Greetings, faithful readers! Just wanted y’all to know that we launched FilmNet yesterday. “The circle is now complete!”
Go to the site now. It looks pretty great, if I do say so myself. Check out our blog to hear about all the cool features we have to offer. Watch some cool videos and (shameless self-promotion!) read the reviews.
Did I mention the address? It’s FilmNet.com.
I.Q. is a high school horror movie made by people in high school. If that sounds awful, get ready for a surprise: This is a wildly precocious piece of work.
It was made by the Keeling brothers, Aaron and Austin, who grew up in Lansing, Kansas. They started tinkering with their parents’ camera in junior high, making silly short films. By the time they got to high school, their work had evolved considerably. Influenced by the surreal, nightmarish films of David Lynch (as well as his scrupulous approach to sound design), the Keelings’ Playtime with Schlompkins and Pop Spoon are about as professionally made as anything you’re likely to see by teenage moviemakers.
I.Q. is their first feature. Aaron wrote, directed and shot it, while Austin edited, directed and co-starred in it. (They also performed numerous other tasks – too many to name here.) It took 344 days to complete, and the finished product runs 79 minutes. It’s a testament to their skills (and the Keelings have got MAD SKILLS) that about an hour of it is fun to watch; you often forget you’re watching a high school production. The best thing about it is that, perhaps for the first time, the Keelings have something to say.
It’s set in a high school where all the students are being left behind. The principal, Mr. Thompson (Bobby Parsons), is under enormous pressure to boost the school’s standardized test scores. He’s desperate when the devil shows up in his office in the form of a salesman (Brian Snodgrass), who pitches him on the idea of distributing a miracle drug called NCLB-240. All the students have to do is pop a little green pill every 30 minutes, and their intelligence levels are guaranteed to rise.
Five students – Amy (Jenny Curatola), Mike (Andrew Shafer), Caitlyn (Katie Cook), David (Austin Keeling) and Rachel (Amanda Pina) – are chosen to test the drug based on their lousy grades. Their scores improve dramatically, but pretty soon they’re all going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
There’s some playful social satire going on here. The five unlucky students are assigned to a class taught by Mrs. Robinson (Bianca Elliot), who kindly urges them to “come take your pills, kids.” The Keelings are making a subversive statement about standardized testing, which became such a central aspect of the public education system in this country under Bush II. They may be the first filmmakers who grew up in the Bush years to actually make a feature-length movie about growing up in the Bush years.
The opening sequence is a real grabber, hinting at the terror to come, but after that there’s a lot of exposition to get through. I’m not sure what to make of the subplot dealing with Amy’s boyfriend breaking up with her. Aaron Keeling’s script never quite sells us on the idea that the parents would be left completely out of the loop when it comes to the drug experiments. Of the younger performers, Austin Keeling is the best at delivering his brother’s dialogue, but the other actors have their moments. Pina is especially moving in the scenes where Rachel falls behind the rest of the class and starts taking more pills.
Just when you think the film is about to test your patience, the side effects of the drug start to kick in, and the Keelings unleash a tidal wave of imaginative horror imagery.
The most terrifying things happen inside an operating tent, which the students visit in their dreams. (I love the Wizard of Oz touch of casting Parsons in the role of a mad doctor conducting gruesome experiments.) I won’t soon forget seeing the guy with the dripping head wound, or the other guy with the birthday candles sticking out of his chest. In one of the most unsettling scenes, the students have their mouths sewn shut and buttons sewn into their eyes. I bet the Keelings were pissed when they saw Coraline had beaten them to the punch!
I should single out Elizabeth Decker for her spectacular makeup FX work. The original score (by Chase Horseman) and sound design also contribute to the film’s overall air of professionalism. As do the cinematography and editing, from first scene to last.
The Keelings go out on a high point, finding an ingenious way to encapsulate some of the ideas rolling around in their heads. It’s a stunning finale, one that hints at great things to come, and I expect nothing less from these talented young filmmakers.
I.Q. is available on DVD. It has full-length commentary, deleted scenes and bloopers. You can buy it here. The trailer for the film is on YouTube.
Launching a community site, like FilmNet, is kind of like trying to put on a party… in a tiny apartment… in Bosnia. It’s not so easy to get the A-list crowd (or any crowd) to show up. The way we see it, our greatness is inevitable. But right now, we just need to build up some street cred.
