Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Trailer Watch: Days of Gray
Days of Gray, the Iceland-set debut picture from New York production company Bicephaly Pictures, will have its world premiere October 4 at, appropriately, the Reykjavik International Film Festival. The film will screen at the historic Gamla Bio theater with the seven-piece orchestral band Hjaltalin performing their original score. The filmmakers have blogged for Filmmaker about the production of the film, and now they are debuting here their first trailer, posted above. Here’s the synopsis from the film’s Vimeo page: It is a world without language. A world where one is raised to respect the rules. Every possession is strictly utilitarian. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 24, 2013 -
Two Dollar Radio Launches Microbudget Film Division with Rombes Script, The Removals
Two Dollar Radio, the Columbus, OH-based independent literary house is launching a microbudget film division, and the first project out of the gate is The Removals, written by author, critic and frequent Filmmaker contributor Nicholas Rombes. (His Blue Velvet Project remains a high water mark of this site.) Directing will be Grace Krilanovich, author of acclaimed teen vampire novel, The Orange Eats Creeps, which made a guest appearance recently in Rombes’ essay on Only God Forgives. “The story is part-thriller, part-nightmarish examination of the widening gap between originality and technology, told with remarkable precision,” writes Two Dollar Radio on its […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 24, 2013 -
The Dark Side of the iPhone: Casey Neistat Documents iPhone 5s Hysteria
Filmmaker Casey Neistat, selected as one of our “25 New Faces” in 2006, camped out at Apple’s New York City 59th Street store to make this short film about the fans who waited on line, credit cards in hand, for over a week to purchase the iPhone 5s. (Were any there for the cheaper, “unapologetically plastic” iPhone 5c? I doubt it.) He asked the Apple fans one question: Why? Watch the video above.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 22, 2013 -
Ava DuVernay and AFFRM Launch Podcast, “The Call In,” with Andrew Dosumnu
Filmmaker and