Experiments With Narrative....

floating down the river on a wooden pallet....

Its only Saturday and I feel like I've done so much this weekend already. Friday afternoon Caroline and I met up at Parsons and for about 5 hours we tried to come up with an idea for our character project. We finally got an idea down. We've got Chuck, a down and out criminal at 28 years old. He aspires to be a pop superstar and records an audition tape for the new reality show "America's Next Superstar". Problem is, when he tries to mail the package....his house arrest anklet activates! I will most likely star as Chuck. We are filming at Caroline's house on Sunday and then editing immediately afterwards. I think I will have to record the Super Bowl to be able to watch the commercials, since we'll probably be working on the project most of the time. Hopefully I will find the time to watch the commercials before Tuesday.

In the meantime some updates on films I have watched recently... On Thursday night I took a date to the rerelease of Baz Lurhman's Moulin Rouge. I love this beautiful film. Today I watched the Scottish film Orphans (by Peter Mullan). It's a story about 4 siblings struggling with the death of their mother and the upcoming funeral. It culminates with each sibling going off and dealing in their own way, nearly self destructing but they pull it together with each others support at the end. It won the Best Film award at the 1998 Venice Film Festival.

Today I finally got a copy of Bunuel and Dali's "Un Chien Andalou" on DVD! So I watched that for probably the 24th time. I never fail to be amazed by the greatness of that short film. I was talking to Robin a couple days ago and we thought it would be great to start up some film screenings on a weekly basis, in the tv area of the 10th floor. I have a great collection of important films like 400 Blows, Breathless, etc.. Since so many people in our class seem to have not seem most of these films this would be a great chance to do that and possibly talk about them afterwards too.

On Friday morning I listened to more Howard Stern. That morning he had a special event where he put porn actresses through a series of activities like singing a song while having 4 inches of sausage down their throat. Mild compared to some of the stuff I've heard on his show in the past.

posted by Kevin V. @ 10:56 PM 0 comments

Films and rain... (film/tv/radio log)

Today I watched the most beautiful film I have seen in years. The visual style, tone, and story was exactly what made me fall in love with film the first time around, and what most films are missing. I very highly recommend renting the DVD "Rain" by New Zealand director Christine Jeffs (2003). I don't know how I missed this film when it was at Sundance in 2002. I could have been enjoying it all these years. If anyone reading this, wants to see the film just let me know and I can loan you the DVD overnight. The story is about a 13 year old girl, who goes on vacation with her family at a seaside cottage. She grows up way to fast as she watches her parents relationship falling apart. It's based on the novel by Kirsty Gunn.

Once again...you gotta see it! Gotta see it! Gotta see it!! It's simply breathtaking.

Ok earlier this evening I also went to the advance screening of the new Danny Boyle film Millions. It's a good movie, though I was surprised that Boyle was doing what I see as a "family film". He probably wanted the opportunity to do a film with kids or something, since thats what I did for my first film. It's a whole other challenge in filmmaking. Anyways, there were some really interesting 3D graphic effects in parts of the film (in the kids fantasy sequences). I think the movie hits theatres on March 11th...so check it out if this sounds interesting.



This morning I listened to about 30 minutes of the Howard Stern Show before heading to class. He was up to his normal business. Wanting to have sex with one of the Olsen twins. Going on and on about how excited he was that Cream was getting back together for the first like in nearly 10 years for a UK concert (no word of a tour yet). So then everyone in the studio started singing all the best Cream songs. Then they got the CDs out and started playing all the classics. I forgot how great Cream was. Every once in a while Howard Stern is useful for something :)

posted by Kevin V. @ 8:10 PM 0 comments