Friday, July 29, 2011
Kevin Cruz Describes His Oscar Campaign Plans, Defends $20 Ticket Cost for Being approved Run
When word hit that Kevin Cruz was striving for that Academy awards having a being approved theatrical run for his divisive film, Red-colored Condition, experts split over his perceived goals and, more particularly, the financial relation to his week-lengthy engagement at L.A.’s beloved, family-run New Beverly Cinema. Arrived at for comment, Cruz described his award season intent and why he’s charging $20 for any screening and Q&A in a theater where you can aquire a double feature for $7 every evening, frequently by having an amazing Q&A free of charge. Cruz, who’s accomplished a effective run so far together with his self-distributed Red-colored Condition roadshow tour charging $65 a ticket with little advertising costs and costs, will screen his film from August 19-25 in the New Beverly Cinema to be able to be eligible for a Academy consideration for his cast, including stars Michael Parks, Melissa Leo, and John Goodman. “To be obvious: this Academy-being approved run is STRICTLY concerning the Stars,” Cruz stated within an e-mail to Movieline (emphasis his). “I’m not searching for consideration (as well as kevsideration) personally Among the finest to determine the real talents behind our flick reach least a go at their propers.” Cruz’s overall honours season campaign plans follows the price-effective plotting of his release strategy, that was promoted through person to person, social networking, and Cruz’s established group of followers and podcast. “Naturally, consistent with every factor of [the] Red-colored Condition adventure so far, any campaign won't be any-budget,” Cruz authored. “I’m wishing good sense saves us a lot of money for pricey trade advertisements: When December 31st comes around, if there aren’t five better supporting actor performances compared to dramatic clinic Michael Parks works in Red-colored Condition, he should obtain a jerk, no? Same goes with John Goodman. Same goes with Melissa Leo. Same goes with anybody within our cast. Why Don't You them?” Technically, Cruz isn't four-walling the brand new Beverly being approved run, because it was arranged through director (and New Beverly landlord) Quentin Tarantino. The only-screen theater will function as a test run based on how Red-colored Condition tours in more compact movie theaters later on, with ticket sales dealing with Cruz’s SModcast.com site. While particulars of his arrangement using the New Beverly aren't known, it’s unclear how ticket sales is going to be split using the “Mom &lifier Pop single-screen theater tours” planned with this fall. In reaction to criticisms from the $20 ticket cost for his New Beverly run, Cruz highlights that it's not only a good deal in comparison towards the $65 ticket prices of his Red-colored Condition USA Tour and the $50 or more Canadian Red-colored Province Tour (August. 14-18), you will find also lower prices point choices for audiences who wish to see his film without investing just as much. “When it found the brand new Beverly, we figured, ‘$20 dollars for any first-run flick along with a Q&A is underselling it, but we may as well fill all of the seats for each show by using a cheap ticket cost,’” he described. “And if $20 is simply too much, skip the brand new Beverly screening. Wait two days watching it on any Video When Needed platform for half that cost beginning Labor Day: $9.99. “And should you don’t wish to pay to determine it whatsoever, you’ll likely have the ability to download a little Torrent version free of charge through the finish from the Red-colored Condition Labor Day debut. But still, someone will bitch that even THAT is too expensive in some way.” Cruz is, ultimately, playing a amounts game because he forges a brand new path in self-distribution, sans millions in P&A along with other costs. “I’m really thinking about changing the conventional theatrical release window by touring and selling Red-colored Condition tests-with-Q&A’s lengthy following the flick can be obtained for home video and streaming,” he stressed. “The ad-stays that start working two-days-out and price huge amount of money feel uncreative and inefficient. I’d rather walk lower the hill, because the guy stated, and fuck all individuals cows.” So that as Cruz highlights, other medication is beginning to provide the additional-value theatrical run strategy a go: “Now that [Francis Ford] Coppola is starting by himself multi-city, in-person theater tour for HIS film, I won’t be alone available on the highway any longer. Anybody else wanna come along later on, going all Direct-To-Fan? Seriously in: water’s fine.” For his experts, Cruz remains nonplussed. “Haters gonna hate: as long as they spell the title right and tell folks the title from the theater and also the dates we’re playing, I’ve got no complaints.”
Brand New Super 8 Clips
See two exclusive chunks.... It seems like we've been waiting ages for JJ Abrams' alien invader-meets-coming of age tale Super 8, since America got to see it months ago. Well, the ticking clock has nearly reached its end and the film will arrive over here next Friday, August 5. And now we have two new, exclusive clips from the film for your staring pleasure. The first clip finds young filmmakers Joe (Joel Courtney), Charles (Riley Griffiths), Cary (Ryan Lee), Martin (Gabriel Basso), Preston (Zach Mills) and Alice (Elle Fanning) kicking off some shooting for Charles' latest masterpiece. They decide to include a passing train for what the wannabe Hitchcock describes as "production value" but are shocked when the speeding locomotive suddenly crashes... In the second piece of footage, deputy sheriff Jackson Lamb (the ace Kyle Chandler) is trying to make sense of the chaos that has descended upon his previously sleepy town and then learns that his son, Joe, has vanished along with his pals. Naturally, he's not pleased. Keep your web browser pointed towards Empire for much more on the movie in the coming week...
