You might find the title daunting, “Transmedia Production – Inventing the Language of Cross-Platform, Non-Linear Narration,” but the topic of yesterday’s Digital Hollywood panel addressed a changing landscape that all media consumers are certainly noticing. In our post-iPad, smart phone enhanced, digital world, how is content and media consumption evolving? Panelists Chris McCaleb (Big Fantastic), Mark Netter (Every Body Walk!), Mariana Danilovic (Ultralivetv), Neil Strum (Metan Development Group) and New Video’s Erick Opeka joined moderator David Gale of MTV Networks to talk about new technologies shaping storytelling and business models in film, TV, webisodes, books, and music. New Video’s digital distribution has made indie flicks, TV shows and documentaries available to a growing online audience since 2007 – and so much has evolved in those years. A couple exciting takeaways from the hourlong chat: content producers can and should engage their audience early on in their story and project, and they must educate themselves in how emerging creative options with distribution strategy will impact various revenue streams, including the new ones and the conventional ones.

L to R: Our VP of Digital Distribution, Erick Opeka, Mariana Danilovic (Co-Founder, President & CEO, Ultralivetv), moderator David Gale (EVP, New Media, MTV Networks), Chris McCaleb (Co-Founder, Big Fantastic), Mark Netter (Business Development Executive & Senior Brand Advisor, Every Body Walk!), Neil Strum (EVP, Metan Development Group).

Michael Campo, writer of the film THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE, and Jeffrey Azize, one of the brothers who traveled the world in this film to live in suffering communities, speak about the experience of creating the film and what was observed about hope, love, faith and family. THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE is about a band of brothers who set off on a journey, asking the questions: Why are we here? What is the purpose of it all? Have we forgotten to be human? The journey puts the brothers near to the experience of New York’s homeless, of disabled Peruvian orphans and of lepers in Ghana. It’s a story of rediscovering hope and realizing that we aren’t all that different from one another.  Enjoy the podcast.

Transcript -

MC: Alright, Jeff, I’m glad that we have an opportunity to speak about this stuff because it’s been quite the journey, wouldn’t you agree?

JA: Yeah, I can’t believe we’re interviewing ourselves, it’s pretty funny, it’s the first time ever.

MC: I’m going to basically be asking you some questions that we’ve heard from a lot of different people   all over the world [while] showing this film and I think it will be great for us to just sit down and really just talk, like we always do, about this stuff, ‘cause it’s some pretty intense issues, you know?

JA: Sure.

MC: So, basically, THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE is a film where you and your brother Cliff and two other guys—Matthew and myself—go on this journey. And I think one of the main questions here that people want to know is, out of all of the experiences, which one was your favorite?

JA: You know, Mike, that we definitely get that question a lot. It’s crazy, it’s kind of like saying, “Who do you love more: your mother or your father?” and it’s a tough question, you know? If you live with both your parents in the household and you have a great relationship with both of them, it’s difficult to say, which one of your sisters or your brothers is your favorite. We all love them differently and uniquely and individually. And I have to say that each experience held its own uniqueness and there’s many different forms of love and each experience that  I’ve been through with Cliff has been so distinguished and so unique and original. Being with the homeless people in New York City was just awesome, to experience the amount of wisdom that these people had and the tremendous amount of hope that they have to continue to live each day, day by day, focusing on the moments, which, when we’re comfortable in our lives, really, we forget to seize the moments, you know, those small gems in our everyday lives. And, I have to honestly say that just being with the kids in Peru, the orphans [who have] a tremendous amount of joy and love, that childlike love, was really awesome to experience that. And that life is simple and that meeting the people in Ghana, Africa was just great. Each experience definitely held its own and I definitely loved every single one of them differently and uniquely.

MC: No, I definitely have to agree with you. The experiences in the film are extremely unique, you know, and there pretty ballsy too—just going out and living with these people, people who are suffering: it’s not the easiest thing to do. But, you know, out of all three experiences that you mentioned, what would you say was the most positive thing you learned from the whole process?

JA: Wow. Just meeting these people we met along the way—the homeless people, the people struggling with AIDs and leprosy, and the kids—getting to know who they are and where they came from was the greatest thing. And, yeah, [there were] beautiful landscapes and stuff but the people were number one. The most positive thing that I learned is like: it was crazy, it was after a monsoon in Africa, and, Mike, you probably remember, we just started dancing in the rain when that huge rainstorm was coming—

MC: —yes, it was the rain dance; we were doing the Ghanaian rain dance—

JA: Yeah, and it was perfect cause it cooled us off, you know, just hanging out and just enjoying the moment of being in Africa in the middle of the night. And there we all were sitting down and saying, “How does all of this relate?” you know, “How does the man in the streets of New York City relate to the person in Ghana, Africa?” And we realized that these four elements kept reoccurring throughout our journeys, and that was: hope, love, faith and family. Those were, like, the four elements that I’ve learned from these people that really was the common thread throughout all of them. And it didn’t matter whether you were homeless on the streets of New York City, the kid suffering in Peru, or the people in Ghana, Africa—they all had the same values. It was hope, love, faith and family. And that was a tremendous amount of wisdom right there that I’d learned and definitely Cliff learned, and we were all there saying, “This is it, this is the common thread, this is the spine of the whole film.”

MC: Yeah, I’d have to agree with you that these people that we met, a lot of them weren’t in ideal situations in life, some of these people were suffering with some real issues, but the tremendous amount of hope that these people displayed I think was absolutely stunning and a great example to all of us.

JA: Totally, I mean, hey, you’re not just born on the streets of New York City, you end up there. And to sit down and take your time and actually get to know a homeless person—that’s  what I do, you know, if I see a homeless guy on the streets, I’ll invite him to Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds, whatever it is, Burger King, a fast food place, and just sit down and talk with them and say “Hey, what’s your name? Where’d you come from? Where did you grow up? You have any brothers or sisters?” and you kind of take them out of that element that they’re homeless and just treat them like a person, with dignity and respect. And that’s crazy, you know, to see these people’s situations.

MC: It’s amazing because I think a lot of people everywhere in the world, especially if you live in big cities, where you’re accustomed to seeing homeless people all the time: homeless people just become a part of the scenery; we just walk by them every single day. I think that after going through these experiences and actually living that—it’s pretty humbling, wouldn’t you say so?

JA: …especially when Chuck Kinnane, our director, when he said, “Okay, Jeff, I wanna get you begging for food,” and he miked me up with a wireless mike and he was filming from a block down and there I was, going into the stores, begging for food. And I was like…I honestly have to say, Mike, that was extremely humbling for me, and it was definitely humiliating, I felt it.

MC: Nobody wants to beg for food, you know? And I think that a lot of people that have seen the film are like, “Ah, cool idea, let’s go out and live homeless.” But I think by, like, Day 2 when you’re actually in the experience and you’re really hungry and totally now dependent on other people’s generosity for whether you eat or not that day, I think that really puts things into perspective.

JA: Totally, I have to agree, especially after you personally had stripped us of our cell phones and told us that we could only take a certain amount of clothing with us—

MC: [laughs] we had to make it as authentic as possible, right?

JA: Totally, definitely.

MC: Yeah, you know what, I mean, and from the other side of it, going out there with a very, very small crew, I mean, we couldn’t have the whole crew from Grassroots Films out there filming, so, to have you and your brother on the camera and then two guys off the camera filming you guys I think was an extremely important part of the whole process because that was what kept the whole experience, I think, intimate and kept it real and focused on really living the experience.

JA: Yeah, definitely. We had each other and, if one of us was to fall, we always had, like, 10 guys. But, Mike, I got a question for you, it’s your turn now, spotlight reversed on you. Tell me something, there [were] definitely a lot of emotions in the film, and I just wanted to know, that, for you personally, what was the most emotional part for you? And I know you weren’t there for the homeless part, you weren’t there also in Peru, but you saw the footage in the editing room and you were there helping Chuck, cutting it up and making it look great. But you were there in Africa and Africa was a huge part of the film and a lot of people remember Africa distinctly. So, being that you were a part of it and experienced the leper colony and the AIDS epidemic, tell us what was really emotional for you.

MC: I’d have to say there were two parts there, well, both parts. Speaking to people who are suffering with AIDS and who are dying, I’ve never really gotten that close to the disease before in my life, at least to the best of my knowledge, you know? I mean, now, when I think about AIDS or HIV, you know, I have a face to put to it. And that face is the people that we met in Ghana, especially Calvin. Calvin’s a young child who contracted the disease from his mother, who didn’t know that she had it. And it was pretty emotional to sit down and speak with these people about the meaning of life—people who were really suffering and very close to death—especially in Ghana because they don’t have a lot of the resources that we have in an industrialized country. You know, ask somebody who’s dying, “what’s the meaning of life?” And I think the most emotional part for me was really when Calvin’s mother took Calvin and put him in my arms for the first time. I mean, that was probably the most emotional part of the whole experience—I really can’t explain how I felt, I mean, it was crazy. I had a variety of different emotions that ran through—

JA: Can you tell us, do you remember the first thing that went through your mind when you actually felt the weight of Calvin in your arms?

MC: Yeah, man! First thing I thought was, “No, no, no, don’t do it, don’t put him in my arms!” because I don’t know, I was afraid I was gonna drop him or something like that.

JA: He was pretty fragile too, right?

MC: Yeah, I mean, when she put him in my arms, you know, and he was 2 years old, he felt like he was maybe 8 months, I mean, he felt so light and malnourished and stuff, you know, it was really hard to sit there and hold him in my arms, it was tough, you know?

JA: Is there any way you can go into details about the leper colony? Like, it wasn’t in the film, but remember when they first sat us down in front of all 250 lepers to welcome us?

MC: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, when they first sat us down, you know, and we were over here in this leper colony, you know, it was almost like we were being presented to them and they had to, like, accept us. And they were all lined up, you had the chiefs over here and the guys over here and the women over here and the children over there and everyone was kind of separated but at the same time there was an overwhelming sense of unity amongst them, they were incredible. But I think one of the most emotional parts of the whole experience was meeting the lepers in the colony. When I had the opportunity to speak to this one guy, who really broke it down for me, he really just broke it all down, he just basically told me that, “You and me are brothers and this is the reason that we need to love everybody.” And, you know, I think all of us growing up heard that all the time, you know, “We’re all brothers and sisters,” but to actually hear it from him was different, there was something different about it that really just spoke to my heart and my soul, you know? And it went in deep when he said “You are my brother, we are both the same and this is why we need to love everybody,” it was deep, man, it was incredible. And I just want to be honestly real with you, I had no idea leper colonies still existed. I thought it was a biblical thing, in my [stupidity] I thought maybe Jesus had healed them all. I had no idea that these places actually existed. And to actually be in this colony, you know, totally uneducated about the disease, not knowing if we can get it or what the deal was, it was tough.

JA: Yeah, it was, it really was incredible, I mean, to see these people with so little they had, they always made it the best, to work with what they had, and to use it to the fullest of its potential. Wouldn’t you say?

MC: That’s what was amazing about the whole entire film THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE. I mean, to actually meet these people who were suffering and really had a reason to complain about the cards they’d been dealt, and have the exact opposite response—of a great hope that things would get better eventually, and a great love of humanity and one another. I think that’s one of the best examples of how we should all be. You know, I think there’s so much we can learn from people who are suffering.

JA: Yeah, totally.

MC: But, skipping around here, without giving away the total ending of the film…THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE is a tremendous journey, you know, we start homeless on the streets of New York City, we travel to Lima, Peru and then we travel to Ghana, Africa. And, without giving away the ending of the film (because there is a surprise ending), there’s a moment that takes place in the film of forgiveness. And, I guess, as part of the whole human experience, Jeff, in your eyes, how important is it to forgive people and to be forgiven?

JA: Forgiveness is huge, I think, at some point in our lives, we all need to forgive somebody that might have hurt us along the way in life, or we ourselves may need to be forgiven for hurting someone else’s life. And forgiveness is not an easy thing, there are just so many things involved—there are a lot of internal struggles with that person that may have offended you or you offended them and it’s pretty intense.  All I have to say is that, with forgiveness, a lot of people that I’ve experienced after traveling the world and showing this film in so many different countries and hearing all these young people—high school students and college students—hearing them speak about the topic, the subject of forgiveness, I always let them know that forgiveness has to really come from the heart and has to have no other motivation. Forgiveness has to come out of love, that’s the only way for it to be truly authentic. And so forgiveness can also be a sign of vulnerability.

MC: I think that’s the scariest part about it sometimes.

JA: Yeah, it’s that we become vulnerable. You know, both people become vulnerable, wherever it takes place.

MC: Right, right.

JA: There’s a vulnerability that can be in the way of things and therefore prevent that person from [being able to] forgive. But that’s where true strength comes from; I think that definitely springs up from. Jack Nicholson said one time that you have to not be afraid to show your vulnerability. And that’s totally true, you know. To be able to express your vulnerability, to show it, is really a sign of strength, it’s not a sense of weakness, where that’s how it’s been portrayed. In our weaknesses, strength can prosper…and forgiveness is a sense of freedom. Once you forgive somebody, there’s a tremendous amount of weight that’s definitely lifted off someone’s shoulders for sure. Not only do you become free, but that other person becomes free and there’s a sense of accomplishment. And therefore, I can continue to go about life and this weight is not holding me back from trying to make this jump that’s pretty high up—

MC: —that seems impossible—

JA: Yeah, that seems impossible with the weight, you know, because it’s weighing you down. But once you cut that off, man, there’s a sense of freedom, you know, you can definitely open up your wings and fly.

MC: Yeah, you can grow to your greatest potential.

JA: Exactly and I feel totally that when you don’t forgive somebody, that when you hold this grudge against somebody, it totally eats you up. It just becomes moldy and becomes sour and you start decaying in this little part of your heart and it starts spreading like a virus, you know, like cancer, emotionally.

MC: And I think one of the coolest things, we’ve shown this film all over the world now to many different people of all different ages. And I think hearing from young people and old people alike who are struggling with this particular topic of forgiveness; I think it’s monumental to speak about it. I think THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE is a great outlet that just kind of opens up the door. It’s a true story, it’s a real story, you know, and we’re not talking about forgiving people for minor things, we’re talking about true forgiveness—people who have really been hurt by others and have chosen to say, “You know what, I’m not going to hold this grudge anymore, I’m going to pick up and move on with my life.” I guess the question is now, since you’ve mentioned that we’ve shown the film all over the world, how has the response been from people?

JA: The response all over the world has been amazing. It really has been this whole movement of, like, love and hope and the desire to do something great—especially in young people. And I’m young too, you know, I’m only 24 years old. [Laughs]

MC: [laughs] I’m still young—

JA: —Yeah, you’re still young; I’ll give you that—

MC: —I’m getting there but I’m still young—

JA: You’re still under the 30-mark. So, anyway, the response from young people, you know, my age—little older, little younger, in high school, college students, and even in junior high schools—there’s been a tremendous amount of people just rising up to the occasion and saying, “You know what, something needs to get done.” After they see this film, they become so inspired, so moved, that they take the responsibility on themselves and go out there and make the world a better place by going to a third world country or, even, visiting Dr. Tony’s place in Peru, which is a real orphanage and anybody is more than welcome to go there, in Lima, Peru, knock on the door and help do some volunteer work. So it’s amazing to hear back from all these people, you know, especially on Facebook—I get tons of emails from people on Facebook, we get personal emails through our website. And just people constantly in search and constantly asking us, like, “Hey, what can we do? How do we help out?” or, “Check out the photos I just took while being in Peru, after I saw the film.” And so these people become so motivated in life—

MC: You know it’s almost like, when you see students especially starting the film, in a high school or at a university, it doesn’t matter what country we’re in, but when you see students watching this film and they start off in the beginning, by the time they reach the end of the film it’s almost like a transformation has taken place.

JA: Yeah, a 90-minute transformation.

MC: [Laughs] A 90-minute transformation, which,  I really can’t explain because it’s phenomenal just to witness it, the audience really connects and I think it really just comes down to—Jeff, and you’ve heard me say this before but it really comes down to—people want to make a difference. People want to make the world a better place. I think when we’re all little kids we have this voice inside of us that’s just screaming, you know that “I want to make the world a better place, I want to do something great for humanity.”

JA: I had that voice [laughs].

MC: Yeah, I think we all do.

JA: I still do, I hope.

MC: But something happens, sometimes, in some people’s lives, as we get older and that voice seems to get quieter and quieter and then sometimes, you know, we wind up not being the person we thought we wanted to be when we were younger, or the person we thought we were going to be. But I think what’s unique about audiences who see the film THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE… they see the film, they have an opportunity to speak with us, most of the time, afterwards and that voice inside is alive and it’s loud! And people need to know that they are important and that each one of us is called to make a difference in the world.

JA: I think so many people are hungry for truth, you know. People want to be fed the truth and when I heard that voice [when I was] younger, “I wanna do something big,” I remember hearing that voice, I remember feeling that desire and I stuck with Grassroots Films because I believed that Grassroots Films was able to fulfill that in my heart, that I was going to be able to do something big. And I knew, as we did it together, you know, because we were a family first—as you know, we were a family first before we became a film company at the St. Francis House—

MC: And people who see the film will learn a little bit more about, well, they’ll learn a lot about, our personal lives, they’ll learn a little bit about how the film company was started and stuff, in the beginning. But, you know, I have to say that, as filmmakers, in going through this experience, I think the greatest reward that we could ever get from people is really seeing people—like you said earlier—get up and take it upon themselves to want to make the world a better place.

JA: I totally agree and that’s like the most beautiful thing because, you know, they say if you can get a young person’s attention, to really inspire them to do something like that, I mean, I’ve gotten so many emails on facebook, college students saying, “I changed my major,” you know, to do something else. Or a young high school girl in Long Island, wonderful girl, she was 15 years old and she was able to convince her faculty that she wanted the school to have it as part of the curriculum to go out and do some third world traveling, to experience being with poor people and to help them out on a greater level—and she’s only 15 years old! And hearing these stories—and the thing is you don’t necessarily have to do great, big things—

MC: —You don’t have to travel across the world to make a difference—

JA: No, not at all. And it’s like: that young girl from Long Island, I mean, she did it within her own schools. You know, she’s made a difference in her own community. And that’s what matters most—that you don’t have to go in the world and really make a huge difference or huge change, or, try to do one big, great thing, you know? It doesn’t happen like that. An artist doesn’t take a paintbrush and touch the canvas once and get a masterpiece, you know? You have to start off real small. You have to start off with the fingernails and the wrinkles and the whole nine, you know, and the complexion, everything. And so the only way to accomplish this is to do really small acts of love, small acts of kindness, each day, you know?

MC: I hear you say this all the time: “It’s the little wheels that make the big wheels move.” And sometimes we don’t realize how significant we, as little wheels, may be.

JA: Yeah.

Mc: Alright, so let me ask you another question here. Out of all the people that you met through the experiences, have you had a lot of contact with them afterwards?

JA: I would have to say that it’s pretty tough to have an open line of communication with these people, especially the people in Africa because they’re in this secluded area, there in there in the jungles, what can I say? You take a really long dirt road and you going through trees and that’s pretty much it. You’re really driving through the jungle and they don’t have, like, the phone or internet, you now? Most of that is really in the main city of Ghana, which is Accra.

MC: Accra, the capital.

JA: From Peru, Dr. Tony called Joe Camp—the executive producer of grassroots film—called him up several months ago and was wondering what was going on here in the United States because he was getting tons of people knocking on his door, saying “Hey, we’re here to help you, we saw a film in the United States and we were inspired by your story on how you gave up your life to help these kids, and we want to help you .” And so they went in there—carpenters, masonry workers, plumbers—and pretty much renovated the whole place. And it’s really incredible to hear that, especially coming from Dr. Tony, you know, you hear right from the horse’s mouth who’s in Peru and he’s doing really great actually and you get to meet Angela and Victor in the film, who pretty much are still there today and they pretty much run the whole orphanage.

MC: [Laughs] phenomenal kids. I think you say it best when you say that they’re like a young married couple.

JA: [Laughs] they really are.

MC: They just run the whole show.

JA: They really are, they’re like a young married couple, exactly. And kids are always being brought to the home for medical assistance and kids are being adopted from the home to families that aren’t able to have children themselves but they adopt, which is a beautiful option to have, you know? Because there are a lot of kids out there that need a home, you know, and Dr. Tony is able to help these families have kids, you know, in this way. And it’s just a beautiful thing.

So there’s a lot of people you encountered on your journey in suffering but they did display, like, a huge amount of hope. Can you give details on that? Just encountering people on the journey who are suffering that do display this tremendous amount of hope, faith, love and family.

MC: Again, I would say, you and I [are] not experts on anything.

JA: Yeah.

MC: Just talking from experiences. A lot of people that we met, whether the homeless experience or at the orphanage in Peru or, you know, people suffering with a disease in Ghana, Africa, one thing these people displayed that I think is a great example for everyone is a tremendous amount of hope. I mean, these people, who were really suffering and had real problems, really had a beautiful hope each day of their life that things were going to get better. It was amazing to witness that firsthand. I mean, I spoke with a guy who’s suffering, he didn’t know whether he was going to wake up tomorrow and he thought about this every single day of his life and one of the things he said to me was that, “You know what, if God allows me to wake up tomorrow, then it’s because there’s a purpose for my life. He wants me to do something that day.” And I thought that was incredible, to actually hear that from a man who’s facing death every single day. He wasn’t unsure about his purpose in life, he wasn’t distracted by some of the things that we may seem distracted about. I mean, he understood that his life—no matter how short or long it was going to be—had meaning and had purpose and I’m thankful that he was able to share that with us and we were able to include part of his story in the film, because, you know, whether he’s passed away by now or not, his story lives on forever in this film. And I hope that it touches millions of people.

Well I just want to say many thanks to everyone joining us today to talk about the film THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE, which is now available from Docurama Films on DVD, Digitally and On Demand. Jeff, it’s been a pleasure.

JA: Yeah, definitely, Mike, it’s pretty unique to be able to do this with you. It’s the first time, let’s hope it’s not the first and last though.

MC: [Laughs] so thank you very much to everyone out there that’s listening: THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE, thank you.

JA: Yeah thank you very much and enjoy the DVD.

Janet Grillo’s latest film “Fly Away” premiered at the SXSW – a soulful look at a mother raising her daughter with autism, it debuts on Flatiron Film Company label on April 26th. Pictured here, Beth Broderick, Janet Grillo and Reno from our party on Monday night at Club Deville in Austin. About 500 attended the ATX Emerge event sponsored by Flatiron Film Company and Grey Goose Vodka. Performers included Motel Aviv, The Defibulators, Trey Brown and Mission Dorado and Phranchyze.

Photo credit: Oscar Garcia/LuxuryMindz

 L-R: Beth Broderick, Janet Grillo and Reno celebrate the world premiere of Grillo’s film, Fly Away, at SXSW 2011.  

A band performs live for our guests.

The Oscar nominees continue their momentum, with GASLAND activists fighting to end hydraulic fracking before members of Congress, and  WASTE LAND’s breakout character, Brazilian garbage collector Taio, raising major awareness for his organization, the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho. His thoughts on going to LA for the Oscars, ”I feel like Cinderella, living some kind of unbelievable fairy-tale!”


 
We just love this photo of the proud nominees at the Oscar Nominee luncheon. See GASLAND’s Trish Adlesic front and center- yea she’s the one next to Amy Adams and Annette Bening! GASLAND’s Josh Fox wasn’t shy about taking some cell phone snap shots from the big event. Our favorite is of him with WASTE LAND’s Lucy Walker and RESTREPO’s Tim Hetherington. Check out the GASLAND facebook page for more.

Oscar nominees were announced early this week and New Video is honored to distribute 3 selections for Best Documentary Feature: GASLAND, RESTREPO, and WASTE LAND. 

GASLAND filmmaker Josh Fox takes us on a cross country whirlwind super-sleuth  style investigation of the true impact of hydraulic fracking – a term we didn’t know about or care about until seeing the film. He delves into the logistics of natural gas extraction and questions the implications. (Also congrats to GasLand supporter Mark Ruffalo, for his Best Actor in a Supporting Role nom, The Kids Are All Right). In RESTREPO, acclaimed journalists Sebastian Juenger and Tim Hetherington take imbedded journalism to an extreme as they go to the furthest outpost of the Afghan war to give an unmediated glimpse at the soldiers who brave one of the most dangerous postings in the US Military. WASTE LAND is a vivid, breathtaking trip into the slums of Rio, the largest garbage dump on the planet, and the souls of the trash pickers who work there. Filmmaker Lucy Walker follows internationally renowned artist Vik Muniz as he enlists the trash pickers to create works of art on a grand scale.

With our warmest congratulations to the creators of each of these important films, those in the films and their champions.  

We are also proud to announce, The Oath, GasLand, and Last Train Home won Cinema Eye Honors on January 18th in New York.
Some exciting new releases include 2010′s Academy Award^® Best Documentary nominee Which Way Home, Tribeca Film’s My Last Five Girlfriends and the music doc Still Bill about soul legend Bill Withers.
And a couple pieces of great news out of Sundance - about the David Sington-directed financial crisis documentary The Flaw (Deadline Hollywood) and the coal mining doc The Last Mountain (indieWIRE).

… so we’ve been busy. Stay tuned for more updates shortly or join us on Facebook to be kept in the loop!

Hopefully you are not trapped in a strange connecting city due to stormy weather, but if you are rounding that third hour in terminal B while east coast snowstorms wreak havoc, may we suggest you keep entertained. Some ideas to get you started below, or just keep toasty and warm browsing the New Video site.

Punk icon Ian Dury is stage center in the drama Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, or revisit Jimmy Cliff’s classic The Harder They Come - both new on iTunes.

Buzz-worthy documentaries of 2010: The Oath, Restrepo, LENNONYC, Best Worst Movie, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Ram Dass Fierce Grace.

