Let me know what you think.

This shares footage with the first posted cinemaontherun, stealing the fourth wall

Well, not quite that long.

Now that I have mastered RSS, CSS, and PHP (ha!) I am slowly putting the archive of old cinemalogs online, as I also add new ones.

Please let me know what you think.

Cinema On The Run is an experiment; a game.

The challenge: ad-lib a movie, shot for shot, using only whatever supplies and cast are on-hand.

No cheating.

We have a backlog of these to upload, but here’s a recent example of cinemaontherun, ‘TreeMonkey,’ filmed today. From its conception to its completion, the whole process lasted about 15 minutes (which is perhaps clear from viewing it, but that’s another story.)

More material will be forthcoming as we work on the site, but in the meantime enjoy the film.

Menu on the left will index entries by category, so if you just want the videos, click on ‘’video'’ etc and it’’s done.

Mwahahahaha! Now begins the process of uploading more videos. I think I'’m going to do one a week, rather than 3 a week for 2 weeks, then hopelessly have to catch up.

In the meantime, if you’re reading this, and are a techie, I need your help. Email me. (contact info on the right).

And everyone else — Zach, Joe, etc– I have set this up so you can blog here too. (Still working on how to get it to show the picture of whoever typed the blog entry). But here goes nothin’.

WARNING: History of Violence Spoilers

Why do people who make comedies tend to be angry and depressed and people who make very violent movies tend to be nice and funny?

It seems to be true isn’t it? I mean, there’s nothing scarier than a comedian. They’re angry, depressed, terrible people, let’s face it.

It must be. I mean I guess it’s easy to say, but it seems to be inevitably true that there’s a kind of balance that’s struck. If you’re sort of perky and funny in your life then you feel that you have to deal with the other stuff in your art and vice versa, you know.

When Joey (Viggo Mortensen) is leading this small town life, do you feel that he’s hiding from who he is, or that he’s changed who he really is?

No, I think he’s really changed. I mean I think that’s certainly the way we played it. Because he, I mean imagine, he’s suddenly forced out of the identity he had. And you have to decide how much of this you want to reveal to your readers obviously, you could spoil the movie for them.

Don’t worry.

But he could choose to be anything. He could choose to be a Joey in Florida, or a Joey in the west coast. He could choose to go to some other country and be a small time gangster. But he suddenly chooses to be part of this American mythology of itself. This kind of ideal guy in this ideal small town with a family. Very non-violent, very sweet, very gentle with his children. And he genuinely is, he’s been that for twenty years. So he’s been very successful at that. And that’s not hiding, I mean at that point he has really wanted to become somebody else. If he got hit by a bus before the bad guys came to town he would have been buried as Tom Stahl, everybody would have thought that’s who he was and that’s who he would have been.

When the violence does break out, is he reverting–

–No, I think that the way we were playing it was that Joey was not actually a violent person. He didn’t have that incredible anger and rage. Because you would feel that if he had that incredibly violent temper and anger and rage for example that it would come out in those twenty years that he tried to be Tom. You know, it would have come out sooner. But in this case, if you think that Joey learned violence because, and physically being kind of athletic he could be good at it, because he grew up in the streets of Philly. His brother was a mobster, the union was mobsters and to be successful and to have some kind of life he had to become part of that. And he could do violence so he did violence but he wasn’t particularly innately a violent person. So it was just as he says, when his brother says, ‘We’re brothers, what did you think would happen?’ He says, ‘I thought that business would come first.’ For him it was business. And that was the approach to violence in the movie that I took, which is rather than imposing sort of concept of what violence should or shouldn’t be. I wasn’t thinking about that, I’m thinking, okay in this movie where does the violence come from? It comes from these guys who learned it on the streets and its business. Its not sadistic pleasure, it’s not an aesthetic thing, its not martial arts with a philosophy in fighting, or anything, its just business. You do it, you get it over with you get on to the next thing and you make as little fuss about it as possible. That’s what it is to Joey, and therefore it’s very possible for it to disappear. Now it comes back only because it’s a tool that he needs, that he has. It is like the gunslinger who was the fastest gun in the west that put his guns away, you know, it’s got of American iconic reverberations and we were very conscious of that. The guy who’s reluctant to kill although he has a talent for killing, but its not something that gives him pleasure. And that’s really the approach we took and I think its realistic in the sense that it would make it possible for him to become Tom and manage to live that life for so long without revealing something else.

