The worst movies of all time?

Hardly.  It seems like the Huffington Post just wanted to throw something, anything together.  There must be worse.  Still, watching these trailers is so worth it.  And some of these do look terrible.  And kind of incredible at the same time.  I'll refrain from commenting too much because it could be bad karma as I'm cutting Dissent TV (working title...I need to find a title) together.  One wrong move, one thing I overlooked, and maybe the Huffington Post will be all up my ass.  My favorite trailers from these and a link to the rest after the jump.  Jasmine, from Chicago, with the tip.

Very late Oscar live blog

Because, who doesn't?  For the 82nd year in a row, the Academy has snubbed Go Hard Films and not nominated us for anything.  So we'll follow from home and make snide comments.  Come along with us.

Today in pornography: The M.I.L.F. Hunter discovers social networking

You might be aware (probably not, unless you went to high school with me) of Shawn Rees, a.k.a "Shawn Hunter", who single-handedly cashed in on the MILF craze started by the American Pie movies by founding the M.I.L.F. Hunter website, one of the most popular pornographic sites of all time, and at one point one of the 1,000 most visited internet sites in history.  According to his recently deleted Wikipedia page, he's second only to Ron Jeremy as a true male pornographic lead.  It also talks about his personal style of pornography, in which he places emphasis on storyline (yea, if you use the term extremely loosely) and cares just as much about the comedy in his movies as about the sex.   

This guy has been around since 2001, and his site is admittedly on the decline.  That said, I do have some sort of admiration for the empire that he built--I even wrote to him asking for an editing and screenwriting internship back when I was a sophomore in college, and applied for a full-time job about a year ago.  Never got an answer.  It's probably better that way since I couldn't see my mom being too eager to tell people what her son wrote porns for a living.

Anyway, I also always wondered what he was like in real life.   I pictured him being kinda smart and eloquent, for some reason.  A very pragmatic renaissance man who was a lover at heart.  Well, a few weeks ago, Mr. Hunter began a facebook fanpage for himself, and has left a bunch of wallposts on there.  Let's see what it tells us about the mind that is Shawn Rees the M.I.L.F. Hunter.

News from the summit: Just a bit of wholesome competition

It's (not even close to) Saturday, which marks the end of another week spent looking up at actual successful filmmakers with longing, envy, and scorn. Here are some important stories of this week in the film world, or at least some we found noteworthy.

Original Stilldie: Above Ground Episodes

The video that I made with J. Wise to promote his upcoming limited edition album is finally ready for your (until now) unblown minds.

If you want to check it out, or if you want a piece of said album, you can click here.
The way this works is, you give J. Wise money, he pays for the studio time he needs to finish the album and then you get a CD and/or a DVD and/or a vinyl LP and/or private audience at the museum of natural history.

My final endorsements for the Oscars--Best Picture and Best Documentary

I saw Up in the Air over the weekend, with low expectations because I had heard mixed reviews.  It's one of my favorite movies of the year, and my pick for Best Picture, although there were some things from it that I didn't like.  I guess this year's crop of nominees didn't quite do it for me (keep in mind that I haven't watched Up, An Education, The Blind Side, or Precious).  That said, I think it tells the best story of all the nominees I've seen, it's extremely well composed visually and thematically, George Clooney is always a superstar and Anna Kendrick should totally win best supporting actress.  I also think it's really well directed, although I would probably give Hurt Locker the nod in that category.  While I love to make fun of Walter Kirn's twitter freakouts, he has all the right to be proud that his book inspired this film.

Go Hard Meet and Greet: Bucket of Meat

A brainchild of Tyler Warner, and blood-sweat-and-foodstamps-points child of Will Stahl and myself, I would like to introduce Meat Bucket to you.  I'm not sure you'll ever need to make it look like a you've run a human (or any animal, really) through a meatgrinder.  But in case you do, we have a simple recipe. 

Your second grade nerdiness meets the internet age

Remember those choose-your-own adventures books where you'd pretend you were the main character and you'd have to make choices and stuff, and go to different pages for each choice?  It was pretty obvious which was the right choice, but you'd try the disastrous route anyway, and once you died, you'd just go back and try again.  After a while you'd say "fuck it" and just read the book cover to cover.  I don't know, maybe it was just me.  Those books and I never quite gelled.  Anyway, there's a new genre of YouTube videos, which uses annotations so that the viewer can decide what adventure path to go down.  There's a lot of those out there.  I embedded the first one on the list. 

Real or Amateur? (Shaky cam v. Steadycam)

Do you ever find yourself watching a movie, (especially when it’s made by someone you know) and become distracted by the fact that the camera is shaking like it's having a conniption fit? (and feel embarrassed for your friend?)