For laughs, try a lightheartedly intellectual comedy about a kid (Jay Baruchel) who thinks he’s Leon Trotsky reincarnated (The Trotsky). In the stoner flick category, I’m Not Like That No More is best enjoyed with munchies. On that note, if you are old enough to remember the animated bands at kids’ pizza chains, you will be blown away by The Rock-a-Fire Explosion, a doc about grown men obsessed with recreating these mechanical animals. You kinda have to see it…

For countless hours (days?) of suspense with family, there are the classic Hercule Poirot detective stories: Poirot: Death On the Nile, Poirot: Evil Under the Sun and Poirot: Mystery of the Blue Train. Or the Hollywood Collection series on the likes of Cary Grant, Charlton Heston and Grace Kelly.

Keep the holiday spirit bright with the touching holiday romance Lovely, Still, or Christmas movies Christmas Angel, Christmas in Wonderland, Christmas in the Clouds, 24 Nights, or Mr. Christmas. And we’re not kidding, you can also watch actual Christmas Lights online, incase you haven’t seen enough in your neighborhood yet. Kind of like a fireplace Yule log video.

Last night Docurama Films feted the DVD release of Oscar short-lister GASLAND in snowy midtown Manhattan.  Actor Mark Ruffalo, HBO’s Sheila Nevins, and New Video’s Susan Margolin joined filmmaker Josh Fox and producer Trish Adlesic. Guest speaker Albert D. Appleton, former NYC Commissioner of Environmental Protection, thanked the filmmakers for putting a human face on the headlining controversy over natural gas drilling in the U.S.   Just this weekend, Governor Paterson signed a moratorium on the practice of “fracking” (or hydraulic fracturing) in New York. An excited Fox congratulated New York for becoming the first U.S. state to prevent gas drilling, while  acknowledging the ongoing fight to protect our natural resources.

(Photos: New Video/Gianni Cipriano)

Tribeca Film threw a kick-ass DVD release party last Thursday night at LA’s Smog Shoppe, in Culver City.

Executive producer Johnny Knoxville, along with American Express, helped to host a celebration for the documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (now on iTunes).

Guests including rockstar Kid Rock, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, actresses Jaime King and Arielle Kebbel, actors Bryan Greenberg and Michael Rosenbaum, tv personality Brittny Gastineau, Epic Records artist Tiffany Dunn, sportscaster Curt Menefee and the film’s director Julien Nitzberg joined Tribeca Film’s Nancy Schafer and American Express’ Jessica Igoe as they were treated to the first-ever Los Angeles performance by Jesco White (aka the Dancing Outlaw), the White family’s high-stepping muse. White was joined on stage by music legend Deke Dickerson and singer-songwriter Roger Alan Wade.

Congrats to Laura Poitras’s THE OATH and Lucy Walker’s WASTE LAND, each tapped as feature nominees by the International Documentary Association!

IDA winners will be announced during an awards ceremony, hosted by Morgan Spurlock, in Los Angeles on December 3^rd.  Both Films were 2010 Sundance winners with THE OATH taking the Excellence in Cinematography prize and WASTE LAND receiving  Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary.

Filmed in Yemen and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, THE OATH is a family drama about two men whose fateful encounter in 1996 set them on a journey that would lead to Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo Bay Prison, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Catch it now on iTunes.

Offering stirring evidence of the transformative power of art on the human spirit, WASTE LAND follows internationally renowned artist Vik Muniz on a journey to his native Brazil to explore the world’s largest garbage dump and its “catadors” or trashpickers. The film had its theatrical debut in NYC this past weekend at the Angelika Film Center; check out the film’s website for information about upcoming screenings nationwide.

From the classic horror flick NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, to the super kitch cult PUPPET MASTER I &  ll , not to mention the terrifying  tales of Halloween night LATE FEE and DEATH ON DEMAND, we’ve got all the witches, vampires, zombies, blood,  guts and gore you could ever wish for this all hallows eve. Gain inspiration as you get ready to dash out the door decked out in your own fake teeth, or download to your iPhone, iPad, iTouch (or what have you) and take em with you – it may end up a much better bet then the neighbor’s haunted house party.

Killjoy // Harvest of Fear // Smash Cut // American Zombie // Maniac on the Loose // Blood Dolls // The Legend of Bloody Jack // Redneck Zombies // Mustang Sally’s Horror House // Bandaged // Vampire Journals // Witchouse // Witchouse II: Blood Coven // Puppet Master // Puppet Master II // The Cry // Driven to Kill // The Local // The Wandering Soul Murders // Ghost Image // Paranormal Entity // Death on Demand // Night of the Living Dead // The Dead Hate the Living! // Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Curse // Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers // Vampire Journals // Kiss of the Vampire // The Witches Hammer // Demonstone // Passed the Door of Darkness // Eulogy for a Vampire

Our friends at the New York International Children’s Film Festival (@NYICFF) remind comic & animation fans to “Come meet Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart of @SecretOfKells at NY Comic-Con this weekend. @NewVideoDigital booth (#1665) on Sat or panel on Sun.” For insight into this year’s Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Feature, check out director Tomm Moore’s chat with the Film Stage about his groundbreaking debut, now available on iTunes, Amazon VOD, PlayStation, Blu-ray, and DVD. For now through November 1st, get 20% off any Blu-ray or DVD purchase of THE SECRET OF KELLS at NewVideo.com or enter to win a free copy of the film on Blu-ray at Teen Hollywood.

Also this weekend in New York, Central Park hosts a special screening of the documentary LENNONYC on Saturday - on what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.

Thanks to those who came out last week to the screening of civil rights movement documentary SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION and saw author and journalist Danyel Smith moderate a panel at the Paley Center, featuring executive producer Danny Glover, activist Lynda Lowery and filmmakers Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman.

Special congrats to Joe Pantoliano’s film NO KIDDING, ME TOO! for being recognized by the Voice Awards for its candid look at brain diseases and the film’s empowering message to those afflicted to seek treatment.

NEW THIS WEEK:

THE SECRET OF KELLS
Magic, fantasy, and Celtic mythology come together in a riot of color and detail that dazzle the eyes in a sweeping story about the power of imagination and faith to carry humanity through dark times. Available on iTunes, Amazon VOD, PlayStation, Blu-ray, and DVD.

MID-AUGUST LUNCH
The charismatic Gianni Di Gregorio stars in his directorial debut – an utterly charming tale of good food, feisty ladies and unlikely friendships during a very Roman holiday. Available on iTunes.

SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION
A fresh and exhilarating take on one of the most important social movements in American history that explores the civil rights struggle through the powerful and stirring songs that inspired a generation. In riveting studio performances, top contemporary artists including John Legend, Wyclef Jean, The Roots and Joss Stone reinvigorate and reinvent timeless songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Wade in the Water.” Available on iTunes, Amazon VOD and Netflix.

JOURNEY TO THE MOON – THE APOLLO STORY
On July 20, 1969, Apollo commander Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module and made “a giant leap for mankind” – a step that symbolized one of the most remarkable feats in human history. Available on iTunes.

For updates on New Video releases, follow us on Twitter and Facebook or visit us on YouTube, Amazon VOD, and Hulu.

April Benavides speaks with Tomm Moore, the creator of the 2010 Academy Award Nominee “The Secret of Kells” (Best Animated Feature). In this vivid and exquisite work, young Brendan discovers a master illuminator’s book of secret wisdom and power. April talks to Tomm about his inspiration and motivation, Irish literature, creating universal appeal, the effect of an Oscar nomination, and what comes next. Some questions posed by fans via Facebook and Twitter- thanks to our readers and listeners.

Find “The Secret of Kells” on iTunes, Amazon VOD, Netflix, PlayStation, Blu-ray, and DVD.

Halo: Reach has quickly become the highest grossing game Microsoft has ever released. Loyal fans of the game know  and love the “machinima” sci-fi comedy series RED VS. BLUE, which uses Halo video, pre-recorded voicings, and some nifty animation tricks to create comedic gold. April Benavides speaks to creator Burnie Burns, and producer/director Matt Hullum.

Browse Red Vs. Blue on Amazon.com or on the iTunes store:
Red vs. Blue Reconstruction
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 1
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 2
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 3
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 4
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 5

Here’s the interview transcript -

Welcome to The New Video Download, I’m April Benavides. You can also hear this show at blog.newvideo.com. Those of you who play the blockbuster Xbox video game Halo are most likely familiar with the work of my guests today. For the uninitiated, the hit web series RED VS. BLUE is considered a premier work in the machinima genre. Rooster Teeth, which creates the series, takes video from Halo and syncs it to prerecorded dialogue, resulting in a sci-fi comedy that has been called “Halo meets Stripes” and “Clerks meets Star Wars.” Joining me from Rooster Teeth is creator Burnie Burns, original creator of the series, writer, producer, director, editor, and voice of the character Church. Also joining me is Matt Hullum, who voices Sarge and also produces, directs and edits RED VS. BLUE. Burnie and Matt, welcome!

Burnie and Matt: Thank you/ Hi, April.

April: Your series has been incredibly successful, but it can be difficult to describe to those unfamiliar with the genre. How do you explain RED VS. BLUE to outsiders?

Burnie: I guess the best way to describe it is that we use video games in a 3D engine that [is] used to display videogames and we use those to make short animated cartoons, basically, where instead of hand-drawing every single cell of the animation, what we do is we write a script, we record our dialogue and then we use the video game—Halo in this case—to act out the characters. So, it looks a lot like animation. If you didn’t know what it was when you were looking at, you would think it was a 3D animated film like Pixar—doesn’t necessarily look as good as Pixar, because they render everything out frame-by-frame—but that’s what it would look like: it’s a 3D-animated cartoon.

April: Some of the crew knew one another prior to working on the series. Was there any sort of method to how you divided up when choosing between the teams—between the red and blue teams?

Matt: [Laughs] Was there any methodology in that, Burnie? I think it was just, “Who’s left that I can use as a voice and we have to fill this character this week,” right?

Burnie: Yeah, in our intro we had, you heard all the slashes we had in our titles. There’s a lot of crossover in what we do. Matt will direct some episodes; I’ll direct some episodes. But, to answer your question, RED VS. BLUE, Rooster Teeth—that started as two different groups of people, a group of film guys and a group of web guys. Matt and Joel—who plays Caboose—and I, we knew each other in college and we actually made a 16mm film, a feature together. And I was a Computer Science dude and I wanted to learn about filmmaking; Matt was a film student and we got together to make a feature to learn, you know, everything trial by fire, essentially, for filmmaking. And then the other group of guys was a group of web developers who we used to make websites that were reviewing video games and the biggest one we ever made was [a site] called Drunk Gamers. And so when Drunk Gamers shut down because video game companies didn’t want a bunch of drunks reviewing their games, we found out…we just kind of moved on to the next thing and the two groups came together and we made RED VS. BLUE. And so far, so good, I mean RED VS. BLUE was our very first project and we’re still doing it 8 years later.

April: Yeah, wow. Do you guys—working so much in this war setting—ever think about how you would all hold up in that kind of war environment and, maybe, which of you would fare best?

Matt: [laughs] I think…well, the only one of us has any actual military experience is Geoff and that’s kind of scary to think about cause he’s a fairly irresponsible guy. But we get the best messages from our fans who are actually in the military, overseas, who some of the coolest stories we’ve ever had about the show came from over there and the funniest stuff we usually get is where guys will write and they’ll say, “Hey, you know, your characters are just like some of the guys I have in my unit. They’re really great, especially Caboose”—[Which is], like, our stupidest character—“Just like the guy who runs the artillery for us. He’s the guy in charge of the 50-cal. machine guns and can never figure out what he’s doing.” So, it’s pretty funny to receive those messages from those guys and we’ve been really fortunate to have so much support from the military over the years.

April: Well, it’s fascinating that they give you some of these ideas. I mean, I think with the message boards on your site and everything it’s sort of instant feedback. Do you find that there have been other instances where—positive or negative—feedback from the fans [has] kind of changed how you treated an element of the series?

Burnie: I would definitely say so. I do most of the writing for the series and it’s almost a crutch in a way, to have that instant feedback. I mean, when Matt and I made our film, it was such a different process because we had to go to film festivals and get it in a room where 200-300 people can watch at a time and we fought like hell trying to get into that room where people could watch it. And then once we started making RED VS. BLUE and putting it online, it was really accessible literally to anybody who wanted to watch it. There was no barrier there. And along with that came all this instant feedback and, as a writer, it’s great because, as long as you have the ability to write week to week, you can respond to the audience without pandering to them, does that make sense? Because you don’t want to respond to every little thing they do because it’s crazy. After we put up an episode, the comments come flooding in and there’ll be literally people who log second by second what they liked and didn’t like about the episode and you get that feedback from them in, like, ten minutes, so…

April: You can’t be a slave to it completely, right?

Burnie: No, no, you’d go crazy. You know, you can definitely get a feel for what people like and what they don’t like and you can move along with it. I think you have to do that these days, too. I mean, look how much feedback, you know, even for a television show, which—they plan a lot further out than we can plan a web series—they have to react to what an audience likes even if, say, 8 episodes in the can and you come up with a plot that everybody hates, that’s got to be kind of a scary feeling when you’re sitting there in your office like, “Wow, we have another 8 weeks of this, that we know people already don’t like.”

April: Well, you’re right, it really has turned into more of a dialogue. Everyone’s kind of used to having a dialogue now rather than it just being the audience. So, even though it’s a military setting, there is so much workplace humor in the series. Do you tend to base any of the characters on people you know or situations on stuff that happened in the office?

Burnie: Any similarity to actual living people is coincidental. [Laughs] Isn’t that the line we put in the credits? I think the bureaucracy humor, yeah. That actually what we try to write with RED VS. BLUE, that’s the focus, I think, of this series is just how funny groups of people are—no matter what they’re doing—if they’re space marines or if they’re people working in an office. Just when you have an organization and you have the rules of that…that, to me, is funny. And, like Matt said before, only one of us has any military experience at all but you can write to a bureaucracy and that makes sense. I mean, most of what you do—in any field—is gonna be downtime and disguised killing time and, you know, what are they doing between battles or what are they doing between projects? And so, I love the bureaucracy humor and I think it’s kind of a universal humor that everyone has to deal with.

April: Definitely relatable. Are there any characters that you guys identify with personally? Or would no one admit to that?

Matt: No, I think so. I mean, at this point, we’ve all played the characters for so long that we all identify with them in our own way and kind of know what they’re boundaries are. There’ll be times when it will be convenient for a character to do something in the show but it won’t really feel right for the character so we’ll go back and we’ll look at it from each individual character’s perspective and I think, at this point, 8 years in, like, Burnie knows the characters so well and, writing, he can kind of let the character speak for themselves almost and, kind of, determine where the series goes just on their motivations that we’ve come to know so well.

Burnie: It’s kind of fun to write those characters after all this time because we can come up with the scenario independent of the characters and say, “Okay, well we have this situation, what characters would be funniest in this situation?” Like, who would have the hardest time in this situation? And then we just put them in the scene and, “Who would talk first?” and give them the first line and then they almost, kind of, at this point, they know each other so well, we know the characters so well, we can just go back and forth writing the dialogue, knowing how the characters would react to one another. So that’s a lot of fun and it’s fun to come up with the scenarios and put them in. But I would say that I probably identify with Grif, sadly, the most, where it’s just like I’m at the point when people try to over-explain things to me…you know, not in the series, but in the real world when people just have all these rules that they explain, you just wait for them to get through it and you give a big sigh and you’re like, “Okay, let’s go do that…” I also love Joel, the actor who plays Caboose, who’s the lovable idiot of the group and doesn’t ever seem to understand what’s going on…Joel told me one day that he approaches Caboose as though Caboose is the only who realizes that they’re all in a video game. [Laughs] And I love that. And I’ve just always loved that interpretation of the character—that he’s just there to have a good time and that’s it. He’ll just go with the flow.

April: That’s great. You guys are all based in Austin, Texas. Do you find that the city influences the series at all?

Burnie: Yeah, Austin’s got a really, really cool, independent vibe. And, maybe not on the narrative level, but more on the business level in the sense that Austin is one of those cities where its not L.A, it’s not New York, and it’s one of those cities—I think you get that a lot of other cities—where there’s always that idea where you’re going to be the next big thing, you know? You get that feeling a lot in your city, you know, that if, like, a city’s really big with music…and Austin seems to be one of those cities on the verge. And I’ve been here a few years now and it’s kind of always been that way. And that’s kind of a cool vibe to feed off of, people who are willing to try weird tings and new things and it’s a good parallel for what we do because I think that’s where web content is right now. It’s like always on the verge of feeling like it’s about to explode and I think right now people put that in terms of movies and T.V. and more traditional media, we don’t necessarily look at it like that, we like the web. We think RED VS. BLUE is a great fit for the web, a great fit for DVD but it’s fun, it’s a really cool vibe and I think it’s fun to feed off that often…do you agree with that, Matt?

Matt: Yeah, I do, and I think Austin’s one of those places that’s just culturally unique. Not just the independent kind of spirit, there are a lot of different cultural influences here and I always think about the…one of our signature things in the show is that the Warthog—the jeep that the Reds drive in—it’s stuck on a Tejano station. They always play tejano music, which is very culturally specific to Texas and Mexico. And, I think, we’d been around, like, restaurants playing this kind of music all the time but when we put it on the web it was kind of unique and unusual for pretty much 90% of our fan base. But, it’s like, would we have had little idiosyncratic interesting moments like that if we weren’t influenced by the region we’re in?

Burnie: Yeah, and if you think about Austin, too, Matt…Austin is a really odd city just in the context of Texas because Austin is so much different from the rest of Texas. People in Austin will say that and people in Texas will say that too—they’ll talk about how different Austin is from the rest of Texas, so it’s kind of funny in the sense of, like RED VS. BLUE, where you have this really epic storyline with Halo—that everybody knows and loves, and is familiar with it—and then in the middle of that universe, there’s these bunch of kind of slacker idiots that are kind of stuck in there, it’s kind of a nice allegory for that.

April: Well is it: “Keep Austin Weird”? Is that the slogan?

Burnie/Matt: Yeah…

April: So is it, “Keep RED VS. BLUE weird,” too?

Matt: Exactly. Austin is definitely an interesting, weird, oasis in the middle of more straight-laced, boots-and-cowboy-hats Texas. And the RED VS. BLUE crew in Blood Gulch is more of, you know, this weird strange oasis in the middle of this vast military Halo universe.

April: Right. Well, you know, you took one of the most popular game franchises of all time and made a parody that came incredibly popular as well. Some people might think that what you did was extremely risky in light of copyright laws game creator Bungie and Microsoft are on board with what you do. How long did it take for them to embrace RED VS. BLUE?

Burnie: I think our official business policy for the first two weeks was, “Hey let’s try to fly under the radar and see what happens,” and that I think that lasted about 12 hours because, like we said before, when we were trying to get our first feature out there, it was such an uphill battle, taking it to film festivals and all that. I don’t think we were prepared for how quickly things travel on the web. And we had about 3,000 visitors a day to that site Drunk Gamers and so when we put up the first episode of RED VS. BLUE, we had 3,000 viewers of the first episode on the first day. And then the next day, we had about 20,000 views that suddenly came out of nowhere. And when we put up the second episode, we had 250,000 viewers who showed up, at, you know, the moment we put up the video. And from there, by the time that we were in our third week, we were up to almost half a million. So, it was immediate, the reaction to it. It went everywhere all at once. And people, I don’t know, there [weren’t] a lot of web series back then, I mean there was stuff like Homestar Runner that was out there—lot of flash stuff when we first started doing it. But people immediately understood that it was a series and would come back and watch the next one and we used to look at these ip logs, which are where traffic comes from, and we saw a company would come in, you’d see one ip, then you’d see 5 more hits from that same company, then you’d see 80 hits and you’d watch it spread through these companies and organizations. And then the phone rang and it was Bungie and Microsoft on the phone, they said, “Hey we like what you’re doing, we think it’s really cool, we just want to make sure that you do it in the right way—from a business sense—so that you can continue to do it.” And we laid out for them what we wanted to do and, to their credit, they took a look at it and said, “Well, let’s see what happens with this. This seems cool and innovative and let’s give it a shot.” And it’s been a great partnership. I mean, like I said before, here we are, 8 years later and still going strong.

April: Right, it’s pretty amazing.

Matt: It was amazing. It’s interesting because it’s hard to even put it in context today because today, Internet video is so pervasive. And there’s YouTube and a thousand other sites where you can see video. And everyone is kind of accustomed to logging on and watching something. But back when this started there really wasn’t any Internet video. Like Burnie said, there were some flash sites, doing some interesting stuff with animating through flash and making some, you know, one-off pieces. But there wasn’t anything that was really serial and there wasn’t this omnipresent Internet video thing that was just everywhere. There was no YouTube. There was nothing like that so, I think that for Microsoft and Bungie to be so accepting and forward-thinking, really, about it was pretty impressive.

Burnie: You know a big part of our site in those early days was explanations of how to watch the video. Do you remember that, Matt?

Matt: Yeah…how to download it. What is the right click?

April: Wow.

Matt: And then once you get it, how can you actually look at it?

Burnie: And you think about that today. You don’t have to explain on YouTube how to watch the video, what codex you need, where to download the codex, where to find a free version of the codex. And we had to put up about 8 different formats, it felt like, back then.

Matt: There was no such thing as a video counter. Nowadays it’s like, how many hits did your video get on YouTube or whatever? And you can just look at the little video counter at the bottom of the video and you know—everybody knows—how much that is. In those days, there wasn’t anything like it, the technology didn’t exist, so what we did was figuring out the file size of the video and, through the logs on the server, figure out how many times it had been downloaded by downloading our overall aggregate amount of bandwidth being used. So it was a very antiquated process, when we look at it now. None of it was formalized and encoding one video would take an entire day. And now it’s something we do in twenty minutes.

April: You’re kind of like the old men of the web, in a way. You know, back in your day…you couldn’t see the video counter. It’s amazing how much has changed in just 7 or 8 years, it sounds like decades.

Burnie: It is. We had to walk uphill, both ways, to the server.

April: [Laughs] Exactly. In the snow, in Austin.

Matt: That’s right.

April: Do you find working off an already-existing franchise limiting? Or is it beneficial to have a starting point?

Burnie: Well, I think it’s extremely beneficial in that people can be introduced to it and they get—there’s obviously a built-in audience. The RED VS. BLUE audience is a subset of a much larger Halo audience. But then we also get people who come up to us all the time and say, “I don’t play Halo.” We get a lot of girlfriend who watch the show. They say, “Well my boyfriend plays Halo all the time and I don’t play Halo but I watch RED VS. BLUE religiously and I love it.” It’s something they can do together. So, you know, there’s some people who come with an idea of what Halo is and they don’t want to see it differently. There’s some people that will also reject ideas for storylines that we have because they don’t seem to fit into Halo. And then there’s people who get it, who think, “It looks like Halo but it’s not trying to be Halo,” it’s just something—a funny Sci-Fi thing and it’s not related to the Halo universe, even though it really looks like it.

April After seven-and-a-half years of being tied to using video from the game itself, your newest season, REVELATION, leaps forward by using pre-rendered character animation that allows for actions not possible within the game of Halo. How does it feel?

Matt: I think Scary. [At first], it was scary because we just weren’t sure if people would accept it. I think a lot of the humor so far, with the show, has been re-contextualizing the game and some of the bureaucratic humor we used in the show comes out naturally. In terms of rules of the game and reinterpreting or re-contextualizing rules of the game—it’s like why can they only do this with this vehicle, or, why do they need this gun? That kind of stuff, in the game, [creates] different story lines. And we were breaking those limits by having this animation and would that mean that we would lose some of the inherent humor? So, we were very cautious about that but we felt like, after 7 years, the show had gotten to the point on its own where the humor could stand up and the people were into the characters so much that that was really the central point from which people were watching the show and embracing it. So, it was kind of a leap of faith but it felt like it was something we wanted to do after 7 years to keep pushing the show forward and keep pushing us forward, and finding new places to go and new things to do and new opportunities for plots and stories. So we were extremely pleased with how it turned out and it seems like the audience has been more into this season than they have been since any season since season 1.

Burnie: Yeah, we made a very conscious decision when we started the process with the animation where we wanted to make sure we didn’t change the underlying tone of the show. You know, they couldn’t turn into super heroes and start jumping off the walls, they still had to be the idiots, they still had to be inept. And so, it’s fun to have animated inept-ness. It’s like engineered clumsiness. And it’s been a very fun process. We have some really badass characters who are good at things and it’s fun to watch the main RED VS. BLUE characters go up against them and not have to show it off-screen. We’ve had fights before where you hear the entire thing off-screen and it’s nice to go, “Look! We can now pan the camera over and show you what’s going on.” And it’s fun.

Matt: One of our badass characters, Tex—we’ve been talking about for 7 years how she’s such a badass and talking about it, talking about it, talking about it, and now we finally have the opportunity to show it. And we wanted to make sure that when we showed it, that it lived up to the hype of the last 7 years.

April: Right. Can the Red and Blue teams go on forever? Or have you already plotted out a resolution to the series?

Burnie: We plot out more resolutions for characters, because it’s more of a character-driven piece. But, you know, as we have resolutions for specific characters, there’s also other new characters that come into the show. So I guess, technically, it’s a lot like Halo multi-player, when you play online one night with your buddies. These games are always going on, and you might, you know, you might drop in and out, but they’re always there if you want to go back. So, if we ever wanted to go back and revisit the characters or revisit the series, we could. They might not be the same set of characters but they theoretically continue forever.

April: That’s comforting, I’m sure, for your fans. Many thanks to Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum for joining me to give a little insight into the world of their creation, RED VS. BLUE, now available on DVD and for digital download from Flatiron Film Company. Thanks, guys.

