Daily Loaf

Eckerd College’s International Cinema series is back this week with a double feature, loosely tied together around the theme of Asian hit men.

Ashes of Time Redux

The free action starts at 7pm at Eckerd College’s Miller Auditorium. Wong Kar-Wai’s wuxia delight Ashes of Time was redone for the big screen as Ashes of Time Redux and it’s astonishing how gorgeous it looks. As long as you don’t get all obsessed with minor details (like what exactly is going on and who is pining for whom), you will be blown away … this is a must-see on the big screen, playing in a new 35mm print!

At 9pm don’t miss Hiroyuki Tanaka’s inventive, intense and amusing Postman Blues: Sawaki is a postman, bored with his way of life until it all changes when his old schoolmate, who has just joined the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) smuggles a few items into his friend’s bag. Now the police are after him, and a series of coincidences convince them that this seemingly mild-mannered postal worker is a seriously dangerous man.

Warning: if you come to the series you may get hooked and have your Friday nights during the regular school year booked for the next decade. The series has been running for five years now and there are a number of folks who have been there every week for the last several. Come and bring your friends!

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All films in the series are free and open to the public, and screen in the Miller Auditorium of Eckerd College (4200 54th Ave. So., St. Petersburg). Tickets and reservations are not required.

For more information on the International Cinema Series, and to see upcoming films, go to www.eckerd.edu/ic

Questions? Contact the Eckerd College Office of Communications at 727-864-7979 or events@eckerd.edu.

The International Cinema Series is coordinated by me: Nathan Andersen, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Eckerd College.

Voted “Best Local Film Series” by Creative Loafing’s Best of the Bay 2007.

Every year for the past several, Eckerd College’s “International Cinema” series has been offering up exciting and innovative films from around the world to anyone who wants to show up, most Fridays (7pm) during the regular school year.

Mind Game (plays THIS Friday, Feb. 6, 7pm)

Maybe this is shameless self-promotion, since I run the program, but it is free and open to the public and there are usually some empty seats in the Miller Auditorium that are nearly as comfortable as the couch you’ll need to vacate in order to make it down to south Saint Pete and check out what we have to offer. For the past few weeks, my students and I have been bragging about the great time we were having in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival, so now we’re giving you a chance to see some of the cool things that tend not to play in the local multiplexes. Nearly everything we screen is from a 35mm print (the real thing!), and our theater is very nice – no sticky floors and loud teenagers (unobnoxious teens are of course welcome)!

This week’s film (Fri, Feb. 6, 7pm) is a strange one: a mind-bending and innovative Japanese animation focusing on Nishi, a loser with a crush on his childhood girlfriend, on a psychedelic journey to heaven and back, chased by Yakuza. Mind Game is definitely not for children! Read the rest of this entry »

Jerad Ford: Talking about Movies

Jerad Ford

For me, Sundance has been a once in a lifetime experience. Being in Park City surrounded by thousands of people who are all here to watch films and to support independent cinema is very exciting, because everyone is here for the same cause, to support art. Everyone is willing to talk about movies and trade stories about their experiences here. it’s easy to find out which films are good and and bad just by catching the bus and striking up a conversation or even just listening to other people talk about films. I certainly didn’t expect to make friends with two middle aged men, Jim and Rene, who told me they had been coming to the festival for the past twelve years. But that’s just the kind of thing that happens, you’ll be standing in a line for something and soon you’re discussing all of the films you’ve seen and haven’t seen. I ended up talking to both Jim and Rene a handful of times during the festival, as I always seemed to find them at my screenings. Both of them wished me good luck in making films, and they promised they would keep an eye out for a film by me at Sundance after five years or so.

Rajeev: Get out of the Condo!

