Teaser trailer to HEAVEN. A film I’m planning to shoot later this year.

Searching for Sugarman (2012)

Wow. What a great doc­u­men­tary. I was pleas­antly sur­prised by how the story moved me and had my com­plete atten­tion through­out the film. It uses the sense of mys­tery and nar­ra­tive struc­ture that made the story great. Right in the mid­dle of the film, the story takes a big turn that changed the tra­jec­tory of the story. It was sort of an unbe­liev­able story that fit the mythic struc­ture perfectly.

Some great quotes from his con­struc­tion work col­league, Rick Emmerson:

“He had this kind of mag­i­cal qual­ity that all the gen­uine poets and artists have: to ele­vate things. To get above the mun­dane, the pro­saic. All the bull­shit. All the medi­oc­rity that’s every­where. The artist, the artist is the pioneer.”

“What he’s demon­strated, very clearly, is that you have a choice. He took all that tor­ment, all that agony, all that con­fu­sion and pain, and he trans­formed it into some­thing beau­ti­ful. He’s like the silk­worm, you know? You take this raw mate­r­ial, and you trans­form it. You come out with some­thing that wasn’t there before. Some­thing beau­ti­ful. Some­thing per­haps tran­scen­dent. Some­thing per­haps eter­nal. Inso­far as he does that, I think he’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the human spirit, of what’s pos­si­ble. That you have a choice “And this has been my choice, to give you Sugar Man”. Now, have you done that? Ask yourself.”

Highly rec­om­mended.

I Am Not a Hipster (2012)

• The film is about a tal­ented but tor­tured musi­cian named Brook who has a rough week when his 3 sis­ters come to spread their mother’s ashes to the sea.
  
• His sis­ters are like the light that shines into his dark world. Des­tin Cret­ton does a great job of mix­ing humor and seri­ous moments, mak­ing it very enjoy­able to watch. You cry and laugh, giv­ing you a nice bal­ance between the two emotions.
• Direc­tor Cret­ton does a good job flesh­ing out the main char­ac­ter as a sen­si­tive, yet tal­ented musi­cian, who feels things deeply per­haps more deeply then the peo­ple that sur­round him.
• The film works as a nice col­lec­tion of nicely observed lit­tle moments. Like how musi­cal notes add up to be big­ger then the sum of it’s parts, the film does a good job of sim­i­lar accumulation.
• I wish I got to learn more about the other char­ac­ters instead of mainly focused on the main character.
• The cin­e­matog­ra­phy was nat­ural, organic, and fit the story very well. Nice moments of using color and light con­trast to accen­tu­ate the mood. Edit­ing was great, shot com­po­si­tion choices helped to tell the story.

The Retrieval Premiere

Today was the World Pre­miere for The Retrieval, which I helped make 2 years ago. It was a beau­ti­ful film. Had moments sim­i­lar to August Evening. I can’t describe the feel­ing, but I think the clos­est I can think of is a quiet con­tem­pla­tion about how I’m liv­ing my life and my rela­tion­ships. There’s a bit of uni­ver­sal human­ity in his films that works emo­tion­ally. Proud to have been a part of the film.

Bright Star

Finally watched Bright Star. Love, poetry, visuals, beautifully crafted. Story sort of static.

2 shots I thought were very cinematic.

- In the bedroom when the curtain lifts up.

- In the hallway when she hears of the news of John Keat’s Death.

I love how these two shots show both the soothing and the sufferings of love in two similar but very contrasting shots.