Film Comment - Film Review + Critics Poll
Two Film Comment items.
First, the January/February issue contains a complete review of the film. If you’re wondering, Gavin Smith’s comments about the film weren’t a formal review, rather, remarks about the Sundance Festival he had attended.
The review, written by Paul Fileri, opens with:
“With environmental documentaries like Darwin’s Nightmare, Our Daily Bread and Manufactured Landscapes appearing in recent years and many more looming on the horizon, any nonfiction film holding lasting critical value will have to do more than lay out a portrait of ecological degradation. At the same time it will have to avoid settling into reportage and exposé, retreating into nostalgic lament, or falling prey to easy solutions and wishful thinking. With her intelligent and formally accomplished debut feature The Unforeseen, Laura Dunn has shown herself to be up to the task, bringing clear-eyed reflection to bear on modern capitalism, urban development, and globalization, probing the systems of economic and social power that shape our everyday lives as well as our loftier sense of nature as a whole.”
To read the rest of the review, pick up a copy at your local newsstand.
Critics Poll
In addition, Film Comment released their annual critics poll of best films of 2007. The Unforeseen captured lucky number 13 on the “Undistributed” list.
http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/poll/2007pollcritics.html
FILM COMMENT’S END-OF-YEAR CRITICS’ POLL
For Film Comment’s Eighth Annual Critics’ Poll we invited our contributors and colleagues to rank their top 20 films of the year, plus the 10 best unreleased films they discovered on any festival sorties. (In the latter category, 11 had their U.S. premieres at the 44th New York Film Festival and at least three more will be shown in our annual Film Comment Selects series.) In each ballot from the 80-plus critical chorus, a first-place choice was allotted 20 points, 19 for second, and so on. We published the results for the Top 20 in the current issue. Here are the Top 50 released and Top 30 unreleased.
BEST UNRELEASED FILMS OF 2007
(*Currently without U.S. distribution)
1. Silent Light Carlos Reygadas, Mex./Fr./Neth. 175
2. Flight of the Red Balloon Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tai./Fr. 171
3. Paranoid Park Gus Van Sant, France/U.S. 134
4. Secret Sunshine Lee Chang-dong, S. Korea 127
5. My Winnipeg Guy Maddin, Canada 97
6. Useless* Jia Zhang-Ke, China/Hong Kong 95
7. Still Life Jia Zhang-Ke, China/Hong Kong 91
8. In the City of Sylvia* José Luis Guerín, Spain 76
9. The Last Mistress Catherine Breillat, France/Italy 70
10. The Romance of Astrée and Céladon* Eric Rohmer, France/Italy/Spain 57
11. The Duchess of Langeais Jacques Rivette, Fr./Ger. 68
12. Alexandra Alexander Sokurov, France/Russia 44
13. The Unforeseen Laura Dunn, U.S. 43
14. Go Go Tales* Abel Ferrara, Italy/U.S. 41
15. Battle for Haditha Nick Broomfield, U.K. 37
16. Mister Lonely Harmony Korine, U.K./France/Ireland/U.S. 36
17. The Pool* Chris Smith, U.S. 35
18. George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead George A. Romero, U.S. 33
19. Chop Shop Ramin Bahrani, U.S. 32
20. Encounters at the End of the World Werner Herzog, U.S 29
(tie) Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind* John Gianvito, U.S. 29
21. Reprise Joachim Trier, Norway 28
22. The Man from London* Béla Tarr, Fr./Ger./Hun. 26
23. The Edge of Heaven Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey 25
(tie) La France* Serge Bozon, France 25
(tie) The Silence Before Bach Pere Portabella, Spain 25
24. At Sea* Peter Hutton, U.S. 22
(tie) Boarding Gate Olivier Assayas, France 22
(tie) California Dreamin’* Cristian Nemescu, Romania 22
25. Chicago 10 Brett Morgen, U.S. 20
(tie) Dust Hartmut Bitomsky, Germany 20
26. Chronicle of a Chinese Woman* Bing Wang, China 19
(tie) I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK* Park Chan-wook, S. Korea 19
(tie) Taxi to the Dark Side Alex Gibney, U.S. 19
27. Calle Sante Fe* Carmen Castillo, Chile/France/Belgium 18
(tie) Glue Alexis Dos Santos, Argentina/U.K. 18
(tie) SpaceDisco One* Damon Packard, U.S. 18
28. Frownland* Ronald Bronstein, U.S. 17
(tie) I Just Didn’t Do It* Masayuki Suo, Japan 18
(tie) Lou Reed’s Berlin* Julian Schnabel, U.S./U.K. 17
(tie) Snow Angels David Gordon Green, U.S. 17
29. Caramel Nadine Labaki, France/Lebanon 16
(tie) Import Export Ulrich Seidl, Austria 16
30. Actresses Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, France 15
Yesterday’s News and Today’s Confidence Games
Sundance 2008
Hey so Sundance 2008 kicks off tonight. We’re now, officially, yesterday’s news! A year ago today Laura and I (and many others! Lee, Bill Warren, Dad, etc.) were in Park City nauseatingly awaiting the first screening. Thankfully, we are past that phase and about to enter distribution, come what may.
