[sketches in a moleskine]

Based around the New York art scene, ‘Untitled’ looks at a two brothers hoping to break through in opposing directions, one being a music composer that creates anything but commercial work while the other being a very commercially successful artist desperate to gain recognition from the art world. Directed by Jonathan Parker and starring ‘Adam Goldberg’, I think I’m going to like this film, although I have a feeling the trailer won’t be doing this film any justice.

The trailer for Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ was released online a few days ago. The film was initially shot with Heath Ledger in the lead but as Ledger passed away while only one third of the film was shot, Gilliam had him replaced with Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, all three starring as Ledger’s character at different intervals in the fantasy world created by Dr. Parnassus. Trailer looks promising, take a peek. Release date is approx. end of October.

While Sofia Coppola’s new film ‘Somewhere’ is locked in post-production and there doesn’t seem to be any leaks on footage or a trailer at the moment, I thought I might post up footage from one of her earlier films. Before ‘The Virgin Suicides’, Coppola directed a black and white 14 minute short titled ‘Lick The Star’, shot by Lance Accord.

Part 2

I was quite excited when I found out Tim Burton was directing ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Check out the teaser trailer, this film promises to be a crazy trip. With a worldwide release date of March 2010, you’re going to have sit on your ass a little while longer before you can take the red pill.

I picked up a few DVD’s from London before flying back home, one of those being Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘A Bout De Souffle (Breathless,1960) ‘, starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, it was one of the first films to kick off the french new wave alongside the works of Francois Truffaut. Aside from the filmmaker’s use of the then new editing techniques of jump cuts and freeze frames, Godard’s work in ‘A Bout De Souffle’ in particular represented a new found freedom to filmmaking, one that represented a turn to free flowing social commentary and an openness to raw human interaction with quirks of modern humour.

There’s been a lot of hype surrounding the new film ‘District 9′, none least due to news that Dir. Peter Jackson reportedly poured 30 million onto South African director Neil Blomkamp after watching his short ‘Alive in Jo’burg’. Initially slated to direct a film adaptation of ‘Halo’, the project was canned in the last minute resulting in Blomkamp turning his short into a feature with the help of Jackson’s funding. Too much hype never really does any film justice, but I’m not too sure whether I would rate ‘District 9′ anymore than 3.5 stars.

80’s Filmmaker John Hughes passed away on August 6th. Highly regarded for directing cult favourites ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, ‘The Breakfast Club’, and ‘Weird Science’, John Hughes added a candid touch to his films that related well with disaffected youths all over. I remember being able to quote every line of ‘Ferris Bueller’s day off’ and wearing out the ‘The Breakfast club’ tape, a weekly saturday morning ritual. Thinking back I think John Hughes’ films were one of the best things about growing up in the mid-late 80’s and early 90’s. I swear I must have rewinded and rewatched the scene in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ where Jeannie Bueller kung fu kicks principal Ed Rooney, about a million times. Needless to say I don’t actually have a working VHS copy of the film anymore. R.I.P John Hughes, here’s to your films and the legacy you left us.

I walked into a Sydney Film Festival screening of Jim Jarmusch’s latest cinematic offering on late Saturday evening. Starring Isaac de Bankole in the lead role of a lonely hitman, ‘the limits of control’ takes viewers back to the roots of Jarmusch’s classics such as Deadman and Ghost Dog. At times testing for the viewer, this slowly driven narrative centres around the concept of reality, and control. In a film where the lead character carries minimal dialolgue, we are compelled by his encounters with various intertwining characters that drop by with carefully thought out observations, each giving in to a different path of thought. Ultimately it becomes rather evident that this film is more about the journey then the destination, whereby the ends is only a means. Beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle, the film is like a hallucinogen waiting for the viewer to analyse something that’s not really there.

I didn’t take much notice when Nikon then Canon released the first DSLR’s capable of shooting HD Video late last year. But recently more and more short films have started popping up with film like quality images and there now seems to be a growing trend amongst filmmakers who are taking advantage of the huge 16 x 24mm sensor chips found in the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D Mk II, consequently allowing anyone that shoots motion picture to produce a nice soft focus image with a very cinematic shallow depth of field. Here’s a short film I found titled ‘model/photographer’ which was shot on the Nikon D90 DSLR by filmmaker Zak Forsman of Sabi Pictures. He’s also shooting a feature on the same camera.

It’s that time of the year in Sydney, when you start to freeze your ass off but you get to freeze your ass of in the knowing comfort that the Sydney Film Festival is right around the corner. It’s been about 5 years since I last attended a session at the film festival, back than it was suffice to line up on the night of the film to grab tickets, a lot has changed in the film circles since then and I have managed to miss out on tickets to the festival 5 years running – I just wasn’t convinced I had to pre purchase tickets days in advance until this year. With the festival period shrinking in size the organisers have managed to squeeze in quite a few films into the program this year. Tickets I managed to pre-purchase this year were ‘500 Days of Summer’ and the new film by Jim Jarmusch ‘The Limits of Control’, that’s about the extent of what I could grab before the tickets went dry, other notable films that were of interest included 2 Soderbergh films: ‘ Che ‘ and ‘The Girlfriend Experience’.

‘500 Days of Summer‘ – I came home last night convinced I should have given this film an extra half a star on the voting sheet (that would have made it 41/2 out 5 instead of the 4 I gave it…unfortunately the festival did not accommodate half points in the voting process…). It’s been a while since I’ve walked out of the cinema wanting to go right back in and watch it again. That’s the kind of affect the film had on me. Without giving away the major details of the film, (you’ll have to see it when it debuts in October in Sydney and July in the U.S) it’s about the cycle of falling in love, the joy, the pain, the joy, the sleepless nights, the hope, and finally the letting go of that hope. So your typical boy meets girl kinda scenario, except Dir. Marc Webb has been able to inject a stream of realism into the characters that lends itself to the side of playful comedy and gives in to the raw side of human emotion and interaction. The film is told in a non-linear narrative and moves forward and back from day 1 to day 480 to day 15 and so forth and I think this is where the flow of the film really strengthens the viewer’s connection to the characters and the story. If you think about it for a second, and reflect back on your own experiences in love they are rarely ever played back in your mind in a linear sequence, you tend to rush through to the pivotal moments of the relationship and then flash back to the beginnings to make sense of it all. In the end it never really makes sense, and these dramatic sequences of high’s and low’s just continue to make up small and big fragments of your life. The film doesn’t give us a happy or a sad ending, it gives us an ending to a chapter, period. There are many moments in this film to savour, and enough to play it back in your own mind in a non-linear sequence.

P.S The soundtrack is great too…a prerequisite of any good film…of course.