Five Stars from Film Threat

May 5, 2008

Don R. Lewis just reviewed Catalog for Film Threat. At the risk of being self-aggrandizing, I won't pull any quotes here. Needless to say, I'm touched. Thanks Don!

Posted by David Lowery at 11:23 AM | Comments (1)

And also...

May 4, 2008

...one audience member told me after the second screening that she'd seen my film the day before and had dreamed about it that night. And someone else saw it whose response meant more to me than pretty much any reaction I've had. So all in all, Maryland was a great film festival, even though I spent most of it holed up in the hotel room trying to decide what version of the Bosque Brown scene to put in the movie.

On the train ride back to New York this afternoon, the train was stalled for over an hour. Word got around that someone got killed in the tracks.

Posted by David Lowery at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)

Variety!

May 3, 2008

The Baltimore CityPaper seems to have reviewed every single movie screening at the Maryland Film Festival. And while they make a big factual error in their brief appraisal of my film (does my sister really look twentysomething?), they also give me a nice pullquote: "Disturbing for a variety of reasons." That works for me. So does John Waters' presence at my screening this evening.

Oh, and Benny Safdie's short The Acquaintances Of A Lonely John got into Cannes, too! Amazing!

Posted by David Lowery at 12:48 AM | Comments (1)

The Lowery/Safdie Special at The Maryland Film Festival

May 1, 2008

One festival I am going to, through strange channels of convenience, is the Maryland Film Festival, where Catalog is continuing its string of festival appearances alongside Benny Safdie's The Aquaintances Of A Lonely John. Our films have developed a strong bond since first playing together at Slamdance; it'll be great to see the kinship continue in yet another city. We're in Shorts Block Three, and we're screening on Friday, May 2 at 5:30pm and the following Sunday at 11:00am. Also in this block is Andy Betzer's wonderful Small Apartment.

I'm hitching an Amtrak to Baltimore tomorrow afternoon. James is flying in with Merrrily, Merrily and a lot other friends will be there too. It'll be a nice weekend of hanging out, watching films (I'm especially excited to finally have the chance to see Ramin Baharani's Chop Shop) and pretending I don't need to go back to the hotel room and get as much cut on St. Nick as humanly possible.

Posted by David Lowery at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)

The Guatemalan Handshake

April 29, 2008

You'll hear it said that Todd Rohal's The Guatemalan Handshake is a special film. Special in a short-bus sort of way. This is true in as much as its humor is so sweetly juvenile, its wisdom so innocent and naive, its predilections alternatively charming and confounding. Here is a film that operates on the same logic that compelled Benjamin Franklin to recommend the turkey, rather than the eagle, as a symbol for the newly formed United States; it holds no illusions about itself, and its idea of majesty is decidedly against the grain.

And yet majestic it is, and big and gorgeous and every bit deserving of the widescreen 35mm frame to which its been inscribed. That same format is how it should be seen, which is why it's a crying shame that the the first time I saw The Guatemalan Handshake was on an airplane, on my laptop, on a screener DVD that Todd Rohal had given me. Any circumstances are the right ones for a film good enough to transport you away from them entirely, but even so I felt that I was missing out: this film was meant to be seen on the biggest screen possible, looking all glorious. Sadly, I never had the chance to see it in this manner, but the next best thing is the new DVD from Benten films.

Like Benten's Quiet City / Dance Party USA release, this is a 2-disc affair that, to the best of its abilities, offers audiences an inclusive experience similar to the traveling picture show Rohal took on the road last year. There's the movie, of course, lovingly transfered and beautifully presented; then there are the six short films made by various cast and crew members, and Rohal's beloved music video for Ola Podrida's Lost And Found, and the behind the scenes documentaries and slideshows. It's a lot to take in; me, I'm still stuck on the packaging, designed by James Braithwaite, and the essay by David Gordon Green, which is better than any review I could ever write.

And the film itself. Watching it again the other day, I realized that there are moments from it so ingrained in my memory that I'd forgotten they were actually part of this film. I didn't even remember watching them; I just remembered them, like I'd come into some memories that weren't my own. It's been a joy to pull them out of the ether and put them back in their rightful place.

Other things to make you think about getting this disc:

• That essay by David Gordon Green, entitled Outrage The Rooster.


• This interview with composer and Ola Podrida frontman David Wingo..
  
• One of my favorite sequences from the film:


• The fact that Jonathan Rudak, art director on St. Nick, called me up immediately after seeing it to see if I happened to be near enough to Todd Rohal to give him a hug of thanks. I wasn't, but it's the thought that counts.

A final note: if you order the DVD through Todd's website, you'll get a third disc of his short films, and a 35mm film strip from one of the original exhibition prints. Enough said.

Posted by David Lowery at 11:14 AM | Comments (2)

Portishead

It's a little past midnight on a cold, rainy Brooklyn night, and I just bought the new Portishead album. I haven't listened to it yet. I'm waiting until I can turn out the lights and put in my headphones and span time.

* * *

Speaking of spanning time, this article on the affects of nonlinear editing technology on Terence Malick's filmmaking new issue of Reverse Shot is well worth your consideration. There was a point where I'd never mention such a piece without using it a springboard for some discussion of my own. These days, though, I feel like I've run big words and ideas to spend them on.

I need to read more.

Posted by David Lowery at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)

Edwardian Script

April 26, 2008

A Catalog Of Anticipations generally looks amazing on the big screen - except for its titles, which, rendered in Edwardian Script, look cheap and aliased, no matter how many bits I squeezed into it. I think I first developed a fixation on this calligraphic typeface when Jonathan Glazer used it in Birth. Its regal elegance, its rigid grace bespoke a certain timelessness that I was seeking out, both in my own work and that of others; and while it maintained the simplicity of a sans serif font, it wasn't bound by the almost trite modernity that I so frequently associate with such glyphs.

Catalog needed the font, and it worked too for The Outlaw Son (although the titles in the short version that most people have seen are in Helvetica), and for this site. But seeing it on the big screen recently, looking like so many pixels forced into artificial curves, left me feeling like our romance had run its course. I designed the initial St. Nick webpage with another favorite of mine, Helvetica Neue Ultralight, but now I'm finding myself moving back towards regular Light, or even just plain old Helvetica. And what's more: when I think about the actual title of St. Nick and how it'll be presented on film, visions of serifs dance through my head.

Okay, that render is done.

Posted by David Lowery at 10:38 PM | Comments (2)

One More Week Until Iron Man!

In lieu of other things I've been meaning to write about, I just want to say that I'm super hyped about Iron Man. Thursday at midnight! It's gonna be awesome. I'm so ready to have a good time that it'd have to be almost impossibly bad for me not to love it.

Posted by David Lowery at 6:27 PM | Comments (0)

The Pleasure Of Being Selected For Director's Fortnight

April 25, 2008

If Josh Safdie's hand were in front of me right now, I would give it a congratulatory shake; his exquisite debut feature The Pleasure Of Being Robbed (which I reviewed for Spout way back when) has been selected as the closing night film of the Director's Fortnight at Cannes! It doesn't happen often in this workaday world, but sometimes things just work out the way they're supposed to, and amazing films that deserve recognition actually get it. Bravo!

Posted by David Lowery at 10:24 AM | Comments (1)