In 2010 we will have …

Laptops we can take to the beach,

Cars that look a lot like the soon to be dead Saturn,

Dolphins that live in our homes,

Integrated Sanyo home automation systems,

Astronauts near Jupiter,

and two suns.

It’s available on DVD too:

1. The Dark Knight

2. Slumdog Millionaire

3. WALL•E

4. There Will Be Blood

5. The Curious Case of Benjamen Button

6. Tropic Thunder

7. Cloverfield

8. Hancock

9. Speed Racer

10. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

And there there was U2:3D which was really good and a very unique concert film experience.

TETRO is Francis Ford Coppola’s first original screenplay since THE CONVERSATION. It is his most personal film yet, arising from memories and emotions from his early life, though totally fictional. It is the bittersweet story of two brothers, of family lost and found and the conflicts and secrets within a highly creative Argentine-Italian family.

Coppola has made some of the greatest films in modern film history. He’s also made some real stinkers. But I’m of the opinion that a Coppola failure is usually much more watchable than a lot of the dregs out there today. Someone on Twitter (I can’t remember who) pointed to Coppola’s video that he made introducing this new film. I look forward to its release.

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (Paramount and Warner Bros.), Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall
• “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.), Lee Smith
• “Frost/Nixon” (Universal), Mike Hill and Dan Hanley
• “Milk” (Focus Features), Elliot Graham
• “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Chris Dickens

My money (and hope) is on Slumdog!

Have you heard of the website Snag Films? I hadn’t either until I saw that the feature length documentary Dreams on Spec is available there to view in its entirety. What is Dreams on Spec? From the Snag Films website:

DREAMS ON SPEC takes an intimate look at how far people will go – and how much they will sacrifice – for the chance to pursue their dreams. This feature-length documentary delves into the lives of three aspiring Hollywood screenwriters as they pour their hearts into their spec scripts, pitch their ideas to anyone who will listen, go to meetings, hold table reads, and work at low-level day-jobs in the hopes of one day seeing one of their beloved creations made into a movie.

The film is 86 minutes (plus commercial breaks) which is too long for me personally to watch a film online so I’m going to try and tune it in via boxee on my Apple TV. The official Dreams on Spec website has additional information about the film as well. If you want to get the doc on disc then click on over to Amazon as they have the dvd too. I think many of us make a new years resolution to write more and for me 2009 was no exception. Maybe this documentary can help inspire a bit. Happy screenwriting in 2009!

The purpose of this post is to point to a November 19 article titled Siskel & Ebert at the Jugular that Roger published on his blog. It’s an amazing essay on his current physical apperance and what it’s like to “to resemble the Phantom of the Opera.” When great writers open up about personal issues you get the best reading, hands down. But just as good as the essay are the hundreds of comments that follow. Ebert personally responds to many of them and his comments are a great extension to a great essay. It’s a good Sunday afternoon read.

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.*

2. The letter “A” and the word “The” do not count as the beginning of a film’s title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don’t know of any films with those titles.

3. Thanks to some clarification by The Siren, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release.

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number’s word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under “T.”

5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type “alphabet meme” into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.

6. If you’re selected, you have to then select 5 more people.

Sound like fun so here goes:

This was much harder than I thought. As soon as you decide on one movie you like with a particularly popular letter then you will think of 3 others. And then there’s the letters Z and X. They present their own problems. And also there are some letters where you really can’t think of anything! If you are a movie buff then give this little exercise a try.

You’ve heard of crowd sourcing and even crowd surfing .. and now we’ve got crowd funding to help pay for the short film Artemis Eternal. They are selling it as a truely original idea but I’ve heard of this kind of thing before and if you look at the comments on this Tech Crunch article about the proposed film they list some of them by name. These guys may not be the first but they sure look like the best with a top notch website dedicated to their project. It looks like they’ve raised some $40,000 of a $100,000 budget so there is a way to go but kudos to anyone who can raise even $40,000! Looks like they spent a good chunk on that site! I look forward to the finished production.

In a world of Borat and The Departed (both of which I loved) it’s refreshing to see something as magical as Old Joy. Many would not understand it; most would not like it. But a mass audience will never see it anyway. It is the kind of movie that will be sought out by those fans of independent film who know exactly what they are getting into.  Old Joy tells the story (or at least a part of the story) of two old friends. They get together and drive to an overnight camp in the mountains. The kinda get lost, have some lunch, shoot a BB gun, find the hot springs they are looking for, and then return home. Oh, and they take a dog and talk a lot too. That’s pretty much it. What makes Old Joy so refreshing is that it is more of an “art” piece that anything else. Director Kelly Reichardt should be commended in that she has the confidence in her abilities and her story that she that she just lets the movie flow even though it at first looks like there is no story there. But upon reflection you see that the story is very deep… except that the view must fill in a lot of that story by on their own. That is exactly the kind of description that would turn many people off. Those are not the type of people that this film was made for anyway. It is refreshing to see a piece that oozes with the director’s confidence. Every shot is deliberately composed. Every edit is precisely placed. The film has a lyrical, meandering quality that reminds me a lot of David Gordan Green’s All The Real Girls. When you use a term like “meandering” to describe a movie then a lot of people would take that to mean boring. And a lot of people would find Old Joy (and All the Real Girls for that matter) boring. But you have look beneath the surface. Sure that is a long shot out the window but it is the countryside these two friends may or may not have passed many times before. There are layers of history in those glances that a shallower movie can’t touch. Old Joy also reminds me of Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny. It uses a lot of the same techniques but really has nothing to say. The only reason Gallo uses a 2-minute plus shot out the front window of his van is because it’s his movie and he can. It all leads up to a climax that is shock value and nothing more. The climax of Old Joy happens long after you leave the theatre, something even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters can’t match.