‘Belispeak’ Video Released
by Adam Hirsch
Maybe it was 3am. Maybe it was 4am — I can’t remember. But one night in late April, Matt Paley and I were standing at the edge of a pool in Brentwood, steeling ourselves against an improbably cold California rain and dreary temperatures, looking down at Purity Ring‘s Megan James waist deep in the freezing water, covered in black tentacles and slime, a bed floating along behind her, directors Ben and Alex Brewer in their wetsuits at her side, vibrating from the cold and their ninety-ninth cup of black coffee, and we knew everything had quietly (shooting all night — under the radar — in Los Angeles necessitates absolute silence, in case you’re wondering) come together. It was a perfect, delirious moment of filmmaking.
‘Dumb Dumbs’ is Live!
by Adam Hirsch
To kick off 2012, we’re rolling out Dumb Dumbs, a co-production between Greg Hanson of Greth Productions and STE.
Blackest Night
by Adam Hirsch
Green Lantern, dir. Martin Campbell (2011)
Full disclosure: the Green Lantern is my favorite comic book hero.
So I’m giving Green Lantern the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of the heart, because it’s a rare film that refuses to cross the line into cheap gags and cynicism and this film refuses to do either. Most people who’ve seen it dismiss it as hokey, and just plain bad, but there seems to be a depth that Green Lantern aims for and, well, misses. (more…)
No. No! Just, no.
by Adam Hirsch
All the reasons — both good and bad — that Lindsay Lohan has become a public figure are more or less irrelevant today. She’s Lindsay, she’s inarguably part of the Zeitgeist, and she’s more than likely here to stay.
Oh, and she’s just made the worst film. Ever. The title: ”Lindsay Lohan, Transformed”.
She’s teamed up with the painter Richard Phillips and made a two-minute clusterfuck of narcissism and plagiarism to be shown for — wait for it — the “Commercial Break” visual art section of the 54th Venice Biennale.
(In the event it gets taken down from YouTube, you can also watch it here.)
In case anyone is, I don’t know, a little curious about why this film is so aesthetically pleasing, the answer is simple: the majority of shots from this thing has been appropriated from Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona. (more…)
RICKETS: Official Selection
by Adam Hirsch
Our very own Brian Barth has officially stepped on to the festival circuit!
His experimental film RICKETS (2010) will be premiering at the Boston Underground Film Festival ’11 and the Kansas City FilmFest ’11.
RICKETS explores a transformed landscape as it follows the simplest aesthetic narrative — white to black. The textures and rhythms of the image come from the serious digital distortion (achieved entirely in-camera) of the perfectly scenic setting of a boat trip down the Hudson River. The camera captures an alternate, underlying world, an almost microscopic vibration that pervades our existence.
Keep an eye out (for all our loyal Boston followers) – make sure to pick up some tickets for BUFF.
And while you’re there, be sure to also check out the extraordinary nunsploitation film Thy Kill Be Done (2010, dirs. Greg Hanson and Casey Reagan). It’s exactly what you think it is in the best way possible.
Our shoulders are all waxed and ready to rub. Come out and support Brian, the Company, Boston filmmaking, and, heck, just to see some really great film.
The St. Eliot & Company Top 10 of 2010
by Adam Hirsch
Another year passed, another crop of films come and gone.
We publish our list now, at the cusp of 2011, because we needed an extra ten days or so to collect our thoughts — and to steal the time and search under the sofa cushions for the extra money to see every possible movie.
The first list you see is the official Company list. Farther down you’ll see all of our individual lists, a special list from Paul, and an explanation of how the Company list was computed.
1. The Social Network
2. Toy Story 3
3. Exit Through The Gift Shop
4. Black Swan
5. Carlos
6. The Fighter
7. A Prophet
8. True Grit
9. Winter’s Bone
10. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Ménilmontant (1925)
by Adam Hirsch
One of the great things about the internet is having access to things you wouldn’t ordinarily find.
In this case, it’s a 37 minute film by Dimitri Kirsanoff from 1925 called Ménilmontant. I saw it in a screening at Bard with the understanding that it was an “extremely rare film to ever see” and to savor it because the likelihood was that I’d never see it again (unless I, you know, checked it out from the Bard film library).
Ha! Here it is presented for you, in these holiday times. Incidentally, it’s also Pauline Kael’s favorite film (she, too, claimed it was impossible to find). A real gem.
