Different Tastes (the Hot | Not list)

| HOT


Hope from Los Angeles

Indie film producer extraordinaire Ted Hope delivers an optimistic and energizing keynote address which goes against the grain of recent downbeat reports about the difficulties facing independent film distribution and exhibition. It's really refreshing to hear someone start such a lecture with the following words:

I can't talk about the "crisis" of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren't in crisis.

Saturday's speech was given at Film Independent's Filmmaker Forum. Titled "A Thousand Phoenix Rising - How The New Truly Free Filmmaking Community Will Rise From Indie's Ashes", it reminds us that the distribution model must fit the films, not the other way around.

The existing power base in the film industry has focused on films fit for the existing business model, as opposed to ever truly concentrating on creating a business model for the films that filmmakers want to make.

Talk of a film culture is rare at industry events these days, where everyone prefers to talk about a film industry, forgetting that the health of the latter is contingent on the former. Bring it on.


Reassurance from New York

Greencine's David Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Film Comment editor Gavin Smith take part in a wrap-up podcast following a star-studded panel discussion entitled "Film Criticism in Crisis?" at the New York Film Festival. They offers some degree of reassurance. Film Criticism is not dead. It's just fighting for air.


Pikapika

I'm currently totally obsessed with the Japanese animation technique known as Pikapika, or doodling with light. Some advertisers have jumped on the bandwagon but I think short films have the most to gain...




Helium and Celluloid

Obviously inspired by The Red Balloon, these are pretty magical I think.



| NOT



The Dying Breed poster

I'm looking forward to catching this new home-baked horror film as much as the next guy but while the trailer hints at Wolf Creek-style horror, this poster screams comedy. It's good (and surprisingly rare) when a poster stands out from a crowded marketplace thanks to an original design, but mixed messages rarely help to sell a film. According to the Daily Telegraph (via Bloody-Disgusting, I'm too big a snob to read the Daily Telly), the poster was rejected by Adshel for its bus shelters for being too gruesome, though it will be seen in cinema foyers and newspapers.


IF Award Snubs

The strongest Australian films of the year, Cactus, Glass: a Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts and Three Blind Mice, were entirely locked out of the IF Award nominations announced today. All came home empty-handed. The love went instead to The Black Balloon, which admittedly deserved some of its 10 nominations. The well-executed Black Water was nominated three times, for direction, editing and acting (Maeve Dermody). The winners will be revealed on Thursday 13 November.

Different Tastes (the Hot | Not list)