The Mark of Cain: Feature Doc on Youtube

The Mark of Cain is a feature length doc about Russian prison tattoos that's now on Youtube in its entirety (73 min, below). The tattoos are the filmmaker's in to examine the Russian prison system, which is truly terrifying. Once I hit play, I couldn't stop watching this film - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9JDJdaMs-Y

The fictional cousin to The Mark of Cain is Eastern Promises directed by David Cronenberg, which is about a British midwife's interactions with the Russian Mafia in London. I love this movie. Cronenberg has a unique skill when it comes to depicting violence to the human body, which has to come from all his years in horror. I think many people of my generation think of Tarantino as the handy man of entertaining on-screen violence (based on the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs alone) but I think Cronenberg's eerie mix of bluntness and understatement trumps Tarantino's pop sensibilities by a long shot. Not that I don't like a little pop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBcIoq4w7TY

Sawdust City at Los Angeles Film Festival

Sawdust City, the first feature by my old CalArts classmate David Nordstrom will be screening next month at the Los Angeles Film Festival. A big congratulations to Dave N. and everyone who worked on the film - it's very good and I wish them great success. http://vimeo.com/23191355

Dave just launched a Kickstarter project this week to get the film in good shape for the start of it's public life.

From Dave:

The slightly less good news is that we need a final push to get us over the hill to where we need to be. Thanks to the increasing quality of affordable equipment, our own hard-won no-budget filmmaking, and your own inestimable help, we've managed to craft a great little film.  However, it's going up on big screens, on big systems, alongside bigger films and we need to look and sound our best. Let's give this man and his film a Kickstart cause filmmaking is just too damn hard to do alone.

Camera Obscura

Light travels in straight lines - the backyard reflected off my closet doors. For the self portrait I put the camera on the ten second timer and ran like hell.

ISO 6400, exposed for 30 seconds, f2.8

Manda Bala: doc film now on Netflix

Manda Bala means "send a bullet" in Portuguese. It's available via DVD on Netflix and is really worth a watch. For the die hard doc fans you'll notice director Jason Kohn's thank you in the credits to Errol Morris who he used to work for as a researcher. This also helped answer the question I kept asking myself over and over, which was, " how the hell did he make this?" His techniques are not the standard fair. It makes way more sense knowing he's been breathing the same air as Morris. Freakazoids. Who shoots anamorphic 16mm for s doc film anyway? Awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbff7PBDUP8

A Fourth Generation Camera: Kodak Brownie

My aunt gave me my Grandmother’s Kodak Brownie camera last November. It turns out it was actually my Great Grandmother’s camera and she photographed my Grandmother as a little girl with it. It’s absolutely incredible to me. I feel this connection that goes back almost a century through this little box camera. Here’s a picture of my Grandmother when she was a young woman taken with a Brownie:

Here’s what I’ve learned via the internet:

The first Brownie went on sale in 1900 for $1.00 and was designed to be as simple and easy to use as possible. The birth of the Brownie = the birth of the snap shot. Kodak sold a quarter million the first year.

Snap shot was a term borrowed from hunting that described an unplanned shot from the hip.

Kodak thought the Brownie would appeal to children so he named it after a popular children’s character, which was often featured in the Kodak print ads.

In 1930 Kodak gave away a special edition of the Brownie camera free to any child who turned 12 that year. (see the ad here)

The really exciting thing about this camera though is that it still works. It uses 120 film, which is readily available. Below are a few test shots I took with it. I love the aspect ratio and I learned that subjects have to be pretty far back to get sharp focus. There are no controls, only a lever to flip a spring loaded shutter. I can’t believe I’m taking photos with my Great Grandmother’s camera! It's at least eighty years old probably closer to 90.

New Photos: Michigan

Here are a few photos from Christmas in Michigan with my parents: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5457370034/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5457370120/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5456763491/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5456763583/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5456763615/

Valentines Day Movie Options on Netflix

My favorite romantic film of all time is Dr. Zhivago. I’m heavily biased towards E. European/Russian themes but I still think many people will agree that it’s one of the greats. It’s long though, be ready. (Oh Laura) If you’re feeling weary of romantic love and looking for an antidote then you should probably just go straight for the strong stuff and watch Kramer vs. Kramer. Problem solved.

If you’d rather not commit to either extreme then I suggest In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. You’ll survive it no matter where you stand; in or out of love. It’s a beautiful movie.

All are streaming on Netflix.

A trailer for Dr. Zhivago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAWrXTn5Www

New Stuff on Netflix

A Prophet is now available on Netflix (streaming and DVD). It's a French crime/prison film. It's damn good, promise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyOyUwwKgvc

Black Swan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaI1XOB-bs Black Swan is a visually striking, tightly structured, high tempo melodrama about an ambitious but sensually naïve ballerina’s ascent to the top spot. The story, which was written by four men and directed by another one, is a male fantasy of what happens when a young, beautiful and well-behaved woman releases her Id to please her virile young director and for the consumption of her dance loving audience. Nina, played by Natalie Portman, lives in a cloistered apartment with her controlling over-the-hill-dancer mother. She sleeps on childish pink bedding while Mom strokes her hair, a music box pings tinny notes and a porcelain ballerina turns. This is probably the weakest part of the film since their mother-daughter relationship is an on-the-nose stereotype but considering the tradition of melodrama the film belongs to, probably not a big deal.

Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Requim for a Dream) puts enormous faith in Portman’s acting skills since much of the story is told in close up on her. Nina’s desires stream through Portman’s face so authentically it will make you wonder about Portman’s own experiences as an actress and her similarities to the character. It’s also interesting that Portman’s real mother is, like her character’s mother, an artist who is heavily invested in her daughter’s career. This might be turf that Portman really really knows. I guess that’s why the simplicity of Nina’s relationship with her Mom, or better yet the predictability, is kind of disappointing. But I’m harping on a little thing.

Vincent Cassel isn’t bad as Thomas Leroy, the ballet’s director and puppet master, but I blame Aronofsky and Portman that he isn't better. Aronofsky let him slide in some scenes that he looked a little lost in and Portman is so good that someone is bound to look bad next to her. High marks to Mila Kunis, who we know from “That 70s Show” for holding her own next to Portman in full bloom. Black Swan is a top shelf melodrama.

Bush League: Voice Over

These papers are about one third the total it took to draft out the final voice over for Bush League. I never thought it would be this much work to hone it down. I reworked the opening during the holidays to make the first act more accessible and had to reopen this can of worms. Filmmaking is really hard but I never imagined I could love something this much. But what a pain in the ass. Really.

A Few More Photos

These are from Venezuela 2010: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5365991519/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5365991577/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5366604770/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5365991753/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5365991883/in/photostream/

and one from Tel Aviv:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5365992041/in/photostream/

Street Photographer Vivian Maier

Here's a great little video about a street photographer from Chicago named Vivian Maier who worked as a nanny but spent all her free time shooting street photos. Amazing street photos: (Thanks Hani)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWEDOnBfDUI&feature=player_embedded#

Trucker Buddy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/2652858758/ There are some people in life who you meet and you can’t and don’t know why but you just love them right off the bat - that’s how I feel about my friend Danny Kupkie. He and I worked in Iraq for almost two years together. At that time he was putting a lot of his income into his heavy haul trucking business back in Illinois while I was working to pay off my student loans. As I got to know him I also heard a lot about the Peterbilt truck he had back home. He told me that it had gold flake paint and custom 9/11 murals on three sides, which I found impressive. I got to see him and his truck when he was passing through San Diego last spring, which resulted in the video below.

Danny is headed out to Afghanistan this month to work. I’m wishing him success and a VERY safe return.

http://vimeo.com/13119379

More photos from Venezuela and the Revolution Will Not be Televised

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5307394038/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5307382952/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5307382812/

The man with the sugarcane is in an area called Los Llanos in the SW of Venezuela. It’s an expansive plain veined with wetlands, there are giant rodents called capybaras, snakes, piranha, fresh water dolphins, cayman and birds birds birds. The dog is in Caracas, poor devil, that’s a tough town even if you have teeth. The flowers are on the road going from Los Llanos toward the Andes. Three weeks and at least a thousand miles by car around Venezuela and we didn’t bump into Hugo Chavez once. I would have liked to.

The Revolution Will Not be Televised is a documentary film about Chavez and the coup that temporarily took him out of office in 2002. It captures his overthrow from inside the president’s mansion, which is an incredible filmmaking feat. But the most important part concerns the Venezuelan people’s reaction to his removal, which is stunningly democratic. Less directly, it’s a comment on the American popular narrative of Venezuela and the willful misinformation campaign(s) that shape it. Man we get some whack information here. I actually thought he was a dictator until I went. That said, don’t listen to Oliver Stone or Sean Penn either.

Unfortunately it’s not available on Netflix or available on Amazon but you can watch the whole thing free here.

And here’s a YouTube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id--ZFtjR5c

Best Books of the Year

These are the best books I read this year. The Shadow of the Sun is non-fiction written by Poland's only foreign correspondent during the cold war. This book is a collection of his best stories about Africa from the 1960s all the way through the late 1980s. This man saw a lot in Africa and he writes beautifully.

Absurdistan is a novel about the obese son of a Russian oligarch who is waylaid in the fictional Central Asian republic of Absurdistan as it falls into civil war. If you've been to Iraq or Afghanistan and have a hard time expressing to yourself and others the absurdity of what you witnessed, this book is like a love letter. It's Catch-22 for the last decade. (I love you Gary Shteyngart)

The Dirt is about Motley Crue. I didn't like them until I read this. It turns out that Nikki Six is kind of an American hero. This book is not written by the band members so it is legible but it's filthy enough to make you think they wrote it themselves.

New Photos: Venezuela

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5305366166/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5304770895/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cykuck/5304770853/

When I met the soldier at the top he asked me where I was from. In bad Spanish I said I was from the States to which he quickly and casually replied, "Oh, so you're an imperialist." I think I'm still trying to decide if he's right or not - though it's certainly not how I think of myself.

Venezuela Jan 2010