Archive for category Film
Hal Duncan on His Fiction, Other Creative Pursuits
Posted by admin in Film, Literature, Music, branding, philosophy, poetry, theater on August 18, 2010
Hal Duncan
I always appreciate when a friend of the blog broadens my area of knowledge by suggesting an interview subject. This week, thanks to a suggestion from Allison Baker (of MonkeyBrain Books), I present my interview with self-described strange fiction writer Hal Duncan. Here’s a snippet of Duncan‘s bio: “A member of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, his first novel, VELLUM, won the Spectrum Award and was nominated for the Crawford, the BFS Award and the World Fantasy Award. As well as the sequel, INK, he has published a poetry collection, SONNETS FOR ORPHEUS, a stand-alone novella, ESCAPE FROM HELL!, and various short stories in magazines such as Fantasy, Strange Horizons and Interzone, and anthologies such as NOVA SCOTIA, LOGORRHEA, and PAPER CITIES.” In addition to discussing his theories on fiction as well as his work in general, he and I also discussed a musical recently produced that was written by him–and the experience of writing a screenplay. I always thank folks when they give me the honor of their valuable time, but I have to give Duncan an extra big thanks for the level of detail and consideration he gave to his answers.
Tim O’Shea: Your first novel, Vellum, was translated into several different languages. How much were you involved in that process? Can you think of any country where you were pleasantly surprised to find readers took strongly to the book?
Hal Duncan: With some of the translations I’ve had no involvement at all; with others there’s been a lot of back-and-forth. They’re not the easiest books in the world to translate by a long shot, I know; there’s all manner of poetic techniques, dialect, wordplay, even a mixture of mythical, historical, and alternate-history settings that means passing references could be authentic history or utterly spurious. I regard my translators with a mixture of shame at what I put them through and wonder at the fact they’re tackling it. So if there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it. It’s fascinating to see the process anyway.
New to Me: The Quietus
Posted by admin in Film, Music, pop culture on July 27, 2010
The Quietus
Even though it has been around since 2008, I only just recently learned about the British music/pop culture site, The Quietus. Here’s how it describes itself:
“At the start of 2008 we were of the opinion that there was a massive gap in the market for an online music publication not in thrall to snarky one-upmanship, hype, or an overload of fast-click, low-quality content. We also thought there was a gap in the market for a magazine that treated music of all genres from the last 30 years with the same reverence that titles such as MOJO and Word treat the rock & roll hall of fame.We chose a completely spurious Year Zero of 1974 because that’s when Kraftwerk released ‘Autobahn’ as a single. It seemed to us the birth of modern music. Modern sounding, that is.
Since then we’ve aimed to bring you the best of everything. We’re here to give music ranging from dubstep, death metal and post punk to hip hop, pop and spacerock the coverage it deserves. We’d like to inject some much-needed humour, intelligence and passion back into journalism, so we run in-depth features, reviews and opinion pieces from the best new writers and established greats. We also cover film, books, TV and comics, old and new, concentrating on quality over hype.”
Any site that focuses on quality over hype is a critical resource I should pay attention to on a more frequent basis. I would love to write more about The Quietus, but for right now I just want to check out the April2010 interview the site did with Adam Ant.
CJ Wallis on Please Subscribe
Posted by admin in Film, late night TV, streaming video on June 30, 2010
The basic concept of the Please Subscribe documentary (“Please Subscribe follows YouTube celebrites David Choi, Happy Slip, Daxflame, and Tay Zonday as they discuss how online media and YouTube has affected each of their lives and the face of entertainment.“) sparked my interest fairly quickly. The documentary, made by CJ Wallis and the Soska Sisters, hopes to play at several film festivals in the near to long term. I recently conducted an email interview with Wallis. In addition to this documentary, according to Wallis: “I recently directed/edited/conceived the forthcoming Sarah Slean music video and am currently in development on my debut feature film, Frank Flood. The girls are getting a ton of attention for Dead Hooker In A Trunk and are currently in development on two scripts. I also have some original music under the label Elective, which is also going rather well.”
