Media Guerilla

Avant - Director


The Coup - Pick a Bigger Weapon


Eleventh Dream Day - Zeroes and Ones


Elf Power - Back to the Web


Feist - Open Season


The Fever - In the City of Sleep


Godsmack - IV


The Goo Goo Dolls - Let Love In


Robyn Hitchcock - This Is the BBC


Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris - All the Roadrunning


Amel Larrieux - Morning


Praxis - Zurich


Push To Talk - Push To Talk


Rihanna - A Girl Like Me


Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops


Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions


Starlight Mints - Drowaton


The Streets - The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living


Taking Back Sunday - Louder Now


Tom Verlaine - Around (instrumental) - Songs and Other Things (vocal)

In what is certain to be one of the greatest DVD announcements this year, Paramount has announced that POLICE SQUAD is coming on DVD!

Source: http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_8462.html

Sorry I'm late posting this, I know that some of the line-up for Cannes was posted last night, but I went to Milwaukee to see Ike Reilly last night, doing a pretty intimate acoustic/electric set. We had dinner at this Indian place (my wife's suggestion: DON'T EAT ANYTHING) up the street, and talked about a million things: music, kids, Ping Pong, film, Lake County events, and the upcoming (nameless) DVD label I'm going to be running. Maybe I'll have some sort of contest to name it.

Anyway, on to Cannes!

The Official Selections kick off with Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code, which is screening Out Of Competition. Highlights include films by:

Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother, Talk To Her, Bad Education)
Sofia Coppola (Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation)
Guillermo Del Toro (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Hellboy)
Alejandro Gozalez Inarritu (Amorres Perros, 21 Grams)
Aki Kaurismaki (Man Without A Past)
Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko)
Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise/Sunset, A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life)
Ken Loach (Sweet Sixteen, Bread & Roses)
Ye Lou (Purple Butterfly)
Nanni Moretti (The Son's Room)

Official Selections close with a new film by Tony Gatlif (Vengo)

I'll be back tomorrow with the selections in the Un Certain Regard category.

One of the things I'd like to do more of is blog about films when they first come to my attention. One of the ways I run into films is when they add me on Myspace. It seems I'm ALWAYS getting adds from Myspace Film Pages. I think I come up pretty quickly on a search for film festivals on Myspace.

Anyway, here is an add request I just got for a music documentary on homosexual rappers. Sounds very interesting.

There is no word about if Gangstalicious is interviewed.

Also, if you're interested in my Myspace page:
www.myspace.com/lakecountyfilmfest

The Kleptones, the appropriately named mash-up collective who made the GENIUS Yoshimi Battles The Hip Hop Robots have a new DOUBLE album of sampled goodness, entitled 24 HOURS available on their website. Certainly one of the highlights is The Clash's "Rock The Casbah" mixed with David Bowie's "It Ain't Easy", and another is Wham!'s "Careless Whisper" mixed with Bon Jovi's "Dead Of Alive".

Go get yours now:
http://www.kleptones.com/pages/downloads_24h.html

I came back Monday after going to the IFP Producer's Series and wrote a nice long post about the affable Steve Conrad and two of his upcoming projects. The first Quebec will be shooting in Chicago soon with John C. Reilly and Sean William Scott. The other is David Rees's My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable. While putting in some pictures, my browser crashed.

I guess that teaches me to write posts in a separate notepad, instead of directly into the browser (A lesson that I apparently haven't learned since I'm doing it again).

That annoyed me, and I didn't feel like typing it out again.

And then various bits of news came my way.

First was the phone call from someone starting a Film Festival at Lake Forest College. Hearing about the sort of resources he's got was very exciting to me. I helped him out for a long while, and put in an offer to act as a paid consultant.

Second was an E-mail from one of the judges from the LCFF. He informed me that he was starting up a DVD label, and had been working with the directors of two of the films that he saw here. The Traveler and As Smart As They Are (as well as his own work), and thought that someday I might sign on in some sort of "official capacity".

Of course, he had no idea that after running a record label many years ago, it's definitely been on my mind to want to get back into that arena, but with film. Seeing so many great films that don't have distro will do that to you. Instantly I wrote him back with some ideas for a Short Film Compilation. Things sound promising.