Burnie and Matt: Thanks, April!

The countdown ticks down to the 62nd Annual Emmy Awards this evening. Host Jimmy Fallon is reaching out to the Twitter community to help introduce the night’s presenters in many of the top categories, where final voting is expected to be fierce. With Betty White already winning a 5th career Emmy for her memorable ‘Saturday Night Live’ performance, the Academy justly rewarded a living legend and a fan favorite. New this week on Amazon VOD and DVD (soon on iTunes) is a look at the life and career of another entertainment trailblazer – Gertrude Berg. Director Aviva Kempner’s YOO-HOO MRS. GOLDBERG puts the spotlight on the Best Actress Emmy award winner who took her talents as creator, writer and star of the long-running radio show The Goldbergs and produced one of television’s first-ever sitcoms. The woman who made Molly Goldberg a household name during the Great Depression and for many years after was the Lucy and Oprah of her time.

NEW THIS WEEK:

YOO-HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG

Offers a humorous, captivating tribute to one of the most successful and innovative women in American broadcasting history – Gertrude Berg. Includes interviews with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actor Ed Asner, producers Norman Lear (All in the Family) and Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties), and NPR correspondent Susan Stamberg.

Available on Amazon VOD and DVD.

THE AGE OF STUPID

In the desolate future of 2055, an archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) combs through a vast collection of videos to learn what went wrong with the planet. His research points to the first decade of the century, when humans blithely ignored the warning signs of climate change. The footage he views is actually culled from real-life interviews conducted by the filmmaker, whose sharp — and darkly funny — insights populate this sobering documentary.

Available on Netflix, Amazon VOD and DVD.

PRIVATE (Drama)

A thrilling mystery based on the New York Times best-selling novels by Kate Brian. Reed Brennan can’t believe her good luck when she’s accepted to exclusive Easton Academy. Life on campus is an endless parade of cute boys, parties, and special privileges, but nothing at Easton is quite what it seems. With a dangerous romance, shocking discoveries and dark secrets ahead of her, Reed will be lucky if she survives her first semester.

Available on iTunes, Amazon VOD and DVD.

FREEDOM FRIES (Documentary)

A whimsical look at patriotism and consumerism in America. It explores the absurdity of many of the symbolic gestures that have recently pervaded our culture, such as the wasting of perfectly good French Wine.

Available on iTunes and Hulu.

OFF AND RUNNING (Documentary)

With white Jewish lesbians for parents and two adopted brothers, Brooklyn teen Avery, a local track star in high school, grew up in a unique and loving household. But Avery’s curiosity about her African-American roots compels her to contact her birth mother, thrusting her into a complicated exploration of race and identity that threatens to distance her from her family.

Available on iTunes.

FOUR SEASONS LODGE (Documentary)

Follow a group of Holocaust survivors during what may be their final summer together at a bungalow colony in the Catskill mountains. Directed by New York Times journalist Andrew Jacobs, with beautiful cinematography by a team of filmmakers including Albert Maysles, the verite film explores the power of friendship and the drive to find joy despite painful memories. It is a counterintuitive Holocaust documentary: a fusion of ribald humor, stories of unimaginable loss, the last of the Borscht Belt crooners, and a family made entirely of friends and lovers. The characters dance, flirt, and fight as the fate of their community hangs in the balance.

Available on iTunes.

THE TIGER NEXT DOOR (Documentary)

Tracks Dennis Hill over the months that follow a surprise government inspection as he fights to keep the animals he claims to love. It also uncovers the intricate web of commerce and government laxity that keep breeders like Hill in business. What finally becomes exposed is the widespread attitude that humans are indeed lords of the animal kingdom.

Available on iTunes.

In the midst of massive graphic novel franchises, sci-fi empires and classic and irreverent animation of all breeds, this Comic-Con welcomed two comedic series made by and for devoted gamers, hosting panels that could not fit all their fans. ‘Red Vs. Blue,’ the web series based on the soldiers from ‘Halo,’ brought in the creators to talk shop about the new animation hybrid in the current installation ‘Revelation’ – merging machinima with some labor-intensive animation. Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton and a deeply beloved cast channeled ‘World of Warcraft’ players in ‘The Guild,’ and offered a sneak peek into Season 4. The packed auditorium Saturday was also treated to the premiere of a Bollywood-style music video, complete with elephant, that rivals last season’s ‘Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?’ Here are pictures from these goings-on and the whole mad parade.

In December 1967, two weeks after the English rock band, The Zombies, completed their misspelled album ‘Odessey and Oracle,’ the band broke up. Columbia Records’ then-boss Clive Davis eventually released the collection of “baroque psychedelic” pop songs under pressure a full two years later, and ‘Time of the Season’ would go on to reach #3 on the Billboard chart and the album would rank #80 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time. For fans who missed out on the Zombies performing back in the age of Woodstock, the 40th anniversary concert is now available on iTunes. For another take on the classics, the lives and works of Mozart and Beethoven are unearthed in two docs, now on iTunes.

More Movies This Week on iTunes and beyond:

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Documentary)
In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a high-ranking Pentagon official and Vietnam War strategist, concludes that the war is based on decades of lies and leaks 7,000 pages of top secret documents to The New York Times, making headlines around the world.

Harvest of Fear (Horror) A new crop of kids are being killed during the annual ‘Harvest Fest’ and residents start to notice that the killings are strangely familiar with killings that happened 20 years prior.

Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger (Kids & Family, Comedy) A coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old girl trying to fit into both a posh private school and an ordinary public school.

The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle the 40th Anniversary Concert (Concert Films) This concert contains the complete “Odessey and Oracle” album with all 12 tracks lovingly re-created by the original four members of The Zombies.

In Search of Mozart (Documentary) A biography told through interviews and performances with over 70 of the greatest exponents of Mozart’s music.

In Search of Beethoven (Documentary) Juliet Stevenson narrates this documentary account of the life of composer Ludwig von Beethoven, covering all the major highlights from his birth in 1770 through his death in 1827.

Hitler: A Career (Documentary) Dissects the Third Reich with a keen analytical blade; charting Hitler’s improbable rise, his mastery of imagery and crowd psychology, and his consummate skill in exploiting the weakness in others.

Marked (Horror) The story of ghost investigators searching for paranormal activity using high-tech equipment in hopes of finding answers to an unsolved murder.

The Hanged Man (Thriller) The tale of six social misfits who meet online and, in a desperate attempt to escape their troubled pasts agree to gather in an abandoned barn to commit group suicide.

Stagknight (Comedy) The ultimate stag night turns into the ultimate stag nightmare for a goofball group of lovable losers who plan a bachelor party getaway deep in the English woods – and get a bit more than they bargained for.

The Wager (Drama) When the life of mega film star, Michael Steele, is destroyed right before the most important day of his life, his faith is put to the ultimate test.

This Week on Hulu:

American Shopper (Documentary) An absurd, heartwarming hybrid-documentary that follows small-town competitors training to become the first-ever champion of ‘aisling,’ a new sport that turns grocery shopping into a form of self-expression.

Darfur Diaries: Message from Home (Documentary) Featuring interviews with many victims of the devastating genocide taking place, the filmmakers seek to shine some light on this dark chapter in human history, encouraging people to make a great effort for humanitarian relief in besieged Darfur.

Puppet Master II (Horror) Toulon’s puppets help collect brain tissue from human victims for Toulon to create his formula to animate the inanimate. The victims this time include a group of researchers from a US department, responsible for investigating the paranormal.

This Week on Amazon VOD:

Permanent Vacation (Comedy) When Eric Bury’s family arrives at the rundown Florida ‘Adventures Unlimited’ campground, they are plunged into a world of escalating sexual debauchery, religious ecstasy and human sacrifice.

We love to look into the future. While there are no Na’vi or replicants in The Onion’s newscast from 2137, America’s Finest News Source goes toe to toe with CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News – using wormhole satellite technology, not a flux capacitor, to broadcast from the year 2137. Future: News from the Year 2137 is exclusively on iTunes. A little further in the future, in the 26th century, ‘Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles’ takes us, with five volumes, into the lighter side of Halo, as hapless soldiers are better armed with wit than with strategy. Today we honor Back to the Future’s 25th anniversary. Now go buy some power laces.

Trailer from the Future

Onion News Network – Future News: While other media outlets bring you news as it happens, only the Onion News Network has the power to bring you the news before it happens. 

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 1 (Comedy) - In the distant future, ten soldiers battle for control of the least desirable piece of real estate in the known universe – a box canyon in the middle of nowhere.

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 2 (Comedy) - A mild-mannered medical officer encounters a poltergeist haunting a robot, a 200-ton tank in the center of a love triangle, and an evil strain of artificial intelligence attempting to enslave all of humanity.

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 3 (Comedy) - The universe is in chaos, and the final hope for humanity is two thousand years in the past with a fast talking computer that loves knock-knock jokes.

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 4 (Comedy) - A bomb with a bad attitude, an alien with an epic score to settle, and the usual gang of hapless soldiers on a quest to save the universe from an ancient prophecy of destruction.

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Vol. 5 (Comedy) - Concludes with the usual gang of luckless troops – joined by a mysterious stranger, a half-alien child and a crashed ship.

Check out what Woody Harrelson has to say about The Most Dangerous Man in America, in this podcast on iTunes. The Oscar-nominated film is now available for preorder.

Most Dangerous Man in America: Woody Harrelson Interview

Preorder The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

Also this week Prodigal Sons is available on iTunes. A high school quarterback and ‘most likely to succeed’ laureate returns to his native Montana as a transgender woman. Meanwhile his brother struggles with uncontrollable rages after sustaining a brain injury. A work of reality that breaks the scales on truth being stranger than fiction, this documentary is certainly worthy of  LGBT Pride Month.

More movies now on iTunes:
Fuel (Documentary) – Eleven years in the making, an in-depth personal journey of filmmaker and eco-evangelist Josh Ticknell, who takes us on a hip, fast-paced road trip into America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Endgame (Action & Adventure) - A gripping and sophisticated political thriller based on the covert discussions that brought down the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Children’s War (Documentary) - A lost generation of Ugandan youth is the result of a twenty-one yearlong civil war where a vicious rebel army leads a massive and coldly systematic child abduction machine.
The Warrior Class (Drama) - Rookie lawyer Alec Brno has just been assigned the case of his career: exposing a billion-dollar oil scam led by a ruthless mafia boss.
Our City Dreams (Documentary) - A portrait of five women artists working and living in New York City today.
Driven to Kill (Thriller) – An ex-Russian mobster who is now a crime novelist must confront his past when his family is targeted by violence.

New on Hulu:
Skills Like This (Comedy) – When a failed writer discovers his previously untapped talent for larceny, his own life and the lives of his two best friends are turned upside down.
Fuel (Documentary) – Director Josh Tickell takes us along for his 11 year journey around the world to find solutions to America’s addiction to oil.

New on PlayStation:
Dragon Tiger Gate (Action & Adventure) – Three young martial arts masters emerge from the back streets of Hong Kong to help the powerless fight injustice.
Shaolin vs. Evil Dead (Action & Adventure) – Using the Five Elements Formation, Pak and Hak must set aside their differences in order to abolish a horrific creature in a fight to the death that features zombies, vampires, and fierce kung fu action.
Meadowoods (Horror) – In a sleepy and uneventful small town, three college students, bored and desperate to make their mark, plot a savage and merciless murder.
Initial D (Action & Adventure) – After winning his first competition, Takumi focuses his attention on drift racing, a sport he has unknowingly perfected while delivering tofu in his father’s Toyota AE86.
Air Guitar Nation (Documentary) – Chronicles the birth of the US Air Guitar Championships as legions of aspiring rock stars compete to become the greatest air guitarist in the world.
House of Fury (Action & Adventure) – Teddy Yu is a former secret agent turned chiropractor who thought he left his past behind.

The documentary World Cup Soccer in Africa: Who Really Wins?, new on iTunes, exposes the impact of the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament on South Africa. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, construction workers, FIFA’s Communications Director, street traders, politicians, and sports celebs discuss both national pride and corruption, as this massive event affects ordinary South Africans.

This week’s action & adventure release brings to your iPad the WWI fighter pilot known as The Red Baron. During the Great War, military strategists developed their aerial advantage in reconnaissance missions, and in 1916, the aristocratic Manfred von Richthofen became a legend for his Top Gun talent. He would tally 80 air combat victories during his piloting career, earning himself the nickname – the Red Baron.

Celebrating the life and legacy of Dennis Hopper, we remember how it all began with the premiere of Easy Rider at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969. The groundbreaking road movie earned a Palme d’Or nom, and handed Hopper the Best First Work award as director, co-writer and co-star. This Daily TwitPic from that day on MTV Movies Blog shows the cast in southern France over 40 years ago. Hopper was honored this past March with the 2,403rd star on the Hollwood Walk of Fame surrounded by family and friends Jack Nicholson, Viggo Mortensen, and David Lynch. Watch Dennis Hopper in films on iTunes, including Mad Dog Morgan and The Keeper, and appropriately, in moments of footage in the comedy Con Man (aka Cannes Man).

More Movies This Week on iTunes:
The Power of Forgiveness (Documentary) – Explores the concept of how forgiveness can transform your life. Featuring Elie Wiesel (Nobel Laureate, Holocaust survivor and Oprah Book Club author); Marianne Williamson (spiritual activist and author of ‘Healing the Soul of America’) Thich Nhat Hanh (Buddhist teacher, author and peace activist); and Thomas Moore (author of the bestselling ‘Care of the Soul’).
Chain Link (Drama) – Newly released from prison, Anthony does his best to rebuild his life, getting a job and reconnecting with his ex-girlfriend Jade and their young son. But when Anthony finds himself in a bind, he’s forced to consider a return to the criminal life.
Mustang Sally’s Horror House (Horror) – A Madam, Mustang Sally, introduces six college friends to the girls of their dreams. But some dreams are really nightmares as, one by one, each of the guys is lured into a trap that has been unexpectedly prepared for them.
One Bright Shining Moment (Documentary) – Retraces George McGovern’s bold presidential campaign of 1972 – a grassroots campaign that fought for peace and justice, and positioned ideas and people first. Featuring interviews with the candidate himself, supporters and activists like Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, Warren Beatty, Howard Zinn, and music from Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Donovan, and Elvis Costello.
My Dog: An Unconditional Love Story (Documentary) – Explores the unique relationship between people and their beloved pets through candid interviews with notable dog lovers including Glenn Close, Richard Gere and Carey Lowell, Edie Falco, Christopher Meloni, Isaac Mizrahi, Lynn Redgrave, Edward Albee, Greg Louganis, Richard Belzer and Cindy Adams.
Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman (Documentary) – Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, a celebration of the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream.
Afghan Knights (Action & Adventure) – Haunted by the fact that he left a man behind in Afghanistan, an ex-Navy SEAL puts together a special task force to endure one last mission to save his comrade.
Defamation (Documentary) – Speaking with an array of people from across the political spectrum and traveling to places like Auschwitz and Brooklyn, Yoav Shamir discovers the realities of anti-Semitism today.
C.H. Spurgeon: The People’s Preacher (Documentary) – Captures the spirit and message of a man considered to be the greatest preacher in the history of the church whose eventful – and sometimes controversial – life is highly relevant to the twenty-first century.
Fury (Horror) – A wannabe teenage band plan their first concert in an abandoned city building which is scheduled for demolition. But on the night of the concert, the local drug lord shows up and the body count rises on both sides.
Inside (2006) (Drama) – After the loss of their son, a grieving couple traps a young boy in a horrifying existence of desperation, despair and insanity.
Jedi Junkies (Documentary) – Star Wars isn’t just a series of films. It’s an indelible part of the last thirty years of American culture, going far beyond mere entertainment. For some, it’s become a way of life.
Machine (2007) (Action & Adventure) – Vic, an ex-mercenary turned hardened criminal, and his partner Frank survive in L.A.’s underground spending each day immersed in a cesspool of ruthless crime lords, dirty cops and desperate drug dealers.
On the Yard (Drama) – A convicted killer makes a bad impression on his fellow inmates after he causes trouble with the self-proclaimed leader of the prisoners.
Protecting the King (Drama) – David’s story as the youngest bodyguard in the history of rock-n-roll. It is the true account of his ascent into manhood and the struggles of life on the road during the last years of Elvis’s life.

The stars came out May 9th to celebrate their furry and faithful friends in Daryl Roth’s documentary, ‘My Dog: An Unconditional Love Story,’ [available today on iTunes and DVD] at the Directors Guild Theater and The Oak Room. The ASPCA brought some canine stars to join the red carpet with supporters. The premiere was tenderly dedicated to the late Lynn Redgrave, who appears in the film alongside Glenn Close, Richard Gere, Edie Falco, Isaac Mizrahi, Edward Albee and more celeb lovers of dogs.

After a decade of short films and big issues, Media That Matters continues to inspire and impact people across the globe. The tenth annual Media That Matters collection premieres June 2 at 7 p.m. at the SVA Theatre (333 West 23rd Street). This year’s collection features twelve new films—each under twelve minutes—that will inspire audiences to screen, act, impact. Arrive early to take part in the impACT salon, meet the filmmakers and enjoy free ice cream cones generously donated by the Raw IceCream Company! Buy your tickets in advance – for the New Video community, Media Matters is offering a special discount. Simply enter the code MTMSPECIAL at checkout and receive $2 off the regular ticket price of $13.

In other New Video news, we’re happy to announce that the Arthouse Films documentary Herb & Dorothy received a Buyer’s Choice Award at this year’s Museum Store Association Expo.

And we offer warmest congrats to the high school filmmakers from Kansas who took part in this year’s Focus Film Festival for their hard work and love of the cinema.  Luke McDaneld, a senior at  Lawrence High School and co-organizer of the festival, won Best Cinematography for his short “Leap,” and a copy of New Video’s Cinematographer Style. He wrote to us, “It’s a film that, particularly for me, is inspirational—and hopefully, someday I’ll be featured in Volume 2. Thanks New Video—from all of us in Lawrence High School’s film program.”

If you plan to be in the great outdoors anytime soon, you may just want to Know Your Mushrooms, and this trip of a film from Ron Mann is the perfect starter. Appropriately, the film is 100% Fresh according to Rotten Tomatoes – a rare find! “Über myco visionaries” lead us on a hunt for the wild mushroom and the deeper cultural experiences attached to the mysterious fungi.

With baseball season warmed up, two films this week look at a specific moment in baseball history: The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (Documentary) takes a retrospective look at Detroit Tigers first baseman “Hammerin’ Hank,” a pioneer in the Jewish community who battled anti-Semitism during his career on the way to the baseball Hall of Fame. The Chosen (Drama) makes an interesting double feature: Daniel is Hassidic, while Reuven is a Zionist; though separated ideologically, the boys find a common bond through their love of the neighborhood games of baseball.

Three seasons of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe are now on the iTunes store. Bring back the nostalgia of your youth (or share with the youths in your life).

Many More Movies on iTunes:
Waiting for Armageddon (Documentary) – America’s 50-million strong Evangelical community is convinced that the world’s future is foretold in Biblical prophecy – from the Rapture to the Battle of Armageddon.
Bonhoeffer (Documentary) – Dramatic story about the young German pacifist and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who resisted the Nazi regime and was hanged two weeks before World War II was over.
The Camden 28 (Documentary) – Explores how and why 28 individuals intentionally placed themselves at risk of arrest and imprisonment while protesting the war in Vietnam.
Conventioneers (Drama) – At the 2004 Republican Nation Convention, love blooms between a Republican delegate and a Democrat protesting the event.
Breaker Morant (Drama) – Three Australian lieutenants are court martialed for executing prisoners as a way of deflecting attention from war crimes committed by their superior officers. Directed by Bruce Beresford.
Voyager (Drama) – Sam Shepard. A story concerning the travels of an American construction engineer who is wandering throughout Europe, recounting his life story through a series of flashbacks while meeting a variety of new characters.
Battle Planet (Sci-Fi & Fantasy) – Captain Strider, a Special Forces Officer, is sent to a dissolute planet to arrest traitors when he learns of a plan to end all humanity.
Fear City (Thriller) – Melanie Griffith, Billy Dee Williams. 1985. Strippers in Manhattan are being stalked and murdered by a psycho. A hard-nosed police detective and a conflicted ex-boxer-turned-private-eye, hired by the strip club owners, set out to find him before he strikes again.
Adopt a Sailor (Drama) – Patricia and Richard, a successful and hip couple from New York City, inadvertently “adopt a sailor” from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, who changes their lives forever.
Pearl Diver (Drama) – The story of two sisters, haunted by the twenty-year old murder of their mother and what happens when a farming accident rips away the layers of secrecy and buried trauma surrounding that night.
James Blunt: All The Lost Souls Tour – Toulouse, France – 2008 (Concert Films) – Singer/Songwriter sensation James Blunt wows his audience in this 2008 concert featuring all the songs which have made him a household name and a major box office draw around the world.
Honor (Action & Adventure) – In a world where street gangs collide with the law, neighborhood friends must decide which side of the battle to join.
Wildfire (Drama) – Since they met the first time in boarding school as kids, it was obvious that orphans Kay and Frank would become a couple. Now Frank is released from prison and immediately starts wooing Kay again.
Jake’s Corner (Kids & Family) – The fictional story of an ex-football star, Johnny Dunn, who moves far from the spotlight after a family tragedy to a small, desert town he owns called Jake’s Corner.
Streamers (Drama) – Four young recruits about to be sent to Vietnam confront their prejudicial feelings toward one another when it’s learned one of them is homosexual.
Passed the Door of Darkness (Horror) – The chilling tale, with one shocking twist after another, of a serial killer seemingly born of The Zodiac Killer and The Unabomber.

New on Hulu!
Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah // The Low Life // End of Poverty? //Hurbert Selby Jr: It’ll Be Better Tomorrow 

New on AmazonVOD!
Dirt! The Movie // Blessed Is The Match // Wonders Are Many // and Jane Fonda in FTA

When you hear the name Billy the Kid, you might think of a gun slinging hero from the Wild West. What you probably would not imagine is a skinny, teenage boy from rural Maine. The documentary by former fashion stylist and longtime casting agent Jennifer Venditti, tells the coming-of-age story of 15-year old protagonist Billy Price. Jury Prize winner of the Best Documentary award at the 2007 SXSW Film Festival, ‘Billy the Kid‘ [iTunes] introduces us to an expressively fearless high school outsider who deals with life and love on his own terms and invites us along for the journey.

More Movies on iTunes:
A Room with a View (Drama) – When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperone Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr. Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation.
Meadowoods (Horror) – In a sleepy and uneventful small town, three college students, bored and desperate to make their mark, plot a savage and merciless murder.
The Awkward Comedy Show (Comedy) – Written and directed by Victor Varnado and set to the music of cutting-edge hip-hop artist Farbeon, this is a showcase of the talents of four groundbreaking African-American comedians.
Hollywood Flies (Drama) – An Italian expatriate and his high-spirited sister find themselves in a very dangerous position after they pick up a pair of hitchhiking men and get mixed up with a beautiful woman.
Shadow of the Sword (Drama) – Two men who bonded as youths in a European monastery reconnect after a fifteen year span in which they have followed different paths of life.
Shred (Comedy) – Max and Eddy are washed-up pro snowboarders from the ’90s who ruined their careers with reckless behavior but decide to get back on top of the snowboarding scene against the wishes of their old rival.
Short Eyes (Drama) – A child molester sent to prison finds that criminals exact harsher justice than society, and his arrival becomes a catalyst for the anger and violence that erupts amongst the inmates.
Westbrick Murders (Thriller) – Even the blood soaked rain can’t wash away the stink of this sinister city when Billy and Barbara, two serial psychopaths, embark on a killing spree in the dark metropolis of Westbrick.
The Path of the Wind (Drama) – After serving a ten-year prison sentence, Lee Ferguson returns to the small town where he was raised looking to lead a simple life, but is tested on how far he is willing to go to seek redemption.
College Boys Live (Drama) – In a quiet Orlando suburb, three young men struggle to escape the wreckage of their pasts and create new lives for themselves.
The Deal (Comedy) – A down-and-out film producer agrees to make his nephew’s film about 19th century English statesman Benjamin Disraeli, but can only get financing if he casts a well-known action star.
Handgun (Thriller) – Jack McCallister is an aging career criminal whose luck is about to give out and asks his two sons, who have their differences, to work together in finding a missing $500,000 windfall.
The Keeper (Thriller) – When an apparently exemplary cop abducts and secretly imprisons a beautiful dancer, a deadly battle of wills between captor and captive ensues.
My Brilliant Career (Drama) – A story charting the developing self-awareness of Sybylla Melvyn as she grows from an insecure tomboy to a self-assured woman.
Still Green (Drama) – The summer of their senior year, ten best friends rent a beach house for one last week before separating for college, but a tragic accident will test their friendship.

This week, the creative world mourns the passing of fantasy and science fiction artist, Frank Frazetta, following his death from a stroke on Monday at the age of 82. Frazetta’s work ranged from comic books to paintings to film posters to paperback book covers. His influence is the subject of documentary ‘Frazetta: Painting With Fire‘ [iTunes] and still resonates today across all media, as MTV captured his followers’ salute to the man on Twitter:

Mike Oeming, Writer/Artist (“Powers”, “The Mice Templar”): @Oeming “Frazetta was one of my idols. I went to his museum got to meet his wife and his paintings. Going to watch Painting wth Fire tonight”
Steve Niles, Writer (“30 Days of Night”, “Criminal Macabre”): @SteveNiles “Rest in Peace Frank Frazetta.   ”
Rob Liefeld, Writer/Artist (“X-Force”, “Youngblood”): @RobertLiefeld “Frank Frazetta R.I.P. The best illustrator,painter, artist of this or any generation has passed away.”
Gerry Conway, Writer (“Superman”, “Firestorm”): @GerryConway “Sad news about Frank Frazetta. Met him while Roy Thomas and I worked on “Fire and Ice.” Defines “giant” in his field.”

