Paris for President?

Yes, the Hilton sister is running. She could not be any worse than Palin!

Funny video…”your commander in bikini”…

SPAA le Fringe Day Deux

So how was Day 2 of the SPAA Fringe conference?

Kristy Vernon’s The Making of Gabriel was a great forum on the cool Indy genre flick by Shane Abess. I was waking up from Friday night so was grateful for the hour long lunch break.

Then it was Peter Broderick, something of a SPAA Fringe guru, he gave his run down on the old world distribution strategies vs the new world ones. Broderick, clearly has many clever ideas and examples about how people independently kick goals using the web and independent distribution resources. He discusses projects like Four Eyed Monster, some solo pilot video about Van Nuys airport, Jill Sobule lesbian nonsense, The Secret DVD and many other internet success stories both large and small. While I agree 100% with many strategies Broderick showcases, I couldn’t help but feel some the projects he champions, while having the marketing angle down pat, seemed a little light on in the meaningful content department.

I heard good things about the Sue Maslin forum, who produced the new Dominick Dunne doco, and how she maintained many of the rights, and shot an accomplished piece on an International figure… all on a low budget.

Jon Hewitt, back from his hide away on the Hawksbury river, turned up to chat to friends and check out a bit of SPAA Fringe. We hung out with Deborah Tobias, and various industry luminaries joined us to chat, talk good news and have the odd bitch about some aspects of the industry. Jon has been receiving scripts from Hollywood, after his Toronto Film Festival triumph, so we wish him well there!

Saw some footage for a cool looking Indy film, Carmilla Hyde. Sexy girls, latex and leather, all good from my end. Should be playing MUFF 10…

Steven Kastrissios gave an excellent speech to wrap up the SPAA Fringe leaving everyone feeling invigorated and ready to make more Indy films. Gaylee Butler from SPAA Fringe did a great job putting it all together, and I came away with many contacts I’ll be pursuing.

More soon on the new Screen Australia guidelines released Monday.

SPAA Fringe Day 1

Arrived in Sydney late Thursday night, due to the wonderful Jetstar’s interminably late flights.

Watched Unfinished Sky at Matt Clayfield’s house where I’m staying, as he attends the final days of the Melbourne Arts Festival. Peter Duncan’s Unfinished Sky was a minor sleeper at Oz cinemas playing until only recently. While the story originally smelled of the usual PC bullshit served up here in Oz about an Afghani women turning up in the rural outback out of nowhere! Low and behold a subterranean genre film soon comes to the fore involving human slavery (ala The Jammed) and featuring ace whacked out outback wacko’s. The film it turned out wasn’t bad at all, I was pleasantly surprised. William McInnes was good in the lead, and David Field was excellent as a psycho rapist cop. Check it out on DVD!

I registered at SPAA and had fun listening to the TV Pitching session with John Edwards and Courtney Gibson. Courtney, I’d met at Revelation and she seems to be a great ABC head of drama peppering her conversation with candor and curse words about the do’s and dont’s of pitching. Edwards from Secret Life of Us and Love My Way fame also seemed very savy, and gave enlightening information to the SPAA audience.

Its was schmooze time in the lobby and I said hi to Lawrence Johnston from Screen Australia, whose Night I’m still hanging to see. Also said ‘Hi’ to Antony I Ginnane from IFM Films, the No. 1 featured Ozploitation producer in Not Quite Hollywood, who is always treat to chat to and a real gent.

I saw Son Of a Lion. A nicely made film about a father in Afghanistan not wanting his son to get an education, as he wants him to get into the lucrative gun trade and be a Mujahadine OG (Sound advice…?). The films shoot was daring, ala the Miscreants, shooting in dangerous parts of Afghanistan. On the downside the story was a little too simplistic, considering what drama goes on there everyday, and the poster does look a tad like an ad for the Taliban. But it was nicely made on a shoe string and a Sony PD 150 and had a stripped back ontological feel. So it won me over there. I attended the post forum on the film that described its process from Mini DV to film, that was technical but informative.

Then it was SPAA Fringe Pitch time. This was real fun. The first pitch was OK but seemed under developed about a group of Psychiatrists who have every form of mental illness themselves. It somehow branches out to include a serial killer, it could work if developed further and made sure it was well written. Funniest pitch to me was Corrogated Irony, a documentary about Corrugated Iron no less! Thrilling, I hear you scream. They swore they we would make it interesting, but somehow I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised if some sectors at Screen Australia and various local funding bodies are scrambling all over themselves it to make a 20 hour mini series out of it! Considering their track record, hehe. The Kookas pitch was a little cuckoo. Rendered Life, the pitch winner, was the best about the adventures of two guys behind the scenes of the internet delivering mail in a cyber world ala Brazil.

Then it was more booze and schmooze time. I opted for drink and missed the Storm Surfer film, that had an interesting Producer Marcus Gillezeau in attendance for. More later, as I’m still in the middle of it all! And it’s Friday Night fiends!!

SPAA Fringe just got Fringier

I will be attending the SPAA Fringe conference in Sydney this Friday and Saturday, so stand by for a daily report on the proceedings here on Idea Fix. It should be lots of fun!