I do. Most of the time the shaking takes me out of what I’m watching and makes me wonder if the people who made whatever it is were being really pretentious or really didn’t know what they were doing. Or, were trying the former to cover up the later.

A review of Steve James' "No Crossover: the Trial of Allen Iverson"

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend a special screening, here in Chicago, of Steve James' No Crossover: the Trial of Allen Iverson. You might better recognize James as the director of Hoop Dreams, only arguably the best documentary on Earth ever. No Crossover is part of ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary series, through which the channel is comissioning 30 documentaries about sports stories from the last 30 years. This is a much more personal piece for James, as the story of Iverson's trial took place in his hometown and he narrates the story from his point of view. I'll keep this fairly brief, because I don't want to slobber over how awesome this film was for too long.

News from the summit: Our long national nightmare is over--Walter Kirn got his Oscar invite

It's (a couple days after) Saturday, which marks the end of another week spent looking up at actual successful filmmakers with longing, envy, and scorn. Here are some important stories of this week in the film world, or at least some we found noteworthy.

Sundance 2010: What I Learned in Two Days

I was underprepared for Sundance.

I happened to be passing through Utah to California and realized how bizarrely perfect the time of year was for this cross-state voyage. It was fate's way of telling me to see a bunch of undistributed films, most of which starred Kristen Stewart. So I stayed with my friend at a recently married Mormon couple's house. It was pleasant. They're big on board games; abortion, not as much.

Who knew it was so easy to get a press pass? Just submit a request a few months before and supply a sample of your writing (hell, this blog qualifies) and you're in. I had thought you had to be a member of the press. But we live in THE AGE OF THE COMPUTER. Everyone's their own favorite writer. Not so exclusive anymore.

Review: My Name Is Khan

Hey y’all, I know Nick Wanger is review guy now, but I don’t think he’ll mind if I comment on the new Dharma Productions/Red Chillies release, My Name is Khan. (You don’t mind, do you Nick?)

I’ve been waiting for this film for over a year, ever since I saw my first ‘Bollywood’ movie, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (A Match Made in Heaven). It was celebrity crush at first sight for me. Shah Rukh Khan, the glamorous movie star that doesn’t exist in Hollywood anymore. The kind whose car gets attacked by a drooling, swooning mob wherever he appears.

Formal Remarks

This post is in response to my story for the Networking Open Forum, dealing with the Creative Screenwriting Expo and Shane Black.

I'd like to rescind my remarks that Shane Black is an asshole, and say that he is, in fact, a very nice guy. You can read his response to my story in the comments under it, and I think it clears up my initial perception of the Networking Reception at the Expo.

Thanks Shane!

Thankful for YouTube video series: The Hitler parody to end all Hitler parodies

You might have heard of the movie about Hitler, Der Untergang (The Downfall).  I've personally never seen it, although I hope to soon.   You've likely, however, seen a famous scene from it in which Hitler flips out about some WWII something or other, at least a few hundred times.  It has become a new artform to change the subtitles to that scene and parody it, and there are literally hundreds of versions of this out there.  Here are some good ones, and here are some bad ones.  But I present to you the crowning achievement of this genre--the "Meta-Meme", they're calling it, which depicts Hitler freaking out about not being able to make a Hitler parody.  Self-reflexive, brilliant, possibly impossible to top.  Chris Hanel is the writer.  Sebastian from Chicago (were you expecting anyone else?) with the tip. 

Happy Ash Wednesday!

As I've been mentioning quite a bit lately, this year is going to be exciting and terrifying for me. I'm finishing my MA in England and I need to decide what in the holy fuck I'm going to do with my life. The rest of my life. Who knows what the future holds? PhD? Teaching high school? Moving in with girlfriend? Getting a dog? Lots of tea? Cricket bat? It's tough to say. It reminds me of another individual that had an uncertain future. His name was Ashley J. Williams.

Legendary editor = terrible movie?

IFC made the interesting observation that many awesome editors, later in their careers, get hired almost exclusively to try to salvage awful movies.  But obviously, there just isn't much you can do at that stage to salvage a project.  Legendary directors may sometimes salvage bad scripts, by rewriting them.  Editors can only alleviate the shit you give them by making it mercifully shorter.  They can't rewrite your script or reshoot your footage.  Lesson learned.  [IFC]

News from the summit: Ha! Kevin Smith is fat!

It's (a few days after) Saturday, which marks the end of another week spent looking up at actual successful filmmakers with longing, envy, and scorn. Here are some important stories of this week in the film world, or at least some we found noteworthy.

