Planet Ibsen is live on Babelgum

Dear Planet Ibsenities:

Planet Ibsen is live on Babelgum (http://www.babelgum.com/channel/film). We are proud that the hard work and effort of our cast and crew will now been seen by millions of viewers domestically and internationally. Please spread the word.

We will continue to update you as more information comes our way.
Jonathan Wyche & Erica Arnold-Wyche
Planet Ibsen, LLC

Spike Lee in Online Prowl

Spike Lee in Online Prowl
10th September 2008~MILAN AP

Film director Spike Lee is again on the prowl for new filmmaking talent in his second year heading the jury of the Babelgum Online Film Festival. No red carpets and no cinemas. Babelgum — an Internet company that streams videos online for free — has made the Internet its venue. Independent filmmakers upload their entries onto Babelgum’s platform, and audiences vote for their favorites.

Last year’s inaugural edition of the festival received 1000 entries from 86 countries, according to Babelgum. More than 1.5 million viewers voted to select the final cut for the jury. “The results from the first Babelgum Online Film Festival proved that audiences from all over the world are eager for new content, and that independent filmmakers are excited to have found a new place to showcase their work,” Lee said, adding that the festival “has the potential to reach more audiences than any other festival in the world because of the Internet’s global reach.” Last year’s short film award winner, 39-year-old Richard Recco, has since received half the financing he needs to turn his directorial debut into a feature-length film, Babelgum said. The film, Officer Down, is about a corrupt policeman.

Babelgum is accepting uploads of independent short- and medium-length films through the end of the year. The winners will be announced early next year at a time and place still to be determined. This year, the festival has reduced the number of categories from seven to four, including short films up to 20 minutes, documentary and animation. Babelgum viewers will select the top 10 films in each category. From those, Lee will then choose a winner in each category for the Spike Lee Award, worth $A30,000). A four-member jury also will choose a winner in each category, with prizes still to be determined.

Another prize of $A30,000 will be given to an emerging talent from any of the four categories. Babelgum, which was started by the founder of Italy’s second-largest telecommunications company Fastweb, launched its site for the general public in 2007. Supported by advertising, Babelgum uses peer-to-peer technology and focuses on content from independent producers. Competitors include Joost and VeohTV.

Babelgum, which has been pushing to expand its North American presence, also announced a new venture with the Cinetic Media, an industry consulting company that concentrates on financing and sales, to show 12 festival-quality feature-length movies, one a month for a year. The planned offerings include the 2005 film Planet Ibsen by Jonathan Wyche and the 2006 film Hamilton, by director Matthew Porterfield chronicling two summer days in the life of a young family. Mark Cranwell, director of acquisitions for Babelgum, said the deal demonstrates that the Internet is a “viable platform for recent, high-quality pictures”.

On the Web:
http://www.babelgum.com/
http://www.cineticmedia.com/

Planet Ibsen Q&A Update

We posted this Q&A in response to the numerous emails we received asking about the status of Planet Ibsen.

Q: When can I see Planet Ibsen?
A: We are in the process of working with Cinetic Media (CRM). We anticipate that Planet Ibsen will find its way to you very soon.

Q: What else has Jonathan Wyche (Director, Writer, Producer) been working on?
A: Jonathan, after completing 21 episodes and the opening title sequence for Miami Ink, has been working with the Discovery Studios as a Series Producer & Director. He is working between Miami and DC. Jonathan recently completed the third season of Home Made Simple (HMS) for TLC. At present, he is in pre-production for the fourth season of HMS and is collaborating on a couple TV pilots for Discovery. In addtion to shooting in Miami, LA, DC and Chicago Jonathan is also writing scripts; for both film and TV.

We very much appreciate your ongoing interest in Planet Ibsen! Please continue to check back for updated information.

Planet Ibsen in FilmMaker Magazine

Check out the Fall edition of FilmMaker Magazine for an article on the making of Planet Ibsen.

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/fall2006/

Planet Ibsen: Moody, magical, and very honest

Apparently, women have been leaving their husbands for as long as there has been marriage. Unfortunately, no one told August Strindburg.

This is an excellent picture about the true story of the ego of August Strindburg, infamous playwright and typical chauvinist male. The film is told from the perspective of Strindburg's equally famous arch-rival, Henrik Ibsen- a very interesting choice of narration, because the movie itself is about a frustrated man who seems to desire attention in full. Funny? No. Fitting? Yes.

This film will make you torn between your feelings. It explains everyone's "side", so it's hard to formulate an opinion. I love that! It was nice to see a movie about how far a man will go to create his own world, and his own rules. You almost have to identify with Strindberg after watching. Not that he's everyman, but the film explains what happens when his wife gets a hold of a copy of Ibsens play "A Dolls House", and evolves in a way Strindberg is not pleased with. The rest of the film is an explanation of his resulting behavior.

This film was done in an extremely interesting and artistic way. The director of this film had just the right amount of vision to communicate this twisting and flowing drama into an entourage of different personalities that co-exist in the same room, but not necessarily in the same time.

