ADIOS, CITY ISLAND! BON JOUR, 2011

Splendid news: AARP has selected "CIty Island" as Best Comedy of the Year for their "Top Ten Movies For Adults" awards. Apparently there's an actual ceremony attached to this honor, this February at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Thanks, AARP. And screw the Independent Spirit Awards.

And we're on a number of year-end ten best lists. Click here for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

And here for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

And now for something completely different. I'm taking a vacation from this blog. Not retiring it. But not planning on posting anything in the immediate future. The reason is simple: I have a shitload of new writing projects to attend to in the new year and simply don't have the time to continue my increasingly infrequent posting. Even though it takes me no more than an hour per post and I seem to be posting at the shameful rate of once every two weeks, there's the "I have homework" factor. In other words, a lot of the time I spend not writing the blog is spent instead feeling guilty about not writing the blog. Since eliminating guilt in my life (or at least vainly attempting to) is a 2011 resolution for me, this particular pattern needs to be broken. And I simply don't know a better way to do so than coming right out and stating that I will not be writing this blog in the near future.

I will, however, be tweeting without mercy. Please follow my always eccentric, if not to say downright discursive and needlessly prolix, taste in all things film/video/music--courtesy of Youtube natch--on my Twitter stream.

I will, however, consider re-starting this blog once my next movie goes into production. That could be as soon as this spring. Or a little while later. The truth is, all director's have the same lurking sense of doom that they carry through their lives: was my latest film in fact my last film??? Until the next one arrives, one is never sure. But assuming one does--and I'm pretty certain it will come to pass--I will be back to blog the making of whatever that movie is. For it seems to have attracted genuine interest from people around the world who are interested in what goes into the process of telling a story on film. So what the hell. Maybe I'll be back.

Meanwhile, Movies TIl Dawn will remain floating around cyberspace--should anybody be reading this entry who has come here for the first time, I urge you go backwards in time to see the evolution of Movies Til Dawn. In fact, I'll offer the following precis of the blog's history.

I began this blog in 2007 as a film history/criticism venture, using clips from the newly innundated-with-old-movie-clips site known as Youtube. (Well and fondly do I remember the moment when I realized that the site that I'd previously thought was primarily a gathering of stupid personal videos in fact was a repository of the cultural heritage of the last hundred or more years--and somehow it was all for free!) Gathered within the early posts are precious morsels of wisdom about filmmaking from yours truly, along with a number of personal stories stemming from my exposure to a number of Old Hollywood greats whom I had the honor of knowing while growing up around the business.

Then in 2008, when my movie "City Island" actually went into production, the blog converted its purpose, becoming a documentation of the making of an independent movie. If you search the archives beginning in mid 2008, you'll literally see the change in my life occur--I no longer had hours to devote to trolling the tube for old footage and writing about forgotten directors. I had a movie to make.

The next evolution is the one that we're currently at the end of. All this year I've been using the blog as a promotional tool for the movie. And its been a damned good one. I've been delighted to make some cyber-friends of people who followed the movies evolution with real enthusiasm and interest. All the clips of the films making, by the way, are still up on youtube. And I have no intent of taking them down.

I don't know how many readers I have left, but I love every one of you and urge you to love me back. Kidding! Enjoy life and, hopefully, enjoy having learned something from this little on-line experiment.

RDEF

 Subscribe in a reader

CITY ISLAND MEETS THE NEW YORK POST BEST TEN LIST!

Lou Lumenick, film critic of the New York Post, has weighed in with his top ten best films of 2010 and you can click here to see "City Island's" appearance at number seven on the list. Thanks, NY Post--you've been so in our corner since last March when our movie opened. Award season, such as it is, is underway and we'll see if catch any luck or if we're a "just missed" kind of movie. But one way or another the movie has had an amazing life and the fact that its touched as many people--and critics, for that matter--as it has is reward enough. And anyway, what was Montaigne's brilliant quote about awards? "How modest is he who is honored by honors." Great writer Montainge. I wonder if there's a movie in his life. Starring Jackie Gleason, perhaps...

 Subscribe in a reader

CONGRATS TO A.G. ON FIRST OF HIS NOMS

Congratulations to my friend and partner Andy Garcia for the first of his nominations for his work on "City Island". He's been nominated for best actor in a comedy by the International Press Academy, for their "Satellite Awards Show". The winners will be announced on December 19th. The fact that I've never heard of this particular awards show bothers me not a whit; I have heard of (and have been nominated for and attended) the Independent Spirit Awards and I was relieved to hear that they failed to recognize our movie; the food at the one I went to was lousy and it was held in a cold tent on the beach in Santa Monica.

Here's an incredibly nice appearance Andy did on a local LA talk show earlier this week--the hosts couldn't be more complimentary about our film and Andy is quite suave given that it's 7 something AM in the morning. You may have to search the site a bit for it--don't know if this will take you directly there.

And now, continuing my fascination with "caught" audio of famous people acting poorly, dig the infamous Buddy Rich bus
rant. Remember that he's yelling at an entire big band, all of whom are trapped on the bus, and one of whom is surreptitiously recording their dreadful employers harangue.

 Subscribe in a reader