Interview with Forrest Whitaker, who’s favored for the Best Actor Oscar, and director Kevin Macdonald before the premier of their film, The Last King of Scotland. Screenwriter and Waterfront Film Festival co-founder, Hopwood DePree, gives the lowdown on this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Also, the Spout guys react to The Last King of Scotland in an eerie, late-night gondola ride. Listen to the podcast.

Download FilmCouch #4 or subscribe to it in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday.

Although she must be burnt out from Sundance, Anne Thompson put together a nice Oscar nomination analysis on her Risky Business blog.

Here are my main two thoughts about the nominations and her post:

- It’s fascinating that a film like Dreamgirls can get eight nominations, including best actor and best actress, but not get nominated for best picture (or director or writer, for that matter). Each year at this time, when I’m puzzling over the system, I tend to be a bit surprised that it’s not more of a science. Then I remember that falling in love with a person isn’t a science–why should our love for a movie be something calculated? (But, on the other hand, when you compare two best picture nominations–Babel and Letters from Iwo Jima, with seven and four nominations respectively–you have to admit that Babel seems a more likely and deserving pick. Sure makes it seem kind of mathematical.)

- Secondly, when I think of this ideal I have–this inexplicable but genuine falling in love with a film–I quickly snap back to this reality: The Oscars, while not a science, are, in many ways, a game. (Yes, I’m well aware love can be a game, too, but the best love isn’t.) In her post today, Anne Thompson references the Clint Eastwood/Warners “Oscar strategy,” and the “trick with foreign films.” Ah, yes. There are strategies and tricks involved. I can’t help it, though. I want to be a purist. I want the film that wins Best Picture to win because, as Thompson says, it is “beloved.”

Our friend Dodd, known as “moviedodd” on Spout, shares with us a bit of what he’s thinking about just hours before the Academy Award nominations are announced. Dodd, who also wrote a Halloween-inspired post for us a few months ago, is a student at Ohio University, where he’s finishing up an M.A. in Film Studies.
- Kristin

It is once again that important time of the year for Hollywood. While complete disasters such as Code Name: The Cleaner and Arthur and the Invisibles are tossed into theaters as part of National January Dumping Season, the best films of 2006 are discussed in great length as top-ten lists are compiled and award ceremonies prepare their nominations. Typically this is a time to compare notes with the Academy and the Golden Globes to see how many of your personal favorites have a shot at the gold. However, this year I must admit to a feeling of dissatisfaction.

The 2006 Golden Globes saw Dreamgirls and Babel taking home the Best Picture trophies. This is not exactly a shocking revelation. Both of these films received mostly favorable reviews from critics. However, when it comes to recalling the highest praised films this year, none of them were even mentioned. Half Nelson? Negative. Children of Men? Not a chance. Pan’s Labyrinth? While nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, it lost out to Clint Eastwood. Emilio Estevez\’s Bobby, though, managed to snag a nomination despite its primarily negative reviews.

The fact of the matter is most of the highly-touted pictures every year fail to get recognized. I am sure it is no coincidence that these happen to be independent films, or those with unconventional storylines and filmmaking techniques. Real gems such as these have become so neglected that they now have their own ceremony, known as The Independent Spirit Awards.

Behind this whole tirade, I am not saying that a film such as Dreamgirls is an undeserving film. Its Detroit-based Motown numbers pulled me in from start to finish, and had my rhythmless limbs moving for an entire week. However, there are plenty of films out there that received higher praise and deserve just as much recognition. As time goes by, it seems as if nominations are more in the vein of the People’s Choice Awards or, (gasp) the MTV Movie Awards.

During this year’s Academy Awards, I will be donning a tuxedo on my sofa, and nodding in mild agreement as Eddie Murphy predictably takes home Oscar gold. However, I will still remember Ellen Page from Hard Candy, Ryan Gosling from Half Nelson, and every other overlooked performer not accepted by the multiplex masses.

(What do you think? Are the Academy Awards and Golden Globes legitimate, or do they need to take a closer look at the year in movies?)

Is overexposure bad for the Sundance Film Festival?
Is a reputation for schmooz bad for the Sundance Film Festival?
Is Paris Hilton (and the like) bad for the Sundance Film Festival?

We could all go on and on, right? However you choose to phrase it, the heart of the question is the same: Has the “true meaning” of Sundance become lost in the party madness?

The first wording of the question–Is overexposure bad for the Sundance Film Festival?–came from Robert Butler in a piece he wrote for PopWire on PopMatters. He doesn’t actually answer his own question, but he does raise some interesting points:

…with success has come second-guessing. Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly’s chief movie critic, has said that increasingly Sundance is showcasing films with such big names and solid financial backing that the word “independent” doesn’t apply.

Gleiberman has also written about the Sundance “bubble effect,” in which certain films generated a frenzy among festival goers and were fought over by competing distributors. The problem, Gleiberman writes, is that many of these festival favorites become real-world flops. They are “bubbles, destined to burst.”

Starting the Slamdance festival 13 years ago was obviously a way to counter the growing glitz of Sundance and the scores of people who go each year motivated by attractions other than movies.

But many people still don’t think Sundance has issues that need to be countered. Again, from Butler’s article:

Kevin Willmott, the Lawrence, Kan., filmmaker who took his mini-budgeted film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America to Sundance in 2004, said the fest is invaluable in getting a low-budget film in front of a large audience.