To coincide with the release of their documentary, ‘Babies,’ Focus Features asked filmmakers who are new parents to make short films about their… babies. Sascha Paladino, director of ‘Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart,’ contributed this work on his twins, Gianluca and Cole, titled “Have We Met?” Enjoy, and don’t forget the mothers in your life tomorrow.

Filmmakers Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler spoke with indieWIRE’s Eugene Hernandez about their film, WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE, as part of the “Meet the Filmmaker” series hosted by indieWIRE and Apple during the Tribeca Film Festival, at the Apple store in SoHo. 

The interview available here as an iTunes podcast.   

The sisters discuss growing up as the daughters of the radical lawyer William Kunstler, and their relationship to him and his work – from their teen years, when he passed away, through adulthood and coming to terms with his legacy. Quoting Babies director Thomas Balmés, Hernandez points out great documentaries must have tension between subject and documentarian. The sisters grappled with finding their narrative voice, and with the emotions of interviewing their father’s detractors – and created a profound personal portrait of the public figure.

April Benavides talks to Victor Varnado and Marina Franklin of ‘The Awkward Comedy Show,’ now available on iTunes and DVD. If you prefer to read, here’s the transcript:

“Comedy, plus blackness, to the nerd power,” that’s the tagline for THE AWKWARD COMEDY SHOW, a film that premiered on Comedy Central recently. The tagline gives you an idea of the unique viewpoint of the five comedians featured—Victor Varnado, Marina Franklin, Hannibal Buress, Eric André and Baron Vaughn. In many ways, this is the anti-Def Comedy Jam, with the comedians bringing the arrogant street-wise swagger of computer programming, Shakespearean drama and playing the tuba. Joining me from the film are writer/director/comedian Victor Varnado, familiar to many from Late Night with Conan O’Brien, as well as comedienne Marina Franklin, often seen on Best Week Ever and Jay Leno. Welcome, Victor and Marina!

Marina: Hi!

Victor: Hello, April!

April: Victor, this film is your creation. What inspired you to produce it?

Victor: Well, to be honest, I saw a comedy special, which was horrible, on Showtime once and I was like, “This is horrible, I should do my own comedy special.” And I put together an idea with my friends and then made a film around us because a lot of my friends are black comedians who are not necessarily doing, I guess, the regular thing that you think most comedians will do and so just because we all fit into this particular category, that’s when I came up with the idea with the Awkward Comedy Show to be a nice little package for us all to perform in.

April: Well and unlike a straight standup concert film, Awkward Comedy Show incorporates interviews and animated skits—what was your idea behind doing that?

Victor: The idea behind doing the interviews and the animation…well, there were two things—one, because the comedians on the show, I wanted people to get to know them personally because I think that endears you even more to their performance when you sort of know where they’re coming from and how they think. And Marina was brought to the show because I wanted her to, more than anything, be a liaison between some of the comedians that were on the show and the rest of the audience because of all the comedians on the show I thin Marina is probably the most well-known from when we started the Awkward Comedy Show and she was just perfect, I mean, she’s kind of, I would even say walking the line, she’s definitely like—has a foot in both of the worlds.

Marina: Thank you [laughs]

April: Do you agree with that, Marina?

Marina: Well, yeah. I work pretty much mainstream as well as outside of, in that when I say I mainstream, that most the clubs in New York City, I guess that’s what you mean, right, Victor by walking the line

Victor: That is exactly what I meant.

Marina: …and I perform, you know, pretty much all the clubs in New York, whereas when we did this a couple of the comics, actually most of them, weren’t really in all of the—maybe like one club in the city—so there was a lot of dialogue as to: what did they have to do to get in and kind of step over to the next level.

April: Right. Well in the film, you have audience members describing the material they expect from black comedians in stark contrast to the routines that you all do. Do you find that audiences aren’t sure how to respond to you when you first take the stage?

Marina: Well, I actually address it in my act. I do a joke about not being a sassy black female comedienne; I find that audiences oftentimes expect that from a black female performer. Sort of that, you know, “Mmm-hmmm” routine. And it’s not that I’m saying that’s a bad thing, it just that I address it right of the bat that I’m not doing that. Because oftentimes when I start my set and I’m just standing there, I can kind of feel like a drop in the audience, like almost like a disappointment, like “Oh no! She’s not gonna do that thing that we like so much!” and so I address it, I say that, the rest are doing it and, surprisingly, the audience is like cheering as I start doing sort of that, “Mmmm-hmmm, Yeaaah, Mmmm-hmmm” and I respond to that by saying, “Oh look at that, it’s like the sun just came out.” [Laughter] So that’s how I address it.

Victor: For me, it’s often that an audience doesn’t know how to respond when I take the stage. They’ve never really met a black albino comedian before. In fact, the barista at Starbucks doesn’t know how to respond to it. [Laughter] So, I think that I just attack that as much as I can. I just talk about what people might be thinking or feeling and just make that part of my act. Try to bring people into the world from my point of view, always.

April: Can you remember the moment in your life when you realized, “Hey, I wanna make people laugh for a living”? And was that related, maybe, to a moment in your life when you realized, “Hey I’m a nerd”?

Victor: I can remember those moments but they are not related.

Marina: Yeah, I’d say the same thing.

Victor: Unfortunately. The moment I realized that I really wanted to try to make people laugh for a living was in high school. I had a teacher who was nice enough to—well, he wasn’t nice, he was actually angry with me. I would always make jokes in class and then he was mad enough to be like, “If you had the courage to go on stage and actually do that for real, I would give you an A for the quarter.” And so I tried it for real and I bombed horribly—it was high school. But he gave me an A. and I really liked it even though I didn’t do that well, I really enjoyed it so that’s when I started it. And the moment that I realized I was a nerd was when—it was a regular thing for my mother to come to Radio Shack when I was in junior high school. She’d come to Radio Shack and find me in the back learning how to program on the computer there because I had befriended the staff and they would let me play on the their computers and learn how to do computer programming and when someone pointed out to me that that was strange, I was like, “Oh, I guess I am a bit of a nerd.”

Marina: Yeah, I guess, for me, it’s separate as well. The way I found out that I should do it for a living, I guess, is when I actually got laid off. I mean, I didn’t have a choice. I was already doing comedy and I wanted to do it full-time but it was not yet set in my mind which way I was going to go. But my job told me. They said, “We don’t want you here anymore.” So, I fully committed to doing stand-up. I didn’t take a day job anymore and I just started doing it and there was a moment of real, you know, being broke. But I started just hustling a lot more and I was getting the work and I was making people laugh, that I realized that that I could now do this for a living. The moment that I guess I realized I was a nerd? I don’t think I ever realized I was a nerd. I think Victor told me I was a nerd. To be honest with you, Victor told me years ago, he goes, “You know, you’re a nerd.” I was like, “No I’m not!” cause I would do little goofy things, like I dance just whenever I want to and I don’t mind singing to, like, songs like I’m in a musical every now and then. So, you know, people would point that out and a couple of boyfriends—

Victor: I can’t believe she would even dare to say that she was not a nerd when this week she was complaining about how she can’t play Fallout 3 on her computer the way she wants to play it and asking me about getting an Xbox herself—this is not for a boyfriend, this is just her [laughs] what she wants to do. She wants to play Fallout 3.

April: See, you just need to embrace it.

Marina: Yeah, I can’t fight it. I mean, I did have moments in, I guess, high school where I was really into math and I would compete with, like, the top kid in my class and we’d get the top grades and everyone else was just like, “Well—we don’t know what to do,” that was when I guess I knew—I thought I was just smart, I didn’t know that equaled nerd. And, yes, I am a gamer.

April: You were almost a Mathlete, you were saying?

Marina: Almost, almost [laughing]

April: Yeah, I definitely think I’m with Victor then on this. Marina, do you find that being a woman in the comedy world brings you more opportunities or more challenges?

Marina: Both. Being a woman in the comedy scene brings you opportunities as well as challenges—the opportunities [are] because you’re rare and so people are especially looking at you as being a female comedienne being so rare that, you know, you get these opportunities to be the woman on the show or, you know, you have a lot of casting directors that are like, “That’s rare, let me look at her.” So you have more people looking at you as opposed to, I guess, male comedians—there’s so many of them that it’s kind of like, you know, they may not be looked at as often as I am. The challenges are of course not being put into the female box. I’m always asked, what it’s like to be a female comedian as opposed to being a comedian, more so. And the challenge is to not be in that, sort of, box of female comedian. To just be considered funny. Oftentimes you come offstage and a guy will say to you, “I thought you’re really funny—for a female,” instead of just saying, “You were hilarious, you were funny,” you always get, “You were really funny—for a female.” So that’s the challenge that I didn’t even realize I had when I walked onstage that there was a guy in the audience looking at me going, “Oh boy, what is she gonna talk about?” and that I didn’t know I had that challenge. All I thought about when I walked onstage was being funny and entertaining the audience. I had no idea that that was something that I was also combating.

Victor: Marina can also attest to the fact that, for instance, if there was a comedy television show and they were casting comedians. Say they were casting 6 comedians and of all the people who auditioned, 10 female comediennes were great and 10 male comedians were great, they’d cast probably with 4 to 5 comedians and 1 or 2 female comediennes because it’s just the way they do it because if someone is female, they sometimes get excluded from casting. If the casting director and, like most of America, has in their head that, when we say the word comedian, they think of a white male, anybody who’s not that is cast less if its just open to anyone then they’re cast less than the person who’s that white male ideal.

Marina: Right. And I have found more now than ever, in the past month actually, I have found women coming from shows that I’ve done live and they say to me, “We love watching you because you represent us and you have our voice and you give us what we want to listen to as well and we know that your road is much tougher.” They say this to me, which I’ve never gotten before and then I also get “How come there aren’t more women on the show? You were the only one, how come there are not more women?” To that, I usually just go, “Well, because I beat all of them. [Laughter] And I really, I’m the only one that should be here”—no. But it’s interesting that women in the audience are becoming more vocal about what they want to see as well.

April: Well, speaking of white male comedians, to paraphrase a well-known one, “You might be awkward if…”

Victor: I would say, “You might be awkward if your conversations are 40% silence.” [Laughter] I had to go though that a lot because I tend to have ideas or ways of speaking that make people just look at me rather than respond.

April: What about you, Marina?

Marina: Well, you might be awkward if you get this from your friends, quite often: “Whaaattt?” Victor does that to me quite often, “Whaaaat?? What are you talking about? Oh my god!”

Victor: She does crazy stuff; you don’t know her like I do.

Marina: Even other awkwards would acknowledge it. “Whaaaat?” I get that often, “What are you talking about? Were you even listening?” [Laughter]

April: So, what projects are next for you?

Victor: Well, right now I just started pre-production for a new comedy concert film that I’m actually directing and producing—I’m not in this one, this one I’m working on as director/producer, which is going to feature a lot of the rising names in alternative comedy. I can’t talk about it because we’re still working on the casting yet, but that’s happening for me right now. We start shooting in June.

Marina: I’m just doing what I usually do—just performing around New York City. I perform all the clubs: Comedy Cellar, Comic Strip Live, Caroline’s on Broadway. This weekend I’ll be there with Mario Cantone. At the Laugh Lounge, Broadway Comedy—I’m trying to mention them all so they don’t get mad at me—Broadway Comedy Club, New York Comedy Club. I’m supposed to do the Tonight Show this year at some point. I had to, you know, audition and they approved my set so I don’t know yet when that is, they’ll let me know.

Victor: Yeah, it usually takes them several months to figure it out and then they’ll call you out of the blue like, “Okay, it’s tomorrow.”

Marina: And then I also upcoming possibly the Montreal Comedy Festival, they’re looking at me again.

April: Great! Well many thanks to Victor Varnado and Marina Franklin for joining us to discuss The Awkward Comedy Show—available on DVD and on the iTunes store from New Video.

Both: Thank you, April!

April: Thanks, guys!

Tuesday’s MoMA screening of Tamra Davis’ ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child’ drew a dazzling crowd of talent to witness Tamra’s storytelling, including video footage she recorded months before Basquiat’s untimely demise, which made for a lively Q&A session, with Chris Rock asking, “What are the parallels between Basquiat and Dave Chappelle?” and words of admiration flowing from Alicia Keys, Julian Schnabel, and longtime friend Fab 5 Freddy. Several old friends were clearly moved to hear Jean-Michel’s voice after 20+ years, and see his image again in those unguarded moments. Many remembered Basquiat’s dedicated partygoing – his dance style and charisma – blending seamlessly into a tireless work ethic that concreted him into the annals of art history by age 25. A few questioners took aim at the status of street art today and Basquiat’s role in the careers of the likes of Banksy or Shepard Fairey, who was in attendance. The event was luxuriantly hosted, with a party at the Boom Boom Room, by LVMH’s Nowness group – producing an opening event worthy of the 80′s joie de vivre of its golden subject. The film will be available on numerous channels and devices in late 2010; a preview here.

The daughters of William Kunstler have created a compelling portrait of their controversial “radical lawyer” father in the doc, ‘William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,’ released this week on iTunes.  They will be appearing Tuesday at the Apple store in SoHo in an event moderated by indieWIRE’s Eugene Hernandez. (Tuesday, April 27th;  6:30pm-7:30pm; Apple Store SoHo 103 Prince Street, corner of Greene).

Also just released, ‘The Horse Boy‘ [iTunes], based on the memoir of the same name, is part travel adventure and part shamanic quest of the Isaacson family. Traveling the vast, epic landscape of Mongolia in search of help for their autistic son, Rowan, the film is a modern odyssey. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and winner at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, and showing at 70 community screenings throughout April for National Autism Awareness Month.

MORE MOVIES THIS WEEK:

Big Heart City (Drama) – A recidivist horse better in search of his missing girlfriend discovers that the reasons for her puzzling disappearance could lie squarely with himself.
The Goebbels Experiment (Documentary) – The Nazi propaganda mastermind behind Hitler speaks in first person as actor Kenneth Branagh reads pages of the diary kept by the chief of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.
Tales from the Script (Documentary) – Shane Black, John Carpenter, Frank Darabont, William Goldman, Paul Schrader, and dozens of other Hollywood screenwriters share hilarious anecdotes and penetrating insights.
Fish Out of Water (Documentary) – A genre-bending feature that uses animation and academic interviews to dissect the seven Bible verses used to condemn homosexuality and justify marriage discrimination.
An American in China (Romance) – Aimlessly cruising through his first post-Stanford University summer, 22 year old David Braddock finds himself in China where he meets Mei, an ambitious young girl who urges him to find his life’s direction.
I Can Tell The World (Documentary) – Follows the members of an interracial, multi-generational choir committed to the preservation and performance of African-American spirituals.

Though you might recognize Turk Pipkin as Aaron Arkaway, the narcoleptic boyfriend of Tony Sopranos’ sister, Janice, Pipkin’s résumé goes well beyond TV and film. His days of stand-up comedy found him touring with Rodney Dangerfield, and he’s penned several books, including one with friend Willie Nelson. A devoted activist, Pipkin’s 2006 documentary ‘Nobelity‘ [iTunes] interviews Nobel Laureates on global issues such as poverty and the environment, and his new documentary ‘One Peace At a Time‘ [iTunes] continues the global journey. This time around, he meets up with Nobel Prize winners Muhammad Yunus, Steve Chu and Desmond Tutu to seek those organizations improving the lives of children worldwide. ‘One Peace’ visits the model Indian orphanages of The Miracle Foundation, family planning initiatives with Thailand’s Mechai Viravaidya, Ethiopian water projects with A Glimmer of Hope, and Architecture for Humanity’s global design challenge for communities in need in the Himalayas, the Amazon and the slums of Nairobi.

Also this week, Bruce Dern, Big Love’s creepy Frank Harlow, is in a motorcycle gang with Jack Nicholson in 1970′s ‘Rebel Rousers.’ Yes, that seems about right.

MORE MOVIES THIS WEEK:

Rebel Rousers (Drama) – Bruce Dern, Jack Nicholson. A rip-roarin’, rebel-rousin’ motorcycle gang skids into a small town – with trouble in mind.
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh (Documentary) – Follows the remarkable journey of 22-year-old Hannah Senesh, a young Hungarian poet and diarist, paratrooper and resistance fighter who was captured by the Nazis, while trying to rescue Jews during World War II.
The Call of Cthulhu (Horror) – A dying professor’s bequest to his nephew leads him on a globe-spanning quest to unravel a twisted knot of fear, madness, nameless cults and horrors best left unknown.
The Goebbels Experiment (Documentary) – The Nazi propaganda mastermind behind Hitler speaks in first person as actor Kenneth Branagh reads pages of the diary kept by the chief of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.
The Box (2003) (Drama) – Tale of an ex-convict attempting to live on the right side of the law, who meets up with a co-worker that has attempted to begin life over after making a living as a prostitute.
Eavesdrop (Drama) – Like pieces of a puzzle falling into place, a top line ensemble cast comes together in a crowded and smokey New York City bistro. No Witness (Thriller) – Recently indicted Senator Gene Haskell has his lackey hire a professional hit man to clean up a few messes, including an underage girl who’s obsessed with being the Senator’s wife.
Big Heart City (Drama) – A recidivist horse better in search of his missing girlfriend discovers the reasons for her puzzling disappearance could lie squarely with himself.
I Can Tell The World (Documentary) – Follows the members of an interracial, multi-generational choir committed to the preservation and performance of African-American spirituals.

Earth Day turns 40 on April 22. Recent films ‘The Cove‘ and ‘The End of the Line‘ [iTunes] shine a critical light on the state of fish collapse, while the upcoming theatrical release of ‘Oceans‘ offers an uncritical tour of ocean life. The new documentary ‘Dirt! The Movie‘ [iTunes], looks at yet another element of our ecosystem, with some suprising findings. Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, and inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, the film looks at changes underfoot in the unappreciated, unsung hero of soil – with a witty and hopeful view on creating a new and beneficial relationship to dirt.

(Movie Room Reviews is giving away a download.)

Also on iTunes this week:
Davey & Goliath, Vol. 1 (Kids) – The classic stop-motion animated series that aired Sunday mornings in the 60s and early 70s, features little boy Davey and his lovable dog Goliath, his family and friends, and numerous other characters from his community.
Touch the Sound (Music Documentaries) – A documentary that explores the connections among sound, rhythm, time, and the body by following percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who is nearly deaf.
Dirty Country (Music Documentary) – Meet Larry Pierce: a small-town family man who happens to be the raunchiest country music singer in America.
Plunder: The Crime of Our Time (Documentary) – A hard-hitting investigative film that shows how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity.
Queens of Heart (Documentary) – Brings to the screen the first psychological study of drag performance, set in the oldest surviving female impersonation club in the United States.
The Caretaker (Horror) – A group of teenage boys out to give their girlfriends a good scare on Homecoming night uncover the story of a real life urban legend.
Who the Jew Are You? (Documentary) – Alan Goldman is a disconnected Jew, who becomes a new father – only to learn that his new son is not technically a Jew.

April Benavides speaks with The Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, about their inspiration and purpose in staging pranks on the world, and their movie, THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD.

You can also listen on

And if you’re looking for a way to spend April Fools Day in New York, Andy and Mike will be appearing at the 86th St. Barnes & Noble tonight. Stop by and celebrate with professional pranksters!  They should be on their best behavior.

Barnes & Noble
150 East 86th St. at Lexington Ave.
Thursday, April 1, free, 7:00

April: Welcome to The New Video Download, I’m April Benavides. You can also hear the show at Blog.NewVideo.com.

My guests have been the subject of international news coverage for what they call “identity correction.” A representative of HUD [US Department of Housing and Urban Development] once described their work as “a really sick, twisted—I don’t even want to refer to it as a joke.” They are The Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. In 2004, Andy posed as a representative of Dow Chemical to a TV audience of 300 million and falsely announced that Dow would compensate victims of the horrific Bhopal disaster. Dow’s stock instantly plunged $2 billion. The Yes Men’s brazen stunts are captured in their latest film, The Yes Men Fix The World, which premiered to a standing ovation at Sundance and was called “Outrageously entertaining” by New York Magazine. Andy and Mike, Welcome!

Andy: Thanks, April!

Mike: Hello.

April: You’ve both pulled stunts, separately and now together for years. How did you fall into this line of work?

Andy: One thing led to another, I guess, you might say. We just jumped at opportunities to try to make a difference and sometimes, we found that, we are making a difference. [both laugh]

April: Were there people that inspired you in your work. Like other activists and, maybe, other comedians?

Andy: Nope. [both laugh]

April: So nobody was inspiring you? You had to step in?

Mike: No, absolutely not. Especially not, like, the Yippes, or, you know, the Diggers…

Andy: Daniel Defoe, in the 17^th century…especially not Michael Moore or anybody like that…

Mike: Useless, useless…

Andy: Definitely not.

Mike: And even some of our contemporaries, like Ali G, who—we were already doing some of the stuff we were doing before we saw him, but then—just totally uninspiring.

Andy: He definitely didn’t inspire us. Or Alan Abel or Joey Skaggs—or any of them—no, totally, totally not inspiring. We are totally original.

April: [laughs]That’s a great list of people that were truly of no inspiration at all. Dow Chemical lost $2 billion from your stunt, you’ve been the subject of a lawsuit or two—do you find that you make people—or companies—very nervous?

Andy: We hope so. We make ourselves really nervous doing this, so we better make them nervous.

April: And, personally speaking, in seeing the film, Andy, you look a little nervous on your way to the BBC.

Andy: A little [laughs].

April: And that’s this great moment in the film, to see that you guys are able to pull this stuff off even if it’s maybe a little nerve-wracking.

Andy: Yeah. No, it’s just a kind of: you gotta keep going. When we’re doing these things, seriously, we actually feel like we’re on a mission—like: we’re gonna change the world. And, in a real way, I think, it’s true. If you stand up and do something—even if it’s as stupid as the sort of thing that we do—you’re contributing to changing the world, which isn’t exactly what I meant to say, but..

Mike: I like it though, I was going, “Yeah, right on, I’m with ya…”

Andy: Well, that’s good. Okay, see, suspension of disbelief. People are gullible, people just believe anything.

April: You are calling your film The Yes Men Fix The World, so I think that that message is there.

Andy: Yeah. No, it is. And one of the core messages of the film is: you gotta do something, you just have to. You can’t sit on your ass, you can’t just sit there while things go to pot. You’ve got to try to do what you can. And what you can do, like us, is do funny things and tell jokes and make journalists laugh—or whatever it is that we do—you gotta do it. And we found ourselves accidentally bouncing into this sort of activity. And we’re delighted that, at times, we have made a difference. Like that BBC thing got 600 articles written in the U.S. press about the Bhopal catastrophe, and about Dow’s responsibility, and helped to build the pressure against Dow.

April: Well, to that point, the media loves covering you but you also target them occasionally. How do you perceive your relationship with mainstream media?

Andy: Mostly, we collaborate with them. They want to write important stories about important issues. And we give them the excuse to do that, basically. For some reason, it’s not enough that 20,000 people died because of Union Carbide’s inaction and criminal neglect in India, and that Dow, which bought Union Carbide, refuses to do anything about it. For some reason, that isn’t an important in itself, you have to have a funny story to write about that. So we give them that story and the journalists themselves are delighted. I think journalists like us, even though we sometimes pull the wool over their eyes. They really understand why we’re doing it and that, ultimately, we’re giving them the excuse to do their job.

April: Good point.  You know Roger Ebert, in talking about the film, pointed out that it’s surprising that you’re not recognized when you’re performing some of these identity correction acts. And also that a lot of the business people at these conventions regularly accept your proposals, things like the Survivaball. Is there a secret to selling the hoaxes or have you found that people are just really that dumb? Or gullible?

Andy: Oh, it’s not dumb. It’s that people are built to believe things, I think: we’re gullible. We’re supposed to be gullible. We have this great capacity for suspension of disbelief, which enables us to read a book or believe in angels or whatever. (Not necessarily that we should believe in angels. Probably not.) But we can read books and that is good. And we can watch movies and enjoy them or see plays—if we didn’t have those things [Mike laughing], it would be really sad. And so, it’s not like we’re against that, we’re just against people believing something is happening and not being angered by it if it’s terrible.

April: Right. While bringing attention to the serious issues, your stunts are just also, basically, very funny. Who and what—if anyone—makes you laugh?

Andy: Nothing makes me laugh.

April: No one inspires you and no one makes you laugh.

Mike: I guess, again, it’s one of those cases where there are a lot of unfunny things in the world. Like, Monty Python, for example. Total downer, you know? You can turn that on the telly and be bored out of your skull.

Andy: Yeah. Same with, like, Penn and Teller. Or, god forbid, like, Andy Kaufman. Or, oh god, Richard Pryor.

Mike: Chris Rock—

Andy: They’re totally not funny. Like, nobody. Just: nobody, pretty much.

April: I know that, especially lately, you’ve been encouraging others to perform identity correction and help fix the world. And, to your point, we should all be doing what we can. What are your top pieces of advice you’d give to a Yes Man or Woman in training?

Andy: Gosh. If you wanna do a Yes Men-style thing, you’re insane. But the way you do it is that you think of a funny story—something that will make people laugh about a very serious subject. Unless it’s too serious, unless it’s like…people have died in an avalanche—you don’t want to joke about that too much. But, if the death is once-removed, so you can’t actually see it, it’s not like, let’s say Exxon-Mobile has gone out with machine guns and slaughtered a bunch of African villagers. That’s just—you can’t really make a joke about that. But you can make a joke if Exxon-Mobile is indirectly slaughtering the entire continent of Africa. Now, that’s funny. [Both laugh] Complicated, but it’s true. I don’t understand it myself but it’s true.

