DREAMFARM

Wait! Ann Biderman -- director -- are you paying attention to how women are portrayed on RAY DONOVAN. I am seriously wondering how you are ok about this? Here are the top 10 examples (believe me this is the short list) : 1. Scene shows John Voight holding a gun to Patricia Arquette 's head and demands a blow job. His response to her freak out is, "I musta been in the can too long.  I was just following your lead".  Spoiler: Patricia Arquette gets it anyway. 2. Ray has a dead girlfriend and this is his dark secret.  We don't know what happened to her. 3. Ray's wife steals designer shoes because she is unhappy in their marriage. 4. Scene shows Ray's actress girlfriend handcuffing herself to his bathroom sink and then begging for sex. 5. Ray's daughter's boyfriend tries to force her to have sex -- she is about 15 years old. 6. Ray's wife says to her daughter that she will force her, if she gets pregnant, to have a baby and therefore ...

Sometimes you get hired by the strangest folks, for the strangest jobs. There is the Liar, he will tell you everything is terrible, awful or worst. He will tell you that he was sick to his stomach because everything you did was not usable. And he will make vague references to emails about how he had outlined exactly what he had been looking for as content. When you go back to look those emails, all you find are, the one raving, yes raving, about how great the piece was, how fitting and how happy he was with the project. So where did it all go so wrong? Usually it is about giving credit -- some people don't want to give up the credit for a job well done. It has to be theirs from conception to completion. Take a close look at Madmen and you will see a room full of poker faces -- playing the ultimate game of bluff. Who is the Thief? He comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be about credit once again, it could be about fair pay, swiping client accounts, or just an ...

San Francisco's MOMA is about to close for 2 and half years for an extensive upgrade and expansion.   Meanwhile, this is the last week before the closing to view a massive tour de force of visual art called "The Clock". "The Clock" was created by Christian Marclay, a Swiss and American artist born in San Rafael, California and raised in Geneva, Switzerland.  The work Marclay produced is a 24-hour compilation and  editing masterpiece of Hollywood film clips, stock footage and sound design which completely engrosses the viewer.  How does he do this without an intact storyline? The editing is stunning. The pacing is generated real time. The research surreal (over 3 years with a team of assistants) creating a linear time space continuum that propels the viewer forward second by second.  Yet it has been called gimmicky.  Ah, how jaded we are. Pulled from hundreds of hours of footage to find that exact clock, watch or timepiece to illus...

The documentary, Magic Trip, was made in 2011 and somehow slipped by without getting much attention and now it is streaming on Netflix. It is a film that perfectly documents the infamous road trip of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and a host of LSD-fueled soul-seekers in 1964. The cast of characters were hand-picked by Kesey himself, including the speed-powered Neal Cassidy and the magic bus, Further, full of picturesque passengers looking like they walked out of a modern day Ralph Lauren advertisement. Prior to embarking, Kesey convinced everyone to don red, white and blue to signify unity and the American spirit. He art directed these beautiful young people on the outside and the inside with flower power, flag stripes and acid-trip induced visuals. The most stunning feature of the film besides the random continuity of fantastic period visuals is the sound design. Much of the narration of the film's re-inactments are choreographed by the voice of Stanley Tucci, along with s...

"The television business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long, plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and where weak men die like dogs, but you can get free cookies." ~ Hunter S. Thompson I just ran into an executive at a post-house who I knew early in his career. He was the guy who delivered the late afternoon cookies. My first thought was, "Oh my, I hope I was nice to him when he was the cookie deliverer", but I knowing that my nature is to be paranoid, I generally try to back that up with kindness. He was, of course, only bringing treats that left fond memories. Treats from the outside of my dark room filled with people behind my back that I couldn't see and were steering my day with veiled threats and secret jokes. Well, time has flown by -- he is not youngster anymore. I think back at all those people starting out in "the business" and where they are today -- executives, innovators, masters of their art. Some bai...

The Mill Valley Film Festival was winding down and it seemed a darn shame not to experience the annual autumn movie marathon. There is nothing else in the theaters right now and going to see the premiere of TRUST by local filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto and the MVFF's screening of 127 HOURS by Oscar winner Danny Boyle, seemed like a no brainer in a town too cute to be real. What I wasn't prepared for was the physical impact of both these films. I haven't had the sensation that I wanted to run out of the theater mid-movie since seeing GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS. Now, mind you, just like the aforementioned 1994 film, these are good films. Nothing flagrant or gratuitously violent about them -- just hard to watch. Maybe it was because I knew what was coming, so that anticipation of where things were going drove me crazy. Plus, in both cases, the filmmakers didn't keep the plot line secret. 127 HOURS is based on the memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralst...