Attending Mini MegaCon this past weekend was like walking into a different world than the mundane one I tend to inhabit. Stormtroopers, mystic elves, movie stars and a few renaissance festival holdovers invaded Orlando and The Rabid One and Hopp were at the center of it all.
What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:
Sustainable beer 101: A guide to growlers- Benefits of refillable beer jugs far exceed the lure of fresh tap beer.
Refresh your mind, body and spirit by reconnecting with nature- Living in such a busy world these days overloaded with technology leaves little time to get back to the basics and connect with the planet we live on. Take some time out of your busy schedule and reconnect with nature, which will balance you physically, mentally and spiritually.
Ronald McDonald gets a pie in the face from PETA protester- Ronald McDonald takes one in the kisser from a PETA protester who is against McDonald’s “controlled-atmosphere killing” of chickens.
St. Petersburg College and Tampa Bay green building chapter announce partnership- St Petersburg College’s Corporate Training Office announced a partnership with the Florida Gulf Coast Chapter (FGCC) of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to provide a comprehensive sustainable building operations training course based on the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance rating system.
Read the rest of this entry »
With Food Inc. making such a buzz about the food that we eat and where it comes from, this independent film may also be one to watch.
King Corn tells the story of two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
As the film unfolds, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the East coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-ubiquitous grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they questions about how we eat—and how we farm.
My favorite line from the trailer: “We aren’t growing quality – we’re growing crap!” Truer words were never spoken.
Video after the jump
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Outrage, a new documentary by Kirby Dick “outs” allegedly closeted republican figures who have anti-gay voting 
records. Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who recently announced his bid for a 2010 senate seat, is a main target in Dick’s independent film which premiered May 8.
Suspicions of Crist’s homosexuality first arose before his gubernatorial election in a 2006 Palm Beach Post article. A 21 year-old GOP staffer, Jason Wetherington, reportedly boasted to friends that he had sex with Crist and even named Crist’s long-term partner, Bruce Carlton Jordan. 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 »
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.
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 »
… 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 »
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:
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 »
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 »
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