MirandaJuly Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Today YouTube launched a new section of its site titled The YouTube Screening Room, which it calls a "platform for films from around the world to find the audiences they deserve." Here, they will showcase four short films every two weeks and will even offer an occasional feature. Some of the films have been previously screened at film festivals and some have been nominated for or have won an Academy Award. But others will be premiering on the site. Apparently, the filmmakers will be paid a percentage of YouTube's ad revenue based on views and each film will also feature a "Buy Now" button so that you can purchase that film or other films.

Today's debuts include Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?, a 2005 short written by Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), directed by Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl) and starring John C. Reilly, Mike White and July. I've embedded it above for your viewing pleasure. The other three are The Danish Poet, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2007, Love and War, which is a stop motion opera from Sweden, and Our Time is Up, which was nominated for Best Live Action Short in 2006 and which stars Kevin Pollak.

A Sunday Herald article speculates on why so few of us have heard of Gaby Dellal, a British director whose debut feature On a Clear Day premiered at Sundance earlier this year and just had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The movie is about a man who decides to swim the English Channel, and stars well-known actors such as Billy Boyd and Brenda Blethyn. Is it because Dellal's a woman?

In the article, Dellal blames the British media: "The great British press don’t like a female gutsy director getting her film made. We were the only British film at Sundance, and we opened the festival. We got so little publicity in the British press for it."

I don't know if the reason behind a lack of publicity is as simple as sexism—think of Miranda July, whose film Me and You and Everyone We Know received a lot of media attention in the US after doing so well at film festivals. However, July's film won an award at Cannes, so it was much harder to overlook. July is an American ... are the Brits ignoring their female directors? I'm trying very hard to think of other female British feature film directors, and the only ones I can recall are the women who directed the Bridget Jones movies. No one remembers their names; we think only of Helen Fielding. Wait, I've remembered another one: Gurinder Chadha, who directed Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. (What is it with the British female directors and Jane Austen?)

Perhaps it's because Gaby Dellal isn't stereotypically feminine in any way, and On a Clear Day focuses on its male characters. During her interview in Switzerland with the Sunday Herald, she decided to swim across a nearby lake in Switzerland before her movie premiere. The media may not know what to make of her.

On a Clear Day will be released in the UK on September 2. It appears the film may not be released in the US until 2006. I'm hoping I'll remember Gaby Dellal by then, or that the American media will remind me. [via GreenCine Daily]

Me and You and Everyone We Know had it's LA premiere ath the Los Angeles Film Festival last night, and as you can see by this photo (by Brian Brooks of indieWIRE), much of the cast, including its many child actors, joined directress Miranda July on-stage for the Q & A. Brooks also notes that a band of LAFF attendees took it opon themselves to reenact a certain scene from the film. Without giving too much of the film away, here's a hint as to which scene: the reenactment involved an ad, placed on Craig's List, titled, "2 C*cksuckers Looking For an Authority" ... although the reenactment seems to have swapped out two men of about 32 for the adolescent girls who conduct the experiment in the film.

Word on the street is that Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know made $28,000 at the IFC Center this weekend, about twice what Batman Begins made per screen in the rest of the country. The screening that I went to Sunday afternoon was almost sold out, despite the line of striking union projectionists outside the door, waving signs and yelling at patrons to "turn away from IFC." Here are some other observations on the new theater:

• $10.75 doesn't seem like an extraordinarily expensive ticket price for a Manhattan theater that will mostly be showing films that you won't be able to see anywhere else, BUT ...
• ...it would be nice if they had a student discount.
• There are no commericals before the movie! None! At all! And only one trailer! BUT ...
• They are showing rotating short films before the feature instead. Great idea, but it's going to be hit or miss. I thought the current selection, a silly cute-puppy short called Sid, was little improvement on Annoying Cell Phone Man.
• The concessions are (maybe too) upscale, but still no more expensive than anywhere else (popcorn prices range from $3.50 to about $5). BUT ...
• They have rosemary butter, and they have white truffle butter, but they do not have regular butter. I'm the most pretentious person I know, and even *I* think that's going too far,

Anybody else check out the IFC Center this weekend? Hit us up with your own observations in the comments.

It's commonly known that if you've been called back to the awards ceremony in Cannes, you've almost definitely won something. But when Miranda July got the call last week to return to the Palais, she was clearly informed in advance of the reason. "We won everything!," said her producer, Holly Becker. "We won the Prix du Jury for critics week, we won the young audience award, we won the very young audience award, and we won THE CAMERA D'OR!!!! I didn't even think we'd get into Cannes!"

And so Miranda cancelled an appearance at SIFF, and got on a plane to arrive in France with only enough time to pick another free dress at Dior, fix her dirty hair ("I kept saying that I had just washed it that morning, but finally I had to admit that this had been 15 hours ago and I had been on three planes") and hightail it to the Palais. She wrote another genius blog entry all about it, and included handheld video shot whilst waiting to walk down the red carpet.