The Official \"gravida\" reaction thread
 

So rather than randomly put this in the B&S threads, I'm putting it all here as they come in.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1169/...0d94d50ea3.jpg

Official Webpage

preview/review:

Film of the Year

The results are heartfelt and poetic. If McNelly is striving to craft an indie film masterwork gravida is a major step in the right direction.


Interview at Mirror/Stage

Re: The Official \"gravida\" reaction thread
 

also, i'll put a trip report of the premiere in here

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nice review!

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Last Night with Riviera

It's a well-worn path... but he manages to encourage people to look at the scenery differently, while paying tribute to those who've walked it before him.

With a great ear for dialogue he captures the awkwardness of the first date: the shifting glances, the social niceties, the body language, the right words which elude us when we most need them. We've all been there, and the realism of the dialogue and its delivery make it impossible for us not to relate.

...

Like the best films about intimacy, it draws you in close but leaves out enough that you can project your own hopes and fears onto the characters. This allows for conflicting sympathies and ensures that not everyone in the audience relate with the characters in the same way. Loneliness is a mysterious beast, hard to tame. Resisting the tentation to simplify, gravida invites us to ponder the complexity of the choices we make, the unreliability of human connections.

Re: The Official \"gravida\" reaction thread
 

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nice review!

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thanks. it's kind of scary, the review process, b/c they could, you know, hate it

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Wow, thats a really really good review.

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i know. crazy, isn't it?

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I suppose we'll see [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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Bohemian Cinema

"Watching gravida, I gained a little more faith in ultra-low budget filmmaking; it's far from a perfect film, but it shows that you don't need a lot of money to make a smart, personal, interesting movie. To do this, Lucas McNelly's film utilizes the writer-director's ear for dialogue and some intriguing subtext in it's look at a woman who's dealing with something very familiar: loneliness."

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Great reviews Pryor, congrats on your success!!!

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pryor, is there a way for us to watch it? it's great that you're having a positive response.

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Yes, very nice reviews!

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Nice, pryor, must feel good!

Watch out though, that's how they hook you ... sure, the first taste of good reviews is free, but then, they've got you hooked, and it's time for you to pay ...

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Nice, pryor, must feel good!

Watch out though, that's how they hook you ... sure, the first taste of good reviews is free, but then, they've got you hooked, and it's time for you to pay ...

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...and you end up making Night at the Roxbury II ?

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pryor, is there a way for us to watch it? it's great that you're having a positive response.

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there should be copies for sale in the next couple of days..."gravida", "L'Attente", and "guard duty"...all in one dvd...i'm just not sure how much yet


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thanks, all. i'm not sure if it's going to ever be online. haven't decided yet

DVD Panache

"gravida is equally about hope and identity. With a running time of 24 minutes, the film is tight with real conflict and emotion, taking great advantage of its short duration."

....

"gravida deals with a delicate subject matter, and could have lost the audience's interest and trust without a careful hand, but Lucas is certainly up to the task. Lucas' camera is never obtrusive, acting more as an invisible observer even when the story's emotions peak. Actors Rachel Shaw and Adam Kukic find their stride as the story builds and are able to sell the idea that their characters are facing troubling, adult decisions."

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pryor, maybe you could just put it online for a short time, so us loungers can have a look.

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that's an option. it'll also be available on DVD (along w/ L'Attente and guard duty) for like $8 (+ $2 s+h) in the next couple of days

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Ok, so the quick trip report b/c I'm tired and hungover:

We drew 45 paying customers, which is a shade below our break-even point.

Jerome Wincek brought along Nate Custer to play with him. They played for about 45 min, Jerome on the banjo and Nate on the guitar.

After that, we had a short intermission, where we played a cheesy intermission video, complete with dancing hotdogs and whatnot.

Then the films. Everything ran well. People were really impressed with David Lowery's Some Analog Lines, they laughed during L'Attente, and you could hear a pin drop during gravida. as the end credits started, someone said, "that was tremendous" (or something like that). Overall, people seemed to really like it (or, if they didn't like it, they thought it was good).

we sold a couple of dvds. the tshirts got delayed en route, so we couldn't sell any of those. and then we drank wine.

the end

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cool deal! that sucks about the t-shirts, though. You know, I'll buy one. And a DVD! [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

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Yeah, figure out how to do the DVD selling thing going for us, and lots of us will probably buy a DVD just to see what you're up to and as an "attaboy."

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ok, i think i got the DVD selling thing set up

http://dpressproductions.com/dvd.html

also, this is the page for the tshirts

http://dpressproductions.com/filme.html

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got up
got out of bed
didn't bother to drag the comb across my head
(because i cut it pretty short recently)
made some breakfast of cornmeal and coffee
checked some stuff online and everything seemed allright
eventually got to the place i have bookmarked as 'pryor's site'
bought a dvd

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checked some stuff online and everything seemed allright
eventually got to the place i have bookmarked as 'pryor's site'
bought a dvd

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woo-hoo!

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I just bought it too.

This "study in loneliness" flick better be the feel-good hit of the summer!

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I just bought it too.

This "study in loneliness" flick better be the feel-good hit of the summer!

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awesome.

oh yeah, it's definitely a feel-good film.

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I just bought it too.

This "study in loneliness" flick better be the feel-good hit of the summer!

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awesome.

oh yeah, it's definitely a feel-good film.

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Good, because I like my bottomless despair upbeat.

