#films i was involved with

[frosthetix]

some dudebros: tom hardy must be held at gunpoint to still be doing these sony venom movies

tom hardy: WRITES the movie, PRODUCES the movies, repeatedly states how much venom and eddie means to him, reads all the comics, #1 veddie shipper

[greensparty]

2023 IFFBoston Wrap-Up

From April 26 to May 3, I got to enjoy my favorite film festival in Boston, in Massachusetts and possibly the world is Independent Film Festival Boston (read my coverage here). I have a special place for this festival: in 2014 my documentary Life on the V: The Story of V66 had its World Premiere at the festival, and in 2015 I was on the Documentary Jury. Here is my lightning-round of this year’s fest:

Wed. 4/26:

Brooklyn Sudano’s intro at IFFBoston

Opening Night Film was the documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer. Co-director Brooklyn Sudano (daughter of Donna Summer) did an intro and post-screening Q&A. The doc premieres on HBO this month. This is a solid doc about a pop icon. Some parts make you want to dance, not just the music in the doc, but the pacing and editing make you want to tap your feet. But then the doc brings it down a notch for some of the more serious aspect of Summer’s life. 

Thurs. 4/27:

I caught the low-budget quirky indie comedy Free Time. A young NYC Gen Zer decides to quit his job, not be confined to his job and enjoy his 20s - but then realizes he might’ve made a mistake. There were some inspired laughs and definitely things New Yorkers will identify with, but overall I felt like this was a short film that got stretched into a feature.

Fri. 4/28:

Penny Lane (left) doing a Q&A at IFFBoston

Penny Lane has made some great docs in the past: Nuts! was one of my 10 Best Documentaries of 2016, Hail Satan! was one of the highlights of the 2019 Boston Underground Film Festival, and Listening to Kenny G. was really good too! Now she has turned the camera onto herself as she donates a kidney in Confessions of a Good Samaritan. Penny is both the subject and the documentarian as she decides she wants to donate a kidney to a stranger and not only does she document her own journey to this procedure but she speaks to experts in altruism and organ donation. It looks at a lot of different layers and important questions this asks. It was highly thought provoking and nothing but respect for Penny in turning the camera onto herself in this deeply personal experience.

Sat. 4/29:

The Dogmatics and crew at IFFBoston

When I was making my V66 documentary a few years back, I interviewed members of Boston garage rockers The Dogmatics because they were popular on the 80s music video TV channel V66. Skip ahead to 2019, I had heard about a documentary being made about The Dogmatics, so I reached out to director Rudy Childs and producer Jada Maxwell. We met up, talked shop and I stayed in touch with them about the project over the years. A few months ago I was lucky enough to see an early screener of The Dogmatics: A Dogumentary and I am proud to be a Consulting Producer. Even though I saw a screener months ago, I liked it better watching it with an audience. This is very much an audience movie!

Sun. 4/30:

Dave Lindorff (left) at IFFBoston

One of my favorite documentarians Steve James (Hoop Dreams is one of the greatest docs ever and I was a big fan of his docs Life Itself and Abacus: Small Enough to Jail) returns with A Compassionate Spy about controversial Manhattan Project physicist Ted Hall. I didn’t know much about him before this doc, but it was truly fascinating. Many of his docs are him following the subject as their story is happening. Here it is more of a traditional documentary with archival footage, modern day interviews with Hall’s widow and re-enactments. Following the doc was a Q&A with producer Dave Lindorff. 

Dave Habeeb at IFFBoston

Later on I went to Somerville Theatre to see the doc (big year for docs at IFFBoston!!!) Beautiful Was the Fight about several Boston female musicians and their struggles in the music community. I didn’t know some of the musicians featured here, but I was really intrigued by it. Structurally this is different from a lot of Boston music docs, but it made a point about not just sexism, but also Boston as a music city without much industry representation, making it in the music world in the digital age and a larger question of what qualifies success. Director Dave Habeeb (a graduate of Fitchburg State, my alma mater!) did a Q&A afterwards!

