In all likelihood, a new documentary about Robert Pattinsontitled Robsessed is a total cash grab and a waste of time. But let’s not completely toss aside the potential of this film, which UK-based distributor Revolver Entertainment has acquired and will release to DVD in the U.S. around the time that The Twilight Saga: New Moonopens in theaters.
I’m reminded of all the late night commercials I used to see for Biggie & Tupac years ago. The way the film was being sold sure made it seem at the time to be as cheap and disregardable as any of those compilation CD sets advertised in the same late hours. I never would have guessed the film was made by such an interesting filmmaker as Nick Broomfield, who I now place within my top five favorite documentarians. If only I’d been a bigger hip hop enthusiast I might have discovered Broomfield earlier than I did.
Likewise, if I’d been a greater Nirvana fan I might have been turned onto the filmmaker through his prior doc Kurt and Courtney (it wasn’t until years later when I wrote a paper on first-person documentaries that I acquainted myself with Broomfield’s films). And speaking of Kurt Cobain, I’m sure some of his young fans rented Kurt Cobain About a Sononly to wind up interested in non-traditional documentary and the further work of director A.J. Schnack.
Could Robsessed really have been directed by a true talent like Broomfield and Schnack? It’s hard to imagine, especially since neither the news release nor Revolver’s website reveals the filmmaker behind this documentary. But since the film may concentrate primarily on Pattinson’s obsessed fanbase, it could at least be as interesting as docs like Trekkiesand We Are Wizards, which deal with devout followers of the Star Trek and Harry Potter franchises, respectively.
I wouldn’t write Robsessed off so much as I’d say to ignore the film’s DVD-set companion, a pre-TwilightRPattz movie titled The Haunted Airmen.
Check out what other film bloggers are saying about the documentary after the jump:
No, I don’t yet have any footage from the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But at least you didn’t get Rick Roll’d, like I unfortunately did while optimistically searching for a leaked copy (actually getting Rick Roll’d at your lonely home office isn’t too bad. In fact, I got up and danced. Because I can).
What I do have for you instead, while you wait for the trailer to premiere on AOL tonight at 9pm EST, is a new clip related to Harry Potter, courtesy of MTV Movies Blog. It’s a Street Team news report on the HP Alliance’s Wizard Rock the Vote movement (aka Wrock the Vote), which helps Harry Potter fans register to vote.
The 15th edition of the New York Underground Film Festival opens tonight with a film we’ve covered extensively since its Toronto premiere, Suroosh Alvy and Eddy Moretti’s Heavy Metal in Baghdad. The fest runs through April 8, and when it’s over, it’s over: though co-directors Kevin McGarry and Nellie Killian are said to be working on mounting a new event with a similar spirit, the NYUFF as we know it will cease to exist after this run.
Ed Halter ran the festival for ten years, taking it over for co-founder and future Old School director Todd Phillips (yes, seriously). Halter has an obit of sorts at the Village Voice, in which he makes it clear that NYUFF isn’t ending because it has to financially. “It’s a conscious decision: There’s no rent hike to point to, no defunding agency to blame…True to its indie-rock genealogy, the NYUFF has always functioned more like a band than a traditional arts organization…Sometimes, a band just decides to call it quits—and hopes to go out in style, while it’s still got the knack.”
That said, NYUFF may not have worn out its welcome, but––to extend the indie-rock metaphor––this fest ending in 2008 is sort of like Pavement shutting down after Terror Twilight: things haven’t become embarrassing yet, but the enterprise has started to drift somewhat from what its core audience fell in love with. The way Halter describes NYUFF’s glory days, it’s apparent that it’s an event that was pegged to (and helped disseminate) a zeitgeist that may no longer really exist:
Here is a master guide to all of our reviews, interviews and assorted other coverage from the 2008 SXSW Film Festival. You can also revisit all of our SXSW previews here.
It’s fitting that the last film I saw at SXSW was Nerdcore Rising. I’d begun my experience of this year’s festival with a screener of We Are Wizards(review here), a documentary that mostly focuses on the Harry Potter-based “wizard rock”, which I’d then assumed was the nerdiest music genre in existence. And now I’d finished my experience with this doc, which is actually about the nerdiest music genre in existence, “nerdcore hip hop”.
The proof is not in the artists, though. It’s in the fans, which director Negin Farsad is right to concentrate on and showcase so significantly here. The film may center on one specific nerdcore hip hop artist, MC Frontalot, and his band’s first tour, but Nerdcore Rising is really, ultimately, about the freaks and geeks who make up the audience at each show along the way. Not since the height of the ska scene ten years ago has there been a genre so well defined by the character of its fanbase.
Ten-percent of Harry Potter fans are addicts. This is a fact, according to a recent scientific study. But after watching We Are Wizards, a documentary about Harry Potter fandom directed by Josh Koury, it seems clear that the study was a waste of time. One only needs to see this film to know that Potterphiles go a little overboard with their love for the boy wizard.Koury’s film is not simply Trekkies for the Hogwarts set, however. It’s not so much about the obsessed as it is about the inspired; We Are Wizards puts the spotlight on those Harry Potter enthusiasts who have turned fandom into a source of creativity. Like most popular franchises, J.K. Rowling’s series of novels and Warner Bros.’ movie adaptations have spawned their share of fan fiction, fansites and podcasts on the web, which has in turn introduced the phenomenon of fans of fans. But considering Pottermania and the Internet exploded at about the same time, the significance of online Potter fandom is huge. Let the multiple lawsuits brought by Rowling and Warners against the fans be a testament to that. These legal battles have opened up new debates regarding intellectual property and fan loyalty with regards to the (world)wide-open arena of the web. Just last week, in fact, yet another fan was sued for publishing a non-fiction work celebrating the Harry Potter lexicon. …Read more
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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The 15th edition of the New York Underground Film Festival opens tonight with a film we’ve covered extensively since its Toronto premiere, Suroosh Alvy and Eddy Moretti’s 