Of course, we're still working on moving into pre-production on QWERTY. We sent the portions of the screenplay that use SCRABBLE (tm) to Hasbro for approval. We'll be having our fingers crossed on THAT!

And, we're trying to put together a monthly screening series at CLC, to go with the International Film Series.

It seems like we're going to have a VERY busy period ahead of us, which we like (I think).

Who could possibly replace the great Ossie Davis, who played JFK in the original Bubba Ho-Tep?

How about Paul Giamatti?

Apparently he's going to be playing Col. Parker in the sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep. Assumedly this is Col. Tom Parker, Elvis's manager.

Beans - Only
- Avant Rap/Jazz. Features William Parker and Hamid Drake.
Myspace Account - With 2 songs from Only
All About Jazz - Review
Blogcritics - Review


Concretes - In Colour

Myspace Account-
Pitchfork Media - Review

Dead To Fall - Phoenix Throne

Samples

Ani Difranco - Carnagie Hall

Official Release Page (Click Order Now for some samples)

Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics

Official Site, with the entire album streaming
Myspace Account
Pitchfork Review

Medeski, Martin & Wood - Note Bleu

Official Site - 4 songs streaming
Myspace Account






Morrissey - Ringleader of the Tormentors

Official Site

Pink - I'm Not Dead

Placebo - Meds

Official Site
Myspace Account

Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime II

Official Site
Myspace Account

Bubba Sparxxx - Charm

Official Site

Umphrey's McGee - Safety In Numbers

Official Site
Myspace Account





Vines - Vision Valley

Official Site
Myspace Account
Pitchfork Review

I know it's a week late, but I just found out about this:

http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/video/sub_122.shtml

PSA announcements from the characters of the Office. There's some pretty funny stuff there. Thanks to Donlee for pointing them out.

National Releases:

The Benchwarmers

- Jon Heder eats up some of his 15 minutes of fame by starring in a movie with David Spade and Rob Schneider. It's about nerds playing baseball! It's from the director of Happy Gilmore and Problem Child! If you're still reading this, you deserve to see this movie. All those lucky film critics out there didn't have to sit through it, since the studio didn't screen it for them.

Take The Lead

- Antonio Banderas stars in this mixture of Mad Hot Ballroom (the 2nd highest grossing doc of '05) and Dangerous Minds. 64% on rottentomatoes right now, making it the highest scorer for the weekend.


Lucky Number Sleven

- 3rd for the weekend on screen count, but #1 on advertising, from what I've seen. This is one of those films with an endless cast. Josh Hartnett, Stanley Tucci, Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Lucy Liu? Jeez. and 62% on rottentomatoes. I suppose if there was time to get a movie in this weekend, I suppose I'd see this.

Phat Girlz

- An aspiring plus size fashion designer struggles to find love and acceptance. Starring Mo'Nique.

Limited Releases:

Friends With Money

- Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener and Francis McDormand star in this Sundance drama.




When Do We Eat?

-Lesley Ann Warren and Michael Lerner head up an ensemble cast for this comedy about a Passover seder amongst the dysfunctional Stuckman clan. When the head Stuckman (Lerner) accidentally takes a tab of ecstasy, the dinner goes awry and uncomfortable truths emerge. WDWE recently screened at the Omaha Film Festival.

Opening on 44 screens this weekend.


Free Zone

- Natalie Portman and Hana Laszlo star in this Israeli drama. It was nominated for 4 Israeli Academy Awards, and brought Hana Laszlo an award for Best Actress at Cannes, but it's also got an extremely low 27% on Rottentomatoes (although only on 11 reviews.)

I Am A Sex Addict

- Caveh Zahedi wrote, directed and starred in this autobiographical film about his obsession with prostitutes. After a little bit of trouble it appears that IAASA WILL be opening in San Francisco as planned.

Even though my film festival was the Midwest Premiere of Lady Vengeance, I didn't get time to see it. It looks like I'll finally get to see it at the Indianapolis International Film Festival, which I'm sure to write more about later. For now, you can find the trailer here: http://films.tartanfilmsusa.com/ladyv/clips/LadyVengeanceTrailerHigh.mov

Two new music videos today from more bands that will be at Lollapalooza.