April: So, death once removed, in some way…

Andy: Yeah, death once removed is okay. And basically what we do is make jokes about things that enable journalists to write stories. So, you come up with a story that’s funny, a funny angle that you created, you create the scenario, you create the story that, if journalists report it, they’re also going to have to report a very serious, important issue that you wanna highlight. And then you do the thing and then you send out a press release about it, with documentation. So it’s a three-step process: think of the thing, do the thing, and tell about the thing.

April: It’s the secret formula.

Andy: Yup.

April: Well, I’d ask you about what you’re working on next, but I doubt you’d share that with me. I’m sure it’s pretty secret…

Andy: Well, we would! We’re launching what we’re calling “A Yes Lab,” which is, basically, an institute to generate Yes Men projects in collaboration with groups and other activists that want to do the sort of things that we do, or improve on them. So we are already starting to workshop projects with three different activist groups and we hope to up the level considerably and almost create a factory for creative projects that draw attention to important issues. We haven’t really discovered anything new, doing this, but we have discovered that it’s relatively easy to get press attention for important issues using funny techniques and we have gotten to know a few ways of doing that. So we wanna help others to do the sort of thing that we’ve been doing for a while.

April: Well, great. Many thanks to The Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, for joining us to discuss their exploits and latest film, The Yes Men Fix The World, available on DVD from Docurama Films.

Andy: Thank you, April.

Mike: Thank you, April.

April: That was really fun, thank you, guys.

Calling all true and faithful Highlander fans:

Help create and be part of the bonus features on the upcoming DVD and win a trip for 2 to LA to have lunch with producer Peter Davis, and possibly other Highlander personalities through the Highlander Season Two Blu-ray Bonus Feature Fan Participation!

There are THREE very cool ways to enter to win – create a short documentary exploring “The Watchers,” create a video commentary for the episode “The Darkness,” or give your best answers to the questions posted here.

Every submission included in the final blu-ray release of Highlander Season Two will be entered to win. Deadlines: April 30th for all video submissions, and  April 15th for question submissions… good luck!

Stephanie Bruder speaks to writer and director James Mottern, whose film TRUCKER stars Michelle Monaghan as a long-haul trucker. Monaghan received Oscar buzz for the role, and TRUCKER has been called “a revelation” by the Huffington Post, “wonderfully unconventional” by the L.A. Times, and “a knockout” by the Detroit Free Press.

The film is available on DVD or on the iTunes store.

Listen to the interview here or on

Or read the transcript:

Stephanie: Welcome to the New Video download, I’m Stephanie Bruder. You can also hear this show at blog.newvideo.com. It’s not often that a first-time director hits his stride so well as to garner Oscar buzz, but my guest did just that. His film Trucker stars Michelle Monaghan as a long-haul trucker who lives life on her own terms. The film has been called, “a revelation,” by The Huffington Post, “wonderfully unconventional,” by the L.A. Times and, “a knockout,” by the Detroit Free Press. Welcome, James Mottern.

James: Thank you, Stephanie.

Stephanie: You’ve written a lot of documentaries and you won the Nicholls Screenwriting Award. How many scripts led up to Trucker?

James: How many scripts did I write and never saw the light of day? Plenty, you know, a lot. But I’d been working on documentaries for about ten years and I really loved it, it was great, you got to travel and meet a whole bunch of people and just hear real stories, you know, a lot of travel in the United States too—a lot of strange sorts of documentaries. And really anything anyone would hire me to do, if I got to go travel, it was a great thing: a lot of fun. And so I’d written many, many documentary scripts and I tried my hand at a few screenplays as well. I’d started out really wanting to be more like a playwright, you know, within the Sam Sheppard and Eugene O’Neill kind of world, I really liked those kind of American stories. But they’re all around you, in the documentary world they’re just sitting right there like little diamonds, where, if you travel…I’d been living out in the California desert and I’d come across this truck stop—and truck stops are always a good place to kind of get some ideas—and I’d seen the lady truck driver, you know, like a real teamster, all in denim and her hair kinda bleached out and real kinda pale blue eyes and on her dark skin—you know, she’s white—but on her dark skin it kind of really stands out. And she was just an interesting character. She’s sort of like so many people I’ve come across, [she] sort of implanted herself in my brain and I just kept thinking about her. And I love California, and I love the California desert and what California means to people, beyond just sunshine and relaxing in the sun or about the movie business, it means a lot. There’s a sort of very American kind of metaphorical thing about California, I wanted to capture that in it. And so the story comes from my own experience living, more or less, with a single mother and not having too much growing up at certain times in my life. And so this script just kinda came to life out of that and I wrote it while I was out there, out in the desert, and then someone said, “Oh, you should send this over to this fellowship that The Academy of Motion Pictures puts on.” And so I did and got a fellowship and just took it from there and eventually it got made, [which] took a while but [I’m] real glad I got to do it.

Stephanie: Well, congratulations! Michelle Monaghan is a really luminous and varied actress and I feel you brought something completely new out in her in this film. Tell me about collaborating with her.

James: Well, you know, Michelle is unusual actress. I think that a lot of times with women in film where everyone hopes that it’s going to be Julia Roberts that walks down the street because it makes people a bunch of money and, you know, people like it and whatever it is. And she’s got some of those qualities. She’s got a very, kind of, fun-loving personality, she’s got a great laugh and sort-of real star quality but there’s also something about her that kind of runs a little deep, that’s a little off, just a little different…I’m not gonna say it’s a dark side because I don’t think in terms of light side or dark side but there’s a real humanity to her and you can see that in a movie called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which a lot of people haven’t seen but it’s got a little cult following and I attribute some of that to her. And also in a movie called, North Country where I’d seen a couple of scenes with her that really spoke to me as far as this character goes. But when I offered her the part, she took it pretty quick. She kind of understood what I was trying to do with this small movie, you know, there’s not a lot of money for anybody. But it’s really kind of a good part for somebody and so she saw it and liked it and what I really—I think it’s coming from the documentary world where, in the script everything’s kind of set up: it’s all done. You know what the ending, the middle, the beginning—all that sort of thing. And in a documentary, what you do is, you very often have an idea what it’s going to be, going in. You hope that, in your mind, it’s gonna be just what you think it is but I would say probably 85-90% of the time, you take a right turn and it’s something you didn’t really think it was going to be. It tells you something. And so if you do it long enough, you kind of have to open your heart up to the possibility that what you thought about it is going to be wrong. And that you might have to change and it’s always the living, breathing thing, with documentary. And so I think that maybe, I’m not sure if I did exactly, in a sense, I kind of applied that to this, with her. And I really wanted her to feel putting on this jacket of Diane Ford and not be her as being a character actor or mugging for something, but really kind of created with her, on her own and make it something that was just her—it was coming from inside of her, not that she was trying to impress anyone or fulfill some vision I had or whatever. So, you know, I’m not very much into rehearsal so I don’t get too much out of it unless it’s more for blocking or for a sense of a tone or something so we did that a little. But really what we did [was] with the script. We sat down on her balcony up in her house up in Hollywood and we went through the script right on the ground, moment by moment, to see what it was really doing and every script’s got its dirty little secret about what’s not working or what’s working. People can kind of put it aside and hope it works itself out or whatever. So she’s somebody who’s got a lot of guts, she’ll easily say, “This doesn’t sound right,” or “I don’t know if she’d say this,” or whatever it is, so you’ve got to really be on your game with Michelle Monaghan. You’re gonna do your best work because she challenges you; you gotta kind of bring your game to the table. And I hope I’m a little bit that way too. And so we spent about 4 or 5 sessions just going through the script from top to bottom and then I rewrote it sort of with these tonal shifts—and it was more tonal shift, it wasn’t big sweeping dialog changes it was just a tone, it’s a recalibration. I always think that, by percentages: you change something so that it’s in the subtext of it, there’s none of these great epiphanies of change but just enough to make it so that it seems real or organic. And one of the things I discovered about Michelle, and it’s a very important thing for me and actors and that’s why, when I compare her to Gena Rowlands or Sally Fields or Ellen Burston, you know, these sort of great actresses…I also kind of compared her to Jack Nicholson because Jack Nicholson is somebody who performs very much, you know, you see him doing the lines and he’s funny or whatever, but he’s doing two things at once. He’s doing the sort-of outward veneer of this character—the character the world sees in the film (and maybe some people see in the audience) but he’s also playing, sort of, in a minor chord, he’s playing another part, which is the truth of the character, underneath. And so what you’re getting is the top and the bottom of this character: the inside and the outside all at once. And, to me, it’s always a fascinating way of performing because it’s very entertaining and you feel like you’re being let in on this kind of wonderful club with Jack Nicholson as he takes you to these parts and Michelle is very similar to that, she understands the subtext of what she’s saying. What really the scene is about: she plays the subtext, the words are whatever—funny or not-funny—but if she (we talked about this) plays the subtext, she plays the meaning of what it is. And not to, you know, try to be cute or funny or smile or mean or angry, whatever. In that way, you bring the truth of the character out, you bring the reality of it out. So that’s how we collaborated on it and then when we showed up on set, we only had 19 days to shoot in. So, there were no dirty little secrets in the script, or things we had to get over. We all knew what to expect and so then she just went with it and I was just there to, like I said, kind of recalibrate or to maintain the feeling—the tone of it, and so forth.

Stephanie: Fascinating. One of the subjects that you guys collaborated so well on, that you can’t avoid in this film, is gender identity and identity in general, but you’ve got this petite little woman playing a trucker and she’s really trying to define her identity. At some point in the film she says, “This is not who I am,” or, “That is not who I am.” Did you know who she was when you began writing her or was it a discovery for you as you went?

James: Well, I knew this woman once who—very nice, sweet woman—and for about two weeks once in her life, three weeks, when she was about twenty, she got a job as a dancer—she was a stripper—because she didn’t have any money. And she didn’t like it, I’m not sure whatever it was—she didn’t make enough money—I don’t really know, doesn’t make much difference but: she stopped doing it, right? She came from a nice family and she’d done a couple things she wasn’t too happy about—whatever, just like anybody does. But then whenever anybody talked about her, or whatever relationship she was in, whatever it was, people would say, “She was a stripper.” [Laughs] It was like: that was her identity. It became that; something that she’d done for three weeks in her youth followed her. And it happens with women a lot, I’ve seen over the—I mean, I’m not gonna speak for women, I can only say what I’ve observed. I live with my mother and I live with my twin sister and my other sisters and I’ve seen it very much is that, as a woman, you can’t win. You’re either too fat, too thin, too dumb, too smart—whatever it is—it’s just like you’re kind of up against it all the time because you’re constantly in this kind of gauntlet of categorization. And so, for me, when I started writing this character, it was that feeling like: Shit, you know what, I’m writing this story, it’s gonna be like—yeah you can look at it like this sort of binary world where there’s man-woman, good-bad, you know, male identity-female identity and then you can also have [someone watching] this and say, “Oh, it’s getting turned on its ear. Most truckers are men.” So you can look at it very surface that way, if you’d like to. But really, this whole idea about identity is like, it’s gender identity but it’s also very particular to each person, each person has their own identity that’s been assigned to them by the people they love or don’t love or the relationships they’ve had—it’s changed them. And they’ve changed themselves and so, for me, it was that feeling like, yeah it is gender identity-shift, in a certain way. But, you know, throughout history women have worked really hard building this country, farmers, doctors, whatever it is, I thought, you know, people are going to look at this and they’re gonna say, “Oh, she’s a trucker, you know, she’s a slut—sleeps around—she abandoned her children,” whatever it is, you know, she couldn’t win. And so, going into it, I was like, yeah it’s about identity but it’s about human identity, it’s about personal identity that each person has to sort of struggle to fight against and to define themselves and Diane Ford, in this film, you know, she’s always fighting against this. To me, she’s a hero in that sense, is that everyone is telling her who she is, you know, even the title of the film Trucker is like—yeah it’s about a trucker, and you can assume what you want about her because a lot of people have opinions about truckers anyway—that they’re poor and trash and didn’t come from nothing, whatever it is. But Diane Ford, in this film, is always kind of fighting that. I don’t like to reach into my own film, I leave it to everyone else but something when I was writing it occurred to me: the kid asked her what he should call her and she says, “Whatever you want,” you know, it’s sort of like a small recalibration of her, or adjustment in, her temperament, she’s sort of came to peace with like, “You know what? There’s nothing I can fucking do about this, you know, it’s just the way it’s gonna be and I’m just gonna have to live with it and carry on and be the person I think I am.”

Stephanie: And you mentioned Nicholson before and I know that you’re a fan of some of his 70’s films, The Last Detail and Five Easy Pieces, and those both really look at identity through occupation and habit. So tell me a little bit about, you know, were you thinking about those films in particular when you were writing this?

James: Yeah, you know, those movies from the 70’s are sort of like a blip in film history, in a way. And a lot of those are riffing off Godard and all the French films of the 60’s and then the French films are riffing on the films of the 40’s and it’s sort of one feeds into the next and creates these new generations of styles but they all, kind of, are grounded in what I would consider, like, a cinema of emotionality, I guess. (I don’t want to make it sound too academic because I don’t really think of things that way.) But these stories are—Five Easy Pieces,The Last Detail, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore—they’re about these characters, but these characters’humanity. In a very organic way, there’s not a lot of mugging, there’s not a lot of cutesiness, they’re very human stories. They play like documentaries in many, many ways. You know you can think of Harold and Maude, these are all Hal Ashby movies that I like, because a lot of these movies play to the lighter side of it. You see a lot of modern independent dramas where they come in very, very low in the sense that they come in very dark and they come in very—I’m not gonna say depressing, because I like movies that would be considered depressing, there’s a great movie called Come and See, a Russian movie, that has those elements that you look at it and you’re like, “Holy shit, is this really happening?”—But these films of the 70’s, there’s a certain kind of lightness to them when they come in with these characters and then there’s some place to go. I always think of it, there’s some place to go down, deep into something. When you come in on it higher, there’s a depth to it that you can find, whereas when you come in very low and depressed and dark, there’s really no place to go except up and then sometimes it doesn’t play right. It’s not really the way people are, especially in my travels in the documentary world. People want to love life and they love life and they try to get through the best they can but this shit happens to them and everybody’s got their inner life that’s a little troubling, you know, it doesn’t quite fit with what they’re doing from day to day. And those films of the 70’s, they really explore that with the characters that aren’t really fitting in too much. Nicholson’s in the navy in The Last Detailand in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he’s in a mental hospital or whatever it is. But they touch something that’s very much a human experience and, you know, in a lot of films now—I don’t want to go in this realm of judging other films, but I do have a sense that very often you see people in movies and they don’t really seem like they have a job. You know, they’re an ad executive or they’re an architect or whatever, it’s always kind of secondary. But, you know, the people that I’ve traveled around and seen and, you might call, in Middle America, whatever like real people—their work is who they are very often. They’re farmers, they’re truck drivers. It’s an integral part to their personality, it’s why they’ve chosen to do these things or why they wish they wouldn’t do them or whatever it is. But it’s something that is very much a part of this country and also people in general and so, in exploring Diane Ford as a truck driver, yeah it was sort of like, well, she’s a truck driver but she’s not just a truck driver because it’s seemed cute or funny or like it would look good in an article. Her being a truck driver reflects her desire for freedom and to not have anybody tell her what to do necessarily and kind of fulfill a lonesomeness she’s got in her soul and so it’s integral, it’s not something I just layered on there. So, yeah, when I was writing it, her being a truck driver was very organic to her character.

Stephanie: I definitely see the correlation with Five Easy Pieces there.

James: Yeah. In the quality of those films, you look a lot of them and they’re great, you know, there’s a certain—I’m not gonna say there’s a B quality, it’s not that—it’s just there’s a quality to them that’s very accessible. They’re not tricked out, they don’t have huge production values, there’s a lot of handheld stuff, they were done for not a great deal of money and so there’s a feeling—you feel like you can get in, that you’re in that club with those characters and that you’re part of it. And that’s what I try to go for in Trucker a little bit, I wanted it to be beautiful, I didn’t want it to be gritty for the sake of it, so I shot it at 235 aspect ratio, which is very wide and sort of fills—you know, the truck fits perfectly in there—but I wanted it to have a feeling where you could be access it, that you were a part of it.

Stephanie: It is a very gorgeous film.

James: Thanks. My [Director of Photography] Larry Sher, he’s terrific and he had shot Garden State, which I really liked, the look of it and also, just as a cinematographer and a DP on set, the feeling that he brings to the crew and the cast and to me, it was very important that that person be who he ultimately was, and he’s gone on to shoot The Hangover and a bunch of other stuff but I’d always really appreciated his work in this film, absolutely.

Stephanie: And more with the sound in the film, which is so delicately done and restrained and didn’t push your feelings in any particular way, and it seems to me like you paid a lot of attention to that. How important to you—coming from a documentary background—would you say sound is?

James: Sound is, a lot of times, it’s timing. It’s like if you played the piano, you play with the left or the right hand or whatever it is and very often, I would think of the sound as being one of those hands. The way it’s treated, you can make it big or small or whatever but it’s in conjunction with the picture. There’s a film 8 1/2, a Fellini picture, where there’s a scene that I always remember and I do carry it with me, cause it’s a beautiful scene. It’s when the character is young and I think he’s in a winery and he’s being put to bed, all the children are being put to bed at night by, I guess, must be like people in the town, or the mothers (it’s been a while since I’ve seen it). And so the children are running around and trying to get away, and I think they’re giving them a bath, and the way that he did it is very layered, it’s almost as if he shot it without sound and then added it later. It’s very finely done if you hear it, each thing is very musically done, it’s quite beautiful and I highly recommend it for anybody whose interested in that aspect of it, you know. And it’s done very tenderly. But it’s got guts, too. There’s something bigger than life about it, about the way that the sound is done in that part of the film—throughout—but in that part of the film. And so it’s something that, with Trucker, like I said with the script, just cutting dialog, first of all. Most people don’t talk as much as they do in movies, generally there’s a lot of communication with their eyes or just, what have you, and so there was that. I allowed it to be quiet, we all did, that there was silence in it and that the silence is what is replaced by the dialog, not that the dialog replaced the silence, if that makes any sense. [There’s] this undercurrent of silence in it, and from that you can build it and, you know, everything from that to the score. With the score it was that feeling Mychael Danna—a great composer—did the score to it and we talked about, it was always that feeling like (and a good composer’s this way anyway) that I didn’t want to create emotion. I didn’t want to try to create sentimentality, which is, if you could pick an emotion that I find just despicable, it’s sentimentality because it’s a constructed emotion. It’s not fear or joy or anything like that, it’s false, it’s, to me, a movie construct anyway. And so, for me, I wanted to not create anything. I wanted it to be drawn out organically from the film and the experiences of the characters and to have it be something you felt, not that you were given. That’s something that you could come to. And so with that I felt that with the score and the way we did the sound, is it kind of draws you to it, the idea was that it draws you to it on your own terms, in a way. You can either like it or not like it or whatever. But I didn’t want to be somebody who is there to, like, command your emotion at particular moments in the film. Through the composition but also through the audio and there’s some source music that I liked and that nature as well.

Stephanie: Right, I mean, it almost makes me think of Days of Heaven, in the way that it has this opening to listening to the open spaces in America. For me, there’s some kind of correlation between the way that Days of Heaven reads and the way Trucker reads.

James: Yeah, [Laughs] yes. This was the other part of it that I always had in the back of my mind, when you talk about that it reminds me of it. It’s usual, when you drive, you drive and you’re by yourself very often you’ll drive down the highway and you’ll drive for hours and hours in this country cause it takes a long time to get from one place to the other and if you decide you’re gonna drive across country or drive a long distance, you really have to commit, you know, and there are points where it’s just completely boring and you wonder why you didn’t fly and you can’t take another cheeseburger from the interstate, or whatever it is, but you drive and drive. And sometimes, when you’re driving, you come into a rest stop or you come into a gas station and it’s nighttime and you’ve been alone and you’re listening to the radio, or whatever, and, for me, when I step out of the car and I’m suddenly in like a well-lighted place with the reflection on the back of the trucks and the cars and the people talking. Everything is very clear, everything has its own particular cadence and look, you know, everything is brighter and sharper and, for me, and you also sort of muscled feeling like you’ve been someplace, like you’ve been out in a satellite, you’ve been brought back down into earth and it’s such a kind of lonesome but good feeling. It’s very quiet but at the same time you can hear all these very sparkling things around you and see them. And so, on the audio, I mean, that’s the real—I’m sure it’s a feeling you get anywhere in the world—but to me always makes me feel more like myself, more like a human being, grounded in the world when I have that feeling. And so that was a feeling I wanted to convey in Trucker, too, was that sometimes kind of muffled sort of lonesome feeling, but that there’s these moments where certain things you hear just kind of pop or certain things you see, they just sort of strike you so that’s what we tried to do a little bit, if that makes sense.

Stephanie: Yeah, you did. I should mention Benjamin Bratt, also, because he gives a memorable turn in the film as the father of Diane’s child and also former professional athlete. When you were building his character, were you thinking about counterbalancing Diane’s character?

James: Yeah, maybe it’s me, but I think a lot of people I know and a lot of people, they have a longing for something. It’s either, it either takes the form of, regret or they’re hoping to do something or they’re hoping for someone they love to come back or, whatever it is, whether it’s a relationship or someone that’s died. But a lot of people, in their inner life, there’s a longing that they have for something that has been lost or something they can’t have or whatever. It’s not a greedy feeling, it’s not a self-indulgent feeling – it’s a real human kind of feeling. It’s a real thing, it means something, this kind of hope, or whatever it is. A lot of people carry that around with them. And so, the character of Diane Ford in this film may or may not carry that kind of thing around, at least not on the surface, she does maybe underneath. But that Benjamin Bratt character, I always found compelling because he has that feeling, he kind of longs for her, you know, he was a professional baseball player, maybe he wasn’t that great, you know, he had hopes and dreams, just like anybody else and maybe he was a little bit ahead of the game in some way. But one thing that you get a feeling from (and I don’t know if it’s true because I didn’t want to be so pointed in the character) is the relationship between men and women, very often what draws a woman to a man, what he finds compelling or interesting or exciting: later on in the relationship it drives him crazy. It’s what makes him want to get rid of her, it makes him want to control her or shake that out of her, or whatever it is, very often a man will be drawn to a woman who’s a free spirit, who is funny and people love her and she wants to go out and have a great time but when he gets her, it changes. It bothers him, you know, like maybe she’s gonna cheat on him or maybe she’s not paying enough attention to him and then there you are suddenly identifying this person as this person or that person and what you thought made your love great is what destroys it. And so, for me, it was always that thing with the character of Benjamin Bratt where he’s a good guy, you know, he took care of his kid, he did all these things, but he wanted too much. He wanted too much from her and what drew him to her was also what drove him crazy, what also kind of destroyed what they had. I mean, that was always my feeling about it. And so, I always wanted to have him be a counterbalance to her in the sense that she had given it a go. You know, she’d done that thing that people do—gotten in a relationship, had, whether they were married or not whatever it was, and had a kid, and she was somebody in a way that got out like a lot of people, I think, especially women in relationships, you know, especially with children, where it’s not that they want to abandon anybody, its just that it didn’t turn out like they thought it would and so, for me, it was always that feeling like she was a hero because, in a way, she did get out. You know, she kind of fucked up a lot of things and abandoned people or whatever it is, but, in a way there’s a certain degree of heroism in the sense that she went against what everyone was expecting her to do as a woman, in the categorical way that she was identified, and was like, “Fuck it, I’m gonna go do something else,” and so you can see that he was a good guy, it wasn’t a bastard, he wasn’t trying to beat her, you know, he was none of that kind of stuff, but still, she was who she was, it wasn’t that she was driven away by some bastard, some asshole, it’s just that she chose to leave, in spite of the fact. So, yeah, I dunno if it’s a counterbalance but it always informed the character of Diane Ford. To me, that was always a somewhat profound moment of relationship between a man and a woman: that scene in the hospital, you know.

Stephanie: Definitely. You’ve worked previously with the Slamdance Film Festival, right?

James: Yes.

Stephanie: How did that experience and career inform making this film?

James: Yeah, I worked on the Slamdance Film Festival a few years ago and I had done it, more or less, as a favor, you know. And I’ve always been interested in independent film and Slamdance is an organization that serves first-time filmmakers, really. And it’s sort of in conjunction with Sundance. They’re not related but it happens at the same time. The reason I liked Slamdance is it kind of works outside of any kind of system that you’re familiar with. Sundance is an organization that is great and they have good films but it’s really a marketplace and there’s commerce going on. Slamdance—although it’s great when they sell a film or two in there—really it’s a place for filmmakers to come together and, kind of, discuss movies without that—even though there always is that, sort of, grinding feeling that you wish you had money and whose ahead of you, got their movie made, whatever—at least in the structure of it, it’s a place where you come together to really figure out movies and discuss movies and it’s place where ideas can germinate and, for me: that’s filmmaking.  I talked to an actor about a role and they had said, you know, “I would like to fulfill your vision,” and I said, “Well, let’s be very clear that I have no vision, it’s not my vision, you know, it’s a collaborative thing.” I have my ideas about the tone of it and what I would like to see and what I enjoy seeing, what I appreciate but to me it’s really people coming together to make something that becomes its own culture within the film, it’s its own kind of planet, spinning out there, and you all build it together and so, for me, that’s what Slamdance always was: a place to build a planet.

Stephanie: So what planets are you building next?

