One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them..

8 cans to ship them all and 32 reels to bind them! The complete The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is hanging out in our hall ready for screening this weekend.

Nashville filmmakers head to Sundance

The Sundance Film Festival lineup was announced over the last two weeks and features some familiar folk to us here at the Belcourt...very familiar. This may get confusing, so bear with me: Let's start with Brent Stewart's short film THE DIRTY ONES, playing in the shorts program. We showed his documentary THE LONELY back in May as a companion piece to Harmony Korine's MISTER LONELY, the film shoot that it documents. Brent also served as cinematographer and editor on fellow Nashvillian James Clauer's THE ALUMINUM FOWL, a short that made it into the 2006 Sundance Film Festival (and onto our screens later that year). James also will return to Sundance this year having done camera work on a feature film in the Documentary section, BIG RIVER MAN, which chronicles endurance swimmer Martin Strel's trek down the Amazon River. Additionally, both THE DIRTY ONES and ALUMINUM FOWL also share both a cameraman, filmmaker Michael Carter who also shares editing on THE DIRTY ONES, and a producer in new proud parent Harmony Korine. Additionally, THE DIRTY ONES stars Harmony's wife Rachel and the sound mix was done by Belcourt projectionist alumnus Jim Reed. Kudos, gentlemen.

In celebration of all of this, here is THE ALUMINUM FOWL:



--Toby Leonard

No dream is ever just a dream. Notes on Eyes Wide Shut.

As promised, here is my scrawly labyrinth of notes as used for the Wednesday, December 3rd screening of Eyes Wide Shut.

Criterion Collection steps it up...again

We thought it noteworthy that our friends at the Criterion Collection have not only overhauled their website, but made it much more interactive. Not only is there a lot of exploring to be done, but the coolest feature is probably the fact that they are making films available for $5 rental online. Not only are they good quality, but that $5 can be used toward the purchase of the hard copy itself. Film school in a box, that Criterion Collection.

Check out the 4 minute video and take it from there...
http://www.criterion.com/

Considering the perils...

With the challenges inherent in screening often-aged 35mm prints, we're no strangers of screenings gone awry. Today, we pause again to consider the often-foretold evidently-impeding advent of digital cinema. Any time now, we're told. Being an organization bringing a mix of new and classic film, we, by nature, are/have been struggling to reconcile film's future with its past. So, it is with great interest that reports of recent high-profile digital screenings have notably gone awry with some of the major proponents of d-cinema in attendance, and press to cover it. Just Thursday, Paramount's VIP screening of THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON was cancelled when it became apparent that there would be no red. Additionally, a recent industry screening of CHE was botched when it became apparent that there would be no subtitles (oddly enough, they showed up later on a seperate screening of DOUBT, an English language film).

For an organization like the Belcourt, the ramifications of digital cinema are pretty big and would a huge investment in materials that could be subject to expensive upgrades as the tweaks are worked out. We have witnessed at world-class film festivals such exhibitions of world-class digital gear to nary a fault, but the difference in depth, atmosphere and similar intangibles don't quite live up to the glow of 35mm film. This is the world where the history of cinema lives. However, and this could be the subject of an entirely different post, one must consider The Way We Live Now.


--Toby Leonard

Kubrick Addendum #2: 2012 teaser trailer (?)

In honor of next week's Thanksgiving screenings of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, feel free to file this under WTF:

Starring John Cusack and directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow) comes a stretch of the apocalyptic order. But really now: Is it a second sequel to 2001 or a first sequel for THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW? You be the judge. Comes free with theme music stolen from THE SHINING.

Gone, but not forgotten: Miriam Makeba (1932-2008)

In celebration of the South African songstress, who has passed away following a collapse onstage in Italy....

We'll be seeing her onscreen again soon with the coming release of SOUL POWER. Currently making the festival rounds, the film follows the organization and implementation of the music festival that was to accompany the "Rumble in the Jungle" Ali vs Foreman fight of 1974 in then-Zaire. The fight itself was delayed, but the music played on: a cross-cultural matching of James Brown, Bill Withers, Spinners etc with their African superstar counterparts of the time represented by Afrisa, Franco and Miriam Makeba.

Gone, but not forgotten...here's "Qongqothwane" or rather, "The Click Song"...