See SPAA Fringe program here.

The Digi SPAA film comp is on and is screening Gates Of Hell (winner of the MUFF Special Jury Prize) on Saturday. Also playing in that comp is Jason Byrne’s Little Deaths. The Horseman also screens twice at SPAA Fringe, winner of Best Film at MUFF at this year!

I will have some MUFF propaganda to place around the event.

Was Jorg Haider assassinated?

The conspiracy theories grow. See here and here.

I’m beginning to think it is a possibility. What do you all think?

As my last film Pearls Before Swine was about an assassination attempt on a right wing revolutionary, its a topic that I find fascinating to muse on…

Here is his car with many anomalies not akin to a run of the mill car accident. See sites above for more theories…

Thousands turned up for his funeral. See here.

The MUFF awards 2008

And the winners are…

THE MUFF Awards 2008

OZ:
BEST AUSTRALIAN FILM (Tie)
Acolytes – Jon Hewitt / The Horseman – Steven Kastrissios
RUNNER UP BEST AUSTRALIAN FILM
No Through Road – Sam Barret
BEST AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR
Steven Kastrissios – The Horseman
BEST AUSTRALIAN MALE ACTOR
Joel Edgerton – Acolytes
BEST AUSTRALIAN FEMALE ACTOR
Alexandra Weaver – The Run
BEST SUPPORTING MALE ACTOR
Michael Piccirilli – Devils Gateway
BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE ACTOR
Megan Palinkas – No Through Road

MIXED:
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Gates Of Hell – Directed Kel Dolen
BEST GUERRILLA FILM
Cannibal Suburbia – Jean Luc Synikas and D.A Jackson
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Xaviera Hollander – Producer John  Patti
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Mark Pugh – Acolytes
BEST SCREENPLAY
Dead Girl – Trent Haaga

SHORTS from OZ and OS:

BEST SHORT (Tie)
Sin Shoes – Raul Palomar/ Garden of Earthly Delights Stuart Simpson
RUNNER-UP BEST SHORT
Jumping Jack – Julian Costanzo

FOREIGN FEATURE:

BEST FOREIGN FILM
Tin Can Man
BEST FOREIGN DIRECTOR (Tie)
Ivan Kavanagh – Tin Can Man / Thomas Clay – Soi Cowboy
BEST FOREIGN MALE ACTOR
Michael Parle – Tin Can Man
BEST FOREIGN FEMALE ACTOR
Pimwalee Thampanyasan – Soi Cowboy

I like George W Bush

Its so easy not to like Bush. I think he’s a fucking classic with his dumbed down double speak and shrugged shoulder ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude. He has given us two wonderful wars and stoked the fires of hatred like no US President in recent history. He has a cool Washington Machiavellian team behind the scenes, who amongst their many marvelous achievements probably helped pull off 911 as an inside job and kept stupid Joe public in the dark about it all. He hung Saddam Hussein, who promised to kill his father, like a dog, in true gangster fashion. He has altered the constitution and laid important ground work for any coming US fascist state. He can’t be held fully responsible for the current financial crash, as he didn’t invent the Int. Banking system, he only helped stress it a bit to breaking point. Which might produce interesting political results as the 29 crash did. Its been a lively eight years. He brought people into politics who would normally be complacent, on both sides of the fence. Think all you Bush haters what a lacuna would be in your life if you didn’t have him to point the finger at, so as to avoid taking responsibility for your own pathetic, naive, complicit and powerless lives?!

I like George W Bush! What’s not to like?

Oliver Stone seems to think so, too.

After Stone’s Nixon essentially painted a human portrait of a controversial right wing US President. Stone appears to have done the same thing again with W.

Here is the new W trailer. I will be seeing it on the first day.

Black Sun Rising

Jorg Haider Conspiracy?

The internet has talk of a conspiracy after the road accident death of right wing Austrian Politician Jorg Haider, like here. There are accusations of many strange events with this ‘accident’. With Europe experiencing its largest stock market crash and crisis since the great depression, there is serious concern politicians like Haider would in coming years exploit the situation to sweep reactionary, quasi-fascist right wing parties into office across Europe. We all remember a certain other famous politician had some success four years after the 1929 crash. The crisis of Capitalism that we are witnessing, it can be convincingly argued, is a direct gateway toward a new form of fascism.

The BBC and other news sources said Haider died in a car crash traveling at speed, but already accusations that Haider was assassinated are beginning to spread online.

Its a funny coincidence, the crash and Haider’s death, but no more than that I’d say. But who knows…?

There are stories that Mossad was watching him, see here. But his anti-Arab immigration stance brought him closer to the Israeli’s rather than further apart, surely?

He did go on air recently and attack the ‘International Banking System’ as a “mafia” RE: the crisis, see here. Watch the commentators with Haider get very nervous when the ‘Banking as mafia’ issue is raised. Now, he’s dead. Its all fascinating stuff really…

Here is an Australian profile on Haider from 2000, below. Here are links to stories on his death, here and here.

Claude Bernard-Aubert’s La Fessee

A movie from France all about the spanking fetish plays MUFF Thursday 16 October at Glitch directed by French erotic maestro Claude Bernard Aubert. Check it out!