The Little Imperfections
by Adam Hirsch
They came out about a week ago, but if you haven’t already watched them — you should. In an absolute stroke of brilliance, The New York Times Magazine decided to get fourteen A-list actors in front of a camera for short, silent single-take scenes. It’s called “Fourteen Actors Acting“. (Click the link to follow to it.)
For all of you that went through film school — especially working with a Bolex and 16mm B&W Reversal — a lot of these will feel familiar in the best way. They’re just like those exercises and assignments you had to suffer through while trying to get a grasp on the medium, the ones you overexposed or had your actor-friend drop out at the last minute only to be replaced with your roommate’s drunk friend — only these are perfect little exercises, perfect little displays, and fourteen actors — including Matt Damon, James Franco, Chloe Moretz, Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem and Tilda Swinton — who all seem to understand how less translates to more.
They can remind you why you like this crazy stuff in the first place.
Another One From Reichardt
by Adam Hirsch
Kelly Reichardt, the patron mater familias of the Company, whom most of us here were mentored by during our days up on Annandale, has just churned out her newest work, Meek’s Cutoff, and from most of the internet buzz, it’s something. It was sold for theatrical release at the Toronto Film Festival, and as of today it’s loosely scheduled for a Spring 2011 release.
The Social Network
by Adam Hirsch
The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
Ambition makes for seductive storytelling and tales of ambition are nothing new. Yet a study of the ambition that created what anyone under thirty takes for granted everyday as their world — the “new” internet, Web 2.0, social networking — provides insight into the brave new world we inhabit that might otherwise go conveniently unnoticed. The Social Network revels in removing that convenience, pulling back the curtain, and showing us that all this pretty technology only reiterates the most primal instincts of our small existence.
Countdown to Milan
by Adam Hirsch
Well, it’s looking like the time has come for the Company to go international. I’m hopping the pond over to Europe to take Faith Healer to the Milan International Film Festival, where it’s nominated for Best Short Film. Check out the program here. It screens on Sunday May 9 at the Teatra Gnomo.
I’ll be posting updates on the blog periodically over the week, but if you want the play-by-play action follow me on Twitter.
FAITH HEALER at the Alabama International Film Festival
by Adam Hirsch
This Friday, April 23, Faith Healer is playing at the Alabama International Film Festival in Troy, Alabama.
If you’re in the area, please swing by! Getting some friends of the Company in some seats would be amazing. The festival is being held during TroyFest, the local arts festival, and the entire town’s going to be alive and I’ve heard it gets crazy.
It’s playing at 5:30 pm this Friday, April 23, in Historic Downtown Troy at the Studio Theater on Walnut Street.
Last week, the Geneva Film Festival was a big success and this weekend will be just as great!
Dispatches from the Circuit: Back of the Napkin
by Adam Hirsch
At around 6:00 p.m. yesterday, the shorts program ended here at the Geneva Film Festival and I walked over to the bar across the street. I sat down, got a drink, and on the back of the napkin began writing down the first things that came to mind after seeing my work screened (with other people’s hard, truthful work — but more on that in a later post). Here, unedited and unfiltered, is the list.
Sometimes, the Academy…
by Adam Hirsch
Like Kathryn Bigelow, recipient of the Oscar for Best Director, I’m utterly speechless. Last night the Academy decided, under pressure from the big moneymakers and unique genre films, to select the best-made film for best picture. Going into this, I was almost certain that it was going to be Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director and Avatar for Best Film. I am so glad that I was wrong.
Dispatches from the Web: Friends Don’t Let Friends Trip Alone.
by Adam Hirsch
This entry comes via an e-mail from Matt. Apparently I had to see this. Check it out for yourself before I go on because anything I say on the matter will be utterly useless if you don’t.
Friends don’t let friends trip alone. The inexplicable terror of the otherness of time, to borrow the cocktails-at-seven phrase from Freud, has overwhelmed this television ad in many ways. Forty-odd years later it seems like an odd relic of some civilization of indeterminable musical taste and choice in travel. Most haunting of all might be the realization that it was our civilization.
Double Feature: I
by Adam Hirsch
There are always films that fall through the proverbial cracks in every filmmaker’s viewing library, well-known and applauded films that we have claimed to have seen but actually have on our I’ll-eventually-sit-down-and-watch-it list. We all have these lists, myself as much as anyone.
Which is why last night, thanks in part to the wonderful advent of Netflix, I decided to start crossing a few films off the list with weekly double features of missed works. It certainly didn’t hurt that my girlfriend was out of town and I could unapologetically choose which films to watch.
