Authors — Calum Marsh
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Film Schools in a Time of Disruption
At YouVisit Studios in midtown Manhattan, Ben Leonberg, Scott Riehs and Alice Shindelar, three recent graduates of the film MFA program at Columbia, bring their education to bear in rather unexpected ways. They are still, in a sense, filmmakers — Leonberg a creative director, Shindelar a writer/director and Riehs a creative producer, each aspiring to one day make a feature. But as their day job they practice filmmaking of a very different type: together they conceive, write and shoot commercial content that YouVisit calls “interactive virtual experiences.” They work in 360-degree video and with virtual-reality headsets. They experiment with new […]
by Calum Marsh on Jun 16, 2017 -
Freeze Out: Ruben Östlund on Force Majeure
Amidst the red-carpet mayhem of any major international film festival, critics tend to adopt a sort of cinematic shorthand — a private language of allusions and descriptors. It didn’t take long for Force Majeure to earn its seemingly ready-made sobriquet: “the avalanche movie,” further confirmed by the film’s theatrical poster. Force Majeure does indeed revolve around an avalanche — a controlled blast in the mountains of a ski resort in the French Alps, watched by a vacationing Swedish family with awe until, as it hurtles its way toward the restaurant terrace where they are enjoying their breakfast, awe suddenly curdles […]
by Calum Marsh on Oct 20, 2014 -
A Place to Find a Standing Ovation: The Fantasia International Film Festival
Perhaps the most salient feature of the Fantasia International Film Festival’s three-week schedule is its total aversion to mornings. In the interest of efficiency, most festivals promptly begin screenings, panels or press conferences at 9 or 10am each day; at Fantasia things get started around quarter past three. Official and unofficial festival after-parties, meanwhile — premiere celebrations, industry events, cocktail breaks, impromptu gatherings for drinks — customarily extend until dawn (or later), with many attendees migrating after last call from pubs to after-hours bars and diners willing to serve up flights of “special tea” (after-hours booze). Everything about Fantasia — […]
by Calum Marsh on Aug 7, 2014
