Authors — Scott Macaulay
-
Short Film: I Love You So Much by Leah Shore
“To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it).” Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse. The muck of romantic language — spoken, inscribed on the body and splattered, along with images, on the screen — is the subject of Leah Shore’s latest short film, I Love You So Much. Shore made our 25 New Faces list back in ’13, and I Love […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 19, 2014 -
The Strange Dream: Pitching Your Film at the CPH:FORUM
CPH:DOX is like a strange dream. That dream where you wake up and everyone understands that artistically motivated documentaires have a place, have meaning, are celebrated. And frankly the weirder the better. The pitch forum at this Copenhagen-based documentary festival is no exception. Coming up on its fourth year, it is the home of the eccentric doc sibling. The one that confounds and delights, and maybe has broadcast potential, but maybe could also play in an art gallery. In its beautiful peculiarity, the CPH:DOX forum stands out strongly from most of the other pitch forums that abound on the documentary […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 17, 2014 -
Short Film: Person to Person, Directed by Dustin Guy Defa
The New Yorker streams short films — who knew? This discovery is particularly welcome because just posted on the magazine’s YouTube channel — and embedded above — is Dustin Guy Defa’s terrific Person to Person, one of the works that landed the filmmaker on our 25 New Faces list this year. Here’s Brandon Harris on the film here at Filmmaker: Speaking of throwback cinema that doesn’t simply appropriate but forges its own thing out of the familiar, Dustin Guy Defa’s Person to Person is a film one could watch a dozen times. Assuming he doesn’t change the Vimeo password and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 16, 2014 -
Collaborating with James Franco on The Color of Time: Five Directors Discuss the C.K. Williams Adapation
Working nights and weekends while in Detroit shooting Oz the Great and the Powerful, James Franco turned what started out as directing exercise into an unusual anthology film directed by a dozen students from his NYU Graduate Film School class. Based on the life and poems of C.K. Williams, The Color of Time is unlike most anthology films in that its sections are intercut with each other, and it’s unlike most film school-derived works in that it stars A-list talent like Franco, Mila Kunis and Jessica Chasten. The film itself, however, is no by-the-numbers biopic; instead, it seeks to translate […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 12, 2014 -
Festival Trailer Watch: Borscht 9
December 17 – 21 I should be concentrated on Christmas shopping, but I’ll be at Borscht 9 in Miami. (Sorry, friends and family.) Borscht 8 was my favorite film event of 2012, and I can’t wait for this year’s edition. What’s Borscht? (Aside from a soup?) Here, from the site: The Borscht Film Festival (est. 2004 by New World School of the Arts high school students) is a quasi-yearly event held at iconic Miami venues that commissions, produces, and showcases movies created by emerging regional filmmakers telling Miami stories that go beyond the city’s insipid exterior. Borscht Corp is an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2014 -
Miranda July and Carrie Brownstein Promise a Somebody App That “Works”
Regarding her eccentrically beautiful messaging app Somebody, Miranda July has posted this video with Carrie Brownstein about its v.2. “Over the next few months we will be making Somebody 2.0,” she writes. “It’s just like Somebody 1.0 but it works.” If you don’t know about Somebody, it’s an iOS app (Android coming, says July in this video) that allows you to send a communication to someone via a nearby third party, who delivers that message in person. Still confused? Well, Somebody was the subject of a new podcast, Reply All — the second from podcasting startup Gimlet Media. Watch above […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2014 -
Director Diane Bell on What You Should Do if Your Film is in Sundance
Following this week’s Sundance announcements, I linked in my newsletter to two articles I wrote back in 2009: “So You Didn’t Get into Sundance” and “Letter from the Future.” This first is a consoling “what to do next” kind of piece, and the second is an only partly tongue-in-cheek riff on alternative ways to approach festival distribution. The latter owes a lot of Jon Reiss, who in articles written for Filmmaker and elsewhere has advocated for making your festival premiere your premiere and to make a DIY distribution your plan A, not some hastily considered fallback plan when a big […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2014 -
David Ehrlich’s 25 Best Films of 2014 Supercut
At Little White Lies David Ehrlich returns with his excellent annual supercut of his own 25 Best Films list. He writes, “As was also the case with last year’s video, the video kicks off with a little intro that’s intended to set the stage, and then launches into the countdown a couple of minutes later. All of the featured music comes from the films of 2014, and a full track list is waiting for you at the end. As always, this was both a blast to cut together and also just an unspeakably catastrophic waste of time. So… I hope […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2014 -
Sundance Announces 2015 Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontiers Sections
A day after unveiling the Competition and NEXT lineups, the Sundance Institute has announced the 2015 Sundance Film Festival’s Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontiers sections. Of the Midnight section, which contains new films by Eli Roth, Rodney Ascher and, from Cannes, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, Director of Programming Trevor Groth said in a press release, “This year’s Park City at Midnight selections have much to offer genre enthusiasts. With everything from futuristic fantasies to paranormal nightmares, it’s an all-out trip to the cinematic edge.” Of the New Frontiers section of films and installations — the latter […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 4, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: a Young Jane Fonda in Jane, from Drew Associates
Here’s an extraordinary clip from Jane, a documentary directed by Drew Associates about the young Jane Fonda preparing for her first Broadway role. My favorite line: “Andreas [the director] has coached Jane before. They’re friends, and he dates her often.” From the press release: JANE, directed by Drew Associates, captures a rare and oft forgotten piece of film and theater history. A young Jane Fonda prepares for her tumultuous starring role on Broadway in “The Fun Couple.” The Drew Associates filmmakers track Fonda’s every move during the production as she strives to legitimize herself as an actress and remove herself […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 3, 2014