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Rendition
CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is briefing a newly arrived CIA agent in a square in an unnamed country in North Africa (filmed in Marrakech) when a suicide attack kills the latter and eighteen other people. The target was a high ranking police official, Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), who is in liaison with the United States and whose tasks include conducting interrogations, and even overseeing the application of techniques amounting to torture. Fawal escapes unscathed.
Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer who lives in Chicago with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), their young son and his mother, is linked to a violent organization by telephone records indicating that known terrorist Rashid placed several calls to Anwar's cell phone. While returning to the United States from a conference in South Africa, he is detained by American officials and sent to a secret detention facility near the location of the suicide attack depicted earlier, where he is interrogated and tortured. Isabella is not informed and all records of him being on the flight from South Africa are erased, although records remain of him boarding the plane at Cape Town International Airport and making a purchase enroute.
For lack of more experienced staff, Freeman is assigned the task of observing the interrogation of Anwar, whose interrogator is Fawal himself. After Freeman briefly questions Anwar, he is convinced of Anwar's innocence. However, his boss, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), insists that the detention continue, justifying such treatments as necessary to save thousands from becoming victims of terrorism.
Growing worried, Isabella travels to Washington DC, where she meets up with an old friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), who now works as an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), and pleads with him to find out what has happened to her husband. Initially, she is informed that there had been a mistake in South Africa and Anwar was not on the flight, but Isabella presents Anwar's credit card record, which shows that Anwar had purchased something in the in-flight duty free shop, thus confirming that he was on the flight. Smith slowly pieces together details of Anwar's detention. He is unable to convince the senator, nor Corrine Whitman, who had ordered the rendition, to give proper details of the detention, nor to release him. After the senator advises him to let it go, as he is currently fighting to have a bill passed in Congress and it is not the right time to start debating an extraordinary rendition, Smith advises Isabella to get a very good lawyer he knows on the case, but she refuses. Upon hearing the confrontation from her office, his sympathetic secretary quietly tips Isabella off on when Whitman will be next in the office. The next day, Isabella confronts Whitman, but Whitman pretends not to know anything and avoids her questions. Frustrated, Isabella storms out of the office, only to go into labour in the hallway.
Eventually, Anwar confesses to have advised Rashid on how to make more powerful bombs, and to have been promised $40,000 in return. Freeman, suspicious that it is a false confession, asks Anwar where the money is and Anwar's response is that it was supposed to be delivered to him in South Africa, but the courier failed to show up. Freeman's suspicions are confirmed when he has the names Anwar gives traced by Interpol and draws a blank. He then Googles the names and finds out that they are the names of the Egyptian soccer team from the year Anwar left Egypt. He also expresses doubt as to whether Anwar would be willing to put his life, family and job in danger for $40,000 when he earns $200,000 a year in his job. He quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in a discussion with the minister of the interior on the value of intelligence gathered through torture:
I fear you speak upon the rack
Where men enforced do speak anything.
Without the consent of his superiors, and not caring what happens to him, Freeman gets a warrant for Anwar's release and sends him back to America via a clandestine ship to Spain. When Lee Mayers, his immediate boss, calls him to tell him to give Anwar back to Abasi Fawal, he simply hangs up. Angered by the injustice Anwar has suffered, Freeman then leaks the details of Anwar's detention to the American press, to the horror of Whitman and Senator Hawkins.
Another story line is shown in parallel. Abasi's daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) has run away from home with her boyfriend Khalid (Moa Khouas). Fatima sees a picture of Khalid's brother, but he does not tell her what has happened to him. Abasi is told that Khalid's brother was an inmate at his prison and later died. Fatima is unaware that Khalid is a member of a terrorist group until his friends are arrested at a planned march and he leads her to the terrorist group's base. Near the end of the movie, Fatima discovers a notebook that contains pictures of Khalid and his brother together, showing that they were extremely close, as well as a picture of the two brandishing AK-47s, then some pictures of a grief-stricken Khalid standing over his brother's corpse, some pictures of her father and finally a statement saying that Khalid is doing a deed in revenge for his brother's death. Realizing that Khalid's brother met his death at the hands of her father and that Khalid is about to assassinate him, she runs off. It is then revealed that this second story took place before the suicide attack (From the briefing with the CIA agent in the beginning we know that the first story took place AFTER the suicide attack). At the town square Fatima begs him not to do it, arguing that the target is her father. After removing the pin of his detonator he hesitates, and is therefore killed by the organizers of the attack. As a result he releases the handle of the detonator, and the bomb explodes, killing Fatima also. In the present, Abasi rushes to Khalid's apartment and discovers his grandmother, who is stricken with grief over the loss of both her grandchildren and Fatima. Abasi then realises that his daughter died trying to protect him and is filled with grief himself.
