Category: Film & TV

Netflix:

In this comedic action movie, a martial arts master teaches his secrets to a gorilla, who is then dispatched to America to show off the best Chinese fighting techniques. The ape, known as King Kung Fu, escapes from his handlers and eventually seeks refuge atop the tallest building in Wichita, Kan., a Holiday Inn. Pursued by bumbling reporters and blundering cops, will King Kung Fu find peace with the love of his life, Rae Fay?
Releases on DVD Mar 06, 2007

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NYT Magazine:

A studio visit to an artist in Beijing is often like 10 studio visits in Brooklyn. In China, you don’t find a painter, and a sculptor, and a video artist, but rather one artist who is working on painting, sculpture, photography, video and (why not?) performance all at the same time. When I visited Liu Wei in Beijing to select works for my show in Turin, he offered me not only beautiful cityscape paintings but also architectural models of famous buildings, like St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Empire State Building, made from the same rubber used to make fake dog bones. (I chose a painting.) In Europe, an artist that looks for inspiration in both a pet shop and the early work of Gerhard Richter would most likely be dismissed as lacking a consistent point of view. But in China the same criteria do not apply.

European artists often develop different bodies of work. Many Chinese artists seem to develop different bodies for each work. A great chaos under the sky was supposedly an excellent sign for Chairman Mao Zedong, and the same may be true for today’s Chinese artists. Complexity and change is part of Chinese philosophy. To favor one medium over the others would be to impose a silly constraint. If all is possible in contemporary art, why limit yourself?

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NYT:

But the source of his dark-hued lens on life, Mr. Fincher suggested, might be as simple as that original bogeyman. “It was a very interesting and weird time to grow up, and incredibly evocative,” he said. “I have a handful of friends who were from Marin County at the same time, the same age group, and they’re all very kind of sinister, dark, sardonic people. And I wonder if Zodiac had something to do with that.”

Mr. Fincher was first approached about “Zodiac” by Brad Fischer, a producer at Phoenix Pictures, with a script by James Vanderbilt. It was based on two books by Robert Graysmith, a former San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who became obsessed with the Zodiac, and who built a case against one suspect, now dead. Mr. Fincher said he wanted Mr. Vanderbilt to overhaul the script, but wanted first to dig into the original police sources. So director, writer and producer spent months interviewing witnesses, investigators and the case’s only two surviving victims, and poring over reams of documents.

“I said I won’t use anything in this book that we don’t have a police report for,” Mr. Fincher said. “There’s an enormous amount of hearsay in any circumstantial case, and I wanted to look some of these people in the eye and see if I believed them. It was an extremely difficult thing to make a movie that posthumously convicts somebody.”

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LA Weekly:

As we’ve seen from British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, one actor’s deadpan dedication to heavily accented cultural naiveté in the face of unsuspecting victims can do wonders. But actor Ken Davitian, who played Borat’s bearded and oversized film producer, confidant and combatant, Azamat Bagatov, already knew the power of anonymity before he’d ever heard of Cohen or Borat, because it won him the job.

“I didn’t break character,” says Davitian, 53, of his audition. The breakdown called for a “frumpy Eastern European” man who didn’t understand English. But instead of showing up as his needy American bit-player self and then performing the role for a casting camera, Davitian arrived as a bewildered foreigner sporting baggy threads, a gruff demeanor and a parlance inspired by his Armenian relatives. Outside the audition, among fellow actors he recognized from the ethnic-part circuit, all dressed as themselves, he kept up the act. “One of the guys came up and said, ‘You really want this part.’ ”

Inside, Davitian didn’t even hand over a real résumé. “I had a white 8-by-10 that was folded in my jacket pocket,” he says. “I took it out, straightened the creases and gave it to them, and you could see in their eyes, ‘How did this guy get in?’ From what I understand, they thought, ‘This is so sad. Let’s just go through with it a little bit and ask him to leave.’ ”

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LA Times:

Yet such discomfort also provides great fodder for his latest comedy, “Extras,” which has aired in England and returns for its second season in the U.S. on Sunday on HBO. Conceived as a sardonic look at unsuccessful actors trying to make it in the movie business, the series takes a new turn this season when a sitcom script written by the long-struggling Andy Millman, played by Ricky Gervais, is picked up by the BBC.