Let the Right One In, a review of

I imagine some of you will need a film to haul you out of that rank swamp of emotional, commercial, and aesthetic hyperbole, Valentine's Day.  Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), a 2008 Swedish romance-vampire flick, will have you on dry ground in no time. 

Checking in

I guess I should let you know what I've been up to (aside from being a hater).  The main project for Go Hard Films so far this year is a short film noir that we're making for yet another contest.  Soon I promise that we'll make a movie for the sake of it, as my good friend and co-producer for the Doritos commercial Joe Brown was saying I should do, but I think this contest is different than the other ones we've been in.  It's not a commercial contest, it's very open ended, and we get to be extremely creative for it.  The only rule is that it that our film has to be under 25 minutes long and involve a crime or a mystery.

Festival Fodder Sundance edition: Bass Ackwards delivers!

Not a big deal, but I was right.  This film by Linas Phillips is true festival fodder, pure and uncut.  But before I dance on its grave, let's put out a few disclaimers:

1) I have never had a film in Sundance, and Phillips has.  So I have to recognize that and give him kudos for getting a film into such an important festival.

2) I want it to be clear that this isn't a case of people without talent.  You can tell that the people involved with Bass Ackwards are very talented indeed.  They're just talented people who made HORRIBLE, AWFUL decisions and ended up making a very bad movie.  With that in mind, I'm not gonna just tell you that this is a bad movie. Variety does that succinctly enough.  I'm gonna actually try to do a thorough prognosis on what went wrong, especially with the story (which was the film's main problem).  It's like this is a writer's workshop, where the people being critiqued never signed up, and someone less accomplished than them gets to hammer them without them getting to hammer me back.  Awesome!

3) This film is one of the first films--definitely the first film I can think of from a major festival--whose distribution strategy bypasses finding a buyer to aquire it, and simply aims to sell it online. It directly tests what we had talked about before on this blog, it's bold, and I like it.  But when your distribution is the main thing you brag about when marketing the movie, that's a red flag that the movie itself has some serious problems.

Let's get to it.

Announcement: Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Wanger

I wanna announce that we'll be having Nick Wanger on as part of the team.  He'll be specializing in movie reviews, and he'll do it a lot better than me (I'm real easy to please).  Obviously, the rest of us will pitch in reviews now and then, but it'll be nice to have someone like Nick doing it full time.  He'll also be reviewing Go Hard's videos as they come out.  He promised he'd be impartial and brutal.  Nick and I almost never agree on whether we think something is good or not, so this should be fun. 

He'll be reporting in soon with his first entry, and on behalf of the Stilldependent team, I want to give him a warm welcome onto our site.  He's a great writer and I always wanted to figure out a way to get him on here.

News from the summit: A Superbowl roundup (and some film stuff too)

It's (a few days after) Saturday, which marks the end of another week spent looking up at actual successful filmmakers with longing, envy, and scorn. Here are some important stories of this week in the film world, or at least some we found noteworthy.

Dziga Vertov: Mike's Role Model

So I think I finally found someone to join me and Nikola Tesla at my 'Dead Historical Figures Cocktail Party.' You know, the hypothetical get together of all the coolest people? Who are dead? It's a party game, you know what I'm talking about. If you could have a cocktail party with any three dead historical figures etc...

I've really been taking my time coming up with a list, as I'll only accept people that are, in my opinion, the coolest in history. I've brushed away the commonly selected guests: Jesus, Hitler, Cleopatra (she was, however, invited to the Dead Historical Figures Orgy). So far, it's just me and Tesla. Phillip Armour (of Armour Hot Dog fame) is pretty high up there, but the jury is still out on that one, pending further review of his History Channel special. That said, I believe I have found a second:

Open Forum III: The George A. Romero Incident

My views on networking are mixed. On the one hand, you've got to have connections in this industry. Everyone needs to get by with a little (or a lot of) help from their friends. Don't tell me you've made it on your own. No one has. Either your dad is the fucking director of Ghostbusters (hello, now 2-time Academy Award nominee, Jason Reitman) or you've acquired your trusted crew from years of struggling in the indie scene. My former professor, Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy), as much as she'd like to, cannot completely claim to have risen to her height of filmmaking on her own. There's always a friend on some level. But there's no shame in that.

On the other hand, networking is political by it's very nature. We'd like to believe it's a meritocracy, that we can succeed on pure talent alone. It's instinctive to bitch about Jason Reitman--and I do, he's smug and pretends to be a regular guy who waltzed into filmmaking, and his films suffer for his privilege; perhaps if he had actually experienced real life, his films wouldn't be so frustratingly conventional--because being an insider is only a step down from selling out.