Authors — Filmmaker Staff
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Film Comment Appoints New Editor, Film Society of Lincoln Center Creates New Editorial Director Position
Big news from our friends over at the Film Society of Lincoln Center with two new appointments. Having served as interim editor of Film Comment since Gavin Smith’s departure, Nicolas Rapold will assume the editorial mantle full-time. Michael Koresky — perhaps best-known as the co-founder of Reverse Shot, which he’ll continue to edit — will be joining him as Editorial Director, a position that’s new to the organization. This position calls for overseeing all manner of content both within the magazine and as part of FSLC’s overall strategy. First up on the docket: the launch of a Film Comment app. For slightly more, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on May 2, 2016 -
Watch: Francis Ford Coppola on “Live Cinema” and His Career at Tribeca
One of the highlights of this year’s on-stage conversations at the Tribeca Film Festival was this sit-down between Francis Ford Coppola and his unlikely interrogator Jay McInerney. For years now, Coppola has been kicking around the concept of a “live cinema,” which is tricky to define, but he gets down to brass tacks in this conversation, which lasts just under an hour.
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 27, 2016 -
Watch: The Best Sci-Fi Movies of the Century So Far
Zach Prewitt rounds up his 20 best sci-fi movies of the century so far in this video essay. For more context (or just to see the list), click here for his accompanying essay (which also includes an explanation of why seemingly obvious contenders Gravity and Interstellar were excluded). Needless to say, if you want to go into these films totally blind, perhaps this is one to avoid.
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 27, 2016 -
Watch: New York in 1993 in HD
A piece of HD footage shot in 1993 as test footage for the Japanese market has resurfaced on the internet. The effect is a little head-spinning: a recognizably of-another-time New York City, captured with the HD clarity of the present.
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 26, 2016 -
Watch: Connecting the Dots Between David Lynch and Maya Deren
“As many viewers of Maya Deren‘s Meshes of the Afternoon and David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive have recognized, there are many similarities between these two filmmakers,” writes Joel Bocko over at Fandor Keyframe. “An ordinary key is charged with dangerous supernatural power; characters multiply, bending space and time; an Angeleno atmosphere in which daydream becomes nightmare — these are just a few of Meshes‘ and Lynch’s common touchstones.” This video finds the visual connections between Lynch’s work from Twin Peaks onwards and Deren’s best-known short.
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 26, 2016 -
American Dreams and Nightmares
The Boost Released a year after the Partnership for a Drug-Free America’s “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” campaign frightened children into never eating their morning eggs, Harold Becker’s The Boost was this PSA’s cinematic equivalent for adults. An adaptation of political commentator and actor Ben Stein’s 1982 novel, Ludes: A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream, the film is a cautionary tale in which a real estate salesman and his wife grow addicted to wealth, entitlement and cocaine. In his review for The New York Times, filmmaker (and then freelance writer) Cameron Crowe noted that the book “winds up being largely about […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 21, 2016 -
Dispatches from Sundance, Berlin, True/False and Rotterdam
Sundance Film Festival 2016 by Adam Cook Few film festivals carry inscribed connotations the way that Sundance does. For this newcomer to Park City, a visit to this beacon of American indie cinema came loaded with preconceptions about both the nature of the “Sundance film” (part myth, part truth) and the tendency for the collective critical response to hyperbolize and rush to proclaim the year’s early favorites. Given the calendar-based approach of looking at movies in the context of their year, Sundance emerges on the heels of last year’s best-of lists, nearly 12 months ahead of when its own lineup will […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 21, 2016 -
Super 8: Barth, Black and Birzeit
Black Editions Since the ’80s, Japan’s P.S.F. Records has attained cultish status for the wide variety of avant-garde-leaning jazz, psychedelic and sheerly unclassifiable music it’s released. Acid Mothers Temple and Ghost are among the eclectic array of musicians championed by label founder Hideo Ikeezumi, who’s never shied away from following his philosophy: “I only release what I like.” Now, the new label Black Editions will be bringing that catalogue to the states, in the process releasing many of P.S.F.’s records to vinyl for the first time. Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Interactive Closing Remarks “Most of the joy in your life is […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 21, 2016 -
Watch: Rihanna’s (NSFW) “Needed Me” Music Video, Directed by Harmony Korine
“Happy 420, look out for Needed Me TODAY at NOON EST,” Rihanna announced on Twitter. The video, as it happens, is directed by Harmony Korine, and follows up on “Bitch Better Have My Money”‘s appetite for controversy. There will be blunts and cultural conversation-ready problematic images. Watch now, enjoy the thinkpieces later. No surprise: this is a little NSFW.
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 20, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon
On the heels of the announcement that Nicholas Winding Refn’s new film The Neon Demon — his Elle-Fanning-in-LA horror movie — will be premiering at Cannes, we have a trailer. The tone is somewhere between Lynchian and The Canyons. This is one of five (!) Amazon Studios projects showing at Cannes this year.
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 14, 2016
