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January 31, 2012
January 27, 2012
Magical Mystery Tours
Scouting locations for a film is usually a bit of a magical mystery tour.
Venturing into unknown territory and discovering hidden facets of our world. I think that was the inspiration for this fantasy painting/photograph I made of one of the island parks we discovered on our visit to Prague.
But more than places, the fascinating and diverse people you get to meet along the way are always the things that stay with you.
Film professionals are film professionals the world over, with a common language and inate predisposition to solve problems. Two of the best in the business in their countries are:
Ildiko Kemeny of Pioneer FIlms in Budapest
Andjelka Vlaisavljevic of Work In Progress in Belgrade
It was great spending time with them in their native lands and learning their histories in the business and educating ourselves about local films and filmmaking traditions.
Got to go - the magical mystery tour is waiting to take me away!
Enjoy!
william
January 23, 2012
January 19, 2012
The Hungary Artist
Lunch today in the wonderful Gerloczy cafe in Budapest.
Inspired by their collection of old local advertisements on the walls, and tried to grab a few snaps of same to share with you here, in between spoonfuls of the Goulash soup and bites of their streudel!
Enjoy!
william
January 17, 2012
My Balkan Nights
City Hall, Subotica, Serbia
Dom Square, Szeged, Hungary
January 15, 2012
Counting Crows
Today we visited an old cemetary in Belgrade.
The headstones were mostly pre-war, and were crowded together, and covered with the dust of a recent snowfall. But for every soul that was resting there, it felt like there was at least one corresponding black crow perched in the barren trees overhead, like harbingers or sentinels watching over the dead.
Their loud birdsongs filled the air, and suddenly they took flight, filling the twilight sky with their peregrinations. It felt like there were thousands of them, darkening us with their shade, even as darkness descended.
It was ominous, but also quite beautiful.
enjoy!
william
January 08, 2012
Wonderful News
2012 looks to be a busy year for Wonderful Films!
The "Disconnect" editorial team is cutting away (a false metaphor these days as all our "footage" really consists of digital bits of data) in preparation for upcoming screenings of the movie for our financier, test audiences and ultimately distributors.
A nerve-wracking process but one I thoroughly enjoy as the ability to "write" a film for the third and final time with the almost infinite ability we have to stretch and reorder and recolor and manipulate the film with music and sound never ceases to fascinate me.
Next up is the upcoming production of "Therese Raquin" which has been adapted by writer/director Charlie Stratton from Emile Zola's prescient, modern and nor-ish 19th century novel of an adulterous-turned-murderous affair in the lower depths of Paris.
Scouting, budgeting and casting are underway, as am I, off to Eastern Europe in search of remnants of Zola's epoch in these post-modern times.
Another favorite script and project I have been laboring on with my partners for years looks like it is almost set to go at the same time, so watch this space for more news, and for my inevitable 19th Nervous Breakdown to quote the song as I struggle to juggle all the various demands of these shows.
Exciting times!
I hope I can keep up the blog posts and don't disappoint you with what I bring back from my travels and experiences to share with you here.
For those of you who have never seen the Marcel Carne version of Therese Raquin from the fifties, with Simone Signoret and Raf Vallone (as I had not until getting involved with this project) it is well worth checking out. In some ways radically different from the book, and therefore quite different from our version which stays true to the 19th century setting, Carne's film is set in the time it was made, the 1950's, and wholly invents a blackmail plot for the third act of the narrative. But it is quite intense and the performances are terrific, two virtues we certainly hope to equal!
Enjoy!
william
December 25, 2011
A VERY Merry Christmas
Hehe - looks like this Santa must be one of the 1% with his uncanny ability to take from the public trough for his own personal benefit!
Happy holidays to all my blog followers and far flung friends!
See you in 2012 for some more eclectic posts and ephemeral gags.
Enjoy!
william
December 24, 2011
December 19, 2011
Ten Best Films
"Tis the season for retrospective analysis of the year that was and the resulting onslaught of lists, or lisztomania to paraphrase the film of British director Ken Russell, one of the many 20th Century film icons who died this year.
My TEN BEST list this year is retro - ten films that I had wanted to see for years and finally caught up with, or some fresh suggestions of classics from film friends that really inspired me.
All highly recommended. In no particular order.
