Cinema has always been marked by the push and pull between art, commerce and technology, but perhaps never more so than with the advent of digital filmmaking, which stands poised to sweep aside more than a century of celluloid technique and history. Directed by Chris Kenneally and anchored by interviewer-producer Keanu Reeves, the superlative new documentary Side by Side seeks to explore this revolution through the eyes of some of Hollywood’s biggest and most respected filmmakers. A wide-ranging and thoroughly engaging treatise that benefits from a broad spectrum of interviewees and perspectives, this is “inside-the-Beltway” cinema, yes, but it’s also a film about film that matters — one that ably sums up an art form, where we’ve been and where we’re going.
At this moment in time, digital filmmaking and the world of photochemical 35mm exist in tandem, with master cinematographers and directors having a choice between mediums and sometimes switching back and forth between the pair. But the switch-over to much more inexpensive digital filmmaking technology and the subsequent quiet revolution in digital projection — there were only four digital theaters in 1999, for the premiere of The Phantom Menace, 150 three years later, and we’re now hovering around 50 percent nationally — means that 35mm is on its way to becoming a cinematic programming curio.
There are a couple fantastic anecdotes scattered throughout (David Fincher recalls Robert Downey, Jr. leaving mason jars of urine scattered around the set of Zodiac as form of protest over the continuous shooting and lack of mentally refreshing downtime), but Side by Side is mostly a history of digital filmmaking’s transition from black sheep stepchild to mainstream industry embrace. Using the work and opinions of dozens of filmmakers, Kenneally’s movie details films of various groundbreaking types, like Dogma 95 movement debut The Celebration, Sin City, and Danny Boyle‘s 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire, the latter of which was the first film shot almost entirely digitally to win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Several directors, meanwhile, posit that celluloid instills a certain level of focus and respect for the filmmaking process, “because you hear money whirring through camera,” as one puts it.
Kenneally has superb instincts about where and how to indulge sidebar historical lessons, but he also goes to significant lengths to chat with many cinematographers and let them voice opinion on how digital filmmaking is impacting the work, relationships and influence. For some, it seems to have eroded their power, since the work of directors of photography can be evaluated more immediately, instead of waiting on dailies. Digital intermediate colorists also have an increased sway over the final look of a movie.
Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, of all people, bemoans the digital revolution and the fact that it opens up new frontiers for would-be storytellers as signifying the loss of a tastemaker, and gatekeeper. Still, with all major manufacturers having stopped developing new photochemical film cameras, the future of cinema over the next generation-plus seems clear. Side by Side provides an amazing snapshot of this transition, at around the halfway point. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information about the movie and its VOD options, meanwhile, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 99 minutes)
Daily Archives: August 18, 2012
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
An unflinching, diamond-sharp salvo about the roots of the American economic crisis and its impact on particularly the middle class and working poor, Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? offers up a fusillade of facts that convincingly paint the United States as an oligarchy with fairly corruptible political leadership. Co-directors Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher largely eschew traditional partisan truncheons and dig past more familiar villains and boogeymen to shine a light on the damaging impact of three-plus decades of rampant deregulation, job outsourcing and tax policies aimed almost solely at further empowering large business owners and the individually wealthy. The finished product is almost impossible not to raise ire and heart rates.
Narrated by Thom Hartmann, the well-researched Heist slots in comfortably alongside documentaries like Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job. However, it also takes a long view of our current economic situation, revealing the roots of planning that led to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which limited affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms, and other consumer financial system protections. Given particular scrutiny is an important memorandum penned by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell — the deciding vote in 1978’s First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a forerunner for the Citizens United case in which corporations were granted new rights to spend money in order to influence political processes — in which he extolled the free market system and deemed that the end of business regulation would somehow benefit all.
Specifically, Powell (and later his acolytes) advocated business control of raw political power, and mechanisms of punishment for those who opposed their policies and ideas. In foreseeing saw how corporate money could talk louder than organized labor and consumer protection groups — and advancing that cause — the Powell Memorandum provided a veritable blueprint for the creation of ideological marketing organizations masquerading as think tanks, and laid groundwork for news organizations as bloviating big business opinion peddlers. Through these mouthpieces, massive rollbacks on capital gains and dividend taxes were achieved, along with the stripping back of other important measures of federal oversight. In this environment, rapaciousness and excess were then allowed to run amok.
Heist is a cinematic gut punch, to be sure, but not one entirely devoid of hope. It sounds an alarm, and makes a compelling case for greater political involvement and education by those with less means than the moneyed elite of this country. Whether that call is answered en masse may say a lot about the future trajectory of the United States of America. For more information on the film, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7, click here. For my full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Connect the Dots Productions, unrated, 76 minutes)