I’m excited for others at Sundance. We’re eager, like a lot of folks, to see AJ Schnack and Friends’ new documentary awards launch. Not because we have high hopes for The Unforeseen we were surprised to even be mentioned. It’s just long overdue and documentaries aren’t becoming any less ambitious.
Final Final Theatrical Poster
Okay, so here’s the final final poster. What changed?
Cancer Pioneer Judah Folkman dies
One of the most critical interviews in “The Unforeseen” comes from an extraordinary cancer researcher named Judah Folkman, who sadly passed away earlier today. From Reuters:
Dr. Judah Folkman, who discovered that tumors generate their own network of tiny blood vessels to nourish themselves, has died at the age of 74, Harvard Medical School said on Tuesday.
Folkman’s work founded an entire branch of cancer research called anti-angiogenesis therapy. His theory was that if a tumor could be stopped from growing its own blood supply, it would wither and die.
Known for his amazing generosity of spirit and kindness, he extended tremendous patience with us during our interview in 2004, in which he carefully explained how tumors grow and distinguished healthy cell growth patterns from malignant ones. His cogent distillation of these complex biological systems ultimately became key to grasping the central thesis of our film: that all growth is not good, and in fact, (in the words of Edward Abbey) “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
I feel so grateful to have met Judah Folkman, an outstanding teacher and scientist. This blog entry is an attempt, however small, to honor his enormous contributions.
Read more from today’s Associated Press.
Read more about his work in this 2002 interview from Scientific American.
Surreal Estate
It’s almost surreal to watch the national real estate picture playing out. A year ago, we premiered the film at Sundance. I remember telling our film sales rep about the weird parallels between what is being called the subprime crisis and the S&L crisis. He was completely cool, politely listening to my raving, but I couldn’t help but think I came off like those dudes who rants about the gold standard. (Oh wait, I am that guy.)
Anyway, so flash forward almost exactly a year.
- Countrywide’s stock is dropping like a bunker buster.
- Bank of America, already $2B deep into Countrywide, offers to buy them out BEFORE they crash.
- The Fed unveils entirely new instruments to provide liquidity to troubled banks without having to clue us in as to which banks have, to use a Dad term, “a big stinky.”
- Sovereign Wealth Funds are picking up big chunks of cornerstone US financial institutions
Real estate woes are front page stories, week after week. People expect before this is over that we’ll see bank failures, maybe even big banks. Foreclosure rates hitting record levels. Homebuilders, banks, ratings firms, all class of businesses are being hit by this. It’s an absolutely bizarre time to be opening the film. If nothing else, the front page nature of this mess only makes the film seem more timely.
Far smarter and more insightful people have written at length on this subject. Rather than rehash and paraphrase their insights (and surely dilute them) I’m just going to link to some of the more interesting articles of late.
- How the S&L Crisis parallels the Subprime Crisis (CNBC)
- Bank of America’s Countrywide Trap (Fortune)
- Cool Hand Ben Protects a Bankrupt Fed (Seeking Alpha)
- Housing Gridlock - Trapped in Suburbia (Mish - Excerpt Below)
The Chicago Tribune is telling a story that’s happening about 60 minutes from where I live, in booming Will County Illinois where miles and miles of cornfields were turned into miles and miles of houses. It had to end and so it did. Now many are Trapped in a troubled real estate market.