The record of a phone call supposedly made by Rashid to Anwar is not explained in the film. However, earlier it was mentioned that phones are sometimes passed on from one person to another (the DVD extras explain that there was a subplot dropped from the film that elaborated on this concept). Yet despite this reasonable doubt the CIA officials refused to release him. It turned out that in South Africa, while Anwar's phone was off, there had been a call to it from an unknown person.
Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer who lives in Chicago with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), their young son and his mother, is linked to a violent organization by telephone records indicating that known terrorist Rashid placed several calls to Anwar's cell phone. While returning to the United States from a conference in South Africa, he is detained by American officials and sent to a secret detention facility near the location of the suicide attack depicted earlier, where he is interrogated and tortured. Isabella is not informed and all records of him being on the flight from South Africa are erased, although records remain of him boarding the plane at Cape Town International Airport and making a purchase enroute.
For lack of more experienced staff, Freeman is assigned the task of observing the interrogation of Anwar, whose interrogator is Fawal himself. After Freeman briefly questions Anwar, he is convinced of Anwar's innocence. However, his boss, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), insists that the detention continue, justifying such treatments as necessary to save thousands from becoming victims of terrorism.
Growing worried, Isabella travels to Washington DC, where she meets up with an old friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), who now works as an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), and pleads with him to find out what has happened to her husband. Initially, she is informed that there had been a mistake in South Africa and Anwar was not on the flight, but Isabella presents Anwar's credit card record, which shows that Anwar had purchased something in the in-flight duty free shop, thus confirming that he was on the flight. Smith slowly pieces together details of Anwar's detention. He is unable to convince the senator, nor Corrine Whitman, who had ordered the rendition, to give proper details of the detention, nor to release him. After the senator advises him to let it go, as he is currently fighting to have a bill passed in Congress and it is not the right time to start debating an extraordinary rendition, Smith advises Isabella to get a very good lawyer he knows on the case, but she refuses. Upon hearing the confrontation from her office, his sympathetic secretary quietly tips Isabella off on when Whitman will be next in the office. The next day, Isabella confronts Whitman, but Whitman pretends not to know anything and avoids her questions. Frustrated, Isabella storms out of the office, only to go into labour in the hallway.
Eventually, Anwar confesses to have advised Rashid on how to make more powerful bombs, and to have been promised $40,000 in return. Freeman, suspicious that it is a false confession, asks Anwar where the money is and Anwar's response is that it was supposed to be delivered to him in South Africa, but the courier failed to show up. Freeman's suspicions are confirmed when he has the names Anwar gives traced by Interpol and draws a blank. He then Googles the names and finds out that they are the names of the Egyptian soccer team from the year Anwar left Egypt. He also expresses doubt as to whether Anwar would be willing to put his life, family and job in danger for $40,000 when he earns $200,000 a year in his job. He quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in a discussion with the minister of the interior on the value of intelligence gathered through torture:
I fear you speak upon the rack
Where men enforced do speak anything.
Without the consent of his superiors, and not caring what happens to him, Freeman gets a warrant for Anwar's release and sends him back to America via a clandestine ship to Spain. When Lee Mayers, his immediate boss, calls him to tell him to give Anwar back to Abasi Fawal, he simply hangs up. Angered by the injustice Anwar has suffered, Freeman then leaks the details of Anwar's detention to the American press, to the horror of Whitman and Senator Hawkins.
Another story line is shown in parallel. Abasi's daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) has run away from home with her boyfriend Khalid (Moa Khouas). Fatima sees a picture of Khalid's brother, but he does not tell her what has happened to him. Abasi is told that Khalid's brother was an inmate at his prison and later died. Fatima is unaware that Khalid is a member of a terrorist group until his friends are arrested at a planned march and he leads her to the terrorist group's base. Near the end of the movie, Fatima discovers a notebook that contains pictures of Khalid and his brother together, showing that they were extremely close, as well as a picture of the two brandishing AK-47s, then some pictures of a grief-stricken Khalid standing over his brother's corpse, some pictures of her father and finally a statement saying that Khalid is doing a deed in revenge for his brother's death. Realizing that Khalid's brother met his death at the hands of her father and that Khalid is about to assassinate him, she runs off. It is then revealed that this second story took place before the suicide attack (From the briefing with the CIA agent in the beginning we know that the first story took place AFTER the suicide attack). At the town square Fatima begs him not to do it, arguing that the target is her father. After removing the pin of his detonator he hesitates, and is therefore killed by the organizers of the attack. As a result he releases the handle of the detonator, and the bomb explodes, killing Fatima also. In the present, Abasi rushes to Khalid's apartment and discovers his grandmother, who is stricken with grief over the loss of both her grandchildren and Fatima. Abasi then realises that his daughter died trying to protect him and is filled with grief himself.
The record of a phone call supposedly made by Rashid to Anwar is not explained in the film. However, earlier it was mentioned that phones are sometimes passed on from one person to another (the DVD extras explain that there was a subplot dropped from the film that elaborated on this concept). Yet despite this reasonable doubt the CIA officials refused to release him. It turned out that in South Africa, while Anwar's phone was off, there had been a call to it from an unknown person.
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