Andy’s exuberance is quickly diminished when network executives proceed to dumb down the workplace comedy, titled “When the Whistle Blows.” They make him don a curly black wig and outsized glasses for his part as a dim factory boss. They insist his character utter an annoying catchphrase whenever someone appears to have cracked a joke: “Are you having a laugh?”

Critics pan “When the Whistle Blows,” which is nevertheless a popular hit, a fact that only further depresses Andy. In one scene, he is accosted at a pub by fans of the sitcom who urge him to deliver his character’s catchphrase, which he does with no small amount of self-loathing.

“The big theme of it, I suppose, is ‘Don’t compromise,’ ” Gervais said. “Be careful what you wish for. Success without respect is nothing.”

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WFMU’s Beware the Blog:

You  may recall, last year that the amazing site Greylodge ran a Andy Kaufman Collection that many of Greylodge’s readers wrote in to say was one of their favorite  collections that we’ve run. What better way to start out a new year than to top their previous hit? They proudly present, the Gpod 2007- Tony…er…Andy Redux Collection. Containing over 8 and 1/2 gigabytes of chewy Kaufman rarities, with contributions from the private collections of newest GPod contributor, obsolete and long time contributor Joseph Matheny. The …er…Redux Collection (as it’s come to be known) showcases such works as:

All Appearances by AK on Friday’s
Vol. 1, 2 AND 4 of the Rare Andy Kaufman  Collections. (Vol. 3 is still rumored to exist…will we release it? Wait and see.)
I’m From Hollywood (expanded)
Andy Plays Carnegie Hall (expanded, direct from Andy’s own copy!)
Andy’s Funhouse
AK Bio from A & E
Rodney Dangerfield’s “I Can’t Take It No More” special, with AK of course!
The ultra-rare Johnny Cash Xmas Special, with AK as a featured performer and all-around pest.
Stormy Justice with Judge Tony Clifton
The Tony Clifton Movie
Stick Around (pre-Taxi Pilot that never aired) plus outakes
The Kaufman Files- Vol 1 & 2

Download the Torrent Files Here.

Filming of The Kite Runner, NYT:

In addition to keen eyes Ms. Dowd needed extraordinary patience. She spoke, for example, of having to drink 45 cups of tea with the director of one French-run school in Kabul before the director trusted her enough to let her tour his 25 classrooms. He then granted her all of three mornings to complete her search.

On her ninth classroom, running out of tricks, she asked the students who was the naughtiest kid in class. “There was one child who stood out as the most extroverted, but right next to him there was another boy who was quiet, but who was responding to the scene,” said Ms. Dowd, speaking of an 11-year-old named Kekiria Ebrahimi. “There was a special little moment of energy from him, and it stayed with me. He ended up playing Amir.”

A precociously witty 10-year-old, Ahmad Khan Mahmiidzada, plays the role of Hassan, the servant boy who is betrayed by his best friend, Amir. The boys did not know each other before being brought to western China for the filming, but off camera they became close. And while there is no confusing reality and fiction for either, at a fundamental level the story in which they are acting rubs against the grain of their friendship and seems to trouble them.

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Washington Post:

A few blocks from Ali Farouk’s three-story home, an empty house provides a glimpse of what he fears will be the future. Once owned by a Sunni Muslim, the paint is peeling, the windows are blown out. Two scarlet X’s mark the pale blue front door.

To the door’s right are the words: “Not for Sale. Wanted.”

According to neighbors, “Wanted” refers to the former owner, who fled after crossing paths with the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The gunmen accused the owner of killing four of their own at a checkpoint. Then they took over his house.