James: Right now, I’m careening headlong through space [laughs], inertia, I’m sure I’ll hit the sun at some point. Yeah, right I’m now I’m casting this film that’s gonna be in Boston about a Boston firefighter who, after an accident on the job, he becomes addicted to prescription painkillers and ends up going back to criminal life that he had avoided for so many years in south Boston. It’s a great tale and it’s a script that came to me and we’ve been working on it all together and it’s a lot of funny kind of stuff. And then I’ve a bunch of other things, including a script for Michelle, who I’d of course like to work with again, and it’s different than Trucker but it’s sort of—I’m not gonna say it’s a Western, cause that kind of pigeonholes it in certain way but it takes place earlier in the 20^th century, pretty early on, and it’s a pretty harrowing tale in parts and I sound like a carnival barker, I said this before, maybe, but really there’s some stuff on there that I really don’t think you’ve seen too much on film before. I’m excited about it and I think she’ll do it and, you know, working on the script with that. And other things.

Stephanie: Well, I’m really excited about both of those and everything else you have coming up.

James: Well, thanks.

Stephanie: Again, my guest today was James Mottern. Thank you so much for speaking with me.

James: Thanks, Stephanie.

Stephanie: The film is called Trucker and it is available on DVD and you can download it on iTunes.

James Mottern has written and directed award-winning documentaries for a variety of media outlets including BBC and Discovery Networks. He is the former producer of the annual Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. He is the recipient of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Mottern has several projects in development with studios including an original screenplayBoomerang financed by Mandate Pictures and produced by Bona Fide Productions.

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1. ST. PATRICK: APOSTLE OF IRELAND looks at an ordinary man who accomplished extraordinary measures on the way to becoming Ireland’s patron saint.
2. BLACK IRISH tells the tale of two teens in South Boston who face hardship and confrontation as one descends into crime while the other seeks his father’s approval.
3. COWBOYS AND ANGELS is a coming-of-age film about two Irish friends – one gay, one straight – who share an apartment and life’s experiences from work to romance to arrests.
4. THE MIGHTY CELT - X-Files sweetheart Gillian Anderson in an unusual tale of a 14-year old boy who develops a passion for greyhound racing, in a politically heated Ireland.

Following the wonder that was Friday night’s Independent Spirit Awards, the Academy showered the indie community with impressive wins in major categories. Among the underdogs, ‘The Hurt Locker’ walked away with six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director honors for Kathryn Bigelow, the first awarded to a female. ‘Precious’ took home two Academy Awards, one for Best Supporting Actress (Mo’Nique) and one for Best Adapted Screenplay (Geoffrey Fletcher), while ‘Crazy Heart’ won for Best Actor (Jeff Bridges) and Best Original Song for Ryan Bingham’s “The Weary Kind.” With the upset win over ‘Avatar’ in the ceremony’s final category, ‘The Hurt Locker’ became the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in history, earning only $21 million at the box office versus $2.5 billion for James Cameron’s blockbuster .

Our Top 5 Films that should’ve had an Oscar nod for Best Picture, and didn’t:

5. ‘Duck Soup‘ (1933): The Marx Brothers mixed war and politics and threw in a famous mirror scene to create a comedy masterpiece.
4. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs‘ (1937): Before Pixar changed animation forever, this full-length feature was the country’s first animated release.
3. ‘City Lights‘ (1931): The recipient of zero Oscar nominations, this silent romantic comedy remains arguably Charlie Chaplin’s finest films.
2. ‘Psycho‘ (1960): The highest-grossing of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, this thriller reinvented the genre and made taking showers a horrifying experience.
1. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘ (1968): Stanley Kubrick directorial interpretation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel pioneered special effects and set a course for a new frontier.

In advance of the glitz and glamor of Sunday’s Academy Awards, Hollywood’s and Indywood’s best and brightest are watching tonight’s Independent Spirit Awards hosted by the incomparable Eddie Izzard. Films such as “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” “(500) Days of Summer,” “A Single Man,” “Crazy Heart,” “The Messenger,” and “The Last Station” will compete for honors.

Among the 5 films nominated for Best Feature this year is “Amreeka,” the story of a Palestinian family that immigrates to a Chicago suburb just after the invasion of Iraq. A nominee last year for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and a New York Times Critics’ Pick, this underdog film will face stiff competition, but has already proven to have won over many hearts during its journey.

The 25th anniversary of the Independent Spirit Awards will be broadcast tonight with host Eddie Izzard on IFC at 11pm ET. For more on Amreeka, please visit the iTunes store.

Released this week, Joe Berlinger’s “Crude” unearths the effects of Chevron’s oil exploration of the Ecuadorean Amazon in a high stakes legal drama. This cinéma-vérité feature exposes of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet, known as the “Amazon Chernobyl” case. It traces the history between corporate giant Chevron/Texaco and the people of the region from the early days of extraction in the late 1950s up to the recent billion-dollar lawsuit filed by the affected tribespeople.  The recent winner of the International Green Film Award at the Cinema for Pace gala in Berlin, ”Crude” shows in vivid detail the extent of land and water contamination inflicted on the environment and a clean up that is long overdue. Also on iTunes this week:

The End of the Line (Documentary) – Narrated by Ted Danson. Scientists predict seafood will be off the menu by 2048.
Iggy and The Stooges – Escaped Maniacs (Concert Film) – The Godfather of Punk reunites with his original band.
The 3 B’s (Documentary) – Low-budg indie maestro Don Dohler and his notorious resume of sci-fi & horror film creations. 
The Last Hurrah (Comedy) – Grad students enjoy one last night together.
Bachelors (Comedy) – Roommates share the same affection for one girl.
Loser (Thriller) - A small-time drug dealer is bent on self-destruction.
The Sinking of Santa Isabel (Independent) – An adult attempts to recapture his youth through a treehouse.

April Benavides speaks to journalist and author Charles Clover about his book The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat, now the basis for a documentary film of the same name.  The Economist called the film, “The inconvenient truth about the impact of overfishing on the world’s oceans.” The film is available today on DVD or iTunes.

Listen to the interview here or on iTunes:

A transcript of the conversation after the break.

Welcome to The Download, I’m April Benavides. My guest today is Charles Clover, journalist, author, and former environment editor of The Daily Telegraph and columnist for the environment for The Sunday Times. His book The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat has been adapted for the new documentary of the same name. The Economist called the film, “The inconvenient truth about the impact of overfishing on the world’s oceans.” Welcome, Charles!

Charles: Thank you.

April: So, you’ve been an advocate for the environment for decades now. Was this a cause you always knew you wanted to pursue?

Charles: Well it sort of crept up on me, really. It just got more and more important and a lot of the other issues I was writing about as an environment correspondent seemed to take their place beside it. Overfishing was just the one that nobody had written a book about. And nobody else seemed to take it as seriously as I did. I was a recreational fisherman myself and I fished for salmon and sea trout and recently I’ve started fishing for bass—salt water—but originally I was wondering why the salmon and sea trout that I used to catch weren’t coming back in the same profusion. So it was quite self-interested as to why I got into writing about fish.

April: Well, a lot of us, to your point, don’t have that kind of direct connection with fish and so the news in your book and in the film that by 2048, there may be no fish left in the oceans if we continue as we’ve been going… it seems impossible to grasp.  Do you find it challenging to communicate your personal direct experience to people who are just more removed from contact with the ocean?

Charles: Well, first, to say something about that 2048 figure, [which] got headlines around the world a few years ago when it came out in a science paper, but in fact it wasn’t the thrust of the paper. The paper suggests that if we go on as we are, we will have run down most of the world’s major fish stocks by 90% on 1950 levels by some time around the middle of the century. It’s just that some bright spark happened to point to one line that hit the axis as being in 2048 but in fact you can’t predict anything as precisely as that and people have ridiculed the apparent precision of that prediction without undermining its force, which is, that we are running out of fish. And we have eaten them. And if we want to do something about it, we have to manage the oceans in a quite different way to the way we did in the past and we all pretty much have an interest in this. Very large numbers of us eat fish at some point in the year. Some of us may be vegetarian; some of us may eat more or less fish, depending on how close we are to the coast and how much it costs. But if you look at how important fish is to the world, you find that about 1.2 billion people have it as a key component of their diets around the world. And I suspect those figures are underestimates because I think we very often don’t recall that a lot of the fish in developing countries people catch for subsistence reasons. So it’s a food security issue, fish, and I don’t think it’s ever been thought of as such.

April: Right. What was the genesis of turning your book into a film?

Charles: Well, we sat around (a few friends of mine) and said, “Well it’s a very visual subject, you’ve got a book here that got some pretty rave reviews and any, you know, few tens of thousands of people have read it. You walk into a fish restaurant and nobody seems to be paying the blindest bit of notice and there are endangered fish on the menu. Why don’t we make a film?” A lot more people see it; it’s a much more readily absorbable medium than having to go out and buy a book and a lot of people sniffed around the idea of making a film from the film and television world. In the end, I didn’t trust any of them and I thought it’d be better if we made it ourselves and put together a company with which to do so rather than trusting in any particular television slot or network-commissioning decision to produce what we believed needed to be said. That is very much the way that you have to make these great statements. A documentary that’s on television doesn’t seem to really deal with the big issues of the day very often.

April: And the film itself, it’s visually stunning—some of the underwater footage—but then also has all of that kind of hard evidence from scientists about what’s happening to the oceans. It seems that trying to translate that into film must have been challenging in some ways, but also offered you an opportunity maybe to display some things that aren’t as compelling in book form. What were some of the biggest advantages or challenges you found in that transfer to film?

Charles: Well, I think it is—if you’ll excuse the expression—a bit dry reading statistics on paper, even if there is a lot of, sort of, word pictures and travelogues, with which I tried to make it a proper narrative. I mean, the book is a good narrative, it’s the first overfishing book with a narrative that impels you from the beginning to the end (I’d like to think). So we wanted a film that did the same thing, so to do that, in the visual language, you need sequences, which is what Rupert Murray, the director, is particularly good at filming. He films them himself; he is a brilliant cameraman. So, whether it’s the hunting of the bluefin tuna in the Straits of Gibraltar, in these huge nets, which I think is probably the best sequence in the film—it is an utterly stunning sequence of the Al Majabra, as it’s called, these big muscled men wrestling huge bluefin by hand in the foam and spray of their death throes—is just the most amazing sequence. And it just sort of brings home, you know, how intimate the relationship between men and fish has been down the centuries. I think there’s also some very, very moving sequences about modern industrial trawling compared to going out in herring drifters. There are some incredibly moving sequences in Africa, where people on the Senegal coast and West Africa depend on fish in very large numbers and they are now faced with terrible alternatives of either trying to immigrate illegally to Europe or stay there and live by some other means because the European trawlers have taken a lot of the fish that they used to catch. And so those sequences are what make the film different and sort of bigger, really, and better than the book. I think also two other things that we learned in the process of making the film that the book didn’t have. One of them was, as I say, this is your food security, was all around us at the time, but whether or not we were going to run out of maize—corn, as you call it in America—by some deadline, because of the take-up of bio-fuels and the fact that nobody is growing enough grain and nobody is growing enough rice either. And it occurred to us that, you know, fish are part of this problem. And, whether or not we can actually substitute farmed fish for wild fish. Everyone’s assumed that we could. But, in fact, there are many, many problems and many reasons why farmed fish are dependent upon catching wild fish because actually many of them, the carnivorous ones, have to be fed on small wild fish. And then, of course, there was the other issue of global warming, which is now very controversial. But there obviously are many, many processes at work and one of the processes that is enhanced by fish is the process of keeping the sea alkaline and absorbing carbon dioxide. There was a paper, which dropped in science on the day we set off for the Sundance Film Festival, that said that the droppings of fish are what keep the top layer of the ocean alkaline and [are] absorbing carbon dioxide. So all I’m saying is that overfishing, which started off as “why can’t I catch any more salmon or any sea trout?” suddenly, in the course of my researches, and in the course of then making the film, came to be seen as, you know, this great thing that is coming upon us within 50 years, is intimately involved with all the major environmental issues and maybe, you know, is integral to some very big ones. And maybe we’re wrong to give the hierarchy of environmental threats that we commonly think of the listing that we do—maybe overfishing is even more important.

April: Yeah, I totally get that from the film. You mentioned the bluefin tuna, which is endangered, and that sequence in the film. Coming up in March, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora is going to meet and is considering an international ban on the fishing of bluefin tuna. What are your thoughts at this point on how that vote’s going to go?

Charles: Well, my thoughts are that we have a much better chance than we ever imagined, even last autumn, of getting the international trade in bluefin tuna stopped. In March, I still think there’s a pretty uphill struggle, but when I first started out with the film—trying to use the film as a campaigning tool to get ministers and European officials to concentrate on this and to back a trade ban on bluefin tuna, (which I think has been overfished to the point where we have to stop fishing), that was last June—I didn’t think I was going to get very far because every single country had a reason why it didn’t need to make this a major issue. But yet, I went to see our minister Huw Irranca-Davies and about two weeks later, while he was still thinking about it, President Sarcozy made the first of one of his rather vacillating statements saying that he was going to support the listing of bluefin under this CITES Treaty, which was the one that the trade in ivory was banned under in 1989. That’s how you protect a species from wholesale poaching, which is essentially what’s happening in the Mediterranean Eastern Atlantic, because far more bluefin are being caught than should be. So I think we’ve got a much better chance, and particularly after last week when the European parliament, after some fairly heavy lobbying by ourselves, I have to tell you, voted in favor of a trade ban, an Appendix I listing under CITES, without the 18-month delay that President Sarcozy has been calling for. So we’re now waiting for the commission to decide and then the European Council ministers will have to decide at the 27 Nations and I would think there was now a good chance of Europe coming out in favor of an Appendix I listing and then the rest of the world has to decide, because it takes a two-thirds majority at a meeting that represents over a hundred nations to get a listing under Appendix I. So, it’s a pretty uphill struggle, but I think that there are a lot of people around the world, particularly in Africa, who will see that it’s Europe’s rather malign fisheries polices that’s done them a load of harm and think it’s about time Europe took some of their own medicine in terms of actually having this sorted out.

April: Right. Well, to your point that it’s an uphill battle, but it’s nice that there is more hope than there was maybe a year ago.

Charles: Yeah, I was sitting and having lunch with somebody from the Pew Environment Group about a month ago and we looked at each other and sort of said, “Did you ever think we’d get this far?”  And we decided that neither of us did. So, occasionally, when the human race sees something that is so blindingly obviously wrong, the right thing can happen. It’s just: we’ve got to cross our fingers until then.

April: And you’ve recently, in addition to the book and the film and all of your writing, you’ve recently launched the U.S. chapter of a sustainable fish dining website, fish2fork.com. Tell us about the concept and where the inspiration for it came from.

Charles: Well, the inspiration for this website is in the film. The film has this storyline about why certain restaurants, particularly certain very famous sushi restaurants, like Nobu, continue to serve endangered fish. You wouldn’t serve endangered lions or tigers or zebras—you wouldn’t get away with that because the clientele would almost certainly not eat it, and would regard you as odd for doing so. So why do we accept and indeed heap awards upon, you know, celebrity chefs who serve endangered species? The film takes the war to Nobu—who wouldn’t give us any very straight answers and continues still to serve bluefin, with a disclaimer that it’s an environmentally overfished species, which is strange construction, and that you’re asked to choose an alternative—but he still serves it. And so we thought, actually, most of the endangered fish that are sold are sold in restaurants, not in retailers, not in sandwich chains, not in staff canteens and kitchens, they’re served in white tablecloth restaurants for a lot of money. So we thought, “well, why not let’s do the old-fashioned journalistic thing of showing the public which of those very celebrity chefs are responsible for doing this?” So name and shame. So that’s what fisk2fork does.  It says which are the good restaurants, where they try very hard to serve sustainable seafood, and it shows the bad restaurants, which get 5 red fish skeletons. We go from 5 red fish skeletons to 5 blue fish. And the guys who get the 5 red fish skeletons are, by and large, mostly sushi restaurants and, with perfect symmetry, the two best restaurants happen to be sushi restaurants, too…So we’re telling the world this on fish2fork.

April: Fish2fork.com and your book and the film I think give people a lot of tools to do their part. Do you have any parting advice for all of us who want to make sure there’s still some tuna on our plates and swimming around the ocean 50 years from now?

Charles: Well, there are various things you can do: try not to eat bluefin tuna, try not to eat any endangered tuna—Bigeye tuna is also endangered. Rate your local restaurant on fish2fork—it’s there for the public, it’s for you. You can fill in the questionnaire about your local restaurant, you can rate it, you can rat on a restaurant, you can pat a chef on the back: all off the website. And we hope that that will lead to the kind of movement it already is leading to across the world, where it becomes socially unacceptable to serve endangered fish, as it once became socially unacceptable to serve, you know, birds of paradise feathers to ladies in their hats about a hundred years ago. I just think this is an unacceptable aspect of modern society, which we will grow out of. This is one of those means you have to help that happen.

April: It’s up to all of us. Well, many thanks to Charles Clover for joining us to discuss his book, the inspiration for the documentary film The End of the Line, which you can watch on DVD from Docurama Films or on the iTunes store. Thank you, Charles.

Charles: Thank you.

As the Winter Games unfold in Vancouver, here’s a countdown of our fave winter (and summer) Olympic films:

5. “Prefontaine” (1997) / “Without Limits” (1998): Hailing from the running mecca of Oregon, Steve Prefontaine’s life was cut tragically short, but his track career and the records he set left an indelible mark on the sport of distance running.

4. “Miracle” (2004): Kurt Russell takes the helm as coach Herb Brooks commanding the young U.S. men’s hockey team to an upset win over the powerhouse Soviet Union team, onto an Olympic gold medal and into American sports lore.

3. “Cool Runnings” (1993): The late John Candy coaches an unlikely bobsled team from the island nation of Jamaica in the 1988 Calgary Olympics where the spirits of teamwork, competition and sportsmanship reach full fruition.

2. “The Cutting Edge” (1992): Before Tom Cruise brilliantly melded sports and romance in ‘Jerry Maguire’, this film about a hotheaded figure skater who is paired with an ex-hockey player is a medal stand favorite for both genders.

1. “Chariots of Fire” (1981): This British film about the running rivalry between Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew, who are accepted to represent Great Britain in the 1924 Paris Olympics, took home four Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Original Score for Vangelis’ memorable tune.

And for Olympic skiing fans, the documentary ‘Truth In Motion: The U.S. Ski Team’s Road to Vancouver’ is now available as a free download on iTunes.

This week we are are giving away some flicks on prezzes we have loved, including these docs on iTunes, ‘Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived‘, ‘Senator Obama Goes to Africa‘, and ‘Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment‘.

From the HISTORY Channel, we are offering DVDs of the documentary series ‘The Presidents‘.*

Visit our Facebook fan page for details on how to enter to win.

* Contests open to U.S. residents only. For downloads you must have an iTunes account. Your tweet must be received by Friday, 2/19/2010, at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Felicia Day’s THE GUILD outpaced shows like Glee, Weeds, Caprica, Madmen and Lost during it’s launch this week. If you haven’t heard of this award-winning web series, Felicia Day of “Dr. Horrible” brilliance is part of an online gaming guild called “The Knights of Good.”

And, you can enter to win Season 3 of The Guild.*  New Video is offering two free iTunes downloads of Season 3. Enter on Twitter by tweeting us @NewVideoDigitalyour reason for loving ‘The Guild’ along with the hash tag #TheGuild.

The season pass on iTunes includes a free bonus episode, “Tips on Making a Web Series.”

Felicia fans in Canada (or who toggle the Canada store in the lower right corner of iTunes) can check out her awesome celebrity playlist.

* This contest is only open to U.S. residents with iTunes (U.S.) accounts. Your tweet must be received by Friday, 2/5/2010, at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Apple presented the iPad moments ago in San Francisco – much described as a merging of devices, and a rebuttal to e-readers at a very compelling price point. Starting at $499 for 16GBs, the first iPads will ship in 60 days (90 for 3G network compatibility). With a nifty and slick stand and folder, some are wondering if this could replace a laptop for certain users and create a whole new product category. Designed with “the intersection of technology and liberal arts” in mind, it will offer a new category of apps, the iWork suite and iBooks store, and a highly responsive (A4 chip) 9.7” screen, allowing improved media viewing. Media will be accessible in the same way as on an iPhone, allowing for better sized enjoyment of HD movies and TV.

Repeatedly called a “lifestyle device” that “comes alive in your hand” Apple’s newest product certainly is leading the charge in bringing the human and the technology closer than ever, or making the interface between the two less visible than before.  Skiffy dream come true.

Reknowned art collectors Dorothy and Herb Vogel amassed one of the most important collections of contemporary art on a librarian and postal clerk’s salary, and then donated the entirety to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and to museums in 50 states. We spoke with Dorothy Vogel, who has been buying art with husband Herb since the early 60s, about her experiences, detailed in the recent documentary “Herb & Dorothy.”

Q:  How did the many artists whose works you collected react to the donation of the artwork to the National Gallery and the Vogel 50/50?
Dorothy Vogel:  Everyone was excited about the National Gallery but some were skeptical about the 50/50 project.  Now that the project turned out to be successful everyone is pleased.

Q:  How did you react to director Megumi Sasaki approaching you to film this project? Did you have any indication of the scale of the film over so many years?
DV:  We didn’t think she could do it – didn’t think she could raise the money, didn’t know how long it would take. She didn’t either.

Q:  Did you expect that the rest of the world would catch on to the minimalist and conceptual art movement when you first began collecting?
DV:  Had no idea.

Q:  Had you ever gifted any of your artwork before the massive undertaking with the National Gallery?
DV:  No.

Q:  The film touches on your love for animals. Were any pieces ever damaged by a pet during your many years of collecting?
DV:  The cats did not do anything since we were protective of our works, but the fish in the fish tank – someone splashed water on a Warhol poster in the back of the tank and we had to get the watermark removed.

Q:  Did either of you ever consider applying your discerning eye for art toward a job in a gallery?
DV:  No.

Q:  Do you feel that art collecting is still for everyone or has the market changed drastically since you began your collection?
DV:  Think – If you want to collect, you can and will – if you really want to.

Q:  What advice would you offer to a beginner interested in collecting?
DV:  Buy what you love.

New Video Digital would like to add something other than coal to your stocking with some fun giveaways.

Fans of Highlander know There Can Be Only One. Our friends at Davis-Panzer Productions are now offering more than one way to win awesome things. Bullz-Eye, Geeks of Doom, and IESB are each featuring the chance to win a Connor or Duncan MacLeod katana, while Teen Hollywood, Slice of Sci-Fi, eFilm Critic, and Video Detective are bringing you the chance to win the six-volume DVD set, “Highlander – Ultimate Collection (Best of the Best).”

To help you catch up on your independent and documentary movie viewing, we’re giving away iTunes downloads of some favorite releases, including Herb & Dorothy, Objectified, Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth, loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies, and many more. Visit our Facebook fan page for a complete list, and plan to gather round the screen.

If you want a break from Frosty and Heat and Snow Miser, may we suggest:  Christmas In Wonderland // The Christmas Toy // The Santa Trap // Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas // The Christmas Clause // Happy Holidays // Santa and Pete 

Here’s wishing you and yours an entertaining holiday season.

Director and producer Jon Reiss (Bomb It!) talks to Millimeter about the ideas in his new book on distributing and marketing film in today’s marketplace. His thoughts on free content and the challenges of piracy to independent producers, in particular, are worth a read.  The book, “Think Outside the Box Office” is a guide to distributing and marketing your film, phase by phase.

Director Kate Churchill and Nick Rosen talk about their collaboration in a grand yoga experiment captured in the documentary, “Enlighten Up!”

Q: How did the two of you come in contact with one another?  Kate, where did you locate subjects for the film?

Director Kate Churchill: Nick and I met each other at a think tank conference.  We were seated on the same panel and afterwards starting chatting about the work we were each doing. Nick was working as a journalist at the time and interested in documentary films so he sent me some of his articles to read for a possible future project. About 4 months later when the producers and I were debating how to tell this story, he became a potential subject for the film. I liked that he was a journalist, had a good sense of humor and that he was skeptical.

Nick Rosen: Yeah it was funny because it was a conference panel I was totally unprepared for and I didn’t even know I was on, and I totally faked and joked my way through it, trying to make people laugh to mask my total and utter cluelessness. And then Kate fell for it! I often wonder if I had prepared for that panel, and nobody much noticed me, whether Kate would have ever introduced herself, and later pick me for the movie. Lesson for the kids: always be unprepared.

Q: Did the making of this documentary help you to come to terms with some of the “contradictions of yoga” that you wished to explore?

KC: When I started making Enlighten Up! I was determined to find one teacher, or one practice that would have all of the “right answers” and help me overcome what I saw as the contradictions of yoga. Through the course of making the film, and especially during the three years editing Enlighten Up! I learned that there isn’t one teacher or a single practice that will have all the answers, and therefore everyone is going to have their own take on yoga based on what makes sense to them.

Q: Did the two of you ever discuss Nick’s relationship with rock-climbing and outdoor sports? Were there any parallels between Kate’s passion for yoga and anything in Nick’s life?

KC: It was always clear that Nick was a very physical person and rock climbing was one of his main passions. I had a sense that yoga would really help his climbing, which ultimately is really more of his own practice.

NR: Yeah, climbing is like yoga if you did yoga 100 feet off the ground and were always thinking about taking a big fall. Climbing = scary yoga.

Q: Kate, in trying to locate a practice of yoga that suited Nick, did you encounter forms that you yourself took issue with? (Yoga for Regular Guys, Laughter Yoga, etc.?)

KC: Throughout the film there is a back and forth between Nick and myself on who we will go see. It becomes a tug of war over control of the story at times. Inevitable we had our differences and Yoga for Regular Guys was certainly one of those moments. There were also a number of teachers who we went to see that we both were quite excited to spend time with, including: Norman Allen, Pattabhi Jois and B.K.S.Iyegnar.

Q: Nick, were there any moments that were not captured on camera that you wished had been?  Conversely, were there any moments that you did not want to relive when you saw the finished product?