Rajeev Rupani

The festival in itself was a great event for me to meet individuals who were really enthusiastic and emphatic about independent cinema. While having conversations with these people, in theater ticket lines, I learnt about some famous independent filmmakers and some movies that are a must-see. Meeting some of the staff members and volunteers, at the festival, gave me a chance to get information on how the festival worked and the manner in which it was set-up. I felt that talking to and interacting with as many people possible provided me with insight and good educational information on the world of independent cinema. The only downside of the festival was that the transit system took a while getting used to because the shuttles would not follow the simple pattern provided in the guidebook. As an official Sundancer – at this point – my advice would be to enjoy the festival as much as possible and interact with people as much as you can. If you are sitting at the condo and have a bunch of free time, just go down to Main Street, or take a chance on a film that you can waitlist for. Some of the best movies that I have seen here so far were either on impulse or because a friend convinced me to go along with them. Don’t spend your time sitting in the condo or watching television, you can do that in Florida, be outgoing and make some new friends in the group that you are with: I did and had the best time of my life. The festival is the opportune time to learn and experience the most that you can about this very unique branch of cinema, and this can be an experience that will last a lifetime.” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Saturday night in Park City and another festival is winding down.  The first weekend of the festival is always the most chaotic and crowded.  I find the second weekend more pleasant even if it is a bit sad to see things coming to a close.  Shuttle buses are less frequent, people more relaxed.  For the first time in ten days it is snowing, and with the weather everyone seems to be mellowing out, finding some place to stay warm.

I had a ticket to the Grand Jury Prize Documentary Award winning film – and had settled down into a cozy seat in the Library theater, waiting for the announcement as to which film it would be.  I was slightly disappointed to hear it was something I’d seen just yesterday – I’d been hoping to catch something I’d missed – but in hindsight the award makes complete sense: Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public was disturbing but brilliant, a powerful portrait of an internet pioneer with a remarkable vision of the future we are living now.  Unlike many of the documentaries that played at Sundance this year, this one (by the director of Dig!) makes inventive and entertaining use of the possibilities of the medium, and was definitely not made for a PBS audience.

I’ve seen just over 30 films here in Park City, at both Sundance and Slamdance, and in my opinion this is the strongest lineup I’ve encountered in the years I’ve been coming to the festival.   Read the rest of this entry »

Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth catalog, wields the button that got him started (before we'd gone to the moon).

Earth Days (Sundance 2009’s closing night film), directed by Robert Stone, begins with a powerful montage of United States presidents, beginning with John F. Kennedy, proclaiming the urgency of the mission to clean up our air and address our dependency on dwindling energy sources. Our future as a nation depended on it.

Of course, as we know, the urgency has not diminished but the clarity of the vision has. This is signaled in the film as the final president in the series, George W. Bush, expressed nothing more than the need to reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil. In part, as this film shows, the clarity of the mission diminished as the clarity of our air increased. It was the success of early environmental pioneers like JFK’s Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall and California Congressman Pete McCloskey, in the face of very obvious pollution in large American cities, that enabled subsequent politicians to diminish and ignore the challenges that face us in the coming days. Read the rest of this entry »

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

Kaye Breeman

I’ve just left the theater after seeing the Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, and would go to sleep, however I’m too… well… excited. This film was great, not that “great” even comes close. Odd. Puzzling. Emphatic. Ambiguous. Invigorating. Hilarious. Unique. Well, I guess those are closer. But seriously, at what other time in your life could you feel your stomach churn with empathy, or anything at all for that matter, for a man sitting on his kitchen counter staring into the sink at a little blue fish that has recently exploded out of his butt?! This is one of the many feats that director David Russo accomplishes with this film. You are drawn to investigate emotions, implications, and ideas in a story so far-fetched and unrealistic, and yet are so entirely immersed that you hardly have time to doubt.

The film starts when Dory, a strangely religious man, loses his temper at his cubicle job and subsequently loses his job as well. After a fruitless job search, he falls in with a group of misfits that work at Spiffy Jiffy’s Janitorial Service. Late at night, while blasting heavy metal music over the loud speakers, the team cleans, investigates, and sometimes fornicates in the office building. However, this all gets messy when a product testing company decides to use them as guinea pigs for their new product: cookies that emulate oven freshness by warming in your mouth (because god forbid you actually bake your own cookies!). The cookies have some strange side effects though, including being completely addictive, inducing hallucinations and extreme sodium consumption, and quasi-pregnancies that result in the birth of a small blue fish.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday’s premiere midnight screening of Black Dynamite had the audience laughing and cheering as its inscrutable tough guy hero saves the world from “the man.”  The film was among the first to be picked up by a distributor at Sundance, when Sony Pictures bought the film for an estimated $2 million after intense overnight negotiations that closed at 6 a.m. following the premiere.  From what I saw, expect the film to be a breakout hit – this is very likely not the last film we’ll see starring Michael Jai White as Black Dynamite.

I met the director (along with editor and incredible music director Adrian Younge) the night before – when nobody knew who he was – while moving in line to see another highly anticipated comedy (Mystery Team). Luckily I had my Flip Video Camcorder in my pocket, as he agreed to answer a few questions on camera. The following clip combines elements of the trailer with parts of that interview:

Created by Scott Sanders and Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite tells the tale of a righteous brother, who’s got kung fu skills and knows just how to please the ladies. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been in Park City four days and while the novelty is starting to wear off and we are getting used to how things are done, it’s still a lot of fun.

Sundancers Ali, Sam and Alex with the Big River Man himself (Martin Strel and crew)

The first weekend is always the most crowded, the most difficult time to get into movies, and the most likely time to face rude celebrity gawkers shoving their way through crowds on Main Street in an effort to catch a glimpse of Lil’ Wayne or Ewan McGregor or Denise Richards.  Now that it’s Monday, things have settled down a bit and its much easier just to hang out and watch films.

One thing I’ve been consistently surprised by is that the people who are here to see films or to show their own films are remarkably friendly.  Over breakfast yesterday I struck up a conversation with one of the founders of Slamdance; this morning at the screening of Old Partner I got to know one of the programmers of the Thessalonika Film Festival; I’ve chatted with critics from L.A. Times and Variety; I’ve had intriguing discussions with several filmmakers, including the director of the hilarious Black Dynamite and the very engaging No Impact Man.  There’s something about the atmosphere of this festival — maybe it has to do with the fact that everyone is wearing snow gear and no one stands out as they would in L.A., or maybe because almost everyone rides the shuttles, or just because of the common bond of the love of film — but, apart from a few of the celebrity stalkers, almost everyone is extremely friendly and personable.

Here’s what a some of the other sundancers had to say about their first few days: Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been in Park City for two days now, learning the ropes and exploring.  It’s always tough to get tickets for the first weekend, and while we started out with about 8 or 9 tickets a piece, purchased online, I’ve encouraged the group to push their boundaries, see films they have no ideas about going in, meet and talk to people in line and on the free shuttles, try new things.  Most seem quite eager to take me up on that.

After a flurry of blogging to complete assignments for our class before they got on the plane for Sundance, the group has slowed down a bit, focusing a bit more on taking things in.  Here are just a few excerpts from the things we have written in these two busy first days at the Sundance film festival.

Lizzie Kirkham on her first day and her first Sundance film:

Lizzie Kirkham

My first day at Sundance is extremely incomparable to my first day doing anything else. It wasn’t as drug-induced as getting my wisdom teeth taken out, nor was it as fun as my first race in alpine skiing. It was, despite the overuse of the word, unique. I have the largest collection of tickets, one of which was to the most beautiful movie Before Tomorrow… Read the rest of this entry »

After opening last year with In Bruges, a film packed with star power and scheduled to open in theaters the following weekend, Sundance has chosen this year to open edgy and unpredictable. It is not just that Mary and Max is an independent claymation flick from Australia, with a darkly comic theme about a lonely and misunderstood 8-year-old girl who strikes up an unlikely and disturbing correspondence and friendship with a 48-year-old overweight depressive male diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. What was truly unexpected was the moving power of its simple message, achieved without resorting to sentimentalism or cliché.

The film, apparently based on a true story, plays like Wallace and Gromit conceived by Oliver Sacks and imagined by David Lynch and Robert Crumb. The animated characters, who tend to be overweight with exaggerated melancholy expressions, are nevertheless enormously expressive – and the film seamlessly shifts from the muted colors of the rundown Australian suburb where Mary lives to the expressive black and white of Max’s New York City. Read the rest of this entry »

… or at least you ought to try and see when you have some free time and the inclination to stretch your cinematic imagination. On the eve of a new year of discovery and hype (Sundance starts tomorrow, January 15th), it’s as good a time as any to see for yourself why indie filmmakers and distributors still pin their hopes on the festival that got its improbable start in the snowy mountains above Salt Lake City, Utah. Between Netflix and Blockbuster and your local library, you should be able to find most of these.

John Lurie and Richard Edson go to Florida in Stranger than Paradise

Sundance really hit its stride in 1985. Before that it was called the Utah/US Film Festival and hadn’t yet been sponsored by Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute. In 1985 it got a new name and gave the world an introduction to two of the most prolific and exciting filmmaking teams. Jim Jarmusch brought his second feature (following the largely unheralded debut film Permanent Vacation), and introduced the world to his own peculiar take on America in Stranger than Paradise. The Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) stunned audiences with their visceral take on pulp film noir in Blood Simple. Their ability to create intensity through memorable images – a shovel dragging on the pavement, shafts of light that stab through the darkness as bullets penetrate the walls that shelter a terrified Frances McDormand – signaled the emergence of a powerful new team of storytellers. Read the rest of this entry »

Greg Mottola

Greg Mottola got his start at the Slamdance Film Festival in 1996, when he won their Grand Jury Prize for his debut film Daytrippers. Since then, he stuck with television for several years and got to know Judd Apatow during his 3-episode stint as a director for Arrested Development. He made it big behind the wheels of the Apatow-produced and critically acclaimed raunchy teen-sex comedy blockbuster Superbad.

Now he’s back at the festival that snubbed his first flick, with one of the most anticipated premieres of Sundance 2009: Adventureland, a semi-autobiographical ’80s nostalgia piece about a recent college grad who lands a lame summer job and has the best time of his life. The film will have its world premiere in Sundance’s massive Eccles theater, January 19th. At least one of us is sure to see it and let you know what we think — it probably won’t be me, since I usually try to avoid seeing films at Sundance that I know I could see a few months later in the local theaters, and this one definitely fits that bill. For those who can’t wait, or who want to whet their appetite for our review, take a look at a few of the following clips of the film, freshly picked from the web: Read the rest of this entry »

The film festival is just a few days away and we’re all getting ready. We’ve been reading about and watching some of the independent classics, posting our takes on some of the indie icons and legends, and putting together wishlists of the films we will be sure to catch when we get to Park City, Utah.

Meanwhile, here’s a quick introduction to most of us – shot on a little Flip video camera – that may help those who read these pages to see more than a snapshot of who we are. Below that, I’ve posted some short films that some of the students in this class made during the fall semester as part of my “Film and Philosophy” class. They’re not quite to the level of getting into Sundance – though in all honesty I find some of them more entertaining and thoughtful than some things I’ve seen at major festivals – but at least some of them can truly say they are “independent filmmakers” too.

Here’s a very recent spoof on Steven Soderbergh’s independent classic sex, lies and videotape, made by several of our Sundancers:

Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Nate Andersen’s Eckerd College film class is preparing for their trip to Sundance, during which they’ll be blogging for Creative Loafing. Former student Ryan Conrath, who’s now in film school, sent them this open letter:

Sundance is for many just an idea. It’s something that looms over countless student productions. It’s a running joke in film school: “When we get into Sundance…” In another sense, it’s also taken very seriously. It was a big deal when a colleague’s film got into Slamdance. The same guy’s movies have even been shown at Harvard and Cannes. But to my knowledge, Sundance still remains for him the elusive beast that it is for thousands upon thousands of expectant students and professionals.

Again, as an idea, Sundance is probably the most powerful force in American film today. It is almost more of a bragging point to say that your movie got into Sundance than it is to say it was optioned by Hollywood. Read the rest of this entry »

I will never be the same person again. Sundance marked a transition in my life, and there is no turning back. I cannot escape the vortex into which I have fallen. I have always liked movies (I rarely ever saw one I did not like) but never realized that they would be my life’s ambition. And that is how Sundance changed my life: It opened my eyes.

I did not try to go star gazing. I did not try to make it into any fashionable parties. I threw away all the bull that goes along with Sundance and got to its essence. I completely immersed myself into each film I saw. So much so that I do not know if I could remember all the films I saw. Some stuck in my mind: a gay zombie movie [Otto, or up with Dead People], a great baseball flick [Sugar], and a documentary outlining the country’s economic collapse [IOUSA] (”hate to say I told you so” comes to mind), but the entire experience changed me. I thought, “wow, not only is this the greatest thing that has come into my life, but I can do it too.” And so it began, my rocky but enthused trip into trying to make films. How will it all turn out? We will see.

Algenis Perez Soto plays a Dominican pitcher in Iowa in "Sugar"

Read the rest of this entry »

A girl plays by the rapidly eroding shoreline, in Everything's Cool

Sundance has had a green streak for a long time. It goes deeper than the new line of organic cotton festival wear, and the reliable influx of hybrid vehicles into town for the week. Films like An Inconvenient Truth, Blue Vinyl, Everything’s Cool, The Unforeseen, Who Killed the Electric Car, Fields of Fuel, Flow, Manufactured Landscapse, Up the Yangtze all premiered at Sundance over the last few years and all focus heavily on themes of environmental change and of connections between people and their environments. The festival’s related commitment to Native American stories goes back to its beginnings.