It's not at all complicated to follow, which is good because of the subject of the film. The director kept it unbroken and timely, and the actors were so helpful in explaining what was going on with delivery and non-verbal communication (especially Steve Dumouchel) that you wont find yourself getting lost in the coolness. Gabriel Damon is so fun to watch as an overbearing husband, and Clint Howard's detail showed that he truly enjoyed himself.

I'm recommending this film to people who like movies, not just the subject matter. There's not one cuss word and absolutely no nudity, just a good story done well. (J. Branch)http://www.imdb.com/user/ur5488331/comments

Planet Ibsen: "It’s definitely BRILLIANT”

“…I’ve had so many people come up to me and say ‘Wow, what an incredible film (Planet Ibsen); this is the best film in the festival. I didn’t expect to like it so much but it’s just a really incredible film.’… I think it is an incredible film-festival film. It’s definitely brilliant.” ~Cevin Cathell, SBIFF Program Director Variety

Visit Download cathell_on_ibsen.wav to listen to Cevin Cathell's audio podcast. variety yahoo MSN

Planet Ibsen ENTERTAINMENT TODAY Review

5 Films

When I attended the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February, certain types of films caught my eye. I found myself in the audience for Mozart and the Whale, The West Wittering Affair, Shadowboxer, Planet Ibsen, and Believe in Me. Of course, I didn’t really just wander into those screenings – I put them on my schedule of festival happenings and made sure to see them. And you know what? I’m glad I did. All of these films explore, at some level, assumptions about gender in Western society.

Next is Planet Ibsen. This is a surreal take on gender issues quite specifically, based on Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, A Doll’s House, which is considered to be the first stage production with a feminist slant on marriage. Director Jonathan Wyche creates a world of the mind to ponder marital power struggles, women’s awakening consciousness, and men’s dawning realizations. The images and the plot are all fantastical and vaguely historical, supposedly originating in the head of one of Ibsen’s real-life contemporaries, writer August Strindberg. But the issues and messages are absolutely contemporary and very real in their import. This is not classical realist cinema in any sense of the word. So it’s avant-garde not only in terms of the look and feel of the film, but in its positioning of gender dynamics as still requiring thoughtful analysis and remedial work to bring about true equality. Variety

Excerpt from Entertainment Today. See the Mach 3rd Edition for reviews on Mozart and the Whale, The West Wittering Affair, Shadowboxer, & Believe in Me.

Entertainment Today (March 3, 2006), by Madelyn Ritrosky

Planet Ibsen: "Provocatively strange..."

“Provocatively strange Planet Ibsen, Jonathan Wyche’s highly stylized play-within-a-nightmare fantasy about tensions between Scandinavian playwrights Ibsen and Strindberg." ~Josef Woodard, Santa Barbara Independent Variety

So, here's a film that deserves a look...Planet Ibsen

“So, here's a film that deserves a look...Planet Ibsen is about a tormented playwright who is forced to revisit his past while being trapped inside his archrival’s most famous play. Tre clever no? In Planet Ibsen, Strindberg believes he is trapped inside Ibsen’s A Dolls House and his only means of escape is to rewrite Ibsen’s play, in the attempt to revise his life. Out there? You bettya - and it's starring that underrated nugget of talent, Clint Howard - a BluntReview fave ~Emily Blunt, Blunt Review Variety

Planet Ibsen is an intriguing experiment, engaging at various levels: shot composition, editing, story, and theme.

“Planet Ibsen is an exploration into the realms of what-if and altered realities - to that other planet of surrealist exploration. Planet Ibsen is an intriguing experiment, engaging at various levels: shot composition, editing, story, and theme. But it's not about surrealism. At the levels of story and theme and in its formal construction, the film is concerned with self-examination and revelation, gender and power, representation and (non)realism, and historical or "period" stories as prisms for considering our own times. It feels like you're diving into something below the surface, through the looking glass, into cogitation on gender and on heterosexual relations and marriage in particular. Director Jonathan Wyche, in his first feature, wants the viewer to think, to connect images and ideas through association and abstraction rather than through continuity editing and traditional storytelling. There is, however, an overarching narrative trajectory - a character's interior journey and realizations - that will satisfy viewers who want some sort of storyline to follow.” ~Madelyn Ritrosky, Entertainment Magazine Variety

“Planet Ibsen, an eerie, modern thought pyschologically based and extremely creative..."

“Planet Ibsen, an eerie, modern thought pyschologically based and extremely creative version of 1800's Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House” ~Mike Takeuchi, Filmfestivals.com Variety

Far riskier choices...Tsotsi, Joyeux Noel, and Planet Ibsen

“One of our film selection criteria was to pick films …, far riskier choices, but choices that maximize the opportunity offered by the festival to see things that you might not otherwise get a chance to see. Some of our interchangeable passes ended up around the necks of people seeing Tsotsi, Joyeux Noel, and Planet Ibsen.” ~EdHat.com Variety

Planet Ibsen "....a historical fantasia."

