We haven't produced a "Notes On A Screen" since the week of the Wisconsin Film Festival, apologies. We blame complete silver screen burnout. With all of the hoopla regarding Public Enemies being filmed around the Capitol earlier this week this seems like the best time to fire up the weekly round-up of TV, gaming, and film news coming out of the greater Madison metropolitan area.

Johnny Depp wasn't in town for this shoot of what has come to be known simply as P.E., but Christian Bale and Billy Crudup did strut up the steps of the Capitol building as Madison doubled for Hoover's fledgling FBI headquarters. Bale is playing Melvin Purvis, who was Dillinger's pursuer, while Crudup is portraying the young Hoover. The results are photos and coverage galore.

Take a trip back to Depression-era gangster times, when the Wisconsin state capitol was ostensibly located in Washington, D.C., a privileged few apparently had plastic water bottles and modern film and lighting gear, and everything was a kind of warm black and white tint.

A total of 14 pics from the filming of Public Enemies shot from the Pickney and East Wash side of the Capitol:

Part of the Kabaret challenge was to work a secret ingredient into the film; in our case, it was a prop. Click here to read more.

Since 2002, the international filmmaking movement Kino has been thriving in Madison's Wis-Kino chapter. During the organizations 48-Hour Kabaret participants have 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit a short film.

Several Dane101 contributers decided the best way to understand the Wis-kino experience was to participate in it. On Friday evening, Adam Schabow made it to the kickoff meeting for Wis-kino's Spring Kabaret. In a departure from prior years, instead of a shared theme for all the films each team got their own challenge prop.

In case the Wisconsin Film Festival wasn’t enough to satiate cinematic appetites, the Wisconsin Union’s East Asian Film Festival began Thursday. Five films total (one Thursday, two Friday, and two Saturday) will be shown for free at the Frederic March Play Circle in the Memorial Union. The lineup and synopses, which can also be found on the Wisconsin Union’s website are as follows. I haven’t seen most of the films, but I’ve added italicized comments on the films I have seen because I think they’re phenomenal and definitely worth seeing – especially for free.

A number of Wisconsin Film Festival movies will be returning to Madison as they enter wide release or for special showings. We will be highlighting them as they return as part of WFF2008 Encores

Loose Cannons: Campus Security tells the story of a miscreant gang of student campus security officers at a local University startlingly similar to UW-Madison… Protecting and serving become a bit of a problem for them when the football team’s playbook is stolen and their beloved mascot “Muley” is murdered in suspicious correlation with the university’s impending homecoming celebration. The plot thickens; these atrocious acts have not been set in motion by the rival school, but by an embittered domestic foe. Spencer Huntly. One of the very students expelled through the valiant actions of our bubbly campus-cop crew has come back to reek vengeance and reap reward with foul play, a nearly silent sidekick played by the director, and a new gang of thugs appropriately dubbed as the “Freshman 15”. The villain’s treachery can’t be contained by typical human angst; his vile plans, while immature in nature, are obscenely sociopathic. Yet, our “loose cannons” have no fear; their bravery delivers them through even the most elaborate fights and haphazard gun battles with alarming grace.

Sunday morning came early after the Nerdcore premiere the night before. Still, the Orpheum possessed one of my most anticipated films of the Wisconsin Film Festival, and neither the early start nor a hangover was going to keep me away.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss is the story of Wilson, a man that recently moved to Los Angeles to sell a screenplay. Wilson’s roommates Jacob and Min, encourage him to start dating and find someone to spend New Year’s Eve with. Wilson eventually gives in to his nagging roommates, and creates a personal ad on Craigslist.

The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins was provocative, challenging -- the type of documentary that doesn’t neatly sum up a subject but instead leaves the audience with a kaleidoscope of questions and opinions at its conclusion.