NR: I think Kate did a really good job of covering all the big important moments. But there were stretches of time that I was practicing yoga without the camera. There was one time when the whole yoga class was sitting cross legged in a circle listening to the teacher give some weighty lecture on Hinduism, and—oops—I farted. The whole class heard it and the teacher thought it was someone speaking up and said, “What was that, does anyone have a question?” That would have been a pretty funny scene in the movie.

Q: Kate, how were you yourself introduced to yoga seven years before embarking on the

project? Did you initially experience any of Nick’s skepticism?

KC: Very much like Nick, I came to yoga initially for physical reasons. I was doing mini-triathlons and my body was starting to fall apart. I went to a local power yoga studio and was almost instantly hooked on the practice and how good it made me feel. Over the next seven years before I started making this film, I explored a number of different practices including asana (physical practice), meditation and pranayama (breathing).  During these years, I experienced some skepticism from the contradictions I discovered and it made me want to find a way to investigate deeper.

Q: Nick, were there any particularly ambitious poses that you were proud to be able to perform in the end?

NR: I did do some things with my body that I never thought possible. For instance, towards the end there I was doing a complex ashtanga pose called “Marichyasana B,” where my knees and elbows and feet are poking out all over the place like a bad car accident victim. My knee started to hurt at that point, so I eased off. I still am not sure whether that got me closer to any kind of higher spiritual truths. Corpse pose was my favorite.

Q: Would you consider practicing yoga again under less pressure? Have you applied any of the yogis’ teachings to other aspects of or activities in your life?

NR: Yes, I continued to practice after the project pretty intensively for a while. Yoga is like crack—it’s not easy to stop. Even today I do yoga (once a month) and I really enjoy it. And yes, the yogic lessons, even when I thought they sounded silly in the context of a glorified stretching class, did manage to trickle into my psyche. Some of the teachings we received from the wise men and women in India and America were simple but profound. Be true to yourself. Practice compassion. Go fuck yourself (that last one was my favorite).

Q: How did your parents react to your experiences and the insight you gained throughout the making of the film? 

NR: True to form: my mom says she saw a really big transformation, my dad was more skeptical, perhaps. I think this is true for most people. The movie is a kind of reflecting pool for their own beliefs—sometimes it reinforces those beliefs, sometimes it challenges them, but those insights are always different depending on where the viewer is coming from. And the same goes for my very different parents.

Believe it or not,
it’s 1980s TV,
You can watch it on your PC…
Believe it or not, Hulu’s free.

And while we stroll down memory lane: Co-Stan-Za.

 In 1993 Marion Cajori had just won the prestigious Pratt-Whitney Grand Prize at the International Film Festival for Films on Art in Montreal. The filmmaker had plans for a documentary about painter Alice Neel, but it was her Chuck Close project that occupied her mind for the next decade – along with her children, and the cancer she’d been diagnosed with. In 1998, PBS broadcast her Emmy-nominated special “Chuck Close: Portrait in Progress.” Just before her untimely death in August 2006, Cajoli completed a full-length documentary about Close – one of the world’s leading contemporary painters. A culmination of her years capturing the artist, ”Chuck Close” examines the artist with a focus worthy of his own intensive work. It is a final testament to Cajoli’s passion for studying artists with an intensive gaze, for moving towards the essence of her subjects and what motivates them.

New Video Digital is launching a Twitter retweet contest to promote the documentary “2012: Science or Superstition”, now available on iTunes.

Here are the contest details to enter:

Prize: $300 iTunes gift card (open to US residents only)
Duration: Ends on Sunday, 11/22, 11:59PM EST
Entry: Simply retweet the following link and hash tag on Twitter along with a witty 2012 prediction -  http://bit.ly/2NHaur #2012BadPrediction

As we honor those who fought in wars past and those who now serve in the armed forces, we remember the awesome impact that these fine men and women in uniform have had upon the world and not solely on the battlefields. At home last week, we witnessed admirable acts of heroism confront violence at a moment’s notice, such as the assault at Fort Hood. It should become paramount to our national duty that veterans are not only be met with our gratitude, but also with solutions to the threat of homelessness and the inequality of education that have mired countless others before. This Veteran’s Day we are reminded that their service and sacrifice should be a fixture in our civic conscientiousness year round.

Titles now on iTunes: Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived // The War Tapes // Body of War // Saints and Soldiers // Uncovered: The War on Iraq // The Top Secret Trial of the Third Reich // Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories // Operation Homecoming

A few weeks ago, France declared war… against Internet piracy. By adopting a three-strike law that could ultimately disconnect Internet access for its violators, the French government took an unprecedented stance on the illegal, online sharing of music and movies. In response, many Internet advocacy groups quickly disputed that such drastic measures would be a clear violation of fundamental rights, not just as citizens but as consumers. This past Thursday, however, the European Parliament and EU member states sided with the French government in its decision to expand the ability to cut off Internet access beyond what had solely been entrusted with judicial authority. Many in the Chinese business community publicly recognize that piracy poses a threat to growth and innovation. UK video platform VODO – founded by filmmaker/technologist Jamie King – has taken initiative in slowly trying to translate PSP views to money for independent filmmakers. What had seemed a colossal victory against piracy eight years ago with the shut down of Napster, now seems to have come around full-circle with a global outbreak of file-sharing. This week’s new iTunes release, “Steal This Film“, documents the steadfast movement against intellectual property, and features prominent players in the Swedish piracy culture such as the Pirate Bay, Piratbyran (Piracy Bureau) and the Pirate Party. As the piracy battles rage on in the courtrooms, the war online seems pretty lopsided.

Other Documentary titles now on iTunes: Chuck Close // A Life Without Pain // The Big Question

It’s been a great year for movies about music, encompassing the funny, the ironic and the tragic: filmmakers are finding plenty to say when the subject is the musicians they love. The unexpected passing of the King of Pop has turned the posthumous release of “This Is It,” into a phenomenon. Anvil, the Canadian rock band of the early 1980s, reveals its tale of missed opportunities and dire times in “Anvil!: The Story of Anvil,” recently winning DVD/Film of the Year at the Classic Rock Roll of Honour Awards in London. Director Davis Guggenheim brought together a formidable rock triumvirate – Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White – for “It Might Get Loud,” and recently announced that his film will sell exclusively on iTunes  from December 8 to 22, weeks ahead of its retail competitors. After overtaking Wal-Mart as the number one music destination for American consumers last year, Apple launched a new initiative on iTunes this past week highlighting its library of music documentaries, concert films, as well as mainstream classics such as “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Purple Rain,” and “The Doors.” Among the new releases in the genre, “Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart“, finds banjo virtuoso Bela on his travels in Africa to explore the roots of the banjo and to share a cross-cultural appreciation of the stringed instrument.

Other Music Movies on iTunes: loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies // Punk’s Not Dead // Rip! A Remix Manifesto // Wilco: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart // Spend an Evening With Saddle Creek // Elton John: Tantrums and Tiaras

Last month, when News Corp. deputy chairman Chase Carey suggested that Hulu might begin to charge for its online streaming, shock waves hit the online community faster than a leaked trailer for a new Twilight movie. First beta tested in October 2007, Hulu has quickly become the online destination for TV aficionados with an aversion to prime-time advertisements and for TiVo users with congested recording space. In response to the panic that had ensued over pricing speculation, a source close to Hulu told Entertainment Weekly last week that any premium-subscription service would only complement its free content, not replace it. Now, just as everyone started to breathe a sigh of relief, it’s been rumored that Apple has been in talks with TV networks for weeks proposing a monthly subscription service for access to its iTunes programming. But in contrast the rumors surrounding Hulu’s plan, Apple’s ambition seems to be on a much greater scale. If Apply can convince its 65 million iTunes account holders to shell out $30 per month, it may mark a dark day for cable TV. If Apple and networks confirm these talks and lay out a collective agreement, we might soon be hearing “It’s Not HBO. It’s iTunes.”

Tomorrow’s off-year election should shake up plenty of seats, with Republicans united under a common purpose of regaining some power, and Democrats both complacent from their successes and divided over priorities.  Dems may hope that the record turnout for the 2008 presidential election and Obama’s high marks in year one sustain them. The Daily Kos has a handy guide. Key fallout will be new governors in Virginia and New Jersey, flipped congressional seats in New York and California, and mayors for New York City and Atlanta. Gay marriage will be back on the hotseat: citizens in Maine will have an opportunity to veto marriage equity laws, and Referendum 71 will be on ballots in Washington DC.

The documentary Election Day looks inside the process of this formative day, following ordinary and extraordinary individuals who make democracy happen. For more docs on past US elections and their thornier issues, check out Hacking Democracy, Uncounted, See How They Run, So Goes the Nation and How Ohio Pulled It Off.  Tying the Knot offers insight into the political war over gay marriage.

Good luck to all those running on Sunday! We were inspired to hear about Ed Norton running to raise funds and awareness for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. He’ll be running with 3 Maasai, David Blaine and Alanis Morissette as team members. For those preparing, may we suggest Beppe for carbs (try the Butcher’s Spaghetti) and for inspiration, “Running the Sahara,” a doc Matt Damon produced about just that – super marathoners who cross six countries of the Sahara, averaging 2 marathons per day, in 80 days. Damon’s project aimed to raise awareness about water supply in Africa. Should make Sunday’s little jaunt, with scattered showers, feel like a blessing.

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Who will play Björn Türoque?

Paramount Pictures is producing a film based on the doc “Air Guitar Nation” & the book ”To Air Is Human” for 2011. 

Cue extended electric riff with reverb…

Justin Theroux has great taste but apparently will not be starring or directing.

For the roots of Air Guitar: DVD // on iTunes // Book

A law suit filed today against the Yes Men for their climate stunt this week - a faux press conference declaring the Chamber of Commerce’s support for environmental legislation – argues they crossed the line from symbolic parody into stealing, or in the words of the Chamber’s CLO Steven Law, “commercial identity theft.” So the Chamber hopes to prove. Law pointed to the Yes Men’s own commercial interests in promoting their product sales. Here is a link to the faux release, and complete coverage of the stunt on Politico. Reuters picked up the story so fast, it apologized for potentially effecting an epic hiccup in markets.

The 2010 DIY Film Festival is now accepting entries for its year-round program that celebrates independent and self-produced films. The spirit and history behind the “do-it-yourself” movement is the subject of Beautiful Losers, a doc about the personalities within the outsider subcultures of skateboarding, punk and graffiti in the 90s that transformed pop culture. Among other beautiful losers, Harmony Korine and Shepard Fairey continue to make controversial headlines and art. The DIY Film Festival began in 2002 as part of the DIY Convention in LA. The festival travels to New York, New Orleans, Austin and other cities, celebrating moxy and connecting winners with film industry pros.

DVD lifespan speculation heats up today with lively discussion on the Wall Street Journal on Disney’s “Keychest” technology announcement, which puts a single price on access to a movie or show across multiple platforms. The technology addresses two thorny issues of digital movies: cross-device portability and storage capacity. Another variation on cloud computing, participating distribution services could access the Keychest database to verify which films a consumer purchased elsewhere. DVDs could also be tagged with a key. Bob Chapek, Disney’s prez of home entertainment, sums up the dream:

“Our vision for the future is that consumers won’t have to think about where they bought (a movie), how they bought it, or when they bought it.”

Some perceive Disney’s play - with Steve Jobs as their largest shareholder - to be direct competion to the DECE initiative, a consortium headed by the CTO of Sony Pictures that includes five major studios, with Disney and Apple notably absent. Two challenges ahead for Disney: studios would be giving control of access to a competitor, and the studios’ ability to dictate which services and devices participate could make the consumer’s head spin.

Paranormal Activity recently became ”the first-ever major film release decided by YOU” after over 1 million fans asked for it in theaters near them. Kudos to Paramount for scaling this micro-budget thriller. If the Blair Witch-style flick leaves you lying awake at 3am, what better way to relax than to dial up more house-bound demons on your iTunes device?

The film 100 Feet stars Famke Janssen and a distinctly un-Chuck-like Ed Westwick as the boy next door.  Marnie Watson (Janssen) kills her abusive husband in self defense and is sentenced to house arrest… with, guess who? Demonic hubbie’s vengeful, violent spirit!

Also, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, appropriately.  

Update: Here’s a YouTube video of the arrest today of hemp farmers at DEA headquarters.

The DEA has arrested David Bronner, maker of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, for planting industrial hemp, inflaming the debate over the farming of hemp for its many practical, non-narcotic applications. Among supporters, the team behind the new film “Hempsters,” in which Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ralph Nader and Woody Harrelson weigh in on the merits of this plant. Dr. Bronner’s delightfully eccentric approach to making and marketing soap has earned him devoted customers. For those who’ve always wondered about the man behing the soap bottle, the documentary DR. BRONNER’S MAGIC SOAPBOX should enlighten.

Just a standard news week for Sir Elton John: he may be allowed to adopt a 14-month-old Ukrainian boy if he buys his murdering father a shoe store; he commented on the tragic death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately; and he was photographed by a herd of paparrazzi for seeming tired after eating dinner. Not much has changed since partner David Furnish documented Elton’s personal and professional life in all it’s chaotic glory in Elton John: Tantrums and Tiaras, during the 1995 world tour. Now you can get to know the Rocket Man on your iPod.

The arrest of Elliot Madison for creating a virtual GPS on the police at the G-20 summit publicly marks an era of growing government unease with new technologies and security. From police to homeland security, cybercrime units are a hotbed of activity.   Recently, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that closing Guantanamo Bay by the January 22nd deadline would be difficult, with some conservatives still fighting to keep it operational. As the debate over how to handle the detainees’ future continues, more legal arguments persist over torture allegations of the past. This week a new documentary looks closely at the ultimate forbidden fruit, “Secrecy,” with arguments from all sides on whether secrecy regimes make us safer or breed incompetence. 

Also on iTunes this week: Columbus Crew: 2008 MLS Cup Champions // Ghost Image // Train Master // Shaolin vs. Evil Dead // Imagination (2007) // No Higher Love

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama throws rose petals at Raj Ghat, The Memorial to Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi.

September’s International Day of Peace led up to Mahatma Gandhi’s 140th birthday last Friday, recognized as the International Day of Non-Violence. Among the torchbearers of Ghandiji’s efforts,  His Holiness The Dalai Lama said in 2006, “Today’s world really needs Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy, Mahatma Gandhi’s principle.” In “The Unwinking Gaze” filmmakers follow the Dalai Lama over 18 months, as he attempts to strike a balance between his spiritual imperitives and the realpolitik needed to engage China in a debate over Tibet.

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People look at an overflowing dam in Dindi, in Andhra Pradesh state, India, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)

Southeast Asia suffered massive earthquakes, landslides and typhoons this week, with the death toll in the Philippines, South India and Vietnam rising. For Americans with memories of Hurricane Katrina, it may be interesting to look back at the historical flood at Johnstown. Now a documentary on iTunes, “Johnstown Flood,” narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, revisits one of the worst disasters in US history. Known to residents of the Pennsylvania town as the Great Flood of 1889, it was responsible for the largest loss of civilian life at the time – over 2,200 – until it was later surpassed by the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the attacks of 9/11. Clara Barton and the Red Cross were some of the first respondents to Johnstown over a century ago – fittingly the organization she founded continues the legacy today.

Other Documentary titles now on iTunes: Alexandria: Discovering a Lost Empire // One Bad Cat: The Reverend Albert Wagner Story // Rites of Passage: No Holds Barred Fighting // The Putin System // The Unwinking Gaze // W.I.S.O.R.

New Video’s Stephanie Bruder speaks with director Gary Hustwit about his film “Objectified” – the latest in a trilogy of documentaries on design. With Objectified, Hustwit unveils the world of product design: the people and personalities that create the objects that surround us, from iPods to cars to toothbrushes.

Farrah Fawcett passed away 3 months ago from a long, brave battle with cancer. While best known for her role in Charlie’s Angels, she also took on roles in films like Silk Hope, playing a free spirited Frannie Vaughn, who returns to her hometown to find that her mother passed away three days earlier. When her sister decides to sell the family house and split the profits, Frannie becomes determined to hold on to this vital piece of her past.

Polanski’s arrest this past Sunday by Swiss officials provides a stirring reminder to everyone, including the Zurich Film Festival, that he is a fugitive from justice. Polanski may be ruminating on his 1979 production of “Macbeth,” a tragedy that shows that all ghosts return to haunt even kings. The life and times of Academy Award-winning director Roman Polanski merit a poetic film adaptation all their own. As a child he survived the Krakow Ghetto. He achieved extraordinary success with the classics “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) and “Chinatown” (1974). In between, tragedy struck when his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered by Charles Manson’s family of followers. In 1977 he pled guilty to charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13 year-old girl and then fled the country. As years passed, Polanski continued to make films in Europe, including the World War II autobiographical production “The Pianist”, which took home the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and which won Polanski the Best Director Oscar in 2002.

“Plastics.” Uttered in the 1967 film classic “The Graduate,” the quote was a memorable token of advice given to Dustin Hoffman’s character on how to invest in his future. Today’s graduate navigates a sea of plastic, and often fights back, from the dangerously convenient financial kind, to Scotch tape to DVDs. The industry has been responsible for improved medical care, simplified household applications, efficient workplaces, and a severely compromised environment. ‘Reduce, reuse, recycle‘ has migrated from the fringe to the mainstream, and some graduates endeavor to turn plastics into fuel to curb the cumulative impact of plastics on the environment. This week’s new iTunes release, “Blue Vinyl“, takes a look at the controversial, and yet not widely exposed, industry of vinyl. Winner of the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival, this documentary mixes humor with education on how the vinyl siding business has dire consequences for Americans well beyond its unflattering façade.

Other Documentary titles now on iTunes: Note By Note // Elton John: Tantrums and Tiaras // Horses of Gettysburg: Civil War Minutes IV Edition // Straight Acting // The Reckoning: Remembering the Dutch Resistance

By far our favorite pic, thanks to Stranger Than Fiction of Tuesday’s celebration.

D. A. Pennebaker poses with the doc ladies, including Chris Hegedus (far left) and Deborah Shaffer (far right). Credit: STFdocs.com

This fall marks ten years of distributing documentary films on the Docurama Films label. New Video co-presidents Steve Savage and Susan Margolin feted this proud anniversary Tuesday night with a rare screening of the 1962 film “Jane,” kicking off Stranger Than Fiction’s fall series. Thom Powers led a Q&A with filmmaker Robert Drew and cameraman D.A. Pennebaker. The celebration continues into December with the screening of ten powerful documentaries at the IFC Center, culminating with the one that started it all, Pennebaker’s “Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back.”

More photos after the break.

Dame Judi Dench has donated the set of the film “Shakespeare In Love” to be turned into a replica Rose Theatre in the north of England for the British Shakespeare Company. Dame Judi was given the set as a gift after she won an Oscar for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in the film. This is a fitting tribute to the golden age of British theater, which groomed actors whose careers continue to flourish well past their 60th birthdays. Ian McKellen and Dame Judi’s 1979 performance in Roman Polanski’s ”Macbeth” is now available on iTunes, as is Kenneth Branagh’s production of the lighthearted “Twelfth Night.”

Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith, Ian McKellen to Judi Dench.

The art world scuffle between representational and non-representational art may have cooled long ago, but the dust still settles in the vividly captured film Local Color, now in iTunes. An eighteen-year-old aspiring painter spends a life-changing summer with his idol, Nicoli Seroff – a character so real, you feel his art should exist. Nicoli is a reclusive, emotive and vodka-swilling “old master” landscape painter, and based on the director’s own mentor as a young artist. The title “Local Color” is a playful double entendre.  In addition to the common usage, “regional detail in a literary or an artistic work” – which the film demonstrates in conveying mid-20th century New York – the term is likewise known to painters as “the actual hue of a thing, independent of the ways in which different conditions of light and atmosphere might affect it.”

More art films on your iPod, for in between museum visits:  Painter’s Painting // The Cool School: Story of the Ferus Art Gallery // And coming soon, the heartwarming documentary on the Vogels, Herb & Dorothy

Animation in Japan began around 1917, as the film industry in the West was in its infant stage. Techniques in drawing and filmmaking would evolve over time, but anime remains rooted in manga (comic and print cartoon) publications. One popular manga, “Tomorrow’s Joe” or “Ashita no Jō” is the prototypical underdog story that first appeared in the Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 1968. Chronicaling the life of a troubled orphan turned World Champion boxer, it was later renamed “Rocky Joe” for the plot correlation to the 1976 American film. The manga classic would spawn the animated series “Joe vs. Joe” in 1970, one of the first dramatic animations ever created globally. Over the past decades, the anime revolution has grown by leaps and bounds in the United States, with networks nabbing classic and promising titles. With the New York Anime Festival starting next week, we pay tribute to Japan’s #4 favorite all-time anime character with this week’s iTunes release of the 1980 film “Champion Joe“.

As “We Live In Public” rolls out in select theaters following its Grand Jury Prize win (U.S. Documentary) at Sundance, another doc from director Ondi Timoner, “Join Us,” has hit iTunes. The film, which aired on the Sundance Channel last month, follows four families in South Carolina coming to terms with the realization that their church pastor is in fact a cult leader, and their subsequent attempts to break free of his dangerous and destructive spell. Timoner manages to communicate the insidious nature of mind control, and weaves in enough historical context to reveal how America remains a breeding ground and haven for cults.

Jim Carroll, poet and punk rocker, died of a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment on Friday at the age of 60. Best known for his punk group, The Jim Carroll Band, he also authored The Basketball Diaries – a memoir about life as a teenager in New York City’s drug culture. Carroll’s legacy will endure in punk culture. As the film Punk’s Not Dead proves, people who think the genre is dead have lost sight of what punk is. More than a scene, punk is an attitude, a verb and a musical influence. Spawn include pop punk, ska punk, riot grrrl, street punk, anarcho punk, celtic punk, cowpunk, emo, gypsy punk and hardcore – and they’ll keep evolving. R.I.P., Jim.

Last Friday marked the 8th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a result of legislation signed by President Obama this past April, the 11th of September is now recognized as a National Day of Service and Remembrance. As traditional media covered the services and local acts of good deed commemorating the fallen, the digital community around the world also paid respect with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter posts flooding the web. There are some who wonder how our technologically-connected society would react if the 9/11 attacks happened today, while there are others who still look to the past for answers. Charlie Sheen recently made headlines voicing his conspiracy theory view that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, thus joining a long list of ‘truth movement’ advocates. The new documentary release on iTunes: “Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11“, takes a journalistic and scientific approach to question what might have happened.

Other Documentaries now on iTunes: Ballerina // Join Us // Burning the Future: Coal In America // How Ohio Pulled It Off // In Search of the Great Beast 666: Aleister Crowley // Inside the Koran // Orwell Rolls In His Grave // Pie In the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story // Random Lunacy: Videos from the Road Less Traveled // Albert Schweitzer // Con Man // Last Dispatch // Robbie Coltrane: Incredible Britain // American Scary // The Hollywood Collection: Audrey Hepburn Remembered // The Hollywood Collection: Steve McQueen – Man On the Edge // The Hollywood Collection: Gregory Peck – His Own Man // The Hollywood Collection: Marilyn Monroe – Beyond the Legend

According to the Walk To Action website, over 10,500 children are reported abused or neglected every day in America. That’s one child every 11 seconds. The aftermath of child abuse is deftly handled in multi-award winning indie film “Something Is Killing Tate.”  Days before his birthday and weeks before his wedding, Tate Bradley, a twenty-five year old, African-American man attempts to commit suicide. He survives the ordeal, but is left to face his demons. This film is not about defeat, tragedy and hopelessness, but a thoughtful investigation of a human spirit’s  journey towards healing.

Something Is Killing Tate is available on iTunes.

Leonardo's war machines

A few months ago Ron Howard’s “Angels & Demons” kicked off summer blockbuster season with Tom Hanks as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. Dan Brown will soon have yet another payday when his much anticipated new novel, “The Lost Symbol“, hits bookstores this month. Sandwiched between these releases, Brownian replicas abound. In case you think you’ve already seen “The Da Vinci Treasure” – you probably haven’t yet – but the thrills, chills and mysteries will be familiar, as will the faces of C. Thomas Howell and Lance Henriksen.

More Action & Adventures on iTunes: Hide // Dragon Hunter // Snakes on a Train

Screening Series and Private Reception for Filmmakers and the Documentary Community on Tap Partners include IFC Center and Stranger Than Fiction

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 — New York-based Entertainment Company Docurama Films has lined up a slate of activities to commemorate ten years of bringing the world great documentary films. The first and only home entertainment distribution label dedicated exclusively to championing documentary filmmakers, Docurama Films has spent the past decade unearthing and releasing the great classic docs of the last fifty years while scouring film festivals for new filmmakers who are taking the form to new heights. Today, after the release of more than 250 films, Docurama Films continues to find new audiences for groundbreaking documentaries that enlighten and entertain.

In celebration of this anniversary, Docurama Films, in partnership with Stranger Than Fiction and the IFC Center, will be screening nine of the classics from its library — as well as a hidden treasure of documentary filmmaking — over ten weeks. The kickoff begins on September 22nd at 8 p.m. at the IFC Center, with a one-time screening of the legendary documentary JANE (1962), a lost gem from the cinema verite movement about Jane Fonda’s Broadway debut. As a special Stranger Than Fiction event, the film will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Thom Powers with filmmakers Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, and Hope Ryden. A private reception will follow for filmmakers and members of the documentary community to raise a glass to toast a decade of documentaries.

The series continues with eight films from the Docurama Films library spotlighted in IFC Center’s “Weekend Classics” program, with weekend matinee screenings October 2 – December 6, plus a special Stranger Than Fiction presentation of THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND on November 16, with filmmakers Sam Green and Bill Siegel and Weathermen founder Mark Rudd in person. Other films in the screening series include:

SOUTHERN COMFORT
LOST BOYS OF SUDAN
GENGHIS BLUES
BLUE VINYL
THE ATOMIC CAFE
BEST BOY
THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL
and BOB DYLAN: DONT LOOK BACK

Please visit ifccenter.com for details on tickets and showtimes.

