ROYALTY FREE MUSIC

Filmmakers are always looking for music to score their films and no one composer is always right for every film. JAMES IERACI does excellent work for my films but sometimes I need something a little bit off his beaten path. Luckily, the net is filled with composers just trying to get their work heard. With the rise of Creative Commons Licensing, all that's needed is a proper screen credit and the music is "free". One of the best is Kevin Mcleod of INCOMPETECH.COM. He has tons of high quality Mp3 files of his music, with pieces ranging from the epic, to horror, rock and roll and jazz.

But if you want something more "professional", then you can't beat this offer from MOBY-




hi,
i've recently started a website called www.mobygratis.com
it's pretty simple.
it's a website that provides free music for independent and non-profit filmmakers.
there's no catch.
if you're an independent or non-profit film/video maker you can go there and download free, pre-licensed music for your film/video.
see, i was a film student at suny purchase(back when they offered an experimental film major), and ever since i've had a lot of friends in the world of indie film. and their biggest complaint is that it's hard/onerous/expensive to try and license music for low budget(or no budget)films.
so that's why i started mobygratis.com.
free music for indie filmmakers.
i hope that you find it helpful.
thanks
moby

I LOVE SONNY CHIBA!

Although the clip above is really from the highly recommended "The Streetfighter",I'm really posting a link to a REVIEW by Keith Allison of Tele-port City for Kinji Fukasaku's sprawling epic, "THE YAKUZA PAPERS" which is now available on DVD. It's an incredible series of movies made in the early 70's that run 7 hours when watched in order. Somehow, Blockbuster online does not have PART ONE, so I am stuck beginning with part two. I am told this does not matter much since each film contains about 100 characters each and are equally confusing. Basically, everything Mr. Allison says in this review is spot on, except for his criticism of the camerawork which I think is this genre master's wonderful signature. The incredibly shaky shots put you right in the middle of the action and capture the raw anger that seems to EXPLODE from these movies, as every three minutes seem to be filled with people stabbing each other, axing each other, shooting someone in the face(with the incredible gunshot sound effect that the japanese always use-sounds like some kind of BUCK ROGERS ray gun and their brand of blood which looks like poster paint), yelling at the loudest volume, being thrown through plate glass, having sex with a woman who pullls a knife on you and says, "Pay me like the whore I am". And ANY MOVIE that has SONNY CHIBA in the cast is a must see.

CHIBA was once the biggest export star from JAPAN, Japan's answer to Bruce Lee, an incredibly pissed off looking SOB that seems to be some kind of half Japanese half Italian thug. You may have recently seen him as the notorious sword maker Hattori Hanzo in Tarantino's KILL BILL, VOL..ONE. But if you haven't seen THE STREETFIGHTER series of movies, you are really missing out. And I'm not talking about that Van Damme garbage.SONNY CHIBA is the most hateful, violent, pissed off, hero EVER as he goes on his killing spree against the YAKUZA.

He seems to rise from certain death over and over in these films, spurred on by the echoing mantra of his dead father,"Harden your body! Become a...NUMBER ONE MAN! Do not ever let anyone BEAT YOU!"
Anyway, enjoy this REVIEW

"THE INVISIBLE GODARD"

This mysterious avatar is something I call the "INVISIBLE GODARD". He is the phantom of the secret cinema paradise.

WILL BIG BIZ ALLOW IT?

Steven Soderbergh plans eventually to cut the studios out altogether. This, he says, is what digital technology can unleash. "You'll see named film-makers self-distributing their own films. That's where this is going to go. If I can go to the bank and get money to make the movie, and in two to four years' time the digital changeover has happened in the US and all the theatres are digitally projecting, I'll just go right to the theatres and make a deal with them. I'm certainly going to pursue that."

This would be the best situation for all filmmakers especially the "Garage Kubricks" around the world(and I count myself as one of them) who dream of running their own movie industries like sole proprierterships. But will it ever happen? We have control over the cameras and post production through affordable software but what about distribution? In the 70's Coppola dreamt of the same future and put his money into Zoetrope to do so. But he still couldn't control distribution and that was the big mistake. He said that they all thought if they could own the equipment to make the films and get the stars in front of them, they would be home free. But since the studios had such an iron clad control over DISTRIBUTION, there could be no real revolution. Things MAY be different now with the wild west of the internet allowing for direct sales and download. But that is fraught with business peril as well. I'll be watching the day and date release of Soderbergh's BUBBLE very carefully and hope that someone will make a slightly more commercially viable project in this manner to really test the waters-

WHAT THE HELL IS A KINETOFILM????????

You know it when you see it. KINETic, it makes you feel that rush of adrenalin that reminds you that you are alive. It is not passive, not a doormat. This movie will not go quietly. It aims to fire your synapses in ways that only cinema can. It speaks to you in the plastic language of cinema. Effortless. It makes you feel the prescence of the filmmaker within the film. The KINETOFILM should inspire you to go out and shoot a film NOW! Yeah, but does it MEAN anything? If you need to ask that question you've come to the wrong place. A KINETOFILM is defined by what it is, not what it says. I choose to divide the cinema into KINETOFILMS and everything else. What movies excite YOU about filmmaking and make you want to go out and shoot your own film? Post your thoughts here.

TO REMAKE OR NOT TO REMAKE

Since the very successful release of Gore Verbinski's remake of THE RING, both Sam Raimi and Tom Cruise have announced that they are also in the Asian cult horror film remake biz. Raimi will produce a remake of Shimizu's JU-ON(THE GRUDGE) while Cruise has the rights to the Pang Brothers' THE EYE. There are also threats being made to remake Argento's SUSPIRIA and in the coming months we will have remakes of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and DAWN OF THE DEAD heading our way.

I'm not writing this info in order to slam on the idea of remakes as bad cinema. What I find amusing is that money has been spent in order to purchase the rights to these stories in order to remake them. The problem lies in the fact that many of these cult films are worthless as literature and especially in the case of Argento, only interesting in the style that the filmmaker has used to spin the tale. Who really cares about the story beats in DAWN OF THE DEAD without the particular satirical sensibility and editing style that belongs to George Romero? I hear ,by the way, that this remake, written by James Gunn of Scooby Doo fame, has only a tentative relation to the original. Then why call it DAWN OF THE DEAD? Does this title actually hold a mnemonic value to the multiplexers who buy tickets to 2 Fast 2 Furious? If an actual remake wasn't really produced, why not just call it something else and make it in the tradition of Romero's picture. This was the case with THE ITALIAN JOB as well, which I actually enjoyed. The original film was not a success in America in the 60's and it's cult value is really only in England and Europe. Since most of the plot was jettisoned, what was the value in keeping the title?

In Hollywood, it seems that a remake is only second to a sequel in making a picture with a strong audience awareness. Adapting a famous tv show like SWAT, or EMERGENCY is supposed to be a safer bet than to shoot a new movie about a Swat team. In the old days of Hollywood, they just LIFTED any story they wanted and made a picture LIKE another picture only different. And this seems to be the key to what the POP audience lives for, they want a new kind of familiar.