Former roadie Joel Miller reflects on art and commerce in his debut feature The Still Life. He discusses the making of the film, his thoughts on the business and his police encounters with TheFilmChair.com

TheFilmChair: When I looked on IMDB.com I saw that you did all your filming in L.A. Is that right?
Joel Miller: I filmed most of it at my house. I had been a set dresser for a little bit. I wasn’t an art department pro by any means, but I did have the time and being that I lived there I was able to change the building and make it look like an apartment. It’s actually a house. None of it was an apartment at all. The old lady’s room, Mrs. Stratford’s room, her door that Jason (Barry) goes too was actually my bathroom. Her apartment was actually upstairs (in my house). Jason’s room was upstairs. The film office was upstairs. Rachel’s room was in my house in the living room. Mr. Fernot’s office was the other side of the living room. Party scene, backyard.

FC: So you had Terry Moore hanging out in your bathroom for some of the shoot.
JM: I guess so.

FC: It didn’t look like you had many locations.
JM: I started the film with limited financial resources. I don’t come from a film family, where I have any connection. My dad was a car mechanic. You use what you have. When I spoke at Penn State Erie (during the Great Lakes Film Festival), it was cool. I told them that they can do what I did. You don’t have to be in Hollywood.

FC: Did you try to limit the outdoor scenes, just as a matter of practicality?
JM: Yeah, because of the cops. We had the cops come to the set a whole load of times. I think they came four times. When you are outside, it’s a lot easier for the cops to get pissed off. What are you going to do, you know? The meter maid scene, that’s behind this guy I knew’s work. It would have been cooler if we did it on a real curb, but the cops still came…Once the cops came to my house and they said, “You didn’t get any permits, this is totally unacceptable, we’re going to close you down”…Well, the cop grew up around here, and he knew Fishbone. The singer in Fishbone is my buddy, so I go one a twenty minute tirade about Fishbone. I’m telling him rock stories, while they’re shooting upstairs the entire time…The cops thought I was funny and they were like, “We just want to go upstairs,” and basically their interest was, “Are you guys shooting porn? If you guys are shooting porn we are not cool with that.” We go upstairs and Jason has his shirt off [laughs]. But I said, “Hey this is the cops, and the deal is, if you guys are good, they’re going to let us keep shooting. If you suck, we’re not allowed to shoot anymore. So try to make this shot good you guys.”

The Still Life
featuring the film
and the soundtrack
Available Aug. 7

A true film artist has left us. Ingmar Bergman has died. His final film was released in the States last year, a 2003 telefilm titled Saraband. As one of the few living film masters, Bergman was a rare, consistent revelation and the world of cinema is less without him.

From The Seventh Seal

Disney announced that the third Pirates of the Caribbean film At World’s End will be released on DVD on Dec. 4, just in time for the holidays!

The “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” 2-disc Disney DVD set immerses users in hours of behind-the-scenes content and pirate lore from the four corners of the earth. Features include a behind-the-scenes documentary, Keith & the Captain; Anatomy of a Scene: The Maelstrom; The Tale of the Multiple Jacks; Hoist the Colors; Masters of Design; Inside the Brethren Court; The Pirate Code: Revealed; The World of Chow Yun Fat; The Pirate Maestro: The Music of Hans Zimmer; Bloopers of the Caribbean; and much, much more! As with the other Pirates DVD releases, Pirates 3 will be available on the high def Blu-Ray Disc.

Pre-Order Pirates of the Caribbean - At World’s End (Two-Disc Special Edition)

After the rest of the major cast was leaked onto the Internet, only one question was left in terms of casting Watchmen: “Who is going to play The Comedian?” A few names were thrown around including Snyder’s 300 star Gerard Butler and The Punisher Tom Jane. In the end we get….a guy from Grey’s Anatomy. Here is The Comedian, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Again…Skeptical.

Someone behind the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel Watchmen has been slowly and quietly leaking the film’s cast onto the Internet over the last few days. Watchmen is an unfilmable graphic novel, and the adaptation can only appear hollow in comparison. Still, I can’t take my eyes off of the production news. Zack Snyder of 300 and Dawn of the Dead (2004) directs the film. Here’s the cast as it stands today:

Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach

Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan

Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias

Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl

Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre/Sally Jupiter

We’ll see how this one works out, but as of right now, I’m very skeptical. VERY SKEPTICAL. Expect Snyder to announce the rest of the cast at San Diego Comic Con.

Hairspray (2007)–***1/2
Quickie Review

Pleasantly plump teen Tracy Turnblad dances her way onto the Corny Collins Show and aids social change in 1960s Baltimore. A rousing and rebellious musical treat, this film adaptation of a Broadway production, in turn based on a 1988 John Waters’s film, captures the essence of the Hollywood musical for the first time since 2001’s Moulin Rouge. No performer is a disappointment, while director/choreographer Adam Shankman makes his best film to date. The musical does lose some of the John Waters spirit in the second half, but the film is always fun and inspiring. Starring Nikki Blonsky, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Amanda Bynes, Elijah Kelley and John Travolta as Edna Turnblad.

