NYC pt1

I've just returned from twelve fun filled days in New York City. Man, I love that place so much. The impetus to head there this time, not that I need much encouragement, was Last Ride played at MoMA as part of  Adelaide Produces, a programme curated of films that have been produced with the assistance of the Adelaide Film Festival. I've been lucky enough to accompany the film to many great places around the world over the last year and half but this screening was very special indeed. Last Ride is unapologetically an 'art house' film, and MoMA is arguably one of THE greatest of art houses! Here, the audiences were really appreciative, their questions and comments afterwards were encouraging and insightful. It was a great experience all round. I think NY is the one city in the world other than Melbourne, where I feel at 'home'. When I'm there I feel as though every moment, on every street, holds the potential for something amazing to happen. A good friend described New York as 'Disneyland for Adults'. It's such an apt description. I love the way how you can have no real plan but just set off in a direction and you will soon stumble upon something great. Whether it be some incredible architectural, retail or gastronomic experience, strange and wonderful people or being drawn to the details and the incidental moments of beauty that spontaneously jump out while strolling block after glorious block.

LA LA pt 1

Currently in L.A. on route to New York where Last Ride is screening at The Museum of Modern Art! More on that later... Also I've recently signed to SKUNK here in L.A for commercial representation in the U.S, so it has been a good opportunity to meet the team face to face and not via skype. SKUNK has a great roster of directors, including fellow aussie John Hillcoat (The Road, The Proposition) and one of my favorite Belgian directors Koen Mortier who made a great film Ex Drummer a couple of years back (Such a freaky film, so wrong but so right. Watch the first 5 minutes here.).

I've only been to L.A a few times, but each time it creeps a little more under my skin. I can see why some people love it and some people hate it. Even though I find it a pretty tricky place at times, I'm really starting to like the place and all the possibility it holds.

Nat (below) is travelling with me and this is the first time we have been 'child free' for a long while. It's a good time. Of course we are missing the kids, but it's so good to spending  some quality time together!

Love In Hi-Def

Shot with the new Arri Alexa for the first time last week... I think I'm in love.

The Red is dead.

Adalita

I want to send a shout out to my friend Adalita who is currently touring for her debut solo release simply titled 'Adalita'. Both Adalita and her former band Magic Dirt have been a huge inspiration to me over the years, and I'm very excited about her taking the very brave step forward and releasing music as a solo artist. Adalita has created a very special album. Intimate, raw, powerful and deeply personal as the record explores some of the emotional territory she has traversed since the sad death of her former band mate and best friend Dean Turner.

I was really blown away when I first heard the music. Adalita came over for dinner and afterwards we sat in the lounge and listened to an un-mastered copy of the album. I respect Ad for being so open and direct in the way she has made this record. It's such an honest and sincere document both sonically and in it's content.

I took the photographed above of Adalita (click for larger version) late last year. As it's her voice that features so predominately on the album, I really wanted to take a photo of her 'throat', as well as try and show some of the turbulence of her life over the past 12 months. The whole album is pretty much just Ad's voice mixed above her trademark dirty distorted guitar (like it was originally a full tilt rock album, but the rest of the band has been turned down and you are just left with Adalita's tracks), I'm moved by the simplicity of the arrangements, which are almost minimalist at times, and yet they constantly reveal ideas far more complex.

Check out Adalita here on iTunes.

Here endith the raving.

Heart Worn

I've had this clip of Townes Van Zandt singing Waiting Around To Die parked in the Hoaxville cue for far to long. Last night I was driving home from a recce in country Victoria with DOP Jeremy Rouse and he clicked on the CD player in the car and this very track came on. This clip is one of the most perfect examples of what a music video could be as apposed to what most are. Purely performance based the film mkaers captured something very spontaneous, raw and touching. It's an excerpt  from the film Heartworn Highway, which I have on DVD and it's currently one of the 1500.

So, so beautiful.

And I dream about the red of his guitar and the blue his shirt.

YOUTHVILLE

I saw this a week or so ago and it's really stayed with me.  The film feels like you have tapped into someones 'memories' or you have tapped into the way we remember memories. It's not a collection of momentous, epic events, but rather a sequence of regular moments that when cut together create a real sense of the time these kids spent together, just hanging out, 'spanning time' (insert link to Photo Booth Scene from Buffalo 66, which sadly doesn't seem to be on the YouTubes). Sure these kids are good looking hipsters and there are skateboards, but I'm sure if any kid with a bunch of friends shot and cut enough footage and synched a moving track underneath you could get something similar. I guess thats whats cool about the film, it's not what they are doing, it's the fact someone did it! Very cool.

