Luke and Brie Are On a First Date, which world premiered in the Hamptons last weekend, is the debut feature by Chad Hartigan, a frequent collaborator of Aaron Katz, and there are definitely some superficial similarities between the two filmmakers’ work. Like Katz’sQuiet City, Luke and Brie follows two attractive young people (George Ducker and Meghan Webster) around a city as they break through awkward uncertainty to forge a tentative romantic connection, and with their dreamy, super-intimate videography, both films have a way of enveloping a viewer in the action (or what passes for action), ultimately serving as delivery vehicles for the kind of heightened realism that marks an unexpectedly life-changing night out. But Luke and Brie plays its drama much closer to the surface, and through a little bit of self-reflexivity, a film that’s virtually wall-to-wall conversation manages to avoid feeling too talky.
The Zero Film Festival, dedicated to serving “a niche in the independent film community, which has been under appreciated and ignored” by “screening self-financed and zero budget films from filmmakers all over the world”, kicks off tonight with a party in DUMBO, Brooklyn. They’ll be screening short films by some familiar names, including Lena Dunham, Mary Bronstein, Zach Clark and Aaron Katz. According to the fest, Katz’s SXSW 2008 selection Let’s Get Down to Brass Tackswill screen, and Dunham will premiere a new short called Misfire, “about two friends discussing the semantics of a reply to an IM, but it ‘misfires’ when they accidentally hit send.” The lineup also includes Mike Smith’s Chapters 13-22 of R. Kelly’s Trapped In The Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously (see chapters 1-12 above). There’s more info on the event and the fest here.
Welcome to the first in our second annual series of SXSW previews! As the festival approaches we’ll be asking filmmakers to spill the superficial details about their films, to tell us all the deep personal details of what makes them tick, and –– new this year! –– reveal who they had to sleep with, in the incestuous conspiracy-minded secret society that is the wider SXSW community, in order to get their film programmed at the festival.
Chosen as our first preview simply because I very much support the naming films after Flock of Seagulls songs, Modern Love is Automatic is the debut directorial effort from Zach Clark, who edited SXSW 2006 entry Dance Party, USA. Above, check out the stylish, winky trailer for the movie. Below the jump, Clark describes his Emerging Visions entry as a “a No-Wave Douglas Sirk movie”, professes his love for salsa and “Three’s Company style misunderstandings”, and drops the name of a Bollywood-related work-out video that I feel I must purchase immediately.
Luke and Brie Are On a First Date, which world premiered in the Hamptons last weekend, is the debut feature by Chad Hartigan, a frequent collaborator of Aaron Katz, and there are definitely some superficial similarities between the two filmmakers’ work. Like Katz’sQuiet City, Luke and Brie follows two attractive young people (George Ducker and Meghan Webster) around a city as they break through awkward uncertainty to forge a tentative romantic connection, and with their dreamy, super-intimate videography, both films have a way of enveloping a viewer in the action (or what passes for action), ultimately serving as delivery vehicles for the kind of heightened realism that marks an unexpectedly life-changing night out. But Luke and Brie plays its drama much closer to the surface, and through a little bit of self-reflexivity, a film that’s virtually wall-to-wall conversation manages to avoid feeling too talky.
Hartigan, who is a Los Angeles-based box office analyst by day, said after the Hamptons screening that Luke and Brie, based structurally on his own first date with his current girlfriend, was shot in 5 days on a budget of $3000. The small scale of the project opens it up to an obvious criticism: surely, all of us could come up with a single night in our romantic lives that seems worthy of dramatization, and many of us could round up some friends and scrape together a few dollars and take a week off work to tell it. So what makes Luke and Brie special? Maybe nothing, and maybe that’s it — maybe it’s not interesting because it’s entering into unchartered territory, but because it takes us through universal, well-worn feelings and makes them feel new. With his camera often seeming to float over faces in extreme close-up, Hartigan’s micro-focus on the nerves, uncertainties, and ambiguities, the posturing and reflex self-medication and unexpected moments of honesty that fuel the night so nails the harrowing aspect of navigating modern romance — in which it’s always easier to do nothing than to do what one really wants — that he’s able to turn the film’s ultimate surrender to traditional romantic closure into something of a surprise.
I had a bit more to say about Luke and Brie on this week’s episode of FilmCouch. The trailer is above, and future screening information is here. The film is still on the festival circuit and does not have distribution.
Jim Emerson has collated an incredibly comprehensive account of the events of the 1983 Telluride Film Festival, where Andrei Tarkovsky made some obtuse statements about cinema and art, and Richard Widmark offered an eloquent counterargument, which can essentially be reduced to its most powerful two words: “He stinks.”
An intern in the Paramount Vantage publicity office Martin Scorsese has a MySpace profile.
If you have $95, you can buy a My Blueberry Nights tee shirt. Or, you can just go to indieWIRE’s Apple Store event tomorrow night and heckle Wong Kar Wai for indiscriminately distributing his branding rights for free.