To the door’s left, the words: “This is vengeance for the other day.”

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Netflix:

Trouble rears its ugly head at the video arcade in this racy 1980s teen comedy about a group of kids who battle a local businessman with plans to shut down the popular hangout. Concerned parent Joe Rutter (Joe Don Baker) believes that video games will destroy the teens’ minds, and when he tries to close down the arcade, it’s up to King Vidiot (Jon Gries), nerdy Eugene (Leif Green) and the rest of the gang to defend their right to play Pac-Man.

Here.

Slamdance:

Slamdance, an organization always looking to foster new and innovative ways to assist emerging artists and writers, has established the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition.  This contest is a natural extension of Slamdance’s stated mission to nurture, support and showcase truly independent works and will be held concurrently with the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, January 18-27, 2007.

A gaming competition at a film festival? It makes more sense than a first glance might indicate. Gaming is one of – if not the – fastest-growing components of the entertainment industry. Like filmmaking, game design is a means of visual storytelling, and the similarities between the two media far outweigh the disparities. Like a film director working on-set, today’s gamemakers assumes a leadership role in the outcome of the game, guiding plot points and character interaction, integrating art and technology with game design. Recognizing that the space between film and gaming was becoming increasingly smaller, and seeing a niche for it within their festival, Slamdance developed the Game Competition to help aspiring game developers display their work.
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SF Gate’s Daily Dish:

Sources claim Kid Rock, real name Bob Richie, became enraged by his wife’s role in the spoof film — in which Borat, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, travels across America to get close to the blonde beauty.

A close friend of the pair tells Page Six, “(Film producer) Ron Meyer held a screening of ‘Borat’ at his house for a bunch of people, including Pam and Bob. It was the first time Bob had seen the movie, and, well, he didn’t like it.

“Bob started screaming at Pam, saying she had humiliated herself and telling her, ‘You’re nothing but a whore! You’re a slut! How could you do that movie?’ — in front of everyone. It was very embarrassing.

Here.

LA Times:

Spirea Ciorobea, 68, portrayed as the “village mechanic and abortionist” in the film, is being represented by the lawyer’s group.

“I was approached in the street and asked whether I could play a welder,” he said. “Like many people here, I can’t find work, so I appreciated the chance to earn some money for my family. Later, they painted my arms up to my elbows with red paint. I had no clue what for and only realize now they wanted to show that I am covered in the blood of the women whose babies I was aborting. I would never have agreed to that, even if they had paid more than the $4 I was given. I am a Christian and oppose frivolous approach to abortion, and I think what they made me do was disgusting.”

Another “Borat” participant, Nicu Tudorache, was told that the fist-shaped rubber sex toy filmmakers attached to his amputated arm was a prosthetic.
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NYT Magazine:

Christopher Guest’s latest film, “For Your Consideration,” a scathing sendup of award-season hype that opens on Friday, employs his usual repertory of actors — McKean, Shearer, Eugene Levy (who has co-written most of Guest’s films), Parker Posey, Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara, among them. Guest’s movies take months to write, as he and Levy painstakingly develop characters and plot. In “Consideration,” the unlikely Oscar candidate is the independent film “Home for Purim,” a hokey melodrama about a Southern-Jewish family in the 1940s and a dying mother’s reconciliation with her lesbian daughter. Guest and Levy conceived the film-within-the-film to be written by two self-important hacks (played by McKean and Bob Balaban), community-college professors whose pretensions and limitations were explored so completely that Guest and Levy even wrote the titles for 27 of the fictional duo’s plays. As in all Guest films, the parts were created with each actor in mind. When the outlines were finished, the actors offered input into their characters’ costumes, cars, even the set designs for their homes. Then they improvised their dialogue.

“By that point, Gene and I have written hundreds of cards delineating what happens in every scene,” Guest told me. “We have no rehearsal, just turn on the camera and people start talking.” (In the new film, the “Home for Purim” scenes are scripted).
Here.