And we can’t do it without you, our bestest friends in the whole world. We’ve put a lot of effort into developing the site and contacting people to be the initial set of users and contributors. Help us continue these efforts and become an early VIP at the greatest party ever.*
Before we bust out into the public eye, we need to build some buzz. Tell people that FilmNet’s coming, that it’s likely to be very cool and whatever else you want to make up. You could say:
Yo, I heard Jay Z is gonna be there. Don’t tell anyone.
Or you could say something that’s true, like the fact that FilmNet will help small filmmakers to get their movies made with some unique project management and collaboration features; that the site will have tons of high quality films from the hottest content creators from around the world and that it will all play back in high quality and lightning-fast; that the site will have real-time features and a strong sense of community.
Right now, the FilmNet party policy is BYOC - Bring Your Own Content. We need to keep filling the site up with some awesome indie films, web series and music videos as well as talented folks who own them and those who like to watch them.
So the deal is: if you want to be one of the first to see FilmNet, you’ve got to give us a video of yours. This gets you an account and eventual access to the beta site (when it’s live at the end of August) before anyone else! You will find your account and your published video(s) there and you can decide how you like everything long before the general public gets access.
The easiest way to join us is to fill out the form that’s on the landing page of http://www.filmnet.com right now and we’ll hook you up.
We have a Facebook Fan Page. Join it and share your thoughts! Is the idea of FilmNet interesting to you? Got any questions? Observations? Accusations? Please feel free to use our page as a place to vent. We’ll be here with a witty comment reply when you’re happy and a bucket of ice cream when you’re sad.
That’s about it. We’re gonna get back to work now. Thanks in advance to all!
Peace,
FilmNet
* Okay, maybe not the greatest party EVER, but a pretty damn good party. And we hope you understood that “party” is just a metaphor for our website. Don’t show up with Vodka and escorts at our offices. Well…
** We sincerely apologize for that horrible pun heading.
It’s been a great pleasure being involved with FilmNet.com for the last few months. The entire team has been working extra hard to put the finishing touches on what we believe will become an invaluable site for the people that create web entertainment. My job in particular is fun because I get to go through the video sharing sites to find the best videos on the web and then contact their creators to see if our project might interest them.
So far the response has been great and we have found some amazing people/videos. I encourage every one of our users to upload as much content as possible. Soon the people already signed up will get a chance to preview the site. I can’t wait for them to see how the site is looking. In particular I think the review section is going to surprise people. I’ve never seen anything quite like it on any other video sharing site. I like the fact that we are showing that kind of respect to the filmmakers. Why shouldn’t great online movies be reviewed and rated? There is no reason not to.
As our launch date approaches, I feel more and more confident that we’ve created something special that people are really going to enjoy. I can’t wait.
Please visit www.filmnet.com for more information about becoming a FilmNet contributor.
As one of the behind-the-scenes people at FilmNet, I get to see how the site is shaping up as we fast approach our launch date. And I have to say, I’m getting really excited! This is going to be the ultimate site for film lovers - THE place for news, reviews, and the best of online movies.
I’ve been busy writing reviews and working hard to awesomify our review section before we pull back the curtain in September. This has been a decidedly mixed summer at the movies. (Harry: You’re still a wizard. Michael Bay: Could you tone it down just a wee bit?) On FilmNet, you’ll find reviews of movies playing at a theater near you, as well as critiques of the latest DVD releases and an extensive catalog of what are essentially nostalgia pieces - movies that came out a long time ago but we’ve decided to revisit. And, of course, reviews of your short films!
But I can’t do this all by myself, people, and for two reasons: 1) I am only one man; and 2) That’s not what FilmNet’s all about. This is about building a community of film fanatics, and we want our review section to have the same diversity of opinion as any other great user-driven Web site.
So if you like writing about movies, please send us your reviews! On the site, each review will have its own page, with your byline, stills from the movie and ratings on a five-star scale. The review page will link to a profile page, where you can pimp just about anything you want: social networking sites, other places where users can read your work, whatever! Please include a star rating along with the name you want your reviews to be published under. You can e-mail me at sbshupe@filmnet.com.
I thought Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas was supposed to come out last week. According to Wikipedia, its “projected theatrical release date is June 6, 2009.” That’s last Saturday, which doesn’t make much sense in retrospect. Anyway, when it didn’t open, I needed my Gilliam fix. So I decided to revisit Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I hadn’t seen it in years, but I remembered liking it. It’s one of those movies where half the people get up and walk out of the room, while the other half stay glued to their seats. The first 40 minutes are a lot of fun, but then things turn sour. I think that’s a good metaphor for heavy drug use: Fun at first, then no fun at all.
