There’s a Korean movie called Juno Jenny that has something to do with two teens and the night of awkward passion that leads to an unplanned pregnancy. This is news to Diablo Cody, who wrote the script for Fox Searchlight’s much-splooged-over Juno, which is about two teens and the night of awkward passion that leads to an unplanned pregnancy. She blogged the other day about her movie’s “spiritual cousins” which, as she puts it, “is a much nicer way to point out a cool/weird coincidence than going ‘OMG PLAGIARISM!’”:
There’s no adoption subplot and apparently the film is otherwise dissimilar to mine, but how fucked up is that? I bring this up because a journalist drilled me about it recently–awkward!–and also because I saw someone on our IMDB board wondering if Juno was a remake of the K-flick. So for the record, 1.) it isn’t a remake 2.) I haven’t seen Juno Jenny, though I want to now, and 3.) I don’t think anyone would even bat an eye about this if my film was called Jenny. The name Juno is just so darned distinctive that confusion is inevitable.
More on Juno’s various spiritual cousins at the link.
Hey — I’m Karina. I blog here now.
If you’ve happened across the Spout homepage over the past couple of weeks, you’ve seen my sexy, under-lit iSight self-portrait, but if you know nothing else about me, here’s a primer:
1. I grew up in Los Angeles and now live in Queens.
2. My favorite movie trilogy of all time is Back to the Future
3. I co-founded and used to edit the film blog Cinematical. I’ve also written for The Huffington Post, TV Squad, NewTeeVee and FILMMAKER Magazine.
4. I have a bad habit of using “punk rock” as an adjective.
5. Most of the time, I look less like that iSight shot, and more like this.
If you have questions, concerns, news tips, suggestions, complaints or just really need someone to listen to you rant about Sonic Youth producing a record for Starbucks, I’m here for you. You can email me at karina AT spout DOT com, or hit me up on AIM at karinalongworth.
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Kevin posted 1 year ago
We talk with film blogger Karina Longworth of Vidiocy.com about how blogging is changing the film industry. And we caught up with director Gregg Araki, who ponders what feminist film critics will think of his new stoner flick, Smiley Face.
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Our own Rick DeVos, Spout’s fearless leader, was interviewed and quoted in an Austin Chronicle article yesterday. The article, “The Future of Film on the Web,” talks about the overwhelming sea of content on the web, and how “The old days of a Web campaign for a film attracting audiences on novelty alone are over. …Instead, filmmakers are finding success in reaching out to online communities….”
Communities build excitement around discovering and sharing something with others, the article asserts, which is what filmmakers need to do today to make their movie stand out. This, of course, is where Spout comes in. Here’s part of what Rick has to say:
For Rick DeVos, founder and CEO of film community Spout.com, that’s where Hollywood goes wrong. “They think of community as, oh, I’ll put a message board on my Web site, and that’s building a community around this film. It’s much deeper and more complicated than that.”
Spout is a community first, a commercial entity second, and it’s powered by connections. “We’ve stolen liberally from Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas around the tipping point,” DeVos explains. “We think of our users as three components: You have the casual film consumer; you have the maven, the passionate film fan, the connector who’s tagging and blogging like crazy; and the filmmaker. We think of the maven as the way of connecting the consumer and the filmmaker. They’re a trusted voice in this sea of content.”
Each morning as I walk around my brother’s too-hip-and-cute Portland neighborhood in search of my next cup of coffee, I’m secretly waiting to run into Morgan Freeman. Yes, he is here, filming at a coffee shop a mere two blocks from my brother’s front door. What could be more Portland than that, for a girl from Illinois? Bringing film and coffee together. Ahhhh yes…
The Lakeshore Enetertainment film that’s causing traffic to be redirected all along Mississippi Street here in Portland is apparently called Feast of Love. Freeman plays a college professor at Portland’s private Reed College, and Greg Kinnear is the owner of the coffee shop, which is in real life called Fresh Pot, but for the sake of the film has been renamed Jitters. (Not a very impressive change, if you ask me.) Anyway, people here are generally excited, gauging from the conversations and blogging going on.
Even Oregon’s governor, Ted Kulongoski, wants to get in on the excitement by taking some credit for the three films now being shot in the state. Something tells me, though, that no matter what the governor of, say Nebraska, did, he would have had a tough time attracting the film.
