Been off the grid for a while, but with good reason I assure you. On april 25th, at 19:34 hrs, my wife gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy! His full name is Joshua Matthias Frederik and he is without question the best thing I've ever had a hand in creating. So yes, I am now officially a daddy!Now I know what you must be wondering while reading this news: "you can actually reproduce?". To which I say: yes, apparently I can. Though in all honesty, I must admit that my contribution to this little miracle was fairly limited (you know what I mean, of course). It was Marije who had to carry the little one for over nine months and had to deliver him as well. And let me tell you, childbirth may be wondrous and beautiful, it's also pretty gross. As in: it makes you wonder why something that small was ever intended to allow something that big to come through. But I digress.
Anyway, almost five weeks in and life has changed quite a bit. And not just because of all the diaper-changing, bottle-feeding, baby-washing and sleep-deprivation. It's just, I don't know... weird to suddenly be a father. Even though all Joshua does at this point is eat, sleep and poop, he is a real person, with a unique personality and his own little traits. To think I am responsible for him as a father is just amazing.
Too soon? My picks for next year's Oscars!
0 Comments Published by Steven Friedman on Tuesday, March 09, 2010 at 7:09 PM.
Man, it feels like the 82nd Academy Awards were only handed out yesterday. When in fact of course, it was the day before yesterday. Maybe I'm so confused because this year's show was such an uneventful snoozefest.I consider it quite a miracle that I managed to stay awake through it all - especially since watching it from the 'other side' of the Atlantic Ocean means pulling an all-nighter. I yawned considerably more than I laughed, but then again, I think that goes for the majority of those poor 41 milion or so viewers who chose to endure this cure for insomnia.
Anyway, I really wanted to blog about my predictions for this year's Oscars. Honestly, I did. But putting them up now would be kind of silly, wouldn't it? So I thought, why not look ahead and give my predictions for the 83rd Academy Awards? You can never be too early, right? So, here goes: my picks for the 2011 Oscars.
BEST FILM:
True Grit (win)
Hereafter
Winter's Bone
Eat, Pray, Love
Black Swan
The Tree of Life
Somewhere
The Beaver
Inception
The American
BEST DIRECTOR:
Joel & Ethan Coen - True Grit (win)
Anton Corbijn - The American
Clint Eastwood - Hereafter
Darren Aronofsky - Black Swan
Jodie Foster - The Beaver
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Kyle Killen - The Beaver (win)
Darren Aronofsky & Mark Heyman - Black Swan
Christopher Nolan - Inception
Stuart Blumberg & Lisa Cholodenko - The Kids Are Allright
Sofia Coppola - Somewhere
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Ryan Murphy & Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat, Pray, Love
Aaron Sorkin - The Social Network
Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini - Winter's Bone
Joel & Ethan Coen - True Grit (win)
Rowan Joffe - The American
BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE:
George Clooney - The American
Jeff Bridges - True Grit
Stephen Dorff - Somewhere (win, yes Stephen Dorff wins an Oscar)
Mel Gibson - The Beaver
Brad Pitt - The Tree of Life
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE:
Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit (win)
Natalie Portman - Black Swan
Julia Roberts - Eat, Pray, Love
Jennifer Lawrence - Winter's Bone
Anne Hathaway - Love and Other Drugs
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:
Matt Damon - True Grit (win)
Josh Brolin - True Grit
Vincent Cassel - Black Swan
Jack Nicholson - Untitled James L. Brooks Film
Javier Bardem - Eat, Pray, Love
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:
Elle Fanning - Somewhere (win)
Julianne Moore - The Kids are Allright
Lauren Sweetser - Winter's Bone
Mila Kunis - Black Swan
Jodie Foster - The Beaver
BEST ANIMATED FILM:
Toy Story 3 (win)
MegaMind
Tangled
Legend of the Guardians
Despicable Me
So, another year over, a new one just begun. With all the champagne (or rather, cheapo bubbly substitute) now finally cleared from my bloodstream, the time has come to wish you all a happy, healthy and successful 2010. May this year bring you all the joy and happiness you seek and may all your dreams come true. Except of course for those recurring nightmares about blood-sucking freaks cutting you open and feasting on your intestines. That would make 2010 somewhat less of a pleasant experience. Anyway...Christmas 2009 has rather surprisingly - and fortunately - been somewhat of a relaxing experience. What with the wife being six months pregnant and all. Somehow, having a baby in your stomach gives you the ultimate free-pass at family visits and other obligatory yultide social gatherings. Only seven o'clock? Gosh, pregnant women get really tired after six, so you won't mind if we head home a little earlier, would you?