Johhny Depp is ideally cast in the role of Raoul Duke, the hero of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 cult novel. Ostensibly in town to cover the Mint 500 motorcycle race, Duke spends most of his time hiding out in hotel rooms on the Las Vegas strip and taking copious amounts of recreational drugs, like LSD and mescaline. Along for the ride is Dr. Gonzo, Duke’s “rotten attorney,” played by a bloated version of Benicio del Toro.
Drugs are all there is to this movie; they dictate both style and content. The motorcycle race is reduced to a single sequence, which Gilliam films like a Mad Max movie. The rest is all about what drugs Duke and Gonzo are on, what effects the drugs are having, and which crazy person they’re with. Part of the fun of Fear and Loathing is all the cameo appearances. Here’s Tobey Maguire in a fright wig! There’s Penn Gillette as a carnie! Did Lyle Lovett just ask me if I wanted some LSD? Why is Christina Ricci painting portraits of Barbara Streisand?!?
Like every Terry Gilliam movie, Fear and Loathing is a wondrous technical achievement, at once beautiful and ugly to look at. Certainly it’s the most realistic drug film since Roger Corman dropped acid and directed The Trip (1967). It’s also entirely hilarious. At one point, Gonzo spills a salt shaker filled with coke and says, “Jesus! Did you see what God just did to us man?” There’s also an amazing, make-you-throw-up-from-laughing scene in which Depp has an orange towel around his head and Del Toro is faking his own death in the background. The film is a comedy, but you can’t accuse Gilliam of glorifying this lifestyle, not when he includes a money shot of vomit splattering a toilet bowl.
It’s great to see this director working in a non-fantastical realm, applying his bag of tricks to the freak show that is Las Vegas. As Raoul Duke says, “It’s the American dream come true, pure Horatio Alger.”
I looked up the release date for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassu and it doesn’t open until September. Check out this amazing still from the film, which features Heath Ledger’s final performance…
Just wanted to let everyone know that the new site development is going very well. Along with our oversease brethren, we’re working on compiling the various databases (basically lists) that will drive the website. Programmers are building the framework that will hold it all together. Our new Flash wizard is tinkering with the new video player that will display your videos soon.
We have also been getting in touch with filmmakers and letting them know what we’re up to. If you haven’t heard of us, you probably will soon. Thank you all so much for your moral support and your video contributions.
We’re pretty excited to try our new approach to video encoding that will get videos to look better and play faster, as well as all the other super-secret developments in our plans.
I guess if I had to sum up my anxiety and giddiness about the new features, it would go a little something… like this:
Today is the first day of the rest of my new laptop’s life. I’ve had computers before, but getting my hands on this particular one has been a semi-retarded uphill battle. It all started about a month and a half ago, when I and most of my colleagues were fired. Our old job had a bunch of perks, including a super souped-up desktop computer that met all of my work and artistic needs. Once that job ended, the computer that I had been in bed with for over 13 months stopped being my computer. So what’s the logical next step? Purchase a new computer. But with this economy, it’s kind of hard to go out and spend $600 plus dollars on a decent computer when you have a perfectly crappy, monitor-less laptop sitting at home just waiting to suck. My old computer is a MacBook I had purchased back in 2004. I love that computer but the fact of the matter is that it’s outdated & very slow. The monitor doesn’t work so I have to walk around with an external plug-in monitor everywhere I go & that just takes all the portability out of a laptop.
Fast forward a few days later. Once again I am employed. The new job requires a computer so I decided to stick it out and bring my Mac Frankenstein laptop into work every day, but it just couldn’t keep up with my pace. So I made a decision: I was going to take most of my first paycheck and purchase a new Sony VAIO laptop. One day after work I convinced a buddy of mine to drive me to Best Buy to make the purchase. Everything went fine & I walked out with my brand new computer. I was so happy and grateful that my friend had driven me that I decided to offer him a milkshake from Steak ‘n Shake.
We roll up to the restaurant and I give my friend the cash so he can go and purchase the shakes because I didn’t want to leave the new laptop in the car by itself. About five minutes go by and I say to myself, “What the hell, let me go in and grab my own shake. It won’t even take a minute.” I stash the new laptop out of sight underneath the seat, get out of the car and lock it. It took me about 40 seconds to get into the restaurant. Twenty more seconds go by and that’s when I hear it. “Look their breaking into a car!!!” I turn around and see a brown car speeding off. I run out and see glass all over the place. Someone has smashed the window and stolen my new laptop. I try to run after the car but alas, I could not catch up. I walk back to a horrible scene: my friend’s window is busted, it’s about to rain and I pretty much feel like the dumbest human being on the face of the earth, not dumber than George W. Bush, but extremely dumb.
“What did I do to deserve this,” I scream out into the dark sky, but no one answers. I suspect I’m the only that can answer that question. My friend does not have insurance. I feel so bad about the incident that the next day I have his window replaced, which adds $200 to my great disappearing money act. It was one hell of a week to say the least.
Which brings me to today. I have been unhappily using my old Mac for work since I was basically all out of options and money for the last month. This morning I get into the office and set everything up. I’m sitting at my desk, having a conversation with my coworkers/friends, and that’s when it happened. The charger for my Mac started blowing out sparks and actually caught fire. It was a small fire but enough to make me question just how nurturing god’s love really is. I thought I was done for, no laptop equals no work. And then something amazing happened: my boss agrees to lend me the money for a new laptop, which he will then dock out of my next paycheck.
“Why the hell not,” I said. I grab a bat and head over to Best Buy. I buy the exact laptop that got stolen from me. This time I have my friend drive straight back to the office, ignoring all traffic stops and pedestrians in our way. The new Sony VAIO works perfectly and once again all is right with the world. My new laptop is safe now and I hope we have a long prosperous relationship.
During my brief stint as an online movie critic, one thing I learned was just how much gold there was out there to go digging for. I can safely say I reviewed some of the best movies I’ve ever seen, period: How To Say I Love You, Playtime with Schlompkins, Honour Wedding, Paranoland, Papiroflexia, Pencil Face and Patrick Boivin’s masterpiece, Radio (the first of many, I suspect). And that’s just to name a few!
I got exposed to some cool new music, like Danny Malone (my new favorite ginger-haired indie-folk artist), Brooke Waggoner (a formidable lyricist/vocalist, not to mention a strikingly photogenic screen presence) and KEXP - Seattle. I learned about international affairs while watching eye-opening documentaries on the Middle East and Africa.
Most of all, I just had a really great time seeing young artists honing their craft. I can honestly say I saw significant improvement in such artists as FetusFilmsInc and DingBatComedies, whose delirious Preacher Man was a surprise sleeper hit. In the months ahead, I’ll be using this blog to follow the progress of these and other filmmakers. I definitely need to check out the new feature film recently completed by Fetus Films, a horror flick called I.Q. And the prospect of a new season of Zomblogalypze, created by Miles2GoFilms, has me hungrier than a flesh-eating zombie. I’ll also be posting updates and reviews of the Deep River (by Adam Stephenson) and Karma Kula (by ninjaigang) series. And I’ll continue to follow the work of Patrick Boivin, Michael Maxxis, The Minor Prophets, Films Royale, mmmcake and others.
I’d like to close with a few shout-outs to a handful of the filmmakers I’ve “friended” (in the online community sense of the word) during my time as MiamiMovieCritic.
Patrick Boivin: I love your genius.
Fetus Films: You guys make me feel lazy.
Minor Prophets: You are the masters of WTF comedy.
Miles2Go Films: You give British humor a good name.
Adam Stephenson: You are an auteur-in-the-making.
Great work, guys and gals. I’ve had fun getting lost in your films. If you have any questions, or if there’s a film you’d like me to spotlight, just shoot me an e-mail at info@thesplice.com.
Here we are, at the brink of a new adventure. We’ve got a vision. We know what it will feel like, what it will look and taste like. All we have to do is build it - a website the likes of which the world has never seen (though independent filmmakers around the world always hoped to). Once launched, our site will be a mecca of indie film producers and movie enthusiasts, a place where talented content creators can display their work to the world at quality and speed not available anywhere else. A place where regular folk in search of new stuff to watch can find EXACTLY what they were looking for as well as discover something new.
Short films, episodic shows, viral favorites and next-generation format videos (huh? yeah, that’s right) we’ll have it all!
Alas, at this point it’s only a vision. But we’re not mere dreamers. We know we can turn it into reality. Our web development skills, market expertise and team of passionate filmmakers gives us that confidence. Here we will share our journey with you. This blog will be written by several contributors from what we passionately call our Splice Team.
We’ll post site development updates, reviews of movies and web content we like (or dislike), essays and observations about the life of the modern filmmaker and perhaps even some video coverage of everything.
STAY TUNED.
