My New Favorite Film - Brief Encounter (circa 1945)

From a chance meeting on a train platform, a very handsome, middle-aged married doctor Alec (Trevor Howard) and a sweet suburban housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) enter into a quiet yet passionate love affair, meeting every Thursday at a small café at the station to play out their romance. Brief Encounter is based on a Noel Coward play, director David Lean (of Doctor Zhivago fame) explores the thrill and pain of an illicit romance in 1945 Britain.

Subtle yet emotional and definitely from another era, Brief Encounter is timeless in the age-old struggle over morals and extra marital affairs. The brilliance of Brief Encounter is the movie does not focus on the extra marital affair. Rather, it focuses on a chance encounter between two very nice and like-able people who connect organicly and are attracted to each other but have lives that cannot work together. From her living room sitting with her husband, through voice-over we learn all about Laura's brief encounter with Alec.

Shot in black and white, the shadows, both literal and figurative are cunning and remarkable while the newspaper blowing about Laura and Alex's feet as they try to sneak a kiss in the train station adds a modern reality in tune with the current obsession with illicit affairs. However this relationship is natural and nearly perfect. Brief Encounter is a riveting love story where the words spoken are so elegantly and draws the audience into a brilliant space where passions may not be fulfilled. This movie explores love between a man and a woman in its purest form.

Unfortunately, you don't see movies like this one anymore. Celia Johnson is amazing and her performance garnered her an Academy Award nomination. Today's actresses should watch her carefully. Everything about her performance is precise. Not one thing out of place nor predictable. It is refreshing to watch a film in which the actors must hold the movie together as opposed to special effects.

Brief Encounter is truly one of the great movies of all time, and I am happy to have stumbled across it. IT IS MY NEW FAVORITE FILM! You will want to watch it now. PLAY PRESS!

FLICKERIA COMES TO SIZZLE MIAMI

FLICKERIA.COM presents at the upcoming 2010 SIZZLE MIAMI:

Created in 2010, Flickeria.com is a film and distribution production company created by filmmaker Kirk Shannon-Butts. Best known as an emerging LGBT film director (Uptown, Black Enterprise, SGL Weekly, Clik, OUT Magazine, L'Uomo Vogue, Attitude, Pan African Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Frameline) for his groundbreaking debut feature film BLUEPRINT, Shannon-Butts makes his first appearance at SIZZLE MIAMI with a rough cut of his new film DONE.

DONE was shot in Paris, FRANCE in April 2010 about the B.B.B. phenom in the Parisian gay scene. BBB is the term for Black (Black), Beur (Arab) and Blanc (White) gays boy. DONE takes place in the rapidly gentrifying 18th Arrondissement and surrounding sites including the Louvre, Montmartre, Chateau Rogue, Barbes Rochechouart all in the city of lights -- Paris.

FLICKERIA.com is currently developing two (2) more movies: The Pain Session and James Earl Hardy's (BBoy Blues) The Day Easy E Died.

Founded in 2002, Sizzle Miami has quickly grown into the nation's most foremost LGBT event during the Memorial Day Weekend. For five (5) sizzling Miami days, beginning on Thursday, May 27th, beautiful people from all over the United States, North America, Europe and the Caribbean will convene in sunny Miami, Florida to celebrate life.

Join FANS OF DONE at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fans-of-DONE-Paris-Short/105714852794847?ref=ts

Who is the LUCKY BASTARD?

My favorite professor in Film School was a tall, lanky, long-haired, acute young teacher and filmmaker named Everette Lewis. Yesterday I watched Everette's new film Lucky Bastard. It was very entertaining. The characters were a bit twisted but this characterization seems to be the returning theme to Everette's films and characters.

Lucky Bastard is the story of a young, cute, successful architect named Rusty (Patrick Tatten) who meets a mysterious drifter Denny played brilliantly by a sexy and damaged boy-next-door (Dale Dymkoski). After a chance meeting at a convenience store as Rusty searches for a bottle of wine - which Denny eventually locates and selects for Rusty, Rusty and Denny are coupled up after a little tryst in the restroom.

Denny opens Rusty up to a strange new world - shortly after Rust's boyfriend leaves town. Denny is immediately likable and not because of his biceps and low hanging designer jeans. With ease, Denny is able to say all of those little bedroom low light naughty things that most could barely emote in a whisper and his ability to be honest about his deepest emotional issues is so unhumanlike that before he can allow Rusty to response he cuts it all off. His construction ends - no more bricks or glass. Rusty is swept up and into a whirlwind and wants to love and renovate Denny and ultimately himself. In the end, we really can only help ourselves beyond cash, gifts, trips and kisses we present to others.

Lucky Bastard is a wonderful addition to the LA indie film genre as Everette's color palette is one where Los Angeles has been placed under a very light gray filter - all the harshness is there but a little less severe.

The Opposite of Sex!

Last week I re-started my Netflix account and queued up. Yesterday, I returned from New York to see my red envelop waiting for me. My happy and eager little fingers quickly separated the perforation and DRUM ROLL. My feature film is The Opposite of Sex. The Opposite of Sex is a great little indie film with a terrific cast and great story.

A 16 year old Louisiana girl, Dede Truitt (Christina Ricci), abandons her newly widowed mother and runs away with her one testicled boyfriend to her homosexual school teacher half-brother, Bill (Martin Donovan - pretty amazing). The perky teenager immediately starts coming on to her half brother's sexual partner Matt (played wonderfully by the sexy and lanky Ivan Sergei).

Dede ends up pregnant and disappears to Los Angeles with the no longer gay boyfriend Matt. The whole affair blows into scandal, exposing Bill, revealing the true father of Dede's lovechild, and introducing one of Matt's ex-lovers, causing much media attention. As the situation snowballs, the only person who sees what Dedee is up to is Bill's sexually frustrated acid-tongued sister-in-law Lucia (Lisa Kudrow).