1. KES
Ken Loach's second film after his start in British television and the one that brought him international acclaim is a masterpiece of realism featuring an unforgettable performance by young David Bradley and his kestrel, whose soaring flights over the soot-scarred landscape of his troubled youth are pure poetry.
2. THE WORLD
Thanks to Dave Kehr for turning me on to this Chinese film from director Jia Zhangke, with its fascinating modern blend of realism, theatricality and animation. Set in a loopy Beijing theme park with Vegas-style recreations of scaled down versions of famous world landmarks that might have been designed by the villian Gru from "Despicable Me", the opening shot alone is worth the price of admission.
How did I miss this one? An iconic French comedy by Bertrand Blier from the '70's that helped catapult its star Gerard Depardieu to worldwide fame, the somewhat far-fetched and very French premise of a young husband enlisting a lover to cheer up his depressed and tres beautiful wife, wonderfully played by Carole Laure, has three or four unforgettable scenes including the tour-de-force opening ten or twelve minute sequence in which the premise is set-up so convincingly - a triumph of writing, acting and direction.
4. HOUSE
I blogged about this late '70's film from Japanese producer/director Nobuhiko Obayashi previously but it merits another mention here as a celebration of extreme no-limits-to-the-imagination filmmaking. Pure pop!
5. SHADOWS
It was great fun this year in preparing for the filming of "Disconnect" to revisit the early independent work of writer/director/actor/producer John Cassavettes and rewatch Husbands and Faces, and to finally get a chance to watch his very first and perhaps best film "Shadows". The closest film equivalent to a great improvised jazz solo, this black and white portrait of a group of interracial relationships in Beat era New York City stars Leila Goldoni and a memorable turn from Tony Ray, whose father Nick Ray was also one of the most interesting filmmakers of the era.
This film caused a stir among agents and executives in Hollywood when it first came around in 2002 and catapulted its director Paul Greengrass to big studio level filmmaking, but I was out of the country and missed it, and it has been surprisingly hard to get on DVD since then for some reason - it certainly deserves to be more widely seen; perhaps a Criterion treatment should be in the offing. In the vein of The Battle of Algiers, it is a documentary-style portrait of one man caught in the maelstrom of a devastating act of political violence, with an incredible performance by James Nesbitt that must be seen.
From people of the generation that preceded mine I had always heard that this cult film holds a place of reverence, and seen today it is a pioneering analog work that anticipates so much of what has become the lingua franca of the digital age - DIY, confessional self-reflection, unreliable narrative, meta-fiction. "Exit To The Gift Shop" certainly owes a debt of gratitude to this film. Having known the director Jim McBride for decades I am embarrassed to admit that I only caught up with it on its video re-release this year; but I'm happy to include it on this list of rediscovered gems.
I was happy to find this still frame from the movie online, as apart from the more famous iconic image of the bloodied and muddied working class rugby player played by Richard Harris in this amazing, harrowing film by Lindsay Andersen; this was one of the scenes that really broke my heart - the tender interlude he has with the children of widower Rachel Roberts. A sharp contrast to the film's brutal depiction of life and love as violent sport and a bucolic memory to cling to amidst the many hard truths of David Storey's novel and screenplay. Sometimes the emperor has no clothes, and sometimes a masterpiece is a masterpiece for a reason - glad I waited as long as I did to encounter this one.
9. BORN TO WIN
One of the pleasures of having a streaming Netflix subscription and an iPad. I stumbled on this great Ivan Passer film accidentally one night on location and couldn't stop watching it - not because of the small supporting role played by Robert DeNiro who is shamefully featured on the DVD cover - but because it was such a captivating portrait of a time and place (the mean streets of Manhattan circa 1970) with such winning performances (George Segal, Karen Black, Paula Prentiss) and an unforgettable turn by Jay Fletcher as Segal's drug-hustling buddy Billy Dynamite. It has a mixed reputation, but I think it is one of those films that has gotten better with age.
10. MURDERBALL
I liked this film so much that I hired its co-director Henry-Alex Rubin to direct "Disconnect". A documentary with a real grasp of narrative storytelling and just the right tone in a story that could have been too sentimental or full of bathos. The "star" of "Murderball", Mark Zupan, pictured here, even came out and graced us with a cameo in our movie. Watch for him!
What cinematic discoveries or rediscoveries did you make this year?
Enjoy!
william
