Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Trailer Watch: See You Next Tuesday
“A real treat, a genuine discovery, a whirling dervish of a movie, some kind of roiling central-Brooklyn freak show, a film so searing with rip-your-throat-out and spit-on-your-grave anger, the indignity of mental illness, the messiness of race in this fast-gentrifying strip of American near-coastal land that it seems to have a pulse all its own; it feels alive in the ways only superior works of art can.” That’s Filmmaker‘s Brandon Harris on Drew Tobia’s See You Next Tuesday, a film that has multiple fans here at the magazine. There’s me, for one — I was on the jury at Indie […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 11, 2014 -
Short Film Teaser: Peacock Killer, Directed by Boyd Holbrook
Actor and director Boyd Holbrook has been raising funds on Indiegogo to complete his short film Peacock Killer, which is based on a short story by Sam Shepard. He’s just released a new teaser trailer, which suggests an epic sweep. Check it out and, if it intrigues you, consider donating to Holbrook’s campaign. (Oh, and read our profile of Holbrook when we selected him for last year’s 25 New Faces list.)
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 11, 2014 -
Introverts, James Joyce, the Islamic State, Unlikeable Characters and Stalkers: Sunday Links
Here, for your Sunday reading pleasure, are a number of artices and videos I took note of this week. Novelist Helen DeWitt retreats to a family-owned cabin in the woods to make an important writing deadline. She winds up, as she describes in the London Review of Books, being stalked: One neighbour says if she saw him by the road at night she would run him down. Others tell me to get a gun and shoot on sight. Look at it this way: if there were a high risk of attack I wouldn’t be staying in a cottage in 11 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: The Fix
Fresh out of AFI Docs is Laura Naylor’s The Fix, a character-based documentary about Bronx-based IV drug users with Hepatitis C who organize to fight this epidemic. The film screens in New York September 5 at 6:00 PM at Lehman College’s Lovinger Theater in a screening organized by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and the Public Health Program at Lehman College. It is free and open to the public.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 8, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: The Theory of Everything
The life of Steven Hawking is given what looks like a gauzy, romantic approach in this trailer for The Theory of Everything, directed by Man on Wire‘s James Marsh. Eddie Redmayne stars as Hawking and Felicity Jones as his love, Jane Wilde. The film premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival and is in theaters November 7 from Focus Features.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2014 -
Kumiko, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Warpaint Highlight Sundance Next Festival
It’s rare that I can recommend nearly every program at a film festival, but that’s the case with this weekend’s Sundance Next Festival in Los Angeles. With events taking place tonight at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and then this weekend at the theater at the Ace Hotel, the Next Festival is intimate, very cool and with a strong multidisciplinary bent. Alongside several artistic feature highlights from this year’s Sundance Film Festival are shorts, panels and bands, making each program something of an event. Check out the complete line-up at the festival’s site, and here are a few picks of mine: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2014 -
Fundraising $100,000 a Year for Online Video: Mike Stoklasa on Patreon
“Red Letter Media is Creating Weird Internet Videos and Films” is the tagline for the Milwaukee-based collective’s page on online fundraising platform Patreon. It’s an appeal that has impressively generated the group almost $100,000 a year in fan donations. Red Letter Media is the home of various creators, including Mike Stoklasa, whose critical vivisections of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels landed him on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2010. Offering reviews of films and video games alongside other content (like a comedic instructional feature film, How Not to Make a Movie), Red Letter monetizes itself through YouTube advertising, DVD […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2014 -
“Do We Need to Be Cured of It?” Considering Web Junkie
Web Junkie, Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia’s startling documentary about internet addiction in China opens today at New York’s Film Forum. At Sundance, where it premiered, it was considered by Brandon Harris, and Danielle Lurie interviewed the directors. Wrote Harris, in a piece that also included discussion of the doc Love Child: In Web Junkie, teenage boys, often having been deceived into going or plainly drugged and captured with their parents’ approval, suffer a military bootcamp-style existence complete with isolation chambers and other forms of moderately cruel discipline, interspersed with moments of counseling from sensitive, largely female psychologists and a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 6, 2014 -
Short Film: Lost Arts, by Peter Mattei
Inspired by Ira Sachs’ Last Address, filmmaker (Love in the Time of Money) and novelist (The Deep Whatsis) Peter Mattei made this short film, Lost Arts, in 2010. Sachs’ film — which he discusses in the current issue of Filmmaker — looks at the final addresses of a generation of New York artists who died of AIDS. With Lost Arts, Mattei has taken Sachs’ formal approach and applied it to the real estate of arthouse cinema. For those who have long lived in New York, see how many of these Duane Reades, health clubs and Apple stores evoke any hint […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 5, 2014 -
Short Film: Intuition, by Danielle Lurie
Filmmaker, 25 New Face and Film Fatales early member Danielle Lurie was in Barcelona recently, and, as she writes, made a short film there on the fly. Connecting with lead actress Montse Muñoz through Facebook, she has made a lovely film about romantic indecision, conflicting signals and the magic of serendipity. Check it out above. Read Lurie on women in today’s filmmaking at Sundance and the Film Fatales collective here at Filmmaker.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2014