The new Calexico album, Garden Ruin comes out next week. This video is for "Cruel"

Downloadable .mov file

The 2nd video is the highly anticipated video from Gnarls Barkley. Gnarls Barkley is Danger Mouse (The Grey Album, Gorillaz, Danger Doom) and Cee-lo (Goodie Mob).

Their debut album, St. Elsewhere comes out May 9th.

Downloadable .mov file

Steven Gould's JUMPER is a great book.

JUMPER plays out like my favorite type of science-fiction, which is completely reality based, with one element of science-fiction added in. I know everyone who likes science-fiction loves Star Trek, Farscape and Battlestar Gallactica, but they seem too far out there for me to really enjoy. On the other hand shows like Firefly, Quantum Leap, Taken and the 4400 are right up my alley, as well as the books of Michael Crichton and movies like Contact.

JUMPER is a great example of this genre. It begins with a simple premise: What if you could teleport anywhere you'd been before? In no time, 17-year old David Rice has done what I'm sure we would all do, robbed a bank and set up a life for himself. It's been years (actually at least a decade) since I read JUMPER, but I used to always say that David Rice spends the rest of the novel in a Holden Caulfieldesque malaize, dealing with loneliness and adolescence, with just the added twist of having lots of money and the ability to teleport.

So, what of the movie? David Goyer has written a screenplay for it. Certainly Batman Begins fits into the same reality-based sci-fi that we're looking for. IMDB says that Jim Uhls worked on the screenplay as well. He's been pretty quiet since writing Fight Club (which everyone credits to Chuck Palahniuk anyway). But now they've got the writer of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (and XXX2!) doing rewrites? Ouch.

And who is directing? Doug Liman! That's probably enough for me to go see it even if it wasn't a novel I love already (even though I didn't go see Mr. And Mrs. Smith in the theatre).

All in all, I'm sure this will be in my list of most anticipated releases of 07.

And what about Steven Gould? He followed up JUMPER with a great book called Wildside, about a group of kids that find a portal to an alternate earth where humans never existed. I didn't like the two novels after that very much, so I lost track of him, but it turns out he wrote a sequel to JUMPER that I'll be picking up ASAP.

Articles: http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=18445

I know a handful of people that are going to be wearing out THIS DVD.

June 13, 2006.

3-Disc Set. 15 Episodes. Commentary on 7 of them.













Great Flick. Just missed out on my top 10 last year.

June 6th, 2006.

New trailers online in the last week or so:

Everyone at your local nerdery was tittering (a word I can hardly say without giggling like a schoolgirl) over the teaser trailer for THE SIMPSONS MOVIE.

Apparently people are all different colors of pissed, upset and annoyed about the trailer for the upcoming 9/11 movie United 93. It looks interesting to me.

And, after finding out last night that there's such a thing as the Gay Olympics (because the real Olympics aren't gay enough), and even that it was held here in Chicago in it's last incarnation, I'm strangely "curious" about the trailer for Guys and Balls, a German comedy about a gay vs. straight soccer match. I'm sure somewhere there's a joke about not touching balls with your hands in Soccer, but the main character was the GOALIE, seems like he'd be perfect for job!

Tony Kaye (American History X) directed the new video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, called "Dani California". The song is taken from their new album Stadium Arcadium (due May 9th). The music sounds like all of the other bland music they've been putting out post-Blood Sugar Sex Magik, but even on youtube's horrible resolution, I can still tell this video is pretty cool, featuring the RHCP in a pastiche of music videos, including The Beatles, Nirvana, Prince...and is that Avril Lavigne?

This is the first work from Tony Kaye in the eight years since his public battle with Miramax over AHX.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California
--

I'm sure I'm VERY late on this, but I finally saw Kanye West's video for Heard Em Say, by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind). I thought it was really great. You can download a .mov file here:

http://sohotrightnow.redshirtmayhem.com/videoblog-files/Heard_em_say_gondry.mov

Kanye is definitely on my list to see at Lollapalooza this year.

The Media Guerilla is open!