Mon. 5/1:

When Mary Tyler Moore died in 2017, much of her legacy that was memorialized was The Mary Tyler Moore, one of my favorites. To this day the “Chuckles Bites the Dust” episode is one of the greatest episodes in sitcom history! But she left behind such a body of work in TV, theater and film, as well as philanthropy. In the doc Being Mary Tyler Moore, she gets the documentary treatment she deserves. I wasn’t too familiar with her background, but her comedic skills on The Dick Van Dyke Show and her own show were actually matched by her dramatic skills as well in such films as Ordinary People. Watch for this when it’s on HBO.

Tues. 5/2:

I went to see the upcoming HBO doc Time Bomb Y2K, which was produced by Penny Lane, whose doc Confessions of a Good Samaritan I saw on Friday. In the mid-late 90s there was tons of concern about the Y2K bug of computers not being able to understand the year 00 and how they could cause mass chaos for everything connected to computers, i.e. banks, public transportation, utilities...pretty much everything. Was the world going to end on Jan. 1, 2000? This doc is made up entirely of archival footage showing the countdown from 1995 to the year 2000. I dug this because even though it was a legit concern, from the standpoint of 2023, looking at a time before the terrible things we’ve faced since, Y2K hysteria seems tame by contrast.

I also caught the Shorts Gloucester Documentary shorts program. I went because my friend James Rutenbeck (who has had docs at IFFBoston in the past), had a short doc Nixon’s Reversal that was in the program. It looked back with both scholars and archival footage at a brief moment when President Nixon supported a policy that would guarantee American families basic income. This is a piece of history I didn’t know about and was intrigued by. That Nixon of all people was on board with this was mind-boggling. Hats off for the archival footage too.

Wed. 5/3:

Celine Song at IFFBoston

Closing Night with Past Lives. I’d been hearing a lot of great things about this in recent months and honestly, it was my favorite movie of this year’s IFFBoston. It shows Nora and Hae Sung, a girl and boy in Seoul. Their budding romance ends when her family moves to Canada. Twelve years later, they re-connect on social media and begin talking while she’s a student in NYC and he’s a student in Korea. Then twelve years later they reconnect again when he visits NYC, this time Nora is now married. I really got into the way the story was told over the course of 24 years and how people change, evolve, process and move on. Director Celine Song did and intro and then did a Q&A with festival director Brian Tamm. A24 is releasing this in June - go see it!

Cheryl, Rudi and me at IFFBoston after-party

Afterwards, I went to a wrap party, where I got my picture taken with Cheryl Eagan-Donovan (director of All Kindsa Girls, the doc about The Real Kids), Rudy Childs (director The Dogmatics: A Dogumentary), and me (director of Life on the V: The Story of V66 about V66)! Three Boston music documentarians walk into a bar....

It was another great IFFBoston and now I need a nap from all of the films and activity I did in that 8 day period!

For info on IFFBoston: https://iffboston.org/

[beaft]

my policy is i will watch and enjoy a bad movie if it's bad in a fun and interesting way. what i cannot abide is a bad movie that feels soulless. for a bad movie to truly be good, there needs to be a beating heart underneath a solid layer of shlock and tat. so ends my sermon

[ad1thi]

Justin baldoni decided to adapt It Ends With Us because he thought that stories about domestic violence, and specifically escaping and life beyond domestic violence deserved to be platformed.

Instead of being supported, he’s been mean girl’d by the cast; that’s treating the film like its this cutesy rom com : and I think this rly encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the book, and the fanbase it’s amassed

[jimmyspades]

CRASH (1996)

[theposhperyton]

Is this anything chat

[ingravinoveritas]

Bonus clip of Michael on the WTAWTAW podcast talking about his experiences with gender expression as a teenager in Port Talbot and mentioning his crush on John Taylor again. Transcript of notable highlights below:

Michael: "So when I was 12, 13--early '80s, the time that Allie is talking about--and I saw girls with lip gloss and wearing rah-rah skirts and leg warmers and stuff, [whispers] and I was a little bit jealous. Course, never said that, never said that. In Port Talbot if I'd mentioned that, my life would've been hell. But I do remember being quite...attracted by the trappings. A lot of trappings for girls. We didn't have stuff like that for boys. There were rituals for girls, doing your makeup, doing your hair." Michael: "I mean, my first crush--I said this on a thing I did called The Assembly recently--my first crush was a man called--ah, John Taylor from Duran Duran. Ohh, he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. The way I processed it was, like, I'm gonna try and look like John Taylor, try and make my hair like John Taylor." Michael: "And they always used to have a bit of lip gloss going on, didn't they? Those New Romantics. But like I say, I couldn't really try that out in Port Talbot."

