In the 26 months or so since I started editing SpoutBlog full time, we have published thousands of posts, covered dozens of festivals, and reviewed hundreds of films. In that time, blogging has become the default format for online content, while at the same time what it means to be a professional film critic has — to put it kindly — evolved. The meme is that the media is dying, but more precisely, information distribution is in a weird kind of limbo: blogs still seem ephemeral, printed matter legitimate.
So! We are going to publish a book, a compilation of SpoutBlog’s “greatest hits,” with special emphasis on my reports from festivals, writings on below-the-radar films, and posts that reflect the evolution in online film culture. We’re going to publish it through CreateSpace, then sell it on Amazon and at film festivals and like events. The goal is not necessarily to make money (although we do hope to break even on publishing costs), but to create a physical snapshot of this thing that I’ve devoted the last two years of my life to creating, and that many of you have gotten into the habit of reading. Also, I made an empty promise to myself in grad school that if I wasn’t able to publish a book by the time I was 30, it would be a sign that this writing-about-movies racket wasn’t the right vocation for me. I’m no longer such a believer in signs, but I do still like the idea of publishing books.
To do this, we need your help, in three specific areas:
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If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, or don’t have the internet available at home yet (which makes me wonder how you’re reading this), then maybe you’ve been obliviously to the explosion of fan films. These are movies produced with the intent of taking an existing property and breathing new life into it, with sequels, prequels, or “what ifs.” In some cases these films take on a life of their own, which was the case with the childhood friends who decided to make a shot-by-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark with a VHS camcorder.
Author Clive Young has put together a book that charts the progress of fan films (starting in the 1920s!), and how the internet and inexpensive filmmaking tools have taken these otherwise obscure short films and fan efforts into new arenas. We talked to Young about the fan film dabbling of Hugh Hefner and Andy Warhol, the distribution future of that Raiders remake, and why fan filmmaking is a boy’s club.
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Garrison Keillor’s sleepy-voiced radio monologues from the A Prairie Home Companion radio show might be the only way you know the native Minnesotan, but he’s also an author of more than 17 books. He’s published numerous short stories and poems since being published in the New Yorker in 1970, he hosts A Writer’s Almanac daily on NPR stations around the country, and posts regularly to his blog on the Prairie Home website. He’s also a daily columnist at Salon.com, which makes you wonder how he finds time for the rest of his life.
But despite all the books he’s written, Keillor hasn’t had anything made into a movie. Robert Altman directed a fictional feature film version of A Prairie Home Companion, but to a Keillor fan it came off as more of a parody of the radio show than anything else. So where are the movies? Here’s a guide to the five Keillor books I’d really like to see on the big screen.
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I’ve been a fan of Jeanne DuPrau’s Ember book series for several years now, having found them to be a great blend of post-apocalyptic dreariness and steampunk tomfoolery, and all in a young adult book. Tom Hanks’ Playtone production company must have thought so too, since they optioned The City of Ember and gave it to Gil Kenan (Monster House) to direct. I was able to see City of Ember at Fantastic Fest, and it’s sadly not the Ember adaptation I’d been hoping for.
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Cool Hunting has a preview of a beautiful book that’s out in the UK in the conjunction with the release there of Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely (which I reviewed at SXSW, and loved). The book includes the shooting script, by Harmony and his brother Avi Korine, as well as photographs from the set, some taken by Harmony’s wife Rachel. According to Amazon, the book won’t be available until August 2008, but you can pre-order it now.
Via BuzzFeed.
