coked up Gremlin!”  Oh man, I’m dying here, he did the Gizmo song!  “Fuji Howser, M.D.” made Hader lose it a bit.  “Jewpids?”  “Jewish cupids.”  Oh man, Hader is losing it again as he always does.  He never breaks character ever, but Stefon gets him every single time.  “Human suitcase?”  “It’s when a midget on roller skates wears all your clothes and you pull him through an airport.”  HAHAHA, holy shit, that’s great and offensive and amazing.  I understand they need to space out the appearances of Stefon, but I would love to see him every week.  He just slays me.  This saved the show from being the absolute worst of the year.  10/10

Livin’ Single – Vanessa Bayer plays a host on the Oxygen network.  Taran Killam – shit, where’s Paul Brittain tonight? – is playing her co-host, DJ Terry.  It’s a show about being single and all the girls on the show are talking about how they love it, but they really don’t.  Vanessa Bayer really reminds me a lot of Larraine Newman.  The DJ is in love with the host, but she’s not into him.  Russell Brand comes on as Damian, a suave British man and the host is instantly smitten with him.  I imagine the DJ is not going to like this.  Brand feeds her chocolate and she sucks on his finger.  Killam’s stone face is pretty funny.  “Is it sinful if I put your hand on my pectoral?”  “Give us a beat, Terry.”  “No, I don’t want to give him a beat.”  They proceed to start dry-humping.  This is a skit that really shouldn’t work, but Brand and Bayer and Killam are all pretty committed to their characters, which makes it easier to enjoy.  Brand gets the butter…I wonder if that’s in reference to Maria Schneider’s recent passing.  Either way, completely passable skit that I won’t remember tomorrow.  5.5/10

A Spot of Tea – Wow, a Samberg apperance.  Where has he been all night?  Samberg, Brand, and Hader are playing three old proper British women hosting a talk show.  It’s really hard to listen to them because their voices are all so shrill and high, but I suppose that’s the point.  An earthquake hits and their seismograph shows the results.  This is really bizarre and I don’t really think there are any jokes.  I’m hoping that something happens at the end to turn it on its head.  Every time they try to pour the tea, there’s  an earthquake…uh oh, please tell me this is going somewhere unexpected because otherwise this is a waste of everyone.  The show’s sponsor, a cabinet of glass, obviously gets ruined in yet another earthquake.  This is like a skit on a Nickelodeon show or something.  Wow, this was truly terrible.  Oh hey, Paul Brittain finally shows up with cheese fondue for half a second.  1.5/10

Chris Brown Again – This time he’s singing a ballad, which means no dancing, which means cringe-inducing lyrics about being horny and treacly music.  Ugh, this is really terrible.  It’s almost like a parody of the cheesy sex songs that R. Kelly sings.  He’s gonna do you all night, he’s gonna give it to you.  Jeez.  I don’t want to get too much into his personal life, but I wonder exactly what he’s gonna give to you all night.  1/10

Founding Fathers – A top-secret time machine that enables George Washington to appear.  Boehner and Pelosi both plead their cases to see what he would think.  Brand, as Washington, punches out Sudeikis.  Washington is freaking out, takes out his musket and boxes with Boehner, then karate chops Sudeikis.  Pelosi then stabs him in the back and kills him.  I’m surprised they didn’t have Boehner cry as he was getting punched.  Speaking of punches…there was no punchline in this skit.  3/10

Final Grades:

Russell Brand – Really disappointed by his showing tonight.  He was full of energy and all, but I can only fault the writing so much (and it was truly atrocious tonight, a common occurrence when there’s a two or three-week vacation coming) and he just seemed lost.  I just don’t think he was a good fit for this stage and this show.  I think he’s versatile and talented and charismatic, but he was not a strong SNL host.  Like I always say, you never really know who’s going to come through and who isn’t.  4/10

Chris Brown – Blah, blah, blah, boring.  2/10

The rest of the cast – The only thing that stood out to me was the use of Taran Killam and Bill Hader, both of whom were in practically every skit.  Meanwhile, Samberg, Abby Elliott, Fred Armisen and Paul Brittain were all seldom used – if at all.  Hader was probably the MVP tonight, saving some of the skits he was in and was the star of the two best parts of the show – Stefon and the British crime parody.  But Killam is a close second, proving that he’ll be a useful cast member.

