Student Film Debuts and Confessions from Clooney.

• Jennifer Pak had the opportunity to check out film festival at Ottawa’s Arts Court, which featured third-year film projects produced, written and directed by third-year Carleton University film studies students. Some of the film shorts, which varied from film to video to anything film students could get their hand on, really resonated – including one about being trapped in Bell voice-mail..



• Confessions of a Dangerous Mind marks the directorial debut from television/film actor George Clooney. This film, a labour of love for Mr. Clooney, tells the story of Chuck Barris, the man who invented TV game shows such as “The Gong Show,” “The Dating Game” and “The Newlywed Game” – and claimed to be a CIA operative who killed 33 people. There’s a split opinion on this one. Peter loved the film for three primary reasons: (a) Mr. Clooney excels as a director, cribbing a lot of valuable stylistic lessons from his mentor/producing friend Steven Soderbergh; (b) there is a clever script by Charlie Kauffman (the man behind Adaptation and Being John Malkovich); and (c) Sam Rockburn (Wild Bill in The Green Mile) gives an amazing, no holds-barred, break-out performance in the title role of Chuck Barris. John felt the film was a modest filmmaking effort on Mr. Clooney’s part. He did, however, enjoy learning of the origins of historical television game shows and it reminded him of a brilliant movie called Quiz Show that was directed by Robert Redford, another popular actor trying their hand at directing.
  
  

No Trailer Trash here.

• Just commercials? A waste of time? Teasers? Informative? Misleading? People paying for a movie ticket just to see them? Time to go to the washroom, buy popcorn, etc.?... They're all this and more. This week we spent an entire hour, that's right one hour, talking about movie TRAILERS.
  
  
• Well, actually we let the trailers do most of the talking and this was no easy feat. First of all, the trailers had to go through a vigorous screening process. They each had to be able to stand on its own aurally. Many a trailer was rejected because without the visual element, no sense could be made of what was being heard. Next, we had to try categorizing the movie trailers. Being pioneers in this area, we attempted to create genres within this undiscovered land: the voice-over narration trailer; the campy, b-movie trailer; the stylized, quick synopsis trailer; the epic trailer; and the list goes on. Sub-genres were starting to appear creating a complex network that was becoming increasingly unwieldy. Through careful, diligent record keeping the finalists were selected and aired for your listening pleasure.


Each trailer chosen is essentially a mini-film.... (in no particular order).
-The Switchblade Sisters
-Dead Alive
-The Royal Tenenbaums
- Hannah and Her Sisters
- Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
-Magnolia
-Comedian
-Go
-Raising Arizona

• Need to see more trailers? click here. You will need quicktime to view the trailers.