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Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Halloo. Sorry for the lack of posting lately, but I've been busy busy busy. Mainly I've been working on the early stages of Stockstock 2003. For those who are uninitiated, Stockstock is a film festival I produce with five of my filmmaker friends. The shtick is that we take bits and pieces of old so-called ephemeral films (army hygiene films, 50's commercials, educational shorts, etc.), put them on a videotape, and send the tape to other filmmakers. These filmmakers are instructed to make a short movie (<3 minutes) using only the footage we gave them. Then we take all of the films, pick the best ones, and show them on a big, big screen in Seattle for all to see.
We did this last year and had a great response, so we're doing it again this year. We're trying to be more organized about it this time, so we're starting much earlier. I can't say much about it yet because things are still taking shape, but I can tell you that it's going to be cool and that I am very excited. Until I have more information to share, check out last year's Stockstock web site. I'll have lots more on Stockstock in the weeks to come.
When I haven't been busy with that, I've been seeing movies. I saw The Hours on Saturday and Gangs of New York tonight. Gangs was really good. It could have been tighter in spots, and the romantic storyline was largely irrelevant to the rest of the film, but I enjoyed the movie very much. Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing. His is the very definition of a command performance; you literally can't take your eyes off of him when he's on the screen. It's the best performance of 2002 as far as I'm concerned.
The Hours was good, but I still left disappointed. For lack of a better word, the film was just too violent. The book is all about the quiet times and how they can be the most dramatic moments of our lives, but Stephen Daldry seems to have missed that point completely. He loads the film up with passionate, heart-wrenching scenes that, while well-acted, move the film away from the simple beauty of the book and turn it into mere Oscar bait. For me the best part of the film was Julianne Moore's final scene. It was quiet, understated, and immensely powerful - in short, it's everything I wished the rest of the movie had been.
I also thought that Daldry missed a chance to make some great visual cinema. The book is full of daydreams and nightmares, things that film is uniquely suited to expressing; see David Lynch for examples. Instead of communicating those dreams visually, however, Daldry chose to put them into dialogue. I can imagine that is easy to do when you have such fine actors, each of them with agents that are gunning for the Oscar, but I thought he passed up an opportunity to make a truly extraordinary film. Instead, he settled for making one that's merely good. I shouldn't complain, I suppose, but I'd hoped for more. If I ever get the urge to see it again, I think I'll just sit down and read the book. It will be far more satisfying.
We did this last year and had a great response, so we're doing it again this year. We're trying to be more organized about it this time, so we're starting much earlier. I can't say much about it yet because things are still taking shape, but I can tell you that it's going to be cool and that I am very excited. Until I have more information to share, check out last year's Stockstock web site. I'll have lots more on Stockstock in the weeks to come.
When I haven't been busy with that, I've been seeing movies. I saw The Hours on Saturday and Gangs of New York tonight. Gangs was really good. It could have been tighter in spots, and the romantic storyline was largely irrelevant to the rest of the film, but I enjoyed the movie very much. Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing. His is the very definition of a command performance; you literally can't take your eyes off of him when he's on the screen. It's the best performance of 2002 as far as I'm concerned.
The Hours was good, but I still left disappointed. For lack of a better word, the film was just too violent. The book is all about the quiet times and how they can be the most dramatic moments of our lives, but Stephen Daldry seems to have missed that point completely. He loads the film up with passionate, heart-wrenching scenes that, while well-acted, move the film away from the simple beauty of the book and turn it into mere Oscar bait. For me the best part of the film was Julianne Moore's final scene. It was quiet, understated, and immensely powerful - in short, it's everything I wished the rest of the movie had been.
I also thought that Daldry missed a chance to make some great visual cinema. The book is full of daydreams and nightmares, things that film is uniquely suited to expressing; see David Lynch for examples. Instead of communicating those dreams visually, however, Daldry chose to put them into dialogue. I can imagine that is easy to do when you have such fine actors, each of them with agents that are gunning for the Oscar, but I thought he passed up an opportunity to make a truly extraordinary film. Instead, he settled for making one that's merely good. I shouldn't complain, I suppose, but I'd hoped for more. If I ever get the urge to see it again, I think I'll just sit down and read the book. It will be far more satisfying.