If I find out that this is actually 'branded content' for a Nokia camera phone, Sony HD thingy or a pair of shoes, I'll be super disappointed!

(R)ADELAIDE pt2

While in Adelaide I saw the premiere of four upcoming Australian features, all of them worthwhile in their own unique way. Mrs Clareys Concert, Here I Am by Bec Cole (couldn't find a web link), Snowtown by Justin Kurzel (more on this later perhaps) and Hail a film by my friend Amiel Courtin-Wilson. I was lucky to be on set a few times taking photographs and I really loved seeing the way Amiel worked with a very small crew in an intimate and inspiring way. Despite the fact the film was shown as a 'work in progress', with some work still to do, it was still an amazingly pure piece of cinema. On this night it was such a pleasure to watch Amiel and crew celebrate what has been a difficult and all consuming process for them all. As we all clambered into the wee small hours it reminded me of the extreme sense of accomplishment that comes from just completing a film. Well before and regardless of the real world markers of box office, reviews, festivals and awards. Just getting it 'finished', with credits tacked on the front and back and flickering on a big screen in the dark is enough and worth celebrating in itself.

Congrats Amiel!

(r)ADELAIDE pt1

Have just returned from a week in Adelaide where I was invited to be part of The Hive, which is a bit like a creative think tank encouraging the 'cross pollination' of ideas amongst artists from different creative disciplines. For five days I was in the 'lab' with a bunch of really inspiring people. Film directors, theatre directors, choreographers, artists, actors and musicians. I felt very lucky to part of the talent pool but perhaps the greatest thing was the time that we were given to just talk about ideas, with no real quantative outcome in mind. To see how for example choregrpahers Meryl Tankard or Gideon Obarzenak would approach a story idea or just ideas in general. It was a great amount of time very well spent. I went in with a film idea and came out with an idea for exhibition, one that I had been thinking about for a while but it was only half an idea, now I have a full idea and I'm very keen to develop it further. It was so nice to be in a development based workshop that was about 'ideas' and not funding or structure or distribution strategies.

It was held in conjunction with the Adelaide Film Festival, which has fast become the best and most progressive film festivals in Australia. We launched Last Ride there two years ago this week. Festival Director Katrina Sedgwick is one of the coolest people I know. I saw her introduce world premieres, launch programmes and funding initiatives, drive guests around and hug the caterers. Katrina has a the very special quality that I have tried to implement in my own life where when she is talking with you, it feels as though you are the most important thing at that time, regardless of the room full of people around her, or the hundred other things that might be taking up her headspace. She is very present in this way and I find it a most generous quality in her and in people in general.

Beautiful light in Adelaide at this time of year...

AT MIKES

LIKE, LIKE.

I really like the short films of Everynone (I put up 'Words' a while back) The films have such a nice tone to them. Warm and affirming but still very human and understated.

Amazing Story, Amazing Photos

Very little is know about the photography of Vivian Maier, a street photographer who took photos from 1950 through to the early 90's. She was a Nanny but took a camera out on her days off. It wasn't until she died and her things were sold at auction that thousands of medium format negatives and undeveloped rolls of film were discovered.

Observed, playful and with an unique eye for unusual characters and details. It's hard to believe if her whork had not been discovered by accident this incredible catalogue of photographs may have remained unseen.

The story below reveals some details of her life, but essentially she remains a mystery.

Alot more info and photographs at this blog.

She and her photographs remind a little of what Chuck Close is saying in the post below. I don't think she was bundled up waiting for inspiration to strike. She was out there 'doing it'.

Thanks Chuck

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case." Chuck Close

(via JMc's FB status update)

There's a story on every corner

This clip has been doing the rounds a bit, but I think it's a great reminder that stories (and characters for those stories) are found in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times. I wonder if this guys '15 minutes' will help him get off the street and into a recording booth somewhere. I hope so.

SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE

THE QUEEN OF COOL

I think I have contributed to a hundred or so hits to the you tube clip below over the past few days. It's one of the coolest live performance clips I've seen. I saw Blondie last week on tour with the Pretenders and my friend Adalita supporting (who by the way is releasing her debut solo album early next year and it's amazing! More on that later though...)

Blondie may look a little different these days, but man she is still the Queen of Cool!

I want this song in Cherry Bomb!