I’m approaching these posts as impressions more than appraisals. I’m not going to write up synopses or review the filmmaking. The films that I’m going to watch are classics that have just passed me by — I’m choosing the ones I’ve heard are magnificent, and it follows that they are going to deliver on the promise. For this first week’s double feature, I chose to kick things off with a triple feature: Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow and Robert Altman’s Gosford Park.
Lids
by Adam Hirsch
Every year they make the same mistake. They rinse off the pot, give it a quick dry, pop it on the burner and twist the heat to high. The prep work takes precedent, chopping the onions and slicing thin the meat, letting the pot heat all the while. Then the time comes for them to brown the meat and they pour in a few tablespoons of oil, which smokes for a moment, and then, with a sudden and heavy breath, pfoof! – fire. (more…)
Coming Through The Rye
by Adam Hirsch
Yesterday, J.D. Salinger died at the ripe old age of 91. We here at the Company thought there couldn’t be a better way to send the old boy off than with the proper belt of a proper beverage, our eyes firmly set on something heavy with the whiskey.
However, we ran into a revealing snag: there doesn’t exist a Salinger drink. And so, we filled the gap. (more…)
Dispatches from the Web: Pardoning the Innocent
by Adam Hirsch
If I had to pick a moment from a film that’s resonated with me lately, I would choose one that’s been vastly ignored. It’s from Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire, and it’s buried within the emotional climactic scene where Tom Cruise barges in on the neo-feminist divorcee club to win back Renée Zellweger, delivering a long monologue ending with the phrase that permanently entered the zeitgeist, “You complete me”.
But that’s not the moment that I’m thinking of. It’s about three sentences earlier. Cameron Crowe knows how to write dialogue; he easily inherits the chair of conversation-mastery recently vacated by the late Eric Rohmer. Yet this monologue wanders and meanders, and finally Jerry loses his train of thought. He pauses, and in a wonderful non-sequitur, slowly says, “We live in a cynical world. A cynical … world …” (more…)
The Company Round-Up [Jan. '10]
by Adam Hirsch
While my filmmaking brethren are location scouting up in the snowy land of Pickering, Ontario, I’m holding down the fort back here in the States and keeping warm in the nascent days of the new year.
The Round-Up Endorsements this month are leaner than they have been before, but never worry: come February, we’ll have more laid out for you.
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck – Short, sweet and sour stories from a master of style and form. Most people recall Steinbeck as a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, resigned to a high school senior’s reading list, but he’s at his best and grittiest when he’s spitting out short stories.
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis – Speaking of short stories, if you haven’t read Lydia Davis then you’re truly missing out on a modern pioneer of the form. She packs more into a single paragraph than anyone else out there.
Alka-Seltzer – Pop, pop, fizz, fizz, oh! what a relief it is! And, indeed, it is. Get the original kind, the two tablets that drop into a glass of water. Even though it seems just to be an ironic throwback (akin to, “Hey! Moxie soda isn’t just delicious, it’s nutritious too!” [actual advertising slogan]), we at the Company have found that Alka-Selter actually works wonders for both colds and hangovers.
Carrying Tea Packets in Your Coat – Why not chase the tablets with some hot tea? Everyone has more tea packets lying around their place than they would ever like to admit. Make use of them, especially in these chilly winter months, by carrying a few around in your coat pocket. Gas stations, cafes, and even Starbucks rarely charge for hot water, so keep your money and stay warm. Also, green tea helps your immune system. Hypochondriac or no, a little boost in flu season never hurt anyone.
Le photographie d’aujourd’hui
by Adam Hirsch
Last night, my hours of mindless surfing through Flickr paid off.
Here is a collection of photographs, shot on the streets of Paris in 1962, prominently featuring the legendary restaurant Les Halles. The color and saturation of these photos are unreal (which, wouldn’t you know, renders them extremely real and lifelike). In all likelihood, the photographer, Tom Palumbo, shot them on Kodachrome, which is being discontinued by Kodak this year.
I don’t know about you, but there’s something about medium format film that captures an essence that digital can’t touch. (Yes, I know: the RED and Canon MARK IV are amazing. But still I miss the delay of dropping off your roll of film, waiting for it to be developed, and that sublime moment of discovery when you see what you’ve captured this time.)
Click Here to link.
How to Stuff a Piñata for New Year’s Eve
by Adam Hirsch
Who needs Times Square to drop balls? Just get your own, and stuff EVERYTHING you can find inside it.
Happy New Year, everyone.