The writing – This is really where most of the blame lies.  After working for three straight works, it makes sense that they’ve run out of some of their best material by week three, but this was really bottom of the barrel stuff.  They stepped it up for Stefon’s laundry list of oddities, but other than that, it was like they were on auto-pilot.  Either they had strong premises and couldn’t find the jokes or they had jokes that they couldn’t work into decent conceits.  Either way, this was a terrible night for the writers.  2.5/10

Okay, SNL will be on a break for a couple of weeks, so I’ll come up with some other junk to talk about for the next few Sundays.  But don’t forget to check back here on March 6th so we can discuss the Miley Cyrus episode that airs the night before with the sure-to-be-legendary STROKES performance.

Oh, and I give myself an 8/10 today.  I was on my game.

Source: Movie City News Frenzy On Blog

It’s not what I wanted it to be…

Last night I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about Blue Valentine.  She wasn’t a fan of the film because she wanted it to be more than it was.  She was disappointed by the fact that the storyline isn’t particularly original or mining new material.  Basically, she wanted to experience something new in the pantheon of dramas about the dissolution of a relationship.

I both agreed and disagreed.  Part of me wishes that it wasn’t just a film about a typical, uneducated, blue-collar couple that are – from the get-go – not destined to be in a happy relationship.  What I’ve longed to see for years and years – and which fiction, film, theater, etc. have never been able to pull off – is a realistic portrait of how a happy relationship comes apart.  In stories of this nature depicted in fiction, like Blue Valentine or Revolutionary Road or Carnal Knowledge, it’s pretty clear that because of the characters involved and their different personality traits that these couplings are not going to last.  I think it’s fairly easy to take disparate characters and jam them together just because they’re attractive or because one of them is pregnant and then show the ramifications later on.  I suppose this is the reality for a lot of people that wind up with partners they don’t stay with, but I think a large portion of relationships die for more complex reasons than that.  And those deaths aren’t usually the result of one big thing or several big things, but rather a slow disintegration of passion and love.  Blue Valentine, as much as I really enjoyed it, does the typical move: it shows us the beginning and the end.  But as anyone who has ever been in a relationship, the real meat is in the middle.

However, that’s not what Blue Valentine purports to be about.  It sets out to do something specific and does it, so does that mean I should critique it for what I wanted it to be and wasn’t?  However, that’s a slippery slope as a film critic because then I could just apply that same logic to a film like Transformers and say that it’s a good film because it does exactly what it sets out to do.

So I think ultimately, we have to take into account what we want a film to be.  A film like Blue Valentine hits us hardest when we find ourselves relating to the characters.  The scene in the Future Room is a masterpiece because practically everyone I know can relate to one or both of those characters in that scene at one point in their life.  But, as a whole, I find it hard to relate to either character because they make decisions that I wouldn’t make and do a lot of stupid things, which is excused by the fact that they’re not particularly well-educated.  For once, I would like to see a film about well-educated people who make the right decisions in their lives and it still doesn’t work out.

So, who’s gonna be the filmmaker to volunteer for that job?

Source: Movie City News Frenzy On Blog

FILM OF THE WEEK: Carancho

By Vadim Rizov

The most striking moments in Carancho are bursts of luridly unashamed, sometimes comic violence. This isn’t an accident: the two main characters make a living out of artificial calm, but their more excitable instincts always get the best of them. That they snap despite knowing better is part of the joke. In one corner: Sosa (Ricardo Darin), whose balding pate and slouchy comfort with middle-aged sadness recalls French actor Jean-Pierre Darroussin (The Town is Quiet). In the other: young doctor Lujan (Martina Gusman), who graduates from paramedic to 48-hour hospital shifts trying to get hysterical relatives to stop screaming in the emergency room.

Continued reading FILM OF THE WEEK: Carancho…

Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

By: GreenCine Daily

Is Facebook Marketing a Waste of Time for #Filmmakers?

the sales process funnel

It was a question posed in the comments of a Mashable article on tablet commerce and how much ecommerce is happening via tablets and via social sites like Facebook. A Forrester Research poll was highlighted in the article showing “less than 40% [of retailers] have been able to’quantify the return on this investment [social networks], and even fewer have found that social networks grow their business. To the degree that retailers find any benefit at all from social strategies, it is most frequently driven by tactics like ratings and reviews on a website rather than activities on social networks… Social networks, in fact, ranked dead last on a list of 10 customer acquisition tactics.” It leads me to question, is Facebook a good place to be selling?