I always pay close attention to such films because of my involvement with Eckerd College’s “Visions of Nature, Voices of Nature,” Environmental Film Festival, that I have co-directed along with its founder Cathy Griggs for the past three years, and that began as a Native American film festival. For several years, we have tried to supplement the February lineup with at least one film that had just shown for the first time at Sundance. Last year it was Up the Yangtze and The Unforeseen (which played Sundance in 2007), and before that we screened Everything’s Cool. It goes beyond documentary. We have also screened fictional feature films from Sundance, films in which place plays a prominent role, such as Chris Eyre’s Edge of America, Jake Mahaffy’s War, and Kevin Wilmott’s CSA: Confederate States of America. (Kevin Wilmott is back again this year, with a western that I discuss below). We’ll see whether we can manage to pull it off again this year.

There are lots to choose from… Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the day, films like Shaft, Foxy Brown and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song styled funkalicious jazzy soundtracks, tough black heroes and heroines and corrupt white cops and politicians. A new genre was born, both celebrating and exploiting black culture, targeting urban African-American audiences with its style and subject matter. Some of the best of these films have become cult favorites, and have influenced new filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, whose Jackie Brown paid explicit homage to the genre he’d grown up on and loved.

Shaft was remade in slick Hollywood style by John Singleton (Boyz ‘n The Hood) in 2000, featuring Samuel Jackson in the title role. But for the original low budget style and campy flair you had to go to the bargain bin DVD versions, until now.

Scott Sanders’ blacksploitation spoof Black Dynamite premieres this year as one of the “Midnight” category films at Sundance. If the trailer below is anything to go by, the funky magic and excitement appears to be back. Black Dynamite looks hilarious and hotter than TNT: Read the rest of this entry »

Tromadancers on Park City, Main Street

Alongside the main festival, several other smaller film festivals have grown up in Park City during Sundance – giving the film lover a wide range of choices for films ranging from no-budget oddities to unique and compelling gems that might otherwise go unseen. Festivals with names like X-dance (extreme sports films), Tromadance (look up Troma films if you really want to know), and Nodance (taken over by Forrest Whittaker in 2002, but currently on hiatus), Roadance (that screens films on the side of a moving truck), Slumdance and Lapdance (you may be starting to see a trend), have come and gone, but the enduring alternative to Sundance has been the Slamdance Film Festival, running since 1995 and getting bigger and better every year. In fact, while Chris Nolan of Batman fame was put on the map when he played Memento at Sundance, it was Slamdance that gave him his first big break, screening his debut film Following in 1999.

Started by a group of filmmakers who, for whatever reason, couldn’t get their films into the increasingly competitive bigger-name fest, it has now become extremely competitive in its own right. One of the unique things about the festival is that in the competition screenings they show only films without prior theatrical distribution and with budgets under $1 million, from first-time feature directors… Read the rest of this entry »

Paper Heart, starring Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi

Sundance announced its lineup for the 2009 festival over the last couple of weeks, and there is much to anticipate. Of course the write-ups on films by the festival programmers are aimed to make each sound utterly remarkable and groundbreaking, but experience teaches that it’s not all good. So it’s always a bit tricky to figure out what will be worth watching.  As they say at the festival: follow the “buzz.”  But it’s not so simple.

I remember that the first year I brought a group to Sundance (in 2003) the biggest excitement surrounded an edgy street-racing film called Quattro Noza, that was billed as “Stan Brakhage meets The Fast and Furious” (apparently the director, Joey Curtis, studied with the late experimental filmmaker at CU-Boulder). Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly every year for the past several years, I’ve taken a group of Eckerd College students to the Sundance Film Festival.  The trip is the culmination of a January term course on American independent film.

This year, we will all be reporters, giving you the inside scoop on the latest information and gossip, describing our adventures and close encounters with fame in Park City, and letting you know which films to watch for and which to avoid.

We don’t exactly have the run of the festival, and we aren’t professional reporters, so you’ll get a unique look at the festival from the point of view of ordinary college students and a philosophy professor (me).

We have, however, been given a special welcome: Read the rest of this entry »