New Zealand filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly is in Rumbeck, a village in the wartorn region of South Sudan, to work on a documentary about a de-miner (yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like: someone who removes explosive mines for a living). One night near the campfire at the Westerner-friendly NGO camp where Brettkelly’s staying, she encounters a woman (Vanessa Beecroft, the film’s subject) talking about how she’s donating breast milk to twins in the village, and ultimately hopes to adopt the babies. At the time, Brettkelly was working on a project about international adoption, and asks if she could film Beecroft’s process, having no clue that Beecroft herself is an internationally acclaimed, experimental performance artist whose complex psyche would prove a far more interesting study, especially in contrast to the simplicity of their Sudanese surroundings.

It’s taken me a while to digest the nine movies I saw this weekend at the Wisconsin Film Festival (all documentaries except one). When the schedule first came out, I made ambitious plans to see five per day, fully forgetting how exhausting it can be to sit in a dark theatre for hours on end absorbing images and information.

Although I enjoyed every single movie I saw, here’s a rundown from least favorite to favorite film.

Footage Includes:
1. Filmgoer discussion of Loose Cannons, Garbage Warrior, OSS 117, Bon Cop Bad Cop, and El Ciudad de Sylvia
2. Interview with Nerdcore for Life director Dan Lamoureux
3. On top of the Orpheum

While you were at the Wisconsin Film Festival, some minor Public Enemies news that may be relevant to Madison broke this weekend with multiple news sources reporting that Billy Crudup, star of Big Fish and Almost Famous, has been cast as FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover. Rumors are that portions of the Wisconsin Capitol building may be used as backdrop for Hoover's fledgling FBI office. The announcement means that Crudup could be coming to Madison later this month with Christian Bale to shoot those scenes. Bale plays John Dillinger pursuer Melvin Purvis in the Michael Mann directed flick which stars Johnny Depp as the legendary bank robber. Crudup recently completed work on the comic book-to-film adaptation of Watchmen in which he plays the character Dr. Manhattan. Both films are receiving heavy buzz which means 2009 could shape up to be a big year for Crudup. He received a Tony Award in 2007 for his turn in the production The Coast of Utopia.

Wisconsin Film Festival goers attending showings at the Orpheum may have noticed an odd occurrence happening on the wall of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Steven Van Haren had commandeered the marquee of the Orpheum to broadcast some short "films" he produced. In between the videos he would put up his Twitter page allowing him to communicate directly with the curious looking up from the street. We caught up with Steven and followed him up to the State Street overlook.

Speaking with Nerdcore For Life director Dan Lamoureux you can tell he cares deeply for the subjects in his film. That love and respect translates perfectly to the documentary that follows some of Nerdcore’s most prominent artists from their basements to the stage. Most importantly Lamoureux is introducing the world to the Hip-Hop sub-genre of Nerdcore.

At their best, puzzle movies are akin to the works of David Lynch, where the enigma to be contemplated is the movie itself, all those familiar little bits of cinema put together in a way that bends your brain. One level down from that would be movies like Christopher Nolan's Memento or The Prestige, where the movie's unusual subject matter provides a unique metaphorical handle with which to contemplate its larger themes. And then there are Riddler movies, where there's an evil mastermind who behaves like the Batman villain and makes the protagonist solve puzzles just for the sake of a clever-off. This is a more troublesome kind of movie, not only because masterminds can easily be preposterous characters, but also because the filmmakers want to woo you with the pleasure of puzzles while being dramatically obligated to conclude that you can't reduce life to silly games -- in the same way that, say, cable news's tut-tut coverage of sex is so salacious. Fermat's Room is a Riddler movie -- imagine a low-tech version of Cube, or Die Hard with a Vengeance as a one-act play -- but it's a ringer. Four mathematicians gather in a remote Spanish warehouse for what they are promised will be an intellectual gathering at which they puzzle over one of math's great unanswered questions. In reality, the room is a deathtrap, and the characters can only forestall their fate by transmitting via PDA the correct answer to riddles, while at the same time trying to understand why each is there, and who might want such vengeance on them.