As a retailer, and if you are trying to sell DVD’s/downloads you are a retailer, I don’t think it is a good place to focus on selling or to make sales from the site. Selling is of course your ultimate business goal, but Facebook and other social platforms are places where people go to socialize, spend time with their friends, share pieces of their lives. Do you think that is a good time to solicit your products, interrupt the experience by shoving merch in someone’s face saying “buy this?” Would you do that in real life, go to a backyard barbeque with a trunk full of DVDs and walk around the yard asking people to buy one? Some of you might, but then you would never be asked back. Likely, you would go to the barbeque and socialize, subtly finding out who are the likely buyers of your product, you might even give them a card (if they ask, and they will if interested) to continue this conversation and get additional information in another location. You have to look at this as a process where social networking is at the initial contact and ongoing fact finding phase. There are many tools in the sales arsenal, all with a different purpose. Use the right tool for the job.

Social networking sites are for acquiring and cultivating relationships. Generally in the sales cycle, this is the top of the funnel. You should start a sales process by inviting people into your funnel. How do you do that? You research and find the most likely people interested in what you will be selling. Initially this could be a wide, diverse group. This is  best done long before you are actually ready to sell something (preproduction/production). You will be moving these people through the funnel on the way to buying something, but it will be a slow process and not all of them will end up buying. That’s why the funnel starts out big at the top and narrows down. Lots of people will initially be interested and gather in the top part. As the process wears on and you start to hone in on the ones most interested in what you are selling, the amount of people reduces. Facebook and the like are for your initial gathering, the tool to use at the start of your process.

The next phase will lead them to your website where the conversation continues, but not everyone will make that transition. Some may continue to only hang out on your FB page, some may fall away completely. You still have to have a presence there. Some may do both and these are likely your best customers, the people most enthusiastic about your work. They will bring others to the page and speak so highly of their involvement with you, they will help transition the community to the website. Take special care of these people.

As you continue to build and foster your audience on social networking platforms like Facebook, try to resist the urge to hurry them along through the sales process. Someone who feels rushed (or used) to buy something will not stay long on your page. Film is a luxury product, the sales process will be longer and it will start with a relationship. A tab pointing the way to your website or store will serve to guide them to the next phase but should NOT be the landing page of your Facebook presence. People come to your page to find others, meet you, see what the project is all about, starting the relationship process. Don’t close off that communication by virtually saying “unless you are here to buy, we don’t want you here.” As the survey shows, audience/customers rarely buy on Facebook, but they do check you out there which is the first step in the sales process.

ACTORSandCREW is fully psyched to be featuring Sheri Moss Candler’s 411 for the PMD. PMD stands for Producer of Marketing and Distribution and this is the person in a production whose sole job is marketing and figuring out the distribution path for the film so the producer and the rest of the production crew can get on with their work. Sheri is an expert inbound marketing strategist who helps independent filmmakers build identities for themselves and their films. Through the use of online tools such as social networking, podcasts, blogs, online media publications and radio, she assists filmmakers in building an engaged and robust online community for their work that can be used to monetize effectively. She collaborates with filmmaker/author Jon Reiss (who coined the term PMD) in his TOTBO workshop series by teaching filmmakers about utilizing social media and building personal brands. For Sheri’s complete bio visit her site, here. Click here to read Shari’s original post

SNL Recap – Dana Carvey and Linkin Park

I’ve always been a big fan of Dana Carvey and I’m really excited to have him return to Saturday Night Live.  Because of his lackluster movie career, I think he’s often forgotten and overlooked in the pantheon of great SNL cast members.  Lorne Michaels was a huge fan from the beginning (Carvey famously got Michaels to laugh during his original audition, something that NEVER happens) and everybody thought Carvey was going to go on to be a huge movie star.  With middling (but, I think, enjoyable) films like Opportunity Knocks and Clean Slate, things got off to a rocky start and his film career stalled, unable to show his versatility in a vehicle that was designed around him playing one character.  That’s why he made a movie like Master of Disguise, which everyone kills him for.  It’s a kids’ movie that enable him to play multiple characters, a showcase for his talent.  But the movie was awful and that was it for Dana Carvey.  Let’s hope tonight gets him back on track.  I’m expecting a retrospective of all his best characters.  Hopefully we’ll get a Wayne’s World skit, a Church Lady skit, and maybe even a Hans and Franz skit.  I wonder how all of those sketches will play in this day and age.  My DVR didn’t record it, so I’m watching on Hulu, hopefully everything is in order and I don’t miss anything.