If everything goes according to plan, 2010 is going to be a very busy year for me. Not just on the family-expanding front, but workwise as well. And I'm looking forward to every minute of it! Maybe in a couple of weeks, I can elaborate a bit more on the main project that's on the rails right now. Next to that, I've started outlining a new story that I'm very excited about. This one harkens back to the glorious 80's 'Amblin Entertainment'-films I grew up on. And it's shaping up to be one kick-ass ride, I'm telling you.
Ah yes, what would a New Years-post be without another 'Best Of'-list? I think 2009 has given us some terrific films, ranging from original scifi-stories to franchise reboots that actually worked. Anyway, in reverse order, here's my top-10 films I had to pleasure of watching last year.
10. WATCHMEN
09. STAR TREK
08. PRECIOUS
07. (500) DAYS OF SUMMER
06. MOON
05. THE HURT LOCKER
04. UP
03. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
02. AVATAR
01. DISTRICT 9
Hear Ye, Hear Ye!
0 Comments Published by Steven Friedman on Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 12:26 PM.
My sincerest apologies for the lack of recent updates on this little blog of mine. Things have been quite hectic lately and let's just say that probing my mind for marginally interesting blogposts didn't rank that high on my priority-list. I've been working hard all through the summer and, if things go the way they seem to be going, there'll be a truckload of really exciting posts coming up. Yeah, it's all a bit cryptic, I know. I'm just not at liberty to divulge any details on this particular project at this moment. Rest assured that this blog will be the first place I'll post the news, when it comes to pass. Pretty soon, I hope.There is, however, some really terrific news I can share with the world right now: I am going to be a daddy!!! And I don't mean this in a metaphorical way either. I actually managed to succesfully knock up my beautiful wife. Okay, that sounded a bit crude, but it's essentially what has happened. There's still quite a bit of time to go before our little scream- and poopfactory sees the light of day (writing this post, Marije's 15 weeks in, so another 24 weeks to go), but words really cannot explain how proud I already am of this tiny growing miracle! And whether it's a boy or a girl, I'm sure it'll be the best thing I've ever made.
Marketing mishaps: clueless movie trailers
0 Comments Published by Steven Friedman on Thursday, August 06, 2009 at 5:32 PM.
Selling a film is a craft not to be taken lightly. Each year Hollywood spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising, in an attempt to convince those fickle moviegoers to spend their hard earned cash at the box office. In some cases, the cost of marketing can equal - or even exceed - a film's production budget. Crazy, huh? Well, this industry isn't called showBUSINESS for nothing. If you want to sell tickets, you've got to get out there and let the people know your film has the biggest bang, the brightest star, the scariest monster or the most adorable puppies.Make no mistake, marketing can make or brake any film. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT would be nothing more than an obscure little student-film on Youtube had it not been for the brilliant marketing campaign that made it seem like a good idea to spend 8 dollars to watch shaky video-footage of three kids running around in a forest for 90 minutes. At the other end of the spectrum you'll find films like the recent OUTLANDER - deserving of a far better marketing-treatment than what the distributor felt was adequate at the time. Too bad, because more often than not these films actually have the potential to become box office-hits, instead of just hapless straight-to-dvd dumps.
Which brings me to the centerpiece of any movie marketing-campaign: the trailer. That carefully crafted montage of shots from a particular film, set to enticing music and usually accompanied by a deep resounding voice-over. Most people in the industry don't like to refer to it as a commercial, but of course, it's exactly that. And like any commercial for any product, it can either succeed in its goal to move the target audience, or it can fail.
Harrison McCann once famously said that advertising is 'truth well told'. A great adage if ever there was one - and one that I think particularly applies to film-marketing. After all, we're in the business of storytelling. And telling stories is all about telling the truth. Right? Well unfortunately, most movie trailers aren't cut by the people responsible for the final film (ie the director). Marketing is handled by the studio / distributor, so unless your name is Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott, they get the final say over your film's trailers.
The result of this practice? Trailers that give you the completely wrong idea about a film's concept or story. Case in point: the first trailer for Peter Jackson's film adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel THE LOVELY BONES. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the imagery presented to me in this trailer, but after a promising start, we suddenly turn the corner and the story's about 'a dead girl's attempts to hunt her killer from beyond the grave'. Which, as anyone who has read the novel can tell you, is definitely NOT what THE LOVELY BONES is about.
This is an understated story about family dynamics in the wake of a tragedy. More akin to Redford's ORDINARY PEOPLE or Todd Field's IN THE BEDROOM than it is to, say, Jerry Zucker's GHOST. And for the life of me, I don't understand why you would try to sell this film as a supernatural thriller with fantasy-elements thrown in (been there, done that), when you should be selling it on PJ's pedigree, the stellar Academy Award-winning cast and the fact that it's based on a novel read by millions of people around the world. Truth people, truth. Ultimately, that will sell best.