Apparently The Opposite of Sex was to be a indie break-out role for Kudrow. However it is Miss Christina Ricci who steals the WHOLE SHOW and her narration of the story is wickedly funny.

Shank - ON VOD

Today, I watched my very first movie on VOD. It was a little indie feature film titled Shank. Out of England, Shank was directed by Simon Pearce and has won many awards on the global film festival circuit. I read about Shank some time ago and ran across it yesterday in my reading.

Shank is a film that is very hard to say whether it is good or bad because the writers, production team and the director seemed to definitively know this material and all of the social ills which create all of the circumstances and behavior of the characters in Shank. It completely captures this time and place - I guess.

There are two actors that stand out Wayne Virgo and Tom Bott. Virgo is so believable as the Cal, the gangster leading a very sorted risque sexual charged dual life and Bott as his best friend Jonno. Jonno and Cal have a magnetism that most best friends have whether sexually charged or not. In this case Cal knows the potential but pulls back from his best friend while Jonno seems willing but not able to get there. Tension.

Although there is enough psychological dramatics along with two gay bashings to make several additional movies, Shank takes the audience into the dark realm and grim world of the average 20 year old global urbanite: drugs, teenage pregnancy, alcohol while driving, internet sex, sex tapes, rape, friendly violence, gay bashings, self-afflicted homophobia and homophobia. In all of its convolution, Shank, manages to present this story.

With all of its deconstruction of Hollywood filmmaking in favor of the neo modern indie international flick, the final scene reminds the audience to discipline and spank not shank your kids and may be they will grow up not only to be good people but to have original ideas even if they really want a fairy tale ending such as in Shank.

In the end I felt shanked --- hmm a little.

Happy Together

Over the past weekend, I watched one of my all time favorite films HAPPY TOGETHER by director Wong Kar Wai. As a filmmaker, I am often asked who is my favorite director and not to be politically correct, but I always answer I like films rather than a specific director. However I must say director Wong Kar Wai is at the very top of my list of influential film directors.

When I was in film school, I first fell in love with Wong's unconventional storytelling, casting, camera movement and cinematography. It is exactly these points which makes it hard for me to zone in on a director when I know these crew members of the film brought together the final film which I love so much. Happy Together is stunning, bold and an innovation piece of filmmaking.

My very first Wong Kar Wai film was Chungking Express. It was quirkly, modern, cool and very entertaining. Chungking starred Tony Leung who would become one of my favorite actors. A few years later Wong would release Happy Together starring Leung and Hong Kong superstar Leslie Cheung as Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing. The couple travel to Argentina from Hong Kong and decide to take a road trip to the southernmost tip of Argentina to see the magnificent Iguazu waterfalls all the while having a lamp in their possession of the waterfall. A lamp the mirrors the waterfalls and projects images of the beautiful waterfall.

Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing's relationship has stopped and started many times over the duration their time together. However just as the waterfall in the lamp presents an illusion of the real waterfall and occasionally needs to be fixed and resembled -- it is the perfect and cunning metaphor for their relationship. It also turns out that Argentina is on the exact opposite side of the planet as Hong Kong.

As the pair goes adrift, a disillusioned Yiu-Fai starts working in a tango bar to save up for his trip home when a battered Po-Wing reappears. Po-Wing wants to start over again, however Yiu-Fai is empathetic but is unable to enter a more intimate relationship. Eventually Yiu-Fai finds works in a Chinese restaurant and meets the youthful Chang from Taiwan.

The film is shot with such an gorgeous preoccupation with sun, night and water. There scene where the couple is on the rooftop above a gritty undeveloped section of Buenos Aires is so rich with color and the simple scene of the guys playing soccer in the alley near the Chinese restaurant is transformed with the lush flicker and constant sun beams into a beautifully blinding situation.

It is so hard to watch a relationship unravel right before your eyes. You want them to be happy together even though you know it will never work nor last. Why do opposites attract?

SEE HAPPY TOGETHER CLIP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gneSPuSSL2k&feature=related

PARIS - a very new short film

Since January, I have been living in Paris, FRANCE. A few weeks ago my niece asked me to bring her something back from Paris. Upon that, I started thinking about what I wanted to bring back from Paris for myself.

Almost immediately upon my arrival I absorbed myself into my new Parisian life as an Anglophone. I enrolled into French language classes, writing the "The Day Eazy E Died" screenplay, volunteering at the European Independent Film Festival (ECU), launching FLICKERIA.COM, and prepping the DVD release of my first feature film BLUEPRINT.

THEN, I asked myself what is it that I want to take back from Paris -- A FILM! I thought a film. I am a true filmmaker. I wanted to captured Paris like no one else - totally from my POV. Thereafter, on the way to French class I would write scenes. On weekends I would video tape locations. It all started to come together.

AND for three (3) days this week, I filmed my 1st international film (DONE) with an amazing and talented crew. See everything and stay updated here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fans-of-DONE-Paris-Short/105714852794847?ref=ts

The film is about lives intersecting in an oversized apartment in the rapidly gentrifying 18eme in Paris. The lives belong to Marvin, an American traveling to Paris to visit his boyfriend, Julian. Julian, a Parisian and journalist who shares his apartment with an Algerian student, Khalid. Julian gets called away for work and asks Khalid to make Marvin comfortable until he returns from Nigeria covering a story. With Marvin, Khalid finally finds comfort in providing comfort to someone else as far away from home with no one familiar and loving as he remembers his family to be.

The original title of the script is DONE, now that I am DONE principle photography I have a new working title - ALL I WANT - or may be A WORLD IN A WORLD. I don't know - BUT I do know you have never experienced Paris nor France like this.