As for Linkin Park…um, not a fan.  Although this video of theirs, directed by the great Mark Romanek, is pretty amazing:

Okay, let’s get on with the recap:

Cold Open – WAYNE’S WORLD! You know, it’s funny, watching this skit reminds me that the Wayne’s World skits are really lame in comparison to the great Wayne’s World movies.  Still, it’s nice to see these characters again, even if all they’re doing is saying “Winter’s Bone” over and over again.  Strangely we didn’t get one “schwing” despite the fact that Carvey said it about eighty times during one of the promos.  Compared to some of the Wayne’s World skits in the past, this one is not up to snuff.  This is really all about the nostalgia factor, which I have to admit kicked in strongly for me.  And why is Mike Myers wearing a Blackhawks jersey instead of the standard black t-shirt that Wayne always wears?  Ultimately I can’t give it any more than a 6/10.

Monologue – Carvey makes a few salient points about the nature of SNL, about how everybody that watches it picks out one cast and then labels them the best.  Carvey, of course, labels his cast as the best.  Wiig, Samberg, and Hader all come out on stage to question this point until eventually the great Jon Lovitz comes out to agree with him.  They sing a song about being the best cast ever.  Truthfully, it’s a little bit like watching two dads come back to their old college and hang out at the frat house.  It’s not embarrassing exactly, but it’s a little upsetting to watch Carvey try so hard when he used to be the most effortlessly hilarious cast member.  He truly was one of the best, but he’s having too much of a good time with this monologue instead of just selling the jokes.  It’s great to see Lovitz, of course, but this entire monologue is just an excuse for the two of them to say old catchphrases; “Acting!” “Chopping broccoli,” etc.  I’m getting a bad feeling about this show…3/10

Church Lady – This one gets off to a good start, the writing seems stronger.  I love Nasim Pedrad, Abby Elliott and Vanessa Bayer as the Kardashian sisters, they really nail it.  (Side-note: I was really stoked when I saw Abby Elliott outside of a restaurant downtown on Wednesday night, but couldn’t work up the nerve to say anything.)  “I’m Khloe and I’m third.”  I understand that Carvey really wants to bask in the glory of his first “Isn’t that special?” in a decade, but the pause he takes feels a bit like grandstanding to me.  Bobby Moynihan comes out as Snooki, which the crowd always loves, but it’s probably my least favorite recurring “character.”  Moynihan is super talented, but his Snooki is lame, getting by on the “hilarity” of a fat guy in a dress.  “Oooh, a Guido!  You’re hot, make out with me!”  Carvey makes it work, though.  The Church Lady definitely ages better than Wayne’s World.   Really, Justin Bieber?  This dude is everywhere.  He’s at the Knicks games, on Jon Stewart, now SNL.  I have Bieber fever, I think, and it’s going to kill me.  Church Lady is getting turned on by Bieber, that’s an interesting twist.  Wow, this skit is nine minutes long, that’s ridiculous.  People complain about skits on SNL going on too long, but lately they’ve mostly been under five minutes.  Wayne’s World was six minutes, this one was nine, the monologue was six, that’s like a third of the show’s actual running time spent on three pieces.  Crazy.  But the Church Lady skit was the best so far, a welcome return.  7.5/10

The Roommate - Again with the Bieber!  This filmed short is brilliant.  It’s a minute long parody of the Minka Kelly/Leighton Meester movie, except with Samberg (as Sir Ben Kingsley, haha) as Bieber’s roommate.  I really enjoyed this one quite a bit.  Samberg often does this nerdy, nasally weirdo, but he does it so well.  9/10

Linkin Park – This is so awful.  I know there are people that really enjoy this kind of music, but I can’t make it past a minute of this rap/rock/emo/whiny boringness.  Ugh.  1/10

