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Three troubled filmmakers, two films, one ticket!

Just a quick reminder of tonight's Facing Realities program for all you Boston-area folks.

A co-production of the LEF Foundation and the ICA / Boston, this program pairs two major Boston filmmakers and two exciting films: Ross McElwee with his rarely screened Backyard (1984,16mm, 40 min.), and Nina Davenport with the Boston premiere of Operation Filmmaker. (2007, HDCAM, 95 min.)

Ross McElwee says:

"Think of Backyard as a sort of self-reflexive appetizer before the feature length feast of Operation Filmmaker. Both films are autobiographical, and both present portraits of filmmakers in trouble.

In fact, in Nina's film, there are two filmmakers in trouble - one in front of the camera and one behind the camera.

What a bargain: a total of three troubled filmmakers in two films for the price of one ticket. "

6:30 Introductory remarks
6:40 Backyard by Ross McElwee
7:20 Intermission & refreshments
8:00 Operation Filmmaker by Nina Davenport
9:40 Discussion between Ross McElwee and Nina Davenport

ICA / Boston
100 Northern Avenue
Boston, MA

Note the early start--there's apparently some sort of Wolfgang Puck outpost in the museum if you're hungry, or you could leave work early and hit The Barking Crab on your way to the ICA.

LOLbowski

Greetings, imaginary cinefriends. Having sent off half of a massive project and an article, the cinetrix is spent. However, she simply had to emerge from her self-imposed "I'm being good and working and not dicking around on the Internets" exile long enough to share with you The Big LOLbowski.

Short but sweet

A reader writes

I am hoping you can help me find a short film I've been trying to
find. I have googled until my fingers are sore.

I saw it on IFC, and the program was a compilation of some
award-winning short films. It's maybe 5 minutes long, and certainly
not more than 10.

The one I'm trying to identify and find is this:

1. It's about robots. There are many slave or worker robots and
there are 2 or 3 law enforcement/supervisor/master robots.
2. It's in an industrial setting, indoors. Pipes everywhere.
3. It's possibly stop action animation. I'm not sure.
4. The story goes like this:

The worker robots are traveling on their route/path/track. They're
traveling in a line, and there is some space between them. There are
2 or 3 supervisor robots in the scene.

There is a break in the path and the first robot stops.

The second robot stops and says, "Why have you stopped?"

"The path is blocked."

"Go ahead."

"I cannot."

Then the third robot reached the second and says, "Why have you stopped?"

"The path is blocked."

"Go ahead"

"I cannot."

This continues on for several minutes until the supervisor robots see
the workers have stopped and move to the first robot:

"Why have you stopped?

"The path is blocked."

"Go ahead."

"I cannot."

"I said, 'GO AHEAD.""

So the first robot moves, falls into the break, gets broken up. The
second robot also possibly gets broken up, but...

Their wreckage patches the path, and the rest of the robots can continue on.

The supervisor robots appear to be smug that they fixed the problem.

I may be wrong about the dialogue. I don't know if it' "The path
is blocked" or "The path is gone" or whatever.

It was really fun to watch, and it seemed to be making a point,
which was cool.

So---Have you ever heard of this? Do you know anyway to find
something like this?

If I had to guess, I'd guess it was from 2001 or 2002, but my memory
is really fuzzy from that timeframe. It might have been late 90s.

OK, smarties. I'm stumped. What is it?

While I have your attention, I'd like to give shout-outs to my favorite three shorts thus far this year: Eva Weber's City of Cranes [screening this week at MoMA], Jeanne Liotta's Observando El Cielo, and Bryan Wizeman's Film Makes Us Happy.

Head to Amity Island

If you're reading this, and you're in Cambridge, get off the Internets right now and hightail it to the Brattle, where Jaws screens--FREE--at 11 a.m.

Say hi to Quint for me.

Dance party!

for Penny Pascal, a belated birthday bijou.

U need another Other like U need a hole in yo head

Or "Women Beware Women" [with apologies to Middleton, Edward Everett Horton & Fractured Fairy Tales].

The cinetrix watched the trailer for the "long-awaited" remake of Cukor's The Women today. She's posting it here with all the requisite caveat observator disclaimers.

Here's why. Anyone else find it, er, interesting that Hollywood's skittishness about miscegenation extends to queer desire? "There is apparently a saucy lesbian character!" Choire Sicha notes in Radar today. What he doesn't say is that said lady lover is played by Jada Pinkett-Smith [the Other squared!], and she ogles the ersatz Crawford shopgirl striver played by Eva Mendes with approval. [Yes, the same Eva Mendes wooed and won by Jada's husband, Will Smith, in Hitch.] God forbid a perfume counter sales associate be white like the bleached and Botoxed leading ladies, and heaven forfend an African American lesbian should lust after anyone lighter than a lovely Latina.

RELATED: TCM takes on race & hollywood this month, Asian edition. The series includes some questionable "Asians"--why, yes, I am looking at you, Mr. Moto--but stops short of twin travesties Yunioshi and Long Duk Dong. Cinetrix sez binge on Anna May Wong this Thursday, and don't miss Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono on the 24th.

I wanna do whatever common people do.

Did you kids catch this NYT article about the Baghead distribution strategy? Apparently, it bows in Austin and bypasses L.A. and New York for ages. Deee-licious!

Professional reviews and expensive advertising in the national media centers matter less. Internet buzz and the folkways of a flourishing festival culture now count for more.

"It's a cumulative effect," Mr. Bernard said. Critics in the big media centers, he argued, have generally gotten into the habit of writing for one another more than for movie viewers. Meanwhile, audiences in regional centers like the Texas cities he has in mind for "Baghead" have become well informed about films thanks to the widespread availability of information on the Web. And the studio can generate excitement, for instance with an open-air premiere planned for "Baghead" in Austin, word of which will presumably spread to Dallas and Houston.

[snip]

Conventionally, critics for The Times and other New York news media outlets review films only when they open in New York. Those outlets must now decide whether to hold their opinions while peers in Austin or Dallas pronounce on the latest from the Duplass brothers, whose 2005 film, "The Puffy Chair," turned them into darlings of the festival circuit and leading lights of the "mumblecore" movement of understated young filmmakers.

"Baghead" has already played at the Sundance, Tribeca and South by Southwest festivals. But such appearances do not typically trigger newspaper, magazine or television reviews.

If New York and Los Angeles news organizations want to time their reviews to the Austin premiere of "Baghead," Mr. Bernard and company do not expect to offer much help. The company's New York screenings, for example, are largely timed to occur after the film's release elsewhere.

Crap. The cinetrix may have to reconsider the Duplass brothers on the basis of this alone.

Stopped into a church I passed along the way

Please forgive the silence. The Fesser's brother got married this past weekend, and there was a new nephew to inspect.

The muzak in the third airport of the day just graced me with a little taste of the Mamas & the Papas. [You can guess which song.] I chose to take it as a sign. More cinematic stuff soon. Pinky swear.