What is your working relationship with Howard Shore?

Well, he’s done just about every movie [of mine]. We’ve known each other for thirty years.

How much interaction do you have with him during the process?

When we’re working? A hundred percent interaction. Really, I mean, he’s one of, I send my script, any script that I’m considering to do, whether it’s my own script or somebody else’s, I send it to a group of people. Carol [Spier], production designer; Peter Suschitzky director of photography, Howard and my editor Ron Sanders who I’ve worked with for like thirty-five years. And I just want feedback from them and just to get them started thinking about it even before we’ve shot a foot of film. And I do that with Howard too. And so the discussions begin very early on and get more intense and Howard sends me synthesized possibilities and themes and ideas and we discuss that.

Ever before you shoot?

Not before I shoot. No. Unless there’s music or something that happens in the movie like in M. Butterfly (1993) where there’s an opera, there’s music within the film that’s different. Then yes, we would be talking about which version of that opera we would go with. But the discussions would be ongoing and Howard would come visit the set, definitely every movie, and talk to the actors and just get a feel for things and we’ll start sending him some footage to look at. And in this case, we were certainly discussing the American-ness of the movie and the western tone of it and he started to look at John Ford DVD’s and stuff like that to sort of get a feel for the American landscape musically. You know, because music is very American in itself. A little like Aaron Copeland and a little like western. And so, its very, and then when Howard, usually I should be with Howard when the music’s being recorded and we’ll discuss the cues and should he re-record them and did you like that thing with the trombone or do you prefer the flute variation or the French horn variation. Get very detailed about it, where the cues go, I could go on, what the music is meant to do in the movie is a good discussion. That’s a whole interview in itself.

Are you ever afraid to show such graphic violence?

I don’t know; I must be fearless!

Well it seems… You know, for me the first fact of human existence is the human body. You know, I’m not, you know (he looks at the kippa/yarmulke on my head) — I’m — I’m an atheist. I — for me to turn away from any aspect of the human body is a philosophical betrayal. And there’s a lot of art and a lot of religion whose whole purpose seems to be to turn away from the human body. And I feel in my art that my mandate is to not do that. So whether it’s beautiful things, the sexuality part, or the violent part, or the gooey part, just body fluids you know. It’s when Elliott in Dead Ringers (1988) says, “Why are there no beauty contests for the insides of bodies?” You know, it’s a thought that disturbs me. How can we be disgusted by our own bodies? That doesn’t, it really doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any human sense. It makes some animal sense but it doesn’t make human sense anymore so I’m always discussing that in my movies. And in this movie in particular. On the other hand, I don’t really ever feel that I’ve been exploitive in a crude, vulgar way. You know, of just doing it to do it and get attention. It’s always got a purpose, which I can be very articulate about. In this movie in particular we’ve got an audience that’s definitely going to applaud these acts of violence and they do because its set up that these acts are justifiable and they’re almost even heroic at times. But I’m saying, ok so if you can applaud that, can you applaud this? Because this is the result of that gunshot in the head. It’s not nice. And even if the violence is justifiable, the consequences of the violence are exactly the same. I mean the body does not know what the morality of that act was. And so, I’m asking the audience to see if they can contain the whole experience of this violent act instead of just the sort of heroic/dramatic one. I’m saying here’s the really nasty affects on these nasty guys but still, the affects are very nasty. And that’s the paradox and the conundrum.

existenz (1999) was adapted to graphic novel. I know that you didn’t base History of Violence on the graphic novel, but you did eventually read it.

Yes.

With more filmmakers such as Darren Aronofsky, Joss Whedon, Bryan Singer and many more screenwriters doing Graphic Novels, are you interested at all in trying a graphic novel?

Um, I’m not particularly interested, but on the other hand I wouldn’t turn away from it. I mean it really depends on the quality of the work. And I know that it’s an art form that has gone up and down in terms of it’s cultural…

I mean for you to create a graphic novel.