Speaking at the 'Produced By'- conference last saturday, larger-than-life filmmaker (and one of my all-time cinematic heroes) James Cameron once again channeled P.T. Barnum as he pitched 3D as the next evolutionary step in the history of cinema. Funnily enough, he also allegedly dissed MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D - the one recent film I actually HAVE seen in three dimensions - for being nothing more than a cheap throwback to those 70's 'jabbing stuff in your face'-3D attractions (he's right, by the way). Guess I'll have to wait 'till december when Cameron's AVATAR is finally released and my cerebral cortex will be transported to Nirvana as 3D-images of crazy intergalactic jungle-people joyfully burst into my skull.Yet I'm wondering, apart from f*cking my eyeballs (it's an AVATAR internet-meme thing), is 3D really going to radically change the way I watch movies? A close friend of mine, who saw a digital 3D-version of Pixar's UP a couple of weeks ago in Cannes, said the funny glasses added little (if anything) to the experience of watching the film (an opinion shared by many others, apparently). I still haven't had the chance to see UP yet (grrr, stupid international release windows) but I'm sure a 'regular' digital presentation will be just as enjoyable as its 3D-counterpart. Pixar's greatest strength lies in terrific storytelling, not in technological gadgetry.
That's not to say I'm totally antipathetic to the idea of 3D in movie theaters. Some films (and I'm sure AVATAR will be one of them) should be 'experienced', rather than just 'watched'. And if Cameron delivers what he promises, AVATAR is bound to be the first genuine 3D-cinema experience, really sucking the audience through the looking glass and placing them smack-dab in the middle of all the action. But, as with Pixar, I consider Cameron to be a great storyteller first and a technological wizard second. At the end of the day (or rather, the start of the end-credits) the real question is: does the film have a compelling story? If it doesn't, no 3D in the world is likely to save it from being a boring dud.
Which brings me to another piece of film-related technological proficiency I recently heard about: D-BOX Motion Code. Already available in certain Canadian and U.S. movie theaters, this 'film enhancing' device promises to rock your world while watching a movie on the big screen. Quite literally. It's basically a chair that banks, tilts and rumbles along with the film you're watching. Not just randomly, mind you, the different movements are all meticulously programmed to match the action on screen. Cool idea? Definitely. But does it really add to the storytelling part of filmmaking? Well, I think you can answer that before even trying that chair. Who'd want to see DELIVERANCE, the D-Box experience?
Set phasers on stunning!
0 Comments Published by Steven Friedman on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 12:05 PM.
Boy, it's been almost a week now since I saw J.J. Abrams' STAR TREK-reboot (digitally projected, no less) and I think I actually needed that time to allow the full impact of that film to properly sink in. Sure, I'm a sucker for hyperbole when it comes to films I really like, but I think Abrams, Kurtzman, Orci, Pine, Quinto and pretty much everyone else who worked on this film are truly deserving of every bit of praise they're getting. I mean, 95% positive on Rotten Tomatoes? For a summer blockbuster scifi-vehicle? When was the last time that happened?Truth be told, I've never been a huge STAR TREK-fan. Actually, strike that 'huge'-part. I've just never been a fan, period. Didn't care much for the original series (the epitome of camp if you ask me), tried to watch a few episodes of that Next Generation-thingee, but it never struck a chord with me. As far as the films are concerned, I love WRATH OF KHAN and really dug FIRST CONTACT, but the rest is just a mishmash of great ideas and poor execution to me, with that humpback whale-story as an all-time low.
Now I'm definitely not a Lucashound in the sense that I vehemently hate everything Trek simply because the STAR WARS-universe is way cooler. It's just that Roddenberry's vision, as foreseeing and ambitious as it was, never managed to 'wow' me the way that STAR WARS did (and still does). It was just too clean, too neat, too organized, too utopian. From the uniforms to the design of the ships to the idea of an 'intergalactic Federation', it all felt so esoterically impeccable, that I didn't want to be a part of it.
In comes J.J. (soon to be the biggest director in Hollywood, trust me) and he injects the STAR TREK-universe with two elements I think it desperately needed: grittiness and fun. From the adrenaline-rush of the opening sequence, where the U.S.S. Kelvin gets attacked by a Romulan vessel emerging from a black hole, you know right away what kind of Trek-adventure this is going to be. Ships get banged up, people get sucked into the vacuum of space, shit blows up... all while Michael Giacchino's music soars and the sound and visual effects draw you into a world of fun and wonder.
This is a summer blockbuster the way it's supposed to be. After two fun-filled hours it leaves you both satisfied and hungry for more. The $75 million opening weekend might not be the biggest in history, but I think great word-of-mouth will keep this baby spinning in warp drive all summer.