“And with so many American indies rehashing the same old family dramas or quirky tales of teen angst, I had to take special note of this film (Planet Ibsen) , which is a historical fantasia about the rivalry between August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen.” ~Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine Variety

Planet Ibsen ".. low-budget film homage to Orson Welles' The Trial

“The film's called Planet Ibsen, it takes place in the mind of playwright August Strindberg, largely including schizophrenic nightmares of fellow playwright Henrik Ibsen (Clint Howard). It really seemed like a sort of low-budget film homage to Orson Welles' The Trial. It's always a good thing to see that there's another well-shot movie floating around, someone still knows they have to light their movie.” ~Rav, Ain’t It Cool News Variety

George Clooney: On the Road to the Oscars

Actor Clint Howard–a familiar face in his brother Ron’s films like Cinderella Man and in Santa Barbara to promote his new indie Planet Ibsen–showed up because he goes way back with Clooney. “I did a TV movie with George back in the mid '80's called Sunset Beat that I think he would definitely like to forget about, but every time I see him I don't let him.” Despite his subsequent superstardom, Howard said Clooney’s still very much the same guy he was pre-fame. “Here's a guy who's put himself into a really unique position, and yet he's just a regular guy who likes to hang out and have fun.”


To read the full article by Scott Huver visit http://www.hollywood.com/celebs/feature/id/3480341

Hoffman, Panels, & Fan Mail

“..One of our film selection criteria was to pick films that wouldn’t be coming to the Riviera this year, far riskier choices, but choices that maximize the opportunity offered by the festival to see things that you might not otherwise get a chance to see. ….some of our interchangeable passes ended up around the necks of people seeing Tsotsi, Joyeux Noel, and Planet Ibsen.”

http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?id=1198

SBIFF program director CEVIN CATHELL'S thoughts on Planet Ibsen

“So Jonathan and Erica Wyche of Planet Ibsen have worked really really hard to try to get their film seen. It’s not the kind of film that’s an easy film to sell because you really have to think and you have to be active when you’re watching it. But, I think when people see it, and they… I mean I’ve had so many people come up to me and say ‘Wow, what an incredible film; this is the best film in the festival. I didn’t expect to like it so much but it’s just a really incredible film.’ And they (Jonathan and Erica Wyche) have been around all week long, talking about it, attending all the press breakfasts, talking it up with people, and getting to know the other filmmakers; which is really important in getting their support. And I think it’s going to pay off in a very big way. I think it is an incredible film festival film. It’s definitely brilliant.” --Cevin Cathell SBIFF Program Director

• Visit Download cathell_on_ibsen.wav to listen to Cevin Cathell's audio podcast.

• Visit Download rononibsenclint.wav to listen to Academy Award winning (for "A Beautiful Mind") director Ron Howard who was present for one of the screenings and spoke about the film and his brother Clint Howard's performance audio podcast.

• Visit the following links to listen to Jonathan Wyche’s audio podcasts:
  Download Planetibsenaccepted.wav How Jonathan found out that "Planet Ibsen" was selected for the SBIFF.
  Download wychefestexp.wav Without star driven power, studio backing, and advertising, how did they get people to see their film?
  Download wycheworthit.wav Was it worth the effort?

Posted by Takeuchi on FilmFestival.com http://www.filmfestivalstv.com/santabarbara/2006/02/planet_ibsen_1.html

Planet Ibsen's Creators TRUE to Self and Others

Despite tirelessly promoting their film "Planet Ibsen", an eerie, modern thought pyschologically based and extremely creative version of 1800's Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's play "A Doll's House", the wife and husband team of producer Erica Arnold-Wyche and director Jonathan Wyche look no worse for wear at the end of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. (Photo by Mike Takeuchi)

As the SBIFF wound down last week Jonathan Wyche, the writer/director/producer of "Planet Ibsen" finally got to lounge on the couch of the Santa Barbara Hotel. Someone remarked that it was the first time they have seen him sitting down all week. Wyche just smiled. Was he weary? It had been a long week of promoting his and wife Erica Arnold-Wyche's film, where in addition to attending seemingly every movie and all the special events, the couple tirelessly hit the streets to get the word out about their film. But his smile had less to do with fatigue than joy. As with a few other movies that did very well, "Planet Ibsen" was granted another showing at the Festival. Alas, the couple would miss it, as they had a plane to catch. But it didn't matter. They did everything they could, and it was beginning to pay off. One has to admire their determination and resolve to grind it out and take something as far as they could go. And they did it while being genuinely nice, real people that is the antithesis of stereotypical Hollywood. Perhaps it had something to do with his parents being academics (both are university professors), or being reared in different socioeconomic parts of the country, or even his own academic pursuits and life interests. Maybe it is all or none of the above. But after spending some time with both speaking about race, politics, and philosophy, this writer can opine that they did it right. Shakespeare could have had them in mind when he penned "To thine own self be true."

In addition to "Planet Ibsen" being written and directed by Jonathan Wyche and produced by Erica Arnold-Wyche and Jonathan Wyche, Clint Howard and Gabriel Damon are co-producers. The film stars Steve DuMouchel and Clint Howard. For more information on "Planet Ibsen", visit their Web site at http://www.planetibsen.com/.


Posted by Takeuchi on Filmfestivals.com
http://www.filmfestivalstv.com/santabarbara/2006/02/planet_ibsen_1.html