As the dog days of summer begin to wind down, so too does another season of Major League Baseball. With the wild-card chase developing and the Fall Classic on the horizon, the usual chatter surrounding the Red Sox and the Yankees still flood the airwaves and continue to capture the headlines. Viewed by many as one of the most storied rivalries in sports, they have provided many memorable moments over the past decade, both on and off the field. But as college campuses get ready to welcome the Class of 2013, underclassmen and faculty alike know that Saturdays are reserved for college football. Nowhere is college football history more heralded or Heisman heroes hoisted higher than on the Big Ten stage that is the Michigan-Ohio State game. This week’s new iTunes release “Rivalries: The History of Michigan vs. Ohio State” chronicles the triumphs, the tragedies, the trophies and the titles that have followed these prestigious programs. Even the Nintendo Wii is getting into the football action with a new patent for a football-shaped peripheral. Many living room coffee tables will shatter.

Other Sports titles now on iTunes: Friday Nights In America // History of the MLS Cup

On a muggy afternoon in New York, April Benavides of Docurama Films caught up with Peter Rosen about making “Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes,” now on DVD and iTunes.

Here’s an excerpt:

Peter Rosen: So I’ve always admired (Robert) Altman. So here was this director who I think was this real genius and I said,”Mr. Altman, we’re going to start this documentary about Garrison Keillor,” who he had just worked with. And he said,”Well, Keillor is the only genius I ever worked with.” So it was a little bit intimidating when we started out, that the man who I think is the genius of American cinema, telling me that Garrison Keillor was the only genius he ever worked with.

Listen to the conversation by podcast here, or read the complete transcript after the break.

TRANSCRIPT:

TRANSCRIPT:

April Benavides from Docurama Films interviews Peter Rosen, producer and director of the engaging film GARRISON KEILLOR: THE MAN ON THE RADIO IN THE RED SHOES.

Now available on DVD and the iTunes store, the film follows Garrison Keillor, America’s foremost humorist and commentator, as he takes his skits and jokes, music and monologues across the country in his traveling radio show. This freeform, intimate look at the private man in the public spotlight goes behind the scenes of America’s most popular radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and inside the imagination of the man who created it. Over one year of filming resulted in a fascinating inside look at the enigmatic raconteur, and how the fictional world he created became a real place in America.

AB: Welcome, Peter.

PR: Hi. Nice to talk to you, April.

AB: You trained as an architect. How does this influence – if at all – the structuring of your storytelling or your photography?

PR: Well you know when I first got my degree in architecture I realized it was going to be 50 years in that profession before you get to actually design buildings. Today’s great architects are in their 50′s or 60′s and I had some really boring summer jobs doing drafting details. So I had always done a lot of photography and photography leads to film and one day you pick up the film camera and put down your Leicas, but in general, looking back, I think it was a really good education to have as a film maker because architecture basically is about structure and how you organize your ideas, how you’re presented with a program or a problem and you have to solve it in an organized way and that’s basically what documentaries are about. You don’t have a script like in a feature film that you really need to impose your own structural thinking on. You know, like in the Keillor film we shot about 100 hours with him over a year on and off with two cameras, and that’s a daunting task unless you have a brain where you can see the bigger picture and start to put these pieces together in some kind of orderly way that tells a story.

AB: You’ve said that Garrison Keillor is an enigma. Is that the main reason you chose him as your subject?

PR: Well you know it’s sort of an interesting thing from what we were just talking about, like an enigma is a puzzle, and putting together a puzzle is a good metaphor for making a documentary. You do have all these bits and pieces that at first don’t seem to fit together at all and you’ve got to kind of keep working on it in a sculptural way to make them fit. And Keillor himself, his story doesn’t lend itself to a traditional biography even though this was done for American Masters which, as you know, is a PBS series that’s like A&E Biography, of well known people that usually starts with when they were born, and what their family was like, and takes them in a chronological way through their life. Garrison Keillor doesn’t lend himself to that because he’s a storyteller, and you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t true in his stories, about his own life. So it would be kind of a trap to try to make a biography of Garrison Keillor. And, April, what I really liked about the project when I started, was you could really make a very untraditional biography where you don’t quite know what’s true, and what isn’t true. And that was the challenge in this project.

AB: What was Mr. Keillor’s response when you first approached him for the film?

PR: Well, it took about a year for him to okay it after we had a first meeting. I actually met him in the early 90′s because he was one of the subjects of a documentary we made called,”A Place of Dreams: Carnegie Hall At 100″ for the 100th Anniversary of Carnegie Hall, and we brought back to that stage all the great performers who were still around, who had performed on that stage, to tell stories. So I had met him back in 1990 and even then thought he was kind of a strange character and would make an interesting subject. So here we were 17 years later thinking about doing this documentary and I had a nice Sunday afternoon with him, we talked about the film. We saw eye to eye about quite a few things, like number one: don’t interview people about Garrison. He didn’t want us to go out and talk to his friends or other writers about him, and I was against doing interviews in this kind of film to begin with. So we saw eye to eye on that and I thought we were going to move forward, but then it was about a year before I finally got a call from his manager that he agreed to do the film. I don’t really know why. He’s a very private person. Not too many other people have been inside, behind the scenes of the Prairie Home Companion Show. So I don’t really know the answer to the question about why he agreed to do this.

AB: And speaking about his privacy, did you ever figure out what goes on inside Mr. Keillor’s head, what makes him tick? If so, how did you present that visually in the film?

PR: When I started to shoot this we spent a lot of time with him traveling and I noticed that he was always backstage, in dressing rooms, in airports, sitting on the plane, wherever he went he was always typing stuff on this laptop. You want to know what he’s typing. You can’t go look over his shoulder and read it. So I began to think it would be really interesting to try to tell an audience what might be going on in his head while he’s doing all this typing and that’s where we got the idea to create this as a kind of monologue of words inside his head while he’s doing the things that they do every day in terms of rehearsal and, as I said, travel, while he’s at home with his family. So that was really the kind of objective, was to not really figure out, again, I don’t think you can really figure out what’s going on inside his head, but to make up a story line of what he would be writing at the time. I sort of call the film an extended Garrison Keillor monologue. He’s pretty much the only voice in it. We did a few quick sound bites with back stage people or some of the actors who work with him, but 90% of this movie is a monologue by Garrison Keillor and it’s just a kind of flow of consciousness of what could be going on in his head.

AB: When your subject is a master yarn-spinner, how concerned are you with exposing the truth?

PR: Well you don’t know what the truth is so you can’t expose it. We gave up on that aspect of it. I don’t know how many aunts and uncles he had or brothers or sisters or whether all those stories about his childhood are true or not. We did know from the beginning we were making a documentary about somebody who’s primarily a writer even though he’s a very good singer. He holds his own on Prairie Home Companion with some of the top Rhythm and Blues and Country Western and Pop singers in the country. He does pretty well in those duets with them and they all compliment his singing. He’s a really good comedian. The show’s very funny. He’s like a standup comedian. He does all these other things, but we primarily realized we were making a film about a writer.

AB: Robert Altman comes up when you think about Garrison Keillor in film, and I know you have great respect for Robert Altman’s work, and an interview with Mr. Keillor and Mr. Altman appears in the DVD bonus features. How much were you influenced by his narrative”A Prairie Home Companion” as you set out to make”The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes?”

PR: Well you know I’m one of the few people who really like that film. As you know, it was Altman’s last film before he died. Garrison Keillor wrote the screenplay for it and they have Altman’s usual fantastic cast of Lilly Tomlin, and Meryl Streep, Lindsey Lohan and it was kind of a weird take on the show because it was about the Angel of Death lurking around backstage which is all shot in St. Paul in the Fitzgerald Theatre. But, because that was fiction and a screenplay by Garrison Keillor I didn’t see it too relevant to how it would impact the documentary that was to follow. They finished that film in 2006 which was just about when we got the okay and the funding to start our documentary. The only real link was, as you said, we did film a really kind of funny talk between Keillor and Robert Altman. They’re two guys who really have a lot in common. They kind of look alike a little bit. They’re sort of the same age. I guess Altman was a little bit older. And they just hit it off in a conversation like two old guys sitting on a back porch in their rocking chairs having a good time talking to each other about each others’ work. So it’s a really unique bonus to be able to keep that in the DVD. But the only link was when I met Robert Altman just after Prairie Home Companion was premiered at a film festival – I think a lot of documentary filmmakers relate to Bob Altman’s work because it is like documentary, the way its shot. He lets a lot of cameras roll on very spontaneous action or dialogue, lines overlap, things aren’t really read from a screenplay or prompt or cue cards like the way most features are blocked out and that’s what a documentary is: real action unfolding in front of a camera. So I’ve always admired Altman. So here was this director who I think was this real genius and I said,”Mr. Altman, we’re going to start this documentary about Garrison Keillor” who he had just worked with. And he said,”Well, Keillor is the only genius I ever worked with.” So it was a little bit intimidating when we started out, that the man who I think is the genius of American cinema, telling me that Garrison Keillor was the only genius he ever worked with.

AB: Good company to be in.

PR: Yeah and I think I know what he means because these words just keep flowing out day and night. He’s a completely spontaneous, unblocked writer and very few of them are like that. Most writers complain that they’ve got writer’s block all the time. And it seems to be torture for them to get their words out and Garrison just keeps writing stuff all the time.

AB: Right. And on deadline.

PR: Yeah and he says the reason other writers seem to be blocked is they drink so much at night that they wake up with this hangover so they can’t write the next day.

AB: So Peter, you are among a select group of documentarians who are being very creative and playful with storytelling. Where do you think the documentary film form needs to go next?

PR: What I really love about documentaries is that every project sort of takes on its own form depending on what the material’s all about. And so when you really talk about the real independent feature length documentary it’s a very different breed than docs that are made for TV shows. Those kinds of shows have kind of a template and most of the documentaries have to fit into a TV format. But the independent feature length documentary which can be any length, it doesn’t have to fit into a TV slot, can take on any kind of form. You’re totally free and independent to use this medium of film and video that can go in so many directions. When you think about it, we’re just beginning to explore the whole medium of film because it’s been around for 100 years when people had been painting for centuries. And people had been writing for centuries. It’s a very new art form. And we’re just at the beginnings of exploring how to use it. So when you have a documentary there’s no reason for it to have these voice over narrations. There’s no reason to keep zooming in and out on still photographs and to interview people. The thing that turns me off the most about some of the TV work is it’s all based on interviews. Filmmakers think,”Well gee, I’ve got this story so why don’t I go interview people and they can help me tell the story by what they say.” And it was great that Garrison didn’t want any interviews because when you sit somebody down and put lights on them and you’ve usually got a makeup person there and a whole crew around they tell you what they think you want to hear and it’s never that interesting no matter who the person is. But, on the other hand, if you’re just kind of with somebody with a camera and it’s very natural and things unfold in their own time, even if you have to wait a week for someone to open up on something, it’s so much better. So in my own work I try to not do too many interviews in these documentaries, and to find the use of the medium that’s different in each one. If we were going to do the same thing on the next project it would get kind of boring. So what keeps you really interested in this work is that you can find a new way to tell each story.

AB: What are you working on now?

PR: Well we just came back from a really difficult 5 week shoot down in Fort Worth, Texas where we have done, usually every 4 years, the documentary for PBS on the Van Cliburn piano competition. And this year it was really great because this young 20 year old blind pianist, a boy who was blind from birth from Tokyo, Nobuyuki Tujii, tied for first place. And I had a hunch from the beginning because when we go down there we have 30 young pianists to follow because you don’t know who’s going to win and you will eventually need material on whoever the winner is. You have to go back to whenever they start the competition. It’s sort of like American Idol. You’ve got to follow it through each elimination round. But I had a hunch that Nobuyuki or Nobu, as everybody called him, would do really well, so I personally just shot with him every day that he was there in Texas for four weeks and we ended up with a few hundred hours of his whole experience there and then he won. And to be blind from birth and win a classical music competition – the jury and other world class pianists thought it was some sort of miracle. So we’re putting that documentary together which I think will be really exciting when it’s done around September or hopefully by October.

AB: That sounds great. Well this concludes our interview. Many thanks to Peter Rosen for joining me, April Benavides, for this Docurama Films podcast.

PR: Thanks, April.

On a recent weekend in Las Vegas, the Hilton hosted one of the largest Star Trek conventions of all time. A legion of new Trekkies and Trekkers emerged to make their presence felt in the wake of the critically-approved blockbuster. The event beamed aboard its usual crew, including Starship pioneers William Shatner (aka the Priceline Negotiator) and Leonard Nimoy. In the unusual documentary “Mind Meld” both men reveal how their lives were forever changed on and off the Enterprise. Fans can brush up on the Final Frontier’s founding fathers while the waiting for the next movie to be made.

Other Sci-Fi & Fantasy on iTunes: The Source // Invasion of the Pod People

What would The King look like, had he lived into his 70s practicing karate and drinking health shakes? In “Lonely Street,” Robert Patrick transforms into a well-aged Elvis under masterful prosthetic makeup. The talent that created makeup for “Iron Man” reveal how they pulled it off, and co-stars Jay Mohr and Lindsay Price talk about being on set with “Mr. Aaron.”

Our most heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Christian Bauer, the German producer and versatile director of “The Ritchie Boys,” “Missing Allen” and countless inspired productions. It has been our honor to share “The Ritchie Boys” with the world, and we know his work will continue to influence many documentary and narrative filmmakers of tomorrow.

Congrats to Felicia Day for ranking #5 in the geekdom’s popularity contest at Comic Con. She beat James Cameron’s movie handily for most buzz. We are thrilled to hear Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: Next Generation, Stand by Me) is joining the cast of The Guild for Season 3.  The first 2 seasons will come to iPod + DVD on September 29.

Our panel on the upcoming Farscape DVD release packed in nearly 2,000 fans.  Brian Henson (executive producer), Rockne O’Bannon (the show’s creator) as well as stars Ben Browder and Claudia Black brought the crowd.

We were awed as ever by the studio’s investments in this wee comic book convention. Notable booths were AMC’s for THE PRISONER remake, Warner Bros.’ interactive displays for WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, and of course Funimation’s unstoppable DOCTOR HORRIBLE.  More photos after the break.

Think way back to 2006 – when Time Magazine’s Person of the Year was ‘You’ – this was perhaps the dawn of the digital era, and a new page for Hollywood. YouTube was the new darling of the web and each of us played a supporting role… almost Oscar-worthy.  Ryan Higa and Sean Fujiyoshi are two such noteworthy stars of Web 2.0 with 1,248,653 YouTube subscribers of their spoofs. As a reward for parodying some of Hollywood’s biggest hits and stars, this dynamic duo got a chance to star in their own film: “Ryan and Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure,” now the #9 Comedy on iTunes, and #22 in overall movie sales, surpassing The Simpsons Movie, Pineapple Express, and closing in on Harry Potter. While these two Hollywood outsiders may be the first true web-celeb pioneers to parlay a successful movie, Emmy®-winner Lisa Kudrow and ‘friends’ are also blazing the trail with the series “Web Therapy” – not to mention the online juggernaut releases “Dr. Horrible” and “The Guild.”

Also now available on iTunes: A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms // Horatio Hornblower: The Mutiny // Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything // A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms // Waiting for Dublin // The Federation of Black Cowboys // Other Voices, Other Rooms // Rudy Ray Moore: Live At Wetlands N.Y.C.

Nelson Mandela’s 91^st birthday was feted at Radio City Music Hall with a performance by Carla Bruni, the first since she became first lady of France, as well as Lil’Kim and Cyndi Lauper. In “Senator Obama Goes to Africa,” the current U.S. President makes a humbling visit to the former South African President’s cell on Robben Island where he spent many of his 27 years in prison.  Nick Broomfield gets up close and personal with the face of the white supremacist movement in South Africa in “His Big White Self.” May Mandela Day, the new holiday in his honor, raise awareness for all humanitarian efforts, such as those of fellow Nobel Peace laureate James Orbinski, movingly documented in the film “Triage.” Watch on iTunes: Senator Obama Goes to Africa // His Big White Self // Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma

The lifestyles of New York’s privileged kids has been under the spotlight of late, from Bravo’s NYC Prep to Real Housewives of New York’ to the CW’s Gossip Girl. This week on iTunes, Nursery University, spotlights a somewhat younger set of Silver Spooners.

These toddler’s parents have their eye on the prize: New York City’s schools have produced the likes of Bobby Darin (Bronx H.S. of Science), Barbara Streisand (Erasmus), Truman Capote (Dwight), Gwyneth Paltrow (Spence), and John McEnroe (Trinity), to name a few.

Spotted: New parents in Gotham, elbowing for the ivy-track nursery school for their newborns. How will this mommy & daddy version of ‘Lord of the Flies’ pan out? Who will score front-row seats to a Harvard commencement in 20 years, and who will be ironing blue-collar shirts? Good luck to all. XOXO.

Also new on iTunes: Garrison Keillor: The Man On the Radio In the Red Shoes // The Wind In the Willows: The Movie // Poirot: Lord Edgware Dies // Peace! // Horatio Hornblower: The Dutchess and the Devil // Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: The Heart Within // Dark Chamber // Brakhage // Horatio Hornblower: The Fire Ships // Countdown: Armageddon // The First Turn-On! // Burning Down the House // Camjackers

Much has been written of late on the success of Netflix and Redbox–with speculation on the demise of the DVD within 4 to 9 years.  ‘Dead,’ and ‘obsolete,’ are hot-button words when hypothesizing DVD’s fate.  As someone who has sold DVD to retail for the past decade, the debate over the half life of the format has long been in question. Inevitably someone will discuss the collector, a personality the film industry has courted since its origins. Slim and book-like, the DVD trounced the clunky VHS tape, and was shined up with a lower SRP, special features, liner notes, booklets. DVD will always appeal to the collector, and there are more collectors in the world than we may think, as the week of Michael Jackson reminded us. The cultural moment of his death caused a sales explosion of CDs.  Album sales through Sunday reportedly hit 422,000, up from 10,000 the week prior, in tandem with digital track downloads spiking to 2.3 million, a lesser number in terms of individual tracks, spread over a greater number of purchasers. The collector wants a piece of a legacy, a tangible tribute to an idol or their own history. As in the realms of music and books, there is room for coexistence of the physical and the ephemeral video formats, at least for a good long while.

The blood-thirsty genre is alive and well – so to speak, in the similarly vampiric world of entertainment. Enjoying a second year of feasting, franchises like the ‘Twilight’ sequel and HBO’s second season of ‘True Blood‘ trace their genetic makeup to Abraham “Bram” Stoker, who wrote novels in the late 19th century to make extra money. Stoker’s regular job was as a business manager for the world renowned Lyceum Theater in London. When one of his novels, ‘Dracula,’ was published in 1897, it was not the first book to talk about vampires, but it would easily become the best. Like today’s ‘Twilight’ sensation, ‘Dracula’ was put to film in the classic silent film ‘Nosferatu‘ – copyright issues and an absence of Hollywood lawyers caused names and details to change a bit. From Béla Lugosi to Blade to Buffy, vampires have shown their preference for the limelight over the sunlight since Stoker’s passing in 1912.  With the influence of his work still evident in popular lexicon, it’s safe to say that Bram Stoker will remain an immortal for years to come. In commemoration of all characters ambiguously deceased, please enjoy two of the latest releases to reach iTunes: Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Curse and Witchouse, joining other spawn of the genre, 1st Bite and Dracula: The True Story.

Also new on iTunes this week: Horatio Hornblower: The Duel // Poirot: Murder In Mesopotamia // Poirot: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd // Shackleton // Jane White Is Sick and Twisted // Nobody the Great // Little Red Riding Hood // Laserblast // The Dead Hate the Living! // This Is the Life // Ernest In the Army // Man of the Year // Kicking the Dog // Rock Fresh // Class of Nuke ‘Em High // Def By Temptation // Mad Dog Morgan // Interstate // Altered By Elvis

The endless launch of new cell phone models and gaming platforms in the battle royal for your leisure hours leaves a consumer to play Simon Cowell to the auditioning product du jour. In the quest for portable and interactive entertainment, arcade and pinball machines are indeed from another century. Pac-Man is gone from the arcade, but lives somewhere in a downloadable format. A great deal of nostalgia exists for that bygone era of brands like Atari, Coleco and Sega to name just a few. The documentary Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball, now on iTunes, chronicles the glory days of pinball and tells the tale of a last-ditch effort to save the industry. This one will have you reaching in your pocket for more quarters.

New and browsable on iTunes: Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman: The Movie // Saints and Soldiers // Michael Winslow: Live // Poetry In Motion // InSearchOf

At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, consoles began showing signs of serious momentum as video pipelines into the living room. Sony has a new technology that downloads movies and TV directly the PSP portable console wirelessly.

In the future, your mother may use a game console

Console makers are broadening their content offerings, to branch out from the tried and true 80-90% young male demographic. To that point, Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s SVP of Interactive Entertainment, said, “This E3 is about breaking down barriers — between generations, between games and entertainment, and most important, between video game players and everyone else.”

One player notably absent from this particular game: Nintendo, which has no comparable video download service in the US, and seems somewhat lackluster on the propects – President Satoru Iwata told the LA Times, “We are hopeful that we launch a similar service in America someday. But we do not have anything to announce today.”

As the worthiness of the new “Star Trek” sparks debate – in Klingon and Vulcan – one consensus among fans of the original series is veneration for the episode ‘The City on the Edge of Forever.’ The auteur of this masterpiece of sci fi, writer and foul-mouthed provocateur Harlan Ellison is the subject of a gem of a doc now on iTunes, Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth. Ellison wrote the episode’s original script and feuded with Gene Roddenberry on the rewrites. At day’s end, the episode brought home a Hugo Award, a Writers Guild of America Award, and a glimpse at a pre-Dynasty Joan Collins.

Outside the Star Trek galaxy, Ellison’s body of work speaks for itself.  Short stories. Teleplays. Essays. Novellas. Ellison has boldly gone where few writers of the last century have gone before. Enjoy the voyage.

Also gluing us to our iTunes devices: In Debt We Trust // Tales of the Rat Fink // Tupac: Assassination – Conspiracy or Revenge // Farmingville // The Young Unknowns // Michael Winslow: Live

Where are viewers going these days? According to this chart courtesy of our esteemed colleagues at Silicon Alley Insider, it appears that watching TV at home is dead in the water and people are glued to their smart phones. However, is this the kind of data that is actionable or useful in predicting the future? Comparing a new technology to a dinosaur technology in terms of new adopters will predictably yield a chart that looks exciting but in truth is a no-brainer. We couldn’t resist comparing Pinocchio’s proboscis problem. Clearly, mobile phone watching is growing but, ah, tell me something I don’t know. Like a network that boasts to be ”fair and balanced,” here we have a nugget of truth stretched to make a point and get a rise.

This we know– the biggest chunk of  mobile phone video watching is coming from smart phones and most of that from iPhones and, yes, New Video Digital is a supplier of video to iTunes. So, we want to believe in this chart – we do. But, jeehz. Let’s get some data out there… in context.

Here’s what we saw (Pinocchio added to show scale). See if you agree:

CHART OF THE DAY: Screen Shift: U.S. DVR and Mobile Video Growth Climbing Fastest
from Silicon Alley Insider by Dan Colarusso, Kamelia Angelova
A new Nielsen report shows Americans watching plenty of TV at home — 153 hours every month — but DVR viewership and mobile video are growing faster than any other segment. Mobile video watching jumped 52% from the previous year and “time-shifted” TV watching climbed 37% over the same period.

Over the past year, Hollywood has revisited Nazi Germany with hero stories grounded in fact (see Tom Cruise’s “Valkyrie”) and outrageous fiction (see Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards”). The reimagining of those who did attempt to take down Hitler and his henchmen, no matter how fantastically realized, must always pale when compared to the breath-taking documents of those individual hero’s lives. This week we are wowed by trials of the men who plotted to assasinate the Führer in the documentary “The Top Secret Trial of the Third Reich.” The footage, created on Goebbels orders and then banned when it backfired against him, reveals the secret groups of the anti-Nazi movement. As war trials for crimes against humanity still linger from that era, we reflect on those who fought the good fight to their death.

More good stuff to download:  Standing With Stones // Speedo // Homemade Hillbilly Jam // Moving Midway // Sole Journey // Trancers // The Book of Caleb // Sam Kinison: Breaking All the Rules // Cannibal! The Musical // 1st Bite // Little Shots of Happiness

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like without oil? While that is an eventuality, how about a world without people? You can stretch your imagination this week with two new iTunes releases, ”CRUDE IMPACT” and “LIFE AFTER PEOPLE.”     

Rip! A Remix Manifesto on iTunes

And, having practically realized life after CDs, the question is, will there one day be life on Earth after DVDs? Sure, music labels have been in dire straits over the past decade.  As Napster gave way to myriad other sites, the online sharing movement put a huge dent in a once stable industry. Movies now tread cautiously in music’s footsteps, and the film industry nervously watches tickets sales and DVD purchases. “RIP! A REMIX MANIFESTO“ tackles the intellectual property debate head on, exposing the extent to which corporations will go to control public use. The digital revolution forces media companies to change and defend their business models. And of course some will always have their day in court.

More browsable new releases: Painter’s Painting // Sam Kinison Family Entertainment Hour // Winter of Frozen Dreams // Voice of the Heart // Tapioca // Bird By Bird With Annie // H2 Worker // For The Bible Tells Me So // Perfect Sport // Union Square // Coffee Date

It’s very official: “May the Fourth” is Star Wars Day! Celebrate with the surreal clay-mation event that is: STAR WARP’d on iTunes.