Aaron Katz’s third SXSW premiere in as many years, Let’s Get Down to Brass Tackscontinues the filmmaker’s tradition of catching our attention with genius titles––somehow simultaneously catchy, evocative and a little tongue-in-cheek. Brilliant branding aside, the debut of Brass Tacks‘ debut flew somewhat under the radar this year; the twelve-minute short was tacked in front of screenings of the Emerging Visions entry Bootleg, Wisconsin, and many Katz fans seemed unaware that the film was even in the festival.
This is maybe for the best, because Brass Tacks is the kind of thing that needs to be seen without the influence of puffed-up expectations. Definitely slight but surprisingly satisfying, it’s a twelve minute short, staring the director, set in a Days Inn in Mystic, Connecticutt. Katz films himself eating, watching TV, taking a bath, taking a phone call, going to sleep, and waking up. Is that it? Yes, but of course, it isn’t. In long takes that pay special attention to colorless homogeneity of his “set,” Katz delivers a self-contained portrait of the eerie calm endemic to just hanging out, alone, in the type of business traveler room that’s really not meant to be hung out in.
A phrase I found myself saying a lot at SXSW this year: “I liked it. It’s not gonna change the world, but it’s good.” This definitely applies to Let’s Get Down to Brass Tacks, but unlike some of the other films I saw at SXSW, I think that description matches its aspirations. It’s not a grand statement, but as a sketch of a moment, a place, a feeling, it’s virtually perfect.
Erik Skillman, the Criterion designer who recently regaled us with tales of his process putting together the box image for Berlin Alexanderplatz, has applied some of the same techniques to a portrait of Barack Obama. “I’m not sure I quite captured him (there’s a little hint of Reinhold in there that’s kind of strange), but for a 20-minute sketch it’s not half bad…” [via Cinetrix]
Mike Jones has already started blogging Berlin. We’ll be keeping an eye on Filmbrain, Twitch and of course Berlin-based David Hudson for updates over the next week or so.
Jette Kernion on the magic trick of Quiet City: “You can’t watch a man and woman who become fast friends like this without wondering whether they’ll hook up, which provides a small amount of suspense. But you get so caught up watching these people and their friends that the romantic potential hardly seems to matter most of the time.”
Kevin Kelly balks at Christina Ricci’s suggestion that there’s a “sad guy” thing in Speed Racer that will make the boys cry: “What’s a sad guy thing that’s not a sad girl thing? Does Speed lose his penis during one of the races and get told that he can’t have any Speed Juniors?”
Benten Films‘ second superbly-packaged DVD set (they previously released Joe Swanberg’s LOL) hits stores today. The set includes two films directed by Aaron Katz: Dance Party, USA, a kind of correction to Larry Clark’s KIDS, set in Portland and starring exquisitely natural local teens; and the Independent Spirit Award-nominated Quiet City, which I previously reviewed here. Both films are about a young boy and girl who venture out into urban spaces looking for an authentic experience. What sets them apart from traditional coming-of-age stories is, in part, the patience Katz shows in allowing his characters to take the time to settle into a tentative trust together. The films are both languid and totally economical; in terms of action, virtually nothing “happens,” and yet if there’s any fat to cut on either, I can’t find it.
In Dance Party, we follow Gus, a teenage lothario whose sexual exploits seem rooted in a need to have a kernel of truth on which to base the elaborate stories with which he regales his friend/protege Bill, to a Fourth of July house party. Within minutes, Gus has talked a previously unknown girl into bed, but when that’s over––Katz cuts straight from the initiation of the flirtation to Gus rolling off the anonymous female like a cold wave––he still needs someone to talk to.
Erin at Steady Diet of Film has some notes on the Sundance lineup, including: “Why is rape as a weapon in war the new issue du jour? Hmm…”
Filmbrain reports that “the finishing touches are being applied to Benten Films’ second release, Quiet City & Dance Party, USA: Two Films by Aaron Katz.” The cover looks gorgeous.
Tom Hall recommendsMr. Warmth, John Landis’ documentary on Don Rickles, which premieres this Sunday night on HBO: “When I read that the documentary was included in this fall’s New York Film Festival line-up, I was skeptical of its place in the program. Having seen the film (and experienced the amazing press conference with Mr. Landis after the screening), I can say that its portrait of a lost era of American “show business” is both moving and deeply felt. And, obviously, laugh out loud funny.”
“Just over 20 years ago, I thought of killing myself. Or rather, the thought was suddenly present in me, like an unwanted ghost.” So begins an amazing–and amazingly personal–post at Michael Atkinson’s Zero For Conduct, in which he talks of his own battles with said ghost in relation to the suicides of several slightly bolder-faced names, particularly Spalding Grey.