Teen Crisis Hotline – Celebrities helping teens.  I love Hader’s Alan Alda, it’s one of the most pitch-perfect impression I have ever heard.  You can see how good it is when you compare it to Dana Carvey’s Mickey Rooney, which is not really an impression so much as a caricature.  But that’s what Carvey always did well.  People think he was a great impressionist, but his real talent was in picking out one aspect of a person and then building a “character” out of this real-life person (i.e. George Bush, Ross Perot, etc.).  Armisen does Ice-T, which is okay, but more dependent on the make-up and clothing than the voice.  Abby Elliott’s Anna Faris is pretty great, though, spot-on.  “Drunk dad, ooooh, bummer!”  Jay Pharoah, the modern day Eddie Murphy, doing Eddie Murphy!  Brilliant, just brilliant.  Guess this will give Eddie Murphy another excuse to disown his SNL years and never return.

Weekend Update – This is all out of order because of Hulu, which is annoying.  I wish they’d let me just watch Weekend Update straight through instead of breaking it up into clips and ruining the flow.  Oh well.  Paul Brittain as James Franco, hopefully this will be good.  I think Brittain has secretly been one of the strongest newcomers I’ve seen since Andy Samberg and I’m glad he’s getting more airtime.  “I like having jobs!”  Brittain’s got the smiling down pretty well, but it’s not a particularly distinctive impression, and this segment seems designed just to make the joke that James Franco does a lot of things and it gets old quickly.  Thankfully it’s only two minutes.  Kristin Wiig as Angela Dixon, former disco queen turned weather expert.  I’m guessing she’ll break out into song during a forecast…yep, there it is.  Against all odds, I’m really enjoying this character and these songs.  I think Wiig is at her strongest when she does larger than life personalities, but that are grounded in something like a song, which gives the character a focus.  Sometimes she can fall into the trap of just being over the top, but here it makes sense and it works.  And Meyer always make all these characters work with his exasperation, he’s a great straight man.  Winners/Losers: Egypt was a strong segment.  “You cannot punch the handsome off Anderson Cooper.”  Tunisia is the Soundgarden to Egypt’s Nirvana, love the early 90s grunge references.  “Egyptians are great at preserving things.”  The Empire State Building run-up is “great if you love running marathons but always wished someone’s ass was in your face.”  Overall, a pretty good update, no complaints.  Still no Stefon sightings…sigh.  8/10

Linkin Park Again – I’m not even going to pretend that I watched this.  I saw it was in black and white, though, for no discernible reason.  Skip.  N/A

Deidra Wurtz – Abby Elliott finally gets her own skit and it’s a pretty funny premise.  She gives bad news to people even though she’s something akin to a Midwestern valley girl.  She really fully embodies every character she plays and she’s very versatile.  How long until she’s the star of a romantic comedy?  This isn’t the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s got a strong conceit and it’s executed as well as it could be and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.  I won’t be re-watching it anytime soon, but I wouldn’t mind if I saw this character again in the future.  Where’s Dana Carvey?  And, less importantly, where’s Kenan Thompson?  6.5/10

Sports Bar – Hey, it’s Taran Killam, haven’t seen him in a few weeks.  Armisen and Carvey are the leads of a British New Wave band playing at a small sports bar during the Super Bowl, annoying all of the customers who just want to watch the game.  I love Hader and Brittain in the background and Carvey and Armisen are totally committed to this.  Finally, they’re letting Carvey create something new instead of just doing retreads.  This is a really funny premise and I think Carvey and Armisen are just absolutely killing it.  I really like the ending, with Killam admitting that he liked the song.  And I have to admit, I liked the song too.  I wish the skit went somewhere a bit more interesting, but it was still pretty good.  8/10

Pageant Preview – Starts with a very unfunny minute of Kenan and Dana Carvey doing southern accents.  And it doesn’t get that much better from there.  They’re hosts of a kids’ beauty pageant and they describe the contestants as they come out and it’s just awful.  Samberg comes out as a kid dressed as a cowboy, which is mildly funny and helps save the skit somewhat.  But really, there’s no joke here and it’s just uncomfortable to watch.  How did this make it out of dress?  2/10

Final Grades:

Dana Carvey – Really hit and miss and I’m not sure how much of the misses are his fault and how much was the writing’s fault.  And I don’t know how much he contributed to the writing of his own skits.  Church Lady worked, Wayne’s World didn’t, but the best parts of the evening – The Roommate and Weekend Update – were without him.  He had a bit too much enthusiasm in the beginning, but seemed to settle down as the night went on.  Overall, not the dynamic return we were all hoping for, but decent enough.  6.5/10

Linkin Park – Made it through one minute of their ten minutes of stage time.  I don’t really think it’s appropriate to grade them since I find their music abhorrent (although, seriously, check out that Romanek video above, it’s awesome).  So, I’ll go with N/A

The rest of the cast – I think the MVP award goes to Abby Elliott this week.  Her Khloe Kardashian was stellar, her Anna Faris was unbelievably good, and her new character Deidra Wurtz really worked.  It was good to see Paul Brittain, but I thought his James Franco was kinda weak.  Wiig had a good week, her disco weatherwoman was a nice addition to Update.  It was good to see old castmembers like Lovitz and Mike Myers, but wish they would have stuck around and done a few more skits.  Bieber was in more skits than the two of them.  Samberg was excellent as he always is, same with Nasim Pedrad and I wish Jay Pharoah was given more to do than just his amazing impressions.  I was happy that Kenan was absent from most of the skits, though.  7.5/10

The writing – Not the best night for the writers tonight.  I think The Roommate, Update and the Sports Bar skits all had strong premises but a lot of the others ones didn’t go far enough.  The Pageant was awful and the Monologue should have been stronger and I really wish they did something better with Wayne and Garth.  5/10

I’ll give myself a 5/10 for watching on Hulu, which is not my favorite method of watching SNL.  Plus, I’m fairly hungover, so I’m not sure I was on top of my game.  Next week, we’ve got the hilarious Russell Brand and Chris Brown, so I’ll see you all then!

Source: Movie City News Frenzy On Blog

FILM OF THE WEEK: Poetry

by Steve Dollar

Those darn Koreans. They’ll get you every time. After watching a trailer for Poetry, Lee Chang-dong‘s follow-up to the 2007 (but only distributed in the US last year) Secret Sunshine, I was a little wary. OK, so a meek, long-suffering grandmother discovers she’s slipping into Alzheimer’s, only to find solace and an autumnal spiritual awakening by attending a weekly poetry workshop at the local community center. Real triumph of the human spirit stuff, for sure, but ripe for overt sentimentality and the quasi-tragic grand performance that—translated to Hollywood cliché—almost instantly conjures an Academy Award nomination.

Continued reading FILM OF THE WEEK: Poetry…

Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

By: GreenCine Daily

DVD OF THE WEEK: The League of Gentlemen

by Vadim Rizov

In 1957, Jack Hawkins led a coordinated Allied attack on The Bridge on the River Kwai, and three years later, he led a coordinated private attack on a British bank. The film was The League of Gentlemen (included in Basil Dearden’s London Underground, a smashing new box set from Criterion/Eclipse), in which Hawkins rounds up seven equally unpleasant, mostly meta-cast men to assist. The recruits comprise a microcosm of various, superficially resilient members of the British way of post-war life. One is Nigel Patrick, perhaps best known at that point as a mindlessly brave test pilot in The Sound Barrier, a sacrificial lamb to the stiff-upper-limb ethos to the last. He’s Hawkins’ aide, clinging to his pre-war aristocratic status by being paternally glib to the other men and looking foolish in the process. Other members: Terence Alexander (in real life a member of the 27th Lancers, wounded in combat), Roger Livesey (star of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and hence the self-conscious representative of the prototypical British soldier, however satirically), and already respected screenwriters Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes (the latter of whom also served as this film’s writer).

Continued reading DVD OF THE WEEK: The League of Gentlemen…

Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

Via: GreenCine Daily

Sex vs Violence: Why are we even talking about MTV’s Skins?

I’m an unabashed fan of the UK version of Skins.  It was (and is) a show that doesn’t shy away from what actual teenagers do, namely fornication and drug/alcohol abuse.  It doesn’t matter if a kid was reared by good parents or bad ones, what makes them teenagers is the fact that they make mistakes.  After all, making mistakes and getting in trouble is all a part of the learning process of growing up and living a healthy lifestyle and it’s usually something we get out of the way as teenagers and young adults so that we can go on to be functional parts of society (unless you’re Charlie Sheen…sorry, too easy).