This goes directly back to things I have written about on my blog previously, about Michael having these feelings and not being able to express them because of where he grew up and the hateful climate that Section 28 fostered. This is why it is so difficult for someone of Michael's generation to label themselves, because none of that is lightly shaken off.

Even hearing the way Michael talks about it in the podcast, you can tell that this is not a joke, but a longing for something that he still remembers so vividly, because it meant so much to him at the time, and still does. Also, Michael has now mentioned his crush on John Taylor twice in the span of two months after not saying anything about it for years, and if that doesn't tell you where his heart and mind are right now, I'm not sure what does. Neither he nor David need a formal announcement to make it clear who they are, because they've already been telling us...

[1000sunnygo]

Law novel sequel's title will be "Novel Law: The Hour of Kikoku" (Kikoku no Toki).

... or 'The Time of Kikoku', 'Hour' just sounded catchier.

It's going to be a multichaptered spinoff, the upcoming magazine doesn't conclude the story. Here's an update from the official website.

Seems it's the story behind Law acquiring his sword? Sakagami Shusei (Novel Law author) has shared some initial thoughts (the first tweet was before the title revelation).

Felt the last one 🤝

Once again, Oda's involvement is expected to be minimum. It's almost entirely written by Sakagami Shusei, like its prequel.

Let's hope we finally get to know the names of the other members of the Heart pirates!

Nishimura Kinu's sketch seems to hint at Law's interaction with Hakugan, maybe we'll get to know how he got recruited.

[byemambo]

JES JESPIPAT AS TYME

4MINUTES (2024) | 1.07

Bonus: "When you're all better, let's go out for a meal together."

[chinzhilla]

𝔗𝔥���𝔯𝔱𝔶-𝔒𝔫𝔢 𝔇𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔬𝔣 ℌ𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟺

We believe spirits are in every single thing. In houses, in forests, in mountains, in trees in rice fields. Every area has spirits. All of them.

The Medium (2021) dir. Tong Banjong Pisanthanakun

[transswordbian]

Hey um, I'm a tiny blog with not that big a following but ya girl slipped and fell this morning at work and is typing this from the emergency room. Any help would be nice

[fictionadventurer]

I think I have accidentally become very protective of the story of Snow White.

[risetherivermoon]

rosekiller au where Evan posts a random fit check to tt, where Barty is in the bg talking to him abt something while Evan just stares at him awe-struck and everyone is either trying to lip read to figure out what Barty is saying or saying that Evan definitely has a crush on Barty,

and Evan continues to post fit checks and Barty is basically in all of them and whenever he isnt the comments are just like "excuse me??? where is your cute brunette???"

(this is in fact the way Evan figures out he likes Barty... )

[yumemiruuuu]

Mu Qing: (scoffing) You don’t even know my favorite color

Feng Xin: (in deep thought)

Feng Xin: The color of my eyes

Mu Qing: …

Mu Qing: You are actually so dramatic

Mu Qing: My favorite color will never be “Shit Brown”

[chirpsythismorning]

When the interviewer asked when we should expect s5 to be coming out, that’s when Shawn mentioned that a little bit of an answer to that might be out there soon.

He actually mentions that this answer could be out by the time the video for this interview comes out, and since this interview was filmed mid-May and it’s now mid-June, I’m assuming we could be getting something soon or within the next couple months, potentially about a release date aka possibly a small teaser with 2025 stamped at the end…

[shesmore-shoebill]

okay, okay, yes, me and my wife. but also this is a deeply clever and horrifying premise. like "i live in your house" and it becomes true. because he lives in your head, and he is living there. He is in your house even if he isn't.

and you spend the whole time thinking- if its in her head, it will get better once someone else is there- her wife, a loved one who has been expressing concern for her wellbeing.

And then she arrives, and invites him in. And it ends with "do you hear that" and an unbothered "yes".

HORRIFYING. well shot, well written, well composed, well acted.