I’m sure a press release will be forthcoming, and when I get it I’ll post it, but here’s what I deem to be the exciting news from this morning’s Independent Spirit Awards announcement, most of which involve friends and/or pet projects of Spout:
Aaron Katz’s Quiet Cityis nominated for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for $500,000. Also nominated in that category: Shotgun Stories and The Pool, two films I’ve heard great things about but have yet to see.
The Monastery, which was disqualified for Oscar consideration after it was broadcast against the filmmaker’s wishes on European television, got a Spirit nomination for Best Documentary.
Ronnie Bronstein (director of Frownland and star of Joe Swanberg’s upcoming Spout web series Butterknife) and Ramin Bahrani (director of Man Push Cart and Chop Shop) have both been nominated for the IFC/Acura Someone to Watch Award, which comes with a grant worth (I think) $20,000.
Craig Zobel and Julie Delpy were nominated for Best First Film, for Great World of Sound and 2 Days in Paris, respectively. Sound’s Kene Holliday was also nominated for Best Supporting Male.
Broken English, a film which was dismissed by many but which I really enjoyed, earned nominations for Best Actress (Parker Posey) and Best First Screenplay (Zoe Cassavetes).
Otherwise, the usual suspects are all there: lots of I’m Not There,Diving Bell, A Mighty Heart and Juno. More later.
UPDATE: See the full list of nominees after the jump. Surprises, omissions, excitements? Comment, please.
There’s a lot to say about Amy Taubin’s takedown of mumblecore, which recently appeared online as a preview to the November/December issue of Film Comment. Unfortunately, I’m traveling this week and don’t have much time to devote to it; fortunately, David Hudson and Matt Dentler (himself the target of some of Taubin’s wrath) have picked up the slack. Go read their posts for a coherent view; then, click through the jump for some thoughts I scrawled late last night at the Denver airport. If this meme has any staying power, I’ll revisit it when I’m back in New York.
Mumblecore on a hot plate. Karina gets tired of the spitfire debating over Hannah Takes the Stairsand the rest of the mumblecore movies playing at IFC Center this week. Paul and Kevin review LOL (on DVD this week) and Quiet City for all non-new yorkers.
After I wrote that post last week on the films of Kentucker Audley and Frank V. Ross, I got a nice email from Quiet City producer Brendan McFadden, gently reminding me that although I had lumped the female protagonist of the film in with the relatively cosmopolitan characters of some the other mumblecore films, in fact “Jamie as played by Erin Fisher in Quiet City is not an urban dweller, but rather only visiting that world. She is in fact employed at a franchise restaurant (Applebees) in Atlanta.”
Now that I’ve seen Quiet City for a second time, I feel like a total idiot for missing that fact the first time around. It may seem like a minor distinction, but the question of Jamie’s occupation sparks the only moment of negative energy in an otherwise extremely uncynical film, concerned primarily with drawing beauty from the mundane.
Stephen Holden’s New York Times review of Quiet City is extremely favorable towards the film, and extremely skeptical of what he calls “the movie genre labeled mumblecore … a filmmaking sensibility, filtered through Jean-Luc Godard and John Cassavetes and distantly related to punk, with the spirit of defiance replaced by resignation to the art of diminished expectations.”
This would seem to stand in sharp contrast to Matt Zoller Seitz’ Hannah Takes the Stairsreview of a week ago, which was lukewarm on the film itself (”snappy but unadventurous,” he called it), but generally enthusiastic about its place within an exciting wave of American independent film. Still, both critics say the party’s over. Seitz blames Hollywood for luring these artists away:
Hannah plays like an incidental swan song, a signpost marking the point when mumblecore became a nostalgic label rather than a present-tense cultural force, and its most acclaimed practitioners moved on to bigger things. Mr. Swanberg’s third movie is a graduation photo in motion: D.I.Y., class of ’07.
Holden, apparently less invested than part-time filmmaker Seitz in championing grassroots filmmaking on principle, blames the movies:
Aaron Katz is the director of Dance Party USA and Quiet City, both of which are screening as part of The New Talkies festival at the IFC Center. The former plays Tuesday and Wednesday; Quiet City opens on Wednesday for a week-long run. Both films will be released by Benten Films as a two-disc DVD set in January 2008. I love the intersection of high and low in this interview: Aaron talks about Antonioni in the same breath as Can’t Hardly Wait, and puts Ornette Colman on the same list as Mario Kart. He also discusses the pros and cons of the Mumblecore label, and offers up some intriguing details about his next project. All that, and much more, is waiting for you on the other side of the jump.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Jim Emerson has collated an 
Erin at Steady Diet of Film
I’m sure a press release will be forthcoming, and when I get it I’ll post it, but here’s what I deem to be the exciting news from this morning’s Independent Spirit Awards announcement, most of which involve friends and/or pet projects of Spout:
Mumblecore on a hot plate. Karina gets tired of the spitfire debating over 
Stephen Holden’s New York Times review