Oh, for me to create a graphic novel. Oh, no, I’ve never yet had the… Well, I was interested in being involved in the graphic novel that was made out of existenz, and I thought the guy did a beautiful job and it was in collaboration with me. But it’s not my art form.

via Amazon:
David Cronenberg Filmography
A History of Violence
Cronenberg Books

via Slashdot: Congress Pays You $3 Billion To Keep Watching TV

Courtesy of the man, Justin Frankel: Turn Off The Internet

and Flock is a new web browser made for futurepeople.

SHOW ▼

the song for the above video, ‘Bathtime In Clerkwell,’ is available via iTunes

Now, one thing that I have noticed a lot in today’s pop-culture is the general acceptance of Marijuana smoking NORML (supporter). Of course there is still opposition, in fact there is quite the spectrum of commentary on the subject, but what opposition there is is few and far between.

The negative end of the spectrum is seen in programming and Networks that cater to female or homosexual viewership (Lifetime, Oxygen, Logo, YES). On the other side of the spectrum (positive) there are a slew of shows that if not encourage, defend Marijuana smoking (whether this is a bad merit or not I will leave up to you). I believe that the show that most exemplifies this stance on Marijuana smoking is the hit T.V. show Weeds as seen on the Showtime Network Weeds (Huge Fan). There are numerous shows on television now that if they don’t mention Marijuana you know that they were written, directed and made for people, under the influence of Marijuana. To name a few of these shows: Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Drawn Together, A&E Biography.

I think the most curious placement on my Marijuana Smoking Spectrum would have to be the network that we all would have though would be at the top of the list (13 years ago). This network is MTV. Surprisingly MTV does not address the topic, whether positively or negatively. I personally think that MTV’s arbitrary stance on the topic is a bad example and even though the majority of the staff are Marijuana Smokers they can do our society a favor and discourage it (for good appearances at least). I think this is just one more problem stacked onto the MTV sinking ship. MTV somehow has worked its way out of the “cutting-edge music” scene and into the “Stupid Reality & Simulated Reality Programming for Retards” scene. Remember when MTV was good? Remember when MTV had entertaining shows? Remember when M[usic]TV played music videos? If you didn’t watch MTV prior to 1999 then you don’t remember.

MTV used to play great music that either major record labels wouldn’t give a chance to, or radio was not willing to play. This all went downhill with the incorporation of Carson Daly, TRL, Brittney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, N’Sync into the MTV entourage (coincidentally another hit show which falls into the Positive end of Marijuana smoking Entourage). Now that MTV has been completely liberalized and sterilized hopefully people will realize that it is a network to be despised.

But enough about M[oron]TV. The Marijuana smoking issue is a hot topic and there is a lot to be considered before making a decision about your stance. But no matter what side or centrality of the spectrum you fall on there is still one thing we can all agree upon, had it not been for Marijuana smoking how bad would music and comedy be? In fact I think had Marijuana smoking not been done by artists throughout the last 45 years or so the entertainment business would be in the toilet today. All we have to do is think of the places that Music and Comedy were at before Marijuana Smoking became prevalent to see how thankful we should be for it. I mean come on do you want to listen to some Elvis on your way to a Bob Hope performance?

Thank you for reading the entirety of my very first blog posting on cinemalog. There is much more to come as you can see that I have not even touched the topic of American Cinema which is a major interest of mine. I hope in the future you will return to hear what I have to bitch about.

The Internet is on a Kill-Bill-like quest to destroy me!! CSS, PHP, it’s all just eating me alive as the site falls apart in my hands.

But I must not give up. I must fight on. I shall muster every memory I have of watching The Karate Kid II, and I shall face the Internet head-on.

(whimper)

The internet was a clever nemesis, a worthy opponent by any estimation.

And so it was that I found myself being throttled, choking near to death, after a decentralized network of data, or, for the more technical-minded among you, the ‘Information Superhighway’ snuck up behind me. But little did it expect me to launch into a FLYING MASTADON attack, immediately severing several of its limbs and rendering it momentarily distracted. This was my chance. I grabbed the Internet by the neck, slammed it headfirst into the pavement, and began kicking. I showed no mercy.

Yes, I beat the internet half-to-death, and lived to tell the tale. I let the internet live for one reason and one reason only: that the world should know who tamed it.

And now it works for me.

That’s right.