Discovering New Hal Hartley Short Films
The other night I realized it had been awhile since I’d hear about any new work from writer/director Hal Hartley. I was under the impression that his most recent film had been 2006′s Fay Grim (the sequel to my favorite Hartley film, 1997 Henry Fool). But a quick check of IMDb revealed that he had released a slew of films in 2010, much to my delight and confusion.
I was confused because I could not fathom how Hartley could have released so many projects (Accomplice; Adventure; A/Muse; Implied Harmonies; and The Apologies) in one year. So I took my curiosity to Twitter (“OK, anybody else out there Hal Hartley fans? According to imdb he has multiple projects in 2010, anybody seen one of them?”) in hopes of finding out more info from a fellow Hartley fan.
I did not receive a reply from a fellow Hartley fan, but rather an explanation came via a tweet from Hartley’s company (Possible Films): “They’re part of a collection of new short films. You can see one of them on our website. http://bit.ly/4Vo7wZ“. The link takes you to the three-minute short film, Accomplice, which is described as “An artist-criminal far from home asks his assistant to pirate a rare videotape before the German Post Office Authorities come to confiscate it. Part of the PF2: Possible Films Volume 2 short film collection.”
Go visit the site and explore, because that short film is just one part of a Hartley treasure trove. Hartley is clearly utilizing the Internet to a great extent to grant fans the means to purchase not only some of his films, but also his music.
Another Reason to Love New York
Posted by admin in Film, pop culture on June 17, 2010
The Temporary Greening of a Street
Joey Manley is a writer and businessman who I interviewed many, many years ago for a long-dead comic book website. Manley is a smart fellow, and I enjoy reading his tweets on Twitter. But for some reason, I never had checked out his blog…until today.
Recently Manley blogged about his walk to work in New York, along West 28th Street. You need to go to read Manley’s experience first-hand. It’s one of those “only in New York” experiences. His photos and text must be appreciated in total at his site, but here’s a snippet:
“Some days, lilacs followed by cedars followed by tea roses followed by random vines. It’s like a narrow sidewalk-sized botanical garden that changes every morning. One of New York’s small pleasures.”
If that’s not enough to spark your interest, Manley covers a broad range of pop culture topics on a regular basis. I look forward to reading more of his Netflix Diaries entries.
Leah Dieterich on thxthxthx: a thank you note a day
thxthxthx
Quirky concepts catch my attention; visually engaging blogs hold my interest. Leah Dieterich’s blog, thxthxthx: a thank you note a day, is a quirky and visually entertaining concept that I enjoy immensely. Here’s the basic premise: “There’s always something to be thankful for. From the important things like Songs You’re Embarrassed to Like, and Heavy Eyelids that Tell You When You Need to Sleep, to friends and family, love and loneliness, light and darkness, Leah Dieterich sets out to acknowledge them all. thxthxthx is her daily exercise in gratitude.” I am thankful to Dieterich for this email interview and to Jason Bitner for putting me in contact with her.
Tim O’Shea: In the about category for the blog, you explain”Leah Dieterich’s mother always told her to write thank you notes. So she does.” What’s been her reaction to your blog?
Leah Dieterich: It’s funny, she told me after Christmas that she hadn’t written her thank you notes yet. I think it was almost February when she told me this. And she said “I guess you’ll have to take my name off your blog, huh?” That’s just silly. Other than that, she likes the site, but I don’t know that she reads it very often. She’s on the internet a lot less than I am, lucky woman.
