mr. 7 Feb 2010.

Just Like it Says… 4 Feb 2010.

Sundance, Amen. 3 Feb 2010.

Surprise Sundance Winner

Sundance has many differences from other film festivals. But in one respect it is indistinguishable. Its juries tend to live on other planets. They see different films from the rest of us, or the same films differently. So news came down from Planet Crazy that Winter’s Bone, a drama about Ozarks clansmen that received no critical buzz whatsoever, had won the Grand Prix for Dramatic Feature.

Heigh-ho, what can one do? I had pounded the beat. I had walked a million miles between snow-sundered theatres. I had told everyone whom I could shout at without risking an avalanche that the worthy winners were Blue Valentine or The Killer Inside Me. Winter’s Bone was not even on my long list. Next time I will change my routine. I will book a hotel on Planet Crazy, to eavesdrop on the judges, and commute by space shuttle.

Winter’s Bone
Not even on the long list: ‘Winter’s Bone’, winner of the Grand Prix for Dramatic Feature
They got the Documentary Grand Prix half right. Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s Restrepo, praised earlier on this page, is a harrowing report from the Afghan front line. Even here, though, the jury missed a trick. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s Catfish – the hottest ticket in the festival – was the best documentary because it teased new meanings from the word “documentary”. Interweaving comedy, mystery and actuality, and wittily interrogating the notional transparency of the blog and internet worlds, it had us asking on every level: “What is truth?”

But few festival juries are interested in “what is truth?” The question is tackled mainly by people who know they won’t win prizes and are prepared to sit around splitting philosophical hairs, like the VIPs of Sundance’s best on-stage discussion.

This followed Michael Winterbottom and Matt Whitecross’s exuberant, up-your-nose documentary The Shock Doctrine, an assemblage of the socioeconomic views of intellectual whiz-person Naomi Klein. Mixing archive footage into a giant plum pudding and then setting it ablaze with outrageous statements – mainly that all unhindered capitalism is bad – the film will make you want either to guzzle it or to throw it at the wall in impassioned fury.

There they were afterwards: Klein, Winterbottom, Whitecross and a chap in jeans and sneakers called Robert Redford. They pondered art, culture, finance, politics and the meaning of life.

While the jurors were sitting in their high chairs on Planet Crazy, wondering how to lift their spoons to their mouths, the fate of the universe was being discussed on ground zero.

Movie-wise, the festival was not quite the revolution we were promised. There is still too much second-rate cinema at Sundance: too much “we love it, whatever it is, if it’s by a woman, a maverick, a liberal or an actor-turned-director”. Furthermore, no non-Sundancer can know the hardships of moving around this town – the white hell of Park City in January – as snow/ice/slush try to stop you making it in 10 minutes, as you must, from Cinema Igloo to Theatre Permafrost.

But this year Sundance tried. It tried everything. Festival shuttle buses, if you could get on one, were terrific. You met everyone. You could gaze across the aisle at the frozen figure of the chap who made the great Khmer Rouge documentary Enemies of the People (no prize, of course) or the icicled apparition of the director of Blue Valentine (ditto), my favourite film after Catfish, awaiting a kinder universe presided over by an intelligent jury.

Before the screening of the last feature film I saw, Three Backyards, a gentle, enigmatic three-hander, the director Eric Mendelssohn (late of Judy Berlin), said he knew it was a cliché but he had to thank Sundance for its uniqueness as a place of opportunity in America for new cinema. He is right. It is a cliché. Yet it is also true. It has been true and is true. And next year, whichever planet I decide to make my festival-going base, it will still be true.

By Nigel Andrews

Published: January 31 2010 20:29 | Last updated: February 3 2010 06:54

GC. Amen, sister. 3 Feb 2010.

George Clooney Won’t Do for the Corporate World

By Lucy Kellaway

Published: January 25 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 25 2010 02:00

Handsome men don’t belong in corporate life. This thought occurred to me last week when I went to see Up in the Air , in which George Clooney plays a jet-setting consultant who flies around the US firing people.