So why are people shocked (shocked!) that there is a show out there that actually has the balls to address this basic part of modern Western culture?  We were all teenagers once.  It strikes me that teenagers today are really not all that different from the young people that went to Woodstock and got stoned out of their minds on acid and weed.  Sure, kids today have replaced acid with MDMA, but it’s pretty similar.  The music has changed, computers and cell phones have made everything more attainable than they once were, but purposeless hedonism has always been pervasive amongst young folks.  The people of the Baby Boomer generation might argue that they had a sense of purpose, that they were fighting against the man and the Vietnam war and all that.  Well, I would argue that young people today are more politically aware than ever before because of the internet and that the use of mind-altering drugs and having casual sex didn’t (and doesn’t) really do anything to change the world (unless it’s really good sex).

The good Skins

But the part of the outrage that is truly, well, outrageous to me is the fact that all of this hubbub is over a show that a) really sucks and b) isn’t nearly as graphic or insightful as the UK original.  The original version of the show had copious nudity, lots of swear words, and didn’t shy away from emotional complexities.  Can you imagine what the puritanical parents’ groups in the US would do if the remake was half as intense as the original?  They’d probably lose their collective shit.  So why didn’t I hear a whole lot of outrage in the UK about the realistic (and sometimes purposefully unrealistic) portrait of their teenagers in the original Skins?  Why are we in the states so hung up on “protecting” our poor, fragile children from “graphic” imagery?

For me, this always goes back our country’s fascination with violence over sex.  Sex is taboo in our culture, but violence is everywhere.  We can turn on any of the big four networks and watch people get shot and stabbed and it will be approved for all ages, but if someone dares say the word “fuck” or shows a naked rear, it becomes transgressive television.  The same goes with movies.  The MPAA limits the amounts of times you can say “fuck” in a movie or else you’re slapped with a restrictive “R” rating, yet Transformers can have millions of bullets flying and still get a PG-13.

The bad Skins

You know why this happens?  It’s because the folks with the loudest voices are the prudes that take offense at someone having an orgasm.  The folks that don’t find such imagery offensive are likely not to find the violence in films offensive either, so they don’t speak up about it.  If there is ever going to be a change in our culture, if we’re ever going to accept sex as a natural and lovely part of life, then we have to speak up and scold the sponsors for leaving a show like Skins and scold the parents’ groups for telling us what we can and can’t watch.

I don’t like the US version of Skins, but not because it offends me in its depictions of youth (it just offends my sense of good television), and I think it’s ridiculous that in the year 2011 people will still get up in arms about sex and drugs on TV even though it’s probably happening more than they know in their own houses.

Source: Movie City News Frenzy On Blog

PODCAST: Sebastian Cordero

Born and based in Ecuador, filmmaker Sebastián Cordero was actually bitten by the cinema bug while living in France as a child, before moving to Los Angeles to attend film school at USC. His 1999 debut Ratas, Ratones, Rateros premiered at Venice, his 2004 follow-up Crónicas screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, and his new film Rage (natively known as Rabia) is currently playing in New York:

Based on a novel by Sergio Bizzio, RAGE tells the suspenseful story of a pair of Latin American immigrants who fall in love in Spain. José María (Gustavo Sánchez Parra), a hot-headed builder, and Rosa, a housekeeper, embark in a passionate relationship. When a violent confrontation with José María’s foreman results in the other man’s death, José María flees to the mansion where Rosa works, telling no one. Hidden even from her, he watches Rosa be mistreated by her boss as he yearns for the day they can be together.

Currently in Mexico, Cordero called me to discuss his “ghost story without a ghost,” the challenge of writing a story whose protagonist is unjustified in his violent outbursts, and why his proposed English-language debut Manhunt—a Lincoln assassination thriller starring Harrison Ford—never quite made it to pre-production.

To listen to the podcast, click here. (16:13)

Podcast Music
INTRO: Judas Priest: “The Rage”
OUTRO: Gogol Bordello: “Immigrant Punk”

Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

Origin: GreenCine Daily