Sherry Kelly on The Big Life of a Little Man, Michael Dunn Remembered
Posted by admin in Film, Music, Uncategorized, episodic TV on April 14, 2010
Michael Dunn
I love it when an interview opportunity lands in my lap. I first found out about Sherry Kelly’s book about her cousin (The Big Life of a Little Man, Michael Dunn Remembered) from friend of the blog, Amy H. Sturgis. Kelly was willing to be email interviewed about the book. Here is the official description of the book: “”With the help of a treasure trove of letters, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, and personal journal entries from his mother, author Sherry Kelly has compiled a touching and comprehensive account of the life of Michael Dunn, the famous little person actor of the sixties and seventies. Michael was well known as Dr. Loveless in The Wild Wild West TV series and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the movie Ship of Fools. Dunn lived an amazing life from childhood until his mysterious death in London while filming a movie.” My thanks to Kelly for her time and to Sturgis for making me aware of this fascinating book.
Tim O’Shea: I take it that given the fact you had access to “letters, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, and personal journal entries from his mother” in preparing the book, you were fairly close to your aunt? Given that she died in 1990, I was wondering–did she hope someone might try to write a book about her son some day?
Sherry Kelly: (Note: I will be referring to my cousin both as “Gary” and “Michael”.) My mother and Gary’s mother were sisters and our families were very close. Both families lived on the same block in Detroit during Gary’s early childhood and then when Gary was 12-13 years old, my parents along with my older sister, LaRee, and older brother, Tim, and I, moved back to Oklahoma to be near our grandparents who were in declining health. Even with all the distance between us the families remained close and mother and my aunt kept up with all their respective news through letter writing. Telephone calls were expensive back then, considered a luxury, and made only occasionally – on birthdays or to report emergencies. Gary was especially close to my sister and brother who were nearer to him in age. Gary’s parents, Fred and Jewell Miller, moved back to Oklahoma to be near us in their later years. They had no other children and our family looked after Aunt Jewell during the last 15 years or so of her life.
Recommendations: Holman Podcast, Upcoming Oscar Liveblog
My longtime friend, critic Curt Holman, is now part of the team behind the Creative Loafing podcast, Running Dialogue: A Podcast About Movies. This past Friday, they released the third episode of the podcast, in which Holman, “Collider’s Matt Goldberg and /Film’s Russ Fischer disagree vigorously about ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ consider the legacy of director Tim Burton and the future of 3-D, and end up – somehow – discussing the merits of seeing films in theaters vs. waiting for the DVD.”
In addition to mentioning the podcast, I want to heartily recommend that once the Oscar ceremony starts you should head over to Screen Grab, Creative Loafing’s Movie and TV blog where Holman and others will be liveblogging the event. I’ll likely be lurking in the comment sections, making snide asides as the show or the blog inspires me.
YouTube: The Criterion Collection Now Has a Channel
Posted by admin in Film, streaming video on January 26, 2010
The Criterion Collection–the folks that as they so succinctly put it: “Since 1984 . . . has been dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements”–now has a YouTube channel. I assume it will be mostly populated with trailers, nothing full run. But, of course, with YouTube trying to compete with television, I could be proved wrong in a few months. Check it out.
As a Wim Wenders fan myself, I was pleased to find this trailer from PARIS, TEXAS–Wenders’ 1984 film.
I wish I could embed the video here, but YouTube apparently does not allow that on the channels. How odd.
Hulu: John Huston
Posted by admin in Film, streaming video on January 21, 2010
So I was knocking around hulu tonight and stumbled across John Huston‘s 1956 film, Moby Dick (starring Gregory Peck). This got me curious as to whatever Huston films that might be sitting on hulu.
And that’s how I found 1977′s Tentacles. This film is a product of its times, clearly trying to capitalize upon the popularity of 1975′s Jaws (and apparently only a few months before Orca was released)–it was supposed to be a horror film. But appropriately enough, hulu has it listed as a comedy.
Huston does not direct this gem, but rather he acts in it, alongside other folks that leaves me asking “Was money that tight in the 1970s for these folks): Claude Akins (as a sheriff [pre-1979 BJ and the Bear no less]), Henry Fonda and Shelley Winters
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