For a Hollywood film, it is remarkably convincing. The sacked workers (played by real people who have recently lost their jobs) are angry and humiliated in just the right way. Clooney is smoothly professional and insultingly upbeat in just the right way, too. Only once did I think his smarmy lies had gone too far, when he says as he strips one man of his livelihood: “Anyone who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are right now”- but then I read later that this line was pinched from Michael Bloomberg.

Instead, the problem with the film is that Clooney is simply too good-looking to be credible. In his other roles, his perfectly symmetrical features have been less out of place. As the paediatrician in ER he was perfectly plausible. So too as a CIA agent in Syriana . He was even acceptable as a journalist in One Fine Day.

But for the corporate world, Clooney won’t do. If you want to see the real thing, visit the website of Forbes where there is an article by an HR consultant called Burton Goldfield. In real life, Goldfield does something similar to what Clooney does on film, but I hope he won’t mind if I point out that he doesn’t look like Clooney at all. He is a balding man in late middle age with a forgettable face.

In an attempt to stand up my theory about this dearth of beauty in corporate life, last week I sent an e-mail to the 500 journalists who work at the Financial Times. “Can anyone think of any seriously good-looking senior men in business?” I asked. Immediately a pattern started to emerge. There are plenty of handsome investment bankers and handsome hedge fund managers. Jamie Dimon is a minor beauty, Arki Busson a major one.

In continental Europe, corporate life is stuffed with matinee idols. There is Alessandro Benetton, Wolfgang Bernhard at Daimler, Bernard Arnault at LVMH, Henri de Castries at Axa, François-Henri Pinault at PPR – all are distractingly good-looking, and there are many more where they came from.

But in the UK and the US, the pickings are very slim indeed. There are a few dishy entrepreneurs. Michael Dell is quite handsome in a square-jawed sort of way. Richard Branson has – or had – something. But in mainstream corporate life in the UK and the US, the ugly mug rules.

In Britain, the situation is particularly dismal. FT journalists, with their combined experience of business life running into thousands of years, could only think of two possible candidates. Curiously, both called Rose: Sir John at Rolls-Royce and (more controversially) Sir Stuart at Marks and Spencer.

In the US, there were a few more suggestions of beautiful bosses, but almost all were from media companies where different rules apply. Stephen Burke at Comcast is easy on the eye, as is Jeffrey Bewkes at Time Warner.

If my theory is true, I can think of three possible explanations. The first is that men in business start handsome enough but by the time they are big enough to get noticed they are old and bald and have eaten too many aeroplane meals. Their looks have gone, and unlike business women they don’t go to such lengths to hang on to them. They can’t even compensate for dwindling physical charm by sheer power of personality, as Anglo-Saxon corporate life is about conformity, and strong expressions of individuality – even at the top – are not encouraged.

The second and more plausible explanation is that for beautiful men there are easier and more glamorous paths to success than a long arduous climb up the ladder in cement or insurance. Instead they go into investment banking, show business, media and the law, where looks – and the arrogance that goes with them – are admired.

The third possibility is that obviously handsome men are discriminated against in business. As plain men take almost all the hiring decisions they like to keep the good-looking ones out. With women, the reverse is true. A beautiful woman gets hired in a trice.

But whatever the reason, the predominance of plain Johns in corporate life has something to be said for it. Being fired isn’t nice, but it’s even less nice if the man with the axe has a full head of hair and beautiful brown eyes that shine on his victim with fake compassion. I would much rather reach for the tissues in front of someone whose appearance might give them something to cry about, too.

lucy.kellaway@ft.com

DT. 2 Feb 2010.

Thomas had refused to talk to the media in the week leading up to Dallas’ 24-3 win over Miami in Super Bowl VI. After the Cowboys’ win, Brookshier stood next to the running back, talking about his speed and building up to this question: “Are you that fast?”

“Evidently,” Thomas replied.