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I just bought it too.

This "study in loneliness" flick better be the feel-good hit of the summer!

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awesome.

oh yeah, it's definitely a feel-good film.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good, because I like my bottomless despair upbeat.

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lol

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Ordered!

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Ordered!

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merci

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fyodor, blarg, sl,

dvds shipped today. thanks again.

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Sweet.

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Looking forward to seeing the movie. I liked you're other two films (Guard Duty and L'Attente). Strangely I dreamt last night that I was watching Gravida, that is completely random, but there were some strange scenes of a sad unhappy woman and I think my brain connected it to the trailer of Gravida I saw a couple of months ago. The brain works in misteryous ways.

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that is pretty weird. was the film in your dream any good?

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that is pretty weird. was the film in your dream any good?

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Couldn't tell. I think it was just like a glimpse, seeing a woman crying on screen then thinking "that is Gravida" then the dream went on in another direction.

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I liked it. More when it isn't 4am.

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I liked it. More when it isn't 4am.

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nice. we play really well to the insanely tired crowd

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Got my Gravida in the mail today. Having previously read the reviews pryor posted, there were no surprises plot-wise. It is however, one of those films where knowing the entire story in advance actually adds to the viewing experience rather than detracting from it. I enjoyed my second look more than the first.

Although there is a linear storyline, it’s more about mood and emotion. It’s about the space Kristin is in, pregnant and lonely. Things that go a long way towards getting this across are the pacing, nice and slow with some relatively lengthy shots for such a short film, and the music, some great, sparse songs that are mostly just vocals and quiet acoustic guitar. ‘Careless Love’ is especially poignant.

A lot of camera time is also devoted to one-person scenes with no dialogue and little sound. It’s not a ‘sit back and munch some popcorn’ kind of movie. It’s about something more than a catchy story trying to appeal to as large an audience as possible.

Adam Kukic does a fine job as the delivery guy. He’s believable and natural. Rachel Shaw is good through most of the film but I wasn’t too enamored with her crying performance. She appeared to be really forcing it. The snot was a nice touch though.

What I didn’t like about Gravida was that I felt absolutely no empathy for Kristin. Things that turned me off to feeling sympathetic were her being bitter enough about the guy that dumped her to leave his mutilated photo out for her new date to witness, the amount of wine she consumed even though she was pregnant, and the fact that she was attempting to get the guy to sleep with her on a first date without bringing the conversation around to her condition. It wouldn’t be a stretch to suppose that she got pregnant on purpose to hook the guy who dumped her. She just seemed like that sort of girl.

So when the film ended I felt it had done an excellent job of characterizing a person I didn’t care about. It may be I’m just too much of a sociopath to feel sorry for people who feel sorry for themselves, but I would have liked Gravida more if I could have cried with her.

Now that may not have been the point, but the music made me feel otherwise. The music was getting the sadness across. But I wasn’t sad for Kristin.

I still liked Gravida a lot, and there is promise that we could see some great stuff from McNelly down the road.


Question for pryor (or anyone else who might know the answer): There was something in the sound – or missing from the sound – that made it obvious this was a low budget movie. I’ve seen some big budget films with little to no sound (Antonioni comes to mind) where this works without seeming cheap. So what is it? It happens a lot in low budget Canadian productions. Could be something about the lighting as well but I think it's the sound that gives me that feel.

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awesome. you both got the DVD and liked the film...whew

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What I didn’t like about Gravida was that I felt absolutely no empathy for Kristin. Things that turned me off to feeling sympathetic were her being bitter enough about the guy that dumped her to leave his mutilated photo out for her new date to witness, the amount of wine she consumed even though she was pregnant, and the fact that she was attempting to get the guy to sleep with her on a first date without bringing the conversation around to her condition. It wouldn’t be a stretch to suppose that she got pregnant on purpose to hook the guy who dumped her. She just seemed like that sort of girl.

So when the film ended I felt it had done an excellent job of characterizing a person I didn’t care about. It may be I’m just too much of a sociopath to feel sorry for people who feel sorry for themselves, but I would have liked Gravida more if I could have cried with her.

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in the writing, that was the single toughest thing to figure out, how to make her a protagonist that people can feel some empathy for and in the end we had to go for the idea that the audience may not agree with what she's doing but they hopefully can understand why she's doing it. some people won't be able to turn that into empathy, some will. so it goes.

as a filmmaker, i guess i'm not asking for empathy, i'm asking for understanding, and i don't know how often films do that, which tends to make people uncomfortable. most dramas seem to have a message, or a point of view, but this one doesn't, really. the film itself is neutral. the fact that you liked the film but didn't necessarily like the character means that on some level i did my job, i guess. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

oh, and she doesn't drink any of the wine.

the pictures...well...that's my cameo [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] seriously, though, the pictures obviously give her a backstory of having a boyfriend who we can assume knocked her up and then at some point took off (why else would she cut him out of a photo?) and i wasn't sure people would pick up on that if we didn't put at least one of the photos in a prominent spot...if you look closely, there's a photo in the bedroom that's been put face down. Adam almost sits on it.


oh, and your question: it's a sound thing. microphones are expensive. the sound in the office scene in "gravida" got all [censored] up, which is probably the part you're thinking of, and there was no way to fix it without ADR, which wasn't an option.

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Since you can use them in pretty much everything you do, a good mike or two would be an excellent investment.