One of the nation’s fastest-growing counties in recent years, Will County now has the highest foreclosure rate in Illinois and its housing market has come to a standstill. Yet where California or Florida can blame out-of-sight prices, and Ohio or Michigan their shrinking economies, Will County remains affordable and growing even as its residential for-sale signs multiply.
My Comment: Obviously Will County is not affordable. Evidence is twofold. Will County has the highest foreclosure rate in Illinois and for sales sign are multiplying like rabbits.
Growth of houses exceeded growth in jobs. Wages did not keep up. It was an artificial boom. Driving around I have been wondering for years “How can everyone afford to live like this?” Here is the answer. They can’t. That shiny new SUV parked in the driveway may signal trouble, not prosperity.
This really is just a start. I strongly recommend plumbing financial sites like Mish to draw a sharper bead on this mess.
Human Rights Watch Festival - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Info here.
Boston Screening, Saturday the 19th
The Human Rights Watch Festival travels to Boston with The Unforeseen next Saturday, January 19th. More information here.
Nearly finished with the Theatrical Poster
This is the nearly finished theatrical poster. It’s basically an attempt to fix what was wrong with the festival poster. I had 3 or 4 other concepts mocked up. One with a spiderweb merging into a subdivision map. Another with hundreds of monarchs clustered around a tree which gradually fades into being a skyscraper. One with the film’s main developer, merging a photo from his childhood and him relatively recently. It’s rare that someone’s features line up perfectly in photos taken over 40 years apart.
Each concept conveyed themes of The Unforeseen but ultimately, I just couldn’t afford the time and money needed to execute them passably. Hence the new and improved version of the festival poster.
MOMA Documentary Fortnight Screening - Planet in Focus
Read more here.
And the Academy for Best Achievement in Editing of a Documentary..
doesn’t exist. Neither does Best Cinematography or Best Director. It’s all just “Best Documentary.”
AJ Schnack (director About a Son/nominee for the 2007 Truer than Fiction - Independent Spirit Award) working in collaboration with festival programmers from the major North American festivals and distributor IndiePix have announced a new awards event focusing exclusively on documentary film. It seeks to broaden recognition of accomplishments in documentary film by expanding the categories it awards filmmakers. These include:
- Best documentary
- Best international feature
- Best debut feature
- Best achievement in directing
- Best achievement in producing
- Best achievement in editing
- Best achievement in cinematography
- Best achievement in graphics and animation
When you think about it, it’s hard to believe these kinds of categories haven’t existed for documentaries at the Oscars. Of course, mainstream audiences (and therefore advertisers) want to see celebrities succeed and fail, so why spend time on Documentaries, Shorts, or Animated films? (Have you seen what your average animator looks like? Not pretty… 
Anyways, it seems like such an inspired and long overdue idea. Which makes The Unforeseen being shortlisted all the more of an honor. You can read more about this at Schnack’s blog “All these wonderful things.”
THE UNFORESEEN
Directed by Laura Dunn
Laura Dunn takes a straight-forward (and oft-covered) subject - urban sprawl and threats to the environment - and with impecable craft, turns it into a gorgeous, cinematic vision of what it means to lose one’s sense of neighborhood. Barton Springs in Austin, Texas is a community treasure - both old time swimming hole and artesian aquifer - and beloved by old and young, so when plans by developers threaten the Springs, a familiar green vs greed battle is in the offing. But Dunn, working with cinematographers Lee Daniel and Vance Holmes, co-editor Emily Morris and graphic designer Jef Sewell, creates a lyrical and beautiful film that stuns with the ambition of its opening. Notable too is her choice to allow the film’s “bad guy”, developer Gary Bradley, tell much of the story. The title ends up referring not just to the unanticipated harm to Barton Springs, but also to the twists and turns of Bradley’s role in Austin’s super sizing.
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About The Unforeseen
The Unforeseen, executive produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Called "the best film at the festival, hands down" by Film Comment's Gavin Smith, the film documents the struggles between development and preservation of Austin Texas.