I live by a simple rule: there’s no such thing as bad publicity. With that in mind, let’s see what the metacritics.com critics had to say about Pathfinder, which debuts on DVD at the end of the month.

The 0/100 reviews:
“No more than a minute into this, and it becomes obvious that the next 98 are going to be trouble.” - San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle

“Here’s my nomination for future grindhouse double-bill from hell: Pathfinder and Apocalypto.” - Baltimore Sun, Michael Sragow

The 20/100 reviews:
“Makes Conan the Barbarian seem like Dostoyevsky in its complexity.” – Washington Post, Stephen Hunter

“The director, Marcus Nispel, takes his butchery very seriously. (He was the lead vivisectionist for the remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.) He may not be able to make this movie move, but, man, can he make an eyeball fly.” - The New York Times Manohla Dargis

There are better reviews, but for a movie like Pathfinder, an epic Viking actioneer starring Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings), the bad reviews tend to be more entertaining and enlightening then damning. Take that line from the New York Times review about the eyeball flying. For me and many other critics, that line would be a bad thing, but for the fans of full-throttle action movies, it may be exactly what they want to see.

Also as the Times’s Dargis points out that Pathfinder is directed by Marcus Nispel, an early trendsetter in the current torture film movement. The plot of a renegade Viking fighting against his Norse brethren mixed with the bloody sensibilities of Nispel is a perfect storm of exploitation, and Pathfinder has the R-Rating for “strong brutal violence throughout” to prove it.

So what can DVD connoisseurs expect from the Pathfinder: Unrated Edition disc? How about:

o Five-part behind-the-scenes featurette
o The Beginning (the original film, the factual history, and how the movie got the green light)
o The Design (the look of the film, and the collaboration with the creator of the graphic novel)
o The Build (constructing the costumes, props, and sets)
o The Shoot (the challenging shooting conditions and schedule)
o The Stunts (an in-depth look at some of the stunts in the film)
o We Shoot Now! Marcus Nispel on the set of Pathfinder featurette
o Clancy Brown: Cult Hero featurette
o Theatrical trailers

That’s in addition to the features the appear on both the rated and unrated DVD:
o Audio commentary by director Marcus Nispel
o Eight deleted scenes (with optional director commentary)
o Ghost hunts in the forest
o Ghost crosses the lake for the first time and realizes the danger
o Starfire tends to Ghost’s wounds
o Starfire tends to Ghost’s wounds and gets more than she bargained for
o Jester follows Ghost and is chased away
o Jester mimics Ghost
o Vikings hold Ghost, Pathfinder and Starfire hostage
o Pathfinder counsels Ghost before the Quartering

Damning as the reviews may have been, I’d venture to guess Pathfinder, with its meager $10 million box office tally, wasn’t harmed by reviews. It may have just been a bad movie. Lucky for Nispel and the other people involved in making this film, they weren’t shooting for Oscar; they wanted a bloody action epic.

If this clip proves anything, they deliver:

Pathfinder comes to DVD on July 31.

Heroes fans only have to wait 10 more weeks until the premiere of the NBC superhero drama. The Peacock announced its fall schedule today with Heroes premiere date set for Monday, Sept. 24 at its usual 9 p.m. time slot.

Heroes will provide the lead-in for the Alex Graves/Ken Falls sci-fi drama The Journeyman, which even with a Heroes lead-in, will probably be canceled. Seriously, a time travel drama? I’ll stick with Quantum Leap.

If you haven’t seen Heroes: Season 1, you need to catch up. The best new show of last season comes out on DVD Aug. 28.

Slythoar, a.k.a. Ben Folstein, is a revelation. His newest short recently popped up in my MySpace comments, and I must say, there is no better day than a day when a Slythoar film shows up unexpectedly on MySpace. It was even better than that day found a sack full of money and won a free baby liger. “Attack of the Luna Moth” is just that damn good.

Christopher Nolan and his writers appears to be going bat shit crazy when it comes to stuffing villains in the new Batman sequel. Aaron Eckhart, who plays, Harvey Dent in the new film told MTV’s Movie Blog that he will in fact appear as Two-Face in The Dark Knight:

“I play Harvey Dent. Harvey Two-Face. They are both in the movie,” Eckhart revealed exclusively to MTV News.”

Two-Face joins the rumored return of Scarecrow, who will be the first Batman villain to return in a franchise film.

Okay, Bryan Singer. The gauntlet has been laid down. Let’s go freakin’ wild with The Man of Steel.