“For a genuine independent filmmaker Sundance is a huge deal. The day they announced that C.S.A. had been accepted by Sundance I got about 100 phone calls from agents and other folks.”

It all comes back around to that big, hairy distribution monster, doesn’t it?

It’s Friday and here’s the third weekly episode of Spout’s FilmCouch. Subscribe to it in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday.

Sundance has begun. Paul and Dave reminisce over their memories of the festival and debate whether or not it’s actually a theme park. Kevin, Adam, and Paul talk to the writer of Unknown, Matthew Waynee, then discuss the film. Was it deep, or are we reading too much into it?

The Reeler Features Distributors Map the Market

http://www.thereeler.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/381

This entry from The Reeler about the lengths New York film distributors go to prepare for Sundance just kills me. Park City, Utah for the next ten days will be transformed as stores clear out to make way for temporary night clubs and ski instructors make a bundle of money playing high-end cab driver for a week. The streets will be oozing over with film-makers and film-lovers wearing dark-rimmed glasses hustling through the snow to their next screening.

Sundance is the spectacle it is because of its late-night deals where an unknown movie geek becomes the next Quentin Tarantino. It’s the drama that creates the fever which draws so many people. And to read about the distributors who orchestrate this drama coming up with game plans just to get through the throng and make it to their seat in time makes me chuckle.

Sundance has become the over-commercialized spectacle critics accuse it of being, but there’s definitely no other experience to match its insanity. It’s a blast. At least until about 9:00pm when little guys like me are cold and hungry and can’t get a seat in a restaurant and our names aren’t on any of the lists for the two dozen parties happening on Main Street.

There’s a really interesting-sounding new book that I just ordered, The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap, by Stu Maschwitz. Kevin Kelly reviewed it in his newest Cool Tools write up, and Chris Anderson just did a post on it in a Long Tail blog entry called How to Make a Long Tail Movie.

I don’t have The DV Rebel’s Guide in my hands yet, but judging by the excerpts provided, the book contains some really great common sense advice. There’s this:

The DV Rebel cannot pass a glass elevator, or an open-air escalator, or a tire swing, without pondering how it might be used to create a smooth establishing shot. I once made a dolly shot in an airport by resting my camera on the rail of a moving pedestrian walkway. If you can ride it, it’s a dolly. If you can ride it up and down, it’s a crane.

And this:

Watch that scene now. It’s a solid scene, very well directed with a flair that would later become Besson’s trademark. You could never shoot this scene. But now watch it again, and try this: Don’t watch the scene, watch the individual shots. Pause the DVD on each one, and ask yourself this question: Could I create this shot? This less-than-two-second little snippet in time? Could I figure out a way to shoot that with my little DV camera?

I really love posts and books about stuff like this. Breaking things down into scenes, and using everything around you in creative ways–they’re all incredibly doable propositions. Looking at the filmmaking landscape, the flexibility offered by the guerrilla-style DV shooting described in the book is really exciting. You can make more films and take on more risk for less money. Because of thinking like this, it’s a pretty exciting time for filmmaking.

(Check out the second Spout FilmCouch podcast for some additional discussion on this topic.)

The film Four Eyed Monsters just might be the most widely-known self-distributed film around. Co-directors Arin Crumley and Susan Buice threw themselves whole-heartedly into a DIY distribution process–much of which they pieced together as they went–and it’s worked. Recently, they won a $100,000 audience award at the indieWIRE Undiscovered Gem Festival, and the general buzz about the movie and their hugely popular podcast series on iTunes is everywhere you look in the broader indie film industry.

At Spout, we’ve been following Crumley, Buice, and their film, too. Most recently, Paul wrote a post, “Four Eyed Monsters Won a Long Time Ago.” And as all of the hype has been gradually building, one of our designers, Marie-Claire, (known as “Patches” on spout.com) has been quietly conducting an ongoing email interview with Crumley. She became interested in the project after following Crumley and Buice for about four months through their video podcasts on their website foureyedmonsters.com

“After watching just four video podcasts, I was hypnotized,” Marie-Claire said. “I requested that the film come to Grand Rapids, I bought one of their t-shirts, subscribed to the podcast, their email list and told all of my friends and co-workers to do the same. I even made my own flyers to post around town asking others to request the film too. I was hooked.”

In the interviews, Arin Crumley and Marie-Claire talk about the dream of a democratic distribution process for all small films. After watching (or reading or listening to) something, Crumley says, people would have the option to rate it, creating a recommendation network and what he calls “computerized word-of-mouth.” (Sounds like Spout has a role to play here.) Crumley has already experimented with this concept, harnessing existing tools from social networking sites like MySpace, and giving people a chance to request or “vote” that the film be shown in their town.

Read more in the interview, which follows. (Thanks, Marie-Claire and Arin, for letting us in on your conversation!)
…Read more

Spout’s CEO, Rick DeVos, and Paul chat about David Denby’s article, “Big Pictures,” on the state of the movie industry for 2007 (or at least January). Also discussed, Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, is it more omen than sci-fi? And words inspired by Guillermo Del Toro’s new film, Pan’s Labyrinth.

What’s up with all these lists for the top 10 movies of 2006? In this episode of FilmCouch, we discuss Day Night Day Night, which made several lists for the top undistributed film, and we chat a bit about the movies that “scared the crap out of you as a kid.”