At midnight last night, Colin Geddes (the illustrious film festival programmer) announced via the Midnight Madness twitter feed that BUNRAKU will be premiering as an official selection of the Midnight Madness section at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. I am hugely honored to be returning to the film festival that launched my producing career in 2006 with the premiere of ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE.
Hopefully I’ll see some of you in Toronto this September!
First Still Photo from Peep World
via rejectedjokesToronto posted the first still photo from Peep World.
Thunder Soul poster
You too can look this good!
Ladies look great in Thunder Soul shirts
Attention Thunder Soul and Kashmere Stage Band Fans! We need your help getting the Kashmere Reunion Stage Band to Los Angeles for our LA Film Fest screening on June 26th at the Ford Amphitheater. We’ve started a fund-raising effort on Kickstarter (click on the widget below to go to the page). Those that contribute can get a variety of goodies including the Texas Thunder Soul album, a limited edition Thunder Soul poster, the T-shirt shown above, and other great rewards. If we can raise enough money by the deadline, the band will perform LIVE for all 1200+ attendees! There’s only a few weeks left!
Thoughts On the iPad After a Week
1) The on screen keyboard is better than the iPhone but still much worse than a real keyboard. I’m one of those freaks who can type 100+ words per minute on a regular keyboard with very few errors. On the iPad, even with a week of practice I am much closer to 30-40 wpm, but with far more errors.
2) The auto-correction in iPhone OS continues to be of dubious value. I find that around 75% of the time it auto-corrects well, which is necessary for a system where you can’t really be sure you’re hitting the exact key you want. The other 25% of the time auto-correction causes a major hiccup in my sentence flow. This is really the biggest problem with typing on the iPad. In order to write fluidly you need to be able to type fluidly, with the trust that what you are typing accurately reflects your intent. Unfortunately that is not really possible on an iPad with the on-screen keyboard. My flow is interrupted almost every sentence with a typo that has been converted into auto-correct nonsense.
3) Despite these minor complaints, the overwhelming feeling after using an iPad for a week is the same feeling I got watching Usain Bolt run in the Olympics. The iPad is generations ahead of the rest of the world. This is not an evolutionary upgrade, this is a revolution in almost every way. This is a 3.0 device shipping while no one else has even started their first beta test.
The iPad is that rare thing, a new invention that feels like a fully formed creative vision. The iPad is the Toy Story of computers. When Toy Story came out the amazing thing wasn’t just that someone had made a fully CG animated feature film. The amazing thing is that someone made a fully CG animated feature film that was an incredible movie! It was equivalent to someone inventing the motion picture camera and then using it to make Citizen Kane as the very first film. That is the iPad for me, and I want to thank Apple for bringing the future to me way ahead of schedule.
The Arc of Awesome
[This post originated on a message board I participate on, and I thought it was worth sharing. I made some minor edits before republishing here. The question was regarding character arcs in a film or screenplay, and whether they were necessary. Here is my reply, which goes somewhat against the traditional studio development opinion.]
There exists a different kind of arc in a film. It’s related to a character arc, except the character doesn’t change. It’s the Arc of Awesome.
The Arc of Awesome occurs when the main character is so awesome that his awesomeness causes the entire world of the movie to arc. He can’t arc because he started the movie amazingly awesome, so obviously there’s nowhere for him to go other than to continue being awesome. The best you’ll get in an Arc of Awesome is that you’ll keep peeling back layers of awesomeness to see even more awesomeness underneath.
This extends beyond action films like 300. You can see it in a movie like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That’s a movie with an Arc of Awesome. Ferris is so awesome that he helps everyone else arc as characters. But how can Ferris arc? He’s awesome at the beginning and he’s awesome at the end.
I think the traditional James Bond film is another version of this.
I think the reason why studios love making “origin” superhero movies is that it’s a way to insert a normal character arc onto a character that really should just have an Arc of Awesome. Batman doesn’t need an arc, he’s too awesome. He makes Gotham arc. He makes the villains arc. The only real arc you can find for Batman is the arc that starts with him as rich boring Bruce Wayne and ends with him as rich awesome Batman. Maybe you can give him a subtle re-evaluation on the ethics of crime-fighting or some slight adjustment of his position on women, but really these are just ways to point out that he’s awesome.
For example, Bourne Identity is a movie about unpeeling the layers of awesome. We get to discover an awesome character as he discovers himself. Bourne’s “arc” (which isn’t really an arc) is that of self-discovery. He literally finds out over the course of the movie that he is insanely awesome. It’s a brilliant way to approach an Origin of Awesomeness story line without having to deal with that pesky “he’s not awesome yet” part of the story.
In general, you have three options when you make a movie with an awesome main character.
- Your arc is the path of them going from not-awesome to awesome (see origin story).
- Your arc is some tiny thing, like James Bond learning how to use chopsticks, that really has no impact on the awesomeness of the character.
- Your character doesn’t arc, he just continues to be awesome and your movie is a showcase for his awesomitude.
Pictures What I Found
I’m trying something new. I have created a new tumblelog where I will be reblogging, posting, and occasionally uploading pictures that I find worth sharing. Some of these will be my own pictures or related to work I’m doing, but mostly it will be just be imagery that I find interesting or inspiring.
This is the Official Awesome SXSW Teaser Poster for “Thunder Soul” as designed by the crazy talents at Concept Arts.
Here is the screening schedule for “Thunder Soul” at SXSW.
- Saturday, March 13. 11:00am - Paramount Theatre
- Monday, March 15. 6:45pm - Alamo Lamar
- Friday, March 19. 2:30pm - Paramount Theatre
The Kashmere Reunion Stage Band will also be performing live on Monday, March 15 at the Austin Chronicle SXSW party at La Zona Rosa.
I really love how this poster turned out. Concept Arts did a great job with it. Please share it with your music-loving and movie-loving friends.
Ted Hope’s thoughts on the Oscars
I don’t agree with all of Ted’s thoughts on where the independent film world should go from here, but I certainly agree that the current state is terribly unbalanced with regards to equitable creative and financial treatment of indie films and indie filmmakers.
Official Website for "Thunder Soul"
We have launched the official website and the official facebook page for Thunder Soul. Both of these sites will be constantly updated with new content from now through the release of the film.
“Thunder Soul” at SXSW
It was afros and pleated shirts; James Brown and Bootsy Collins. It was the ’70s, and an inner-city Houston high school was about to make history. Charismatic band leader, Conrad “Prof” Johnson would turn the school’s mediocre jazz band into a legendary funk powerhouse.
Now, 35 years later, his students prepare to pay tribute to the man who changed their lives, the 92-year-old Prof. Some haven’t played their horns in decades, still they dust off their instruments determined to retake the stage to show Prof and the world that they’ve still got it.
“Thunder Soul” is my first documentary as a producer, and I have to say that I love this film so much that it turns me into a shameless promoter whenever I discuss it. Mark Landsman has crafted a wonderful story about music, mentorship, education, hope, and funk. I laugh throughout and literally cry at least twice every time I watch this film, and I’ve probably seen it over 30 times at this point.
We’re premiering “Thunder Soul” at SXSW in March. If you’re going to be at the festival, I highly recommend you come to a screeing. You can find all the screening details on the official SXSW page for “Thunder Soul”, but here is a summary.
- Saturday, March 13. 11:00am - Paramount Theatre
- Monday, March 15. 6:45pm - Alamo Lamar 2
- Friday, March 19. 2:30pm - Paramount Theatre
You’re going to see more posts about “Thunder Soul” on my blog and my twitter feed from now on, and I’m excited to introduce the world to the film.