But there was another Thomas gem from that week. Asked just before the game if the Super Bowl is the ultimate game, Thomas replied with a question: “If it’s the ultimate game, how come they’re playing it again next year?”

Thomas scored the first touchdown at Texas Stadium in 1971. He played just two seasons in Dallas, rushing for 803 yards as a rookie and 793 the following year.

¡fete BOOM! 2 Feb 2010.

While we’re centered on music – I’m not sure – some noise around this – but I heard late last night that NY saxophonist, Bill McHenry, is playing at Saxon Pub in Austin, TX tonight.

Jazz is a music that eventually prizes iconoclasts, but positively reveres antecedents. Part of the game in evaluating a young player is figuring out where he or she came from, stylistically. And that’s what makes Bill McHenry so pleasantly perplexing. He partakes of the lineage, certainly: As a saxophonist, he’s studied Sonny Rollins and Dewey Redman, but sounds like neither. His musical presence is more circumspect; his sound is smaller, but not at all ungenerous. McHenry’s compositions in some respects recall those of Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, but not entirely, and not slavishly. These sessions were originally recorded live at the New York’s Fat Cat Jazz Club during the summer of 2005, and certainly, the quintet McHenry led is the band with which to hear him, a band that combines youthful energy with veteran experience.

And the bummer envelope, please…

I’d be happy to go to texas if there was a gig- Glad you enjoyed it-
Bill

From: vaughanstudio@mac.com
To: billmchenry@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Texas Dates?
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 11:35:24 -0600

apologies. i was pretty excited to see that you were playing in austin. i’m not surprised that you haven’t played down here – it can be sort of a dumb state. will try to catch you the next time i’m in nyc. you guys were incredible at village vanguard!

thanks,

ed

vaughan + company
o 512.858.1283
c 512.406.1015

On Feb 2, 2010, at 11:01 AM, Bill McHenry wrote:

Hi Ed-
I don’t know what you were looking at but I’ve never played in Texas- no date scheduled- sorry!
Bill

Musical Score. 1 Feb 2010.

‘chasing KEINO’ should have an original score by next weekend. We’ve been doing weekend duty mixing and re-mixing the musical cues. They really do sound terrific. We are very nearly there. Thanks to some very talented folk.

SDBFF. 30 Jan 2010.

This weekend San Diego is hosting the third largest black film festival in the country. The festival is being attended by such VIPs as actor Danny Glover and director Spike Lee.

Bobby Brown, Victor Willis of the Village People, Kenny Gamble, and a slew of up and coming stars graced the red carpet with Host Kiki Shepard on Friday.

Festival movie showings continue through Sunday at the U.A. Horton Plaza 14, 7th and G St. downtown.

Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-01-30/things-to-do/san-diego-black-film-festival-2010-red-carpet-event

Texas Black Film Festival. Dallas. 22 Jan 2010.

HONORABLE MENTION
Certain films which are worthy of Honorable Mention are not programmed due to various factors including: screen availability; appeal to small niche audiences; or TBFF lacking any Premiere status. The following films, although not programmed, received Honorable Mention.

Chasing Keino dir. by Ed Vaughan (Dripping Springs, TX)
The Fire Inside dir. by Monique Walton (Austin, TX)
Coming Correct dir. by Joseph L. Stovall (Lawrenceville, GA)
River Toll dir. by Kenny Brown (LA, CA)
Brothers, Inc. dir. by Michael Johnson (LA, CA)
Johnny’s Leaving dir. by Kali Baker-Johnson (Maplewood, NJ)

It would have been fun to have screened cK in Dallas, but equally nice that the work was appreciated.

AWDFF. Hamilton, Bermuda. 21 Jan 2010.

Here’s the post for Africa World Documentary Film Festival 2010. My film, ‘chasing KEINO‘, will screen at the Africa World Documentary Film Festival in Hamilton, Bermuda on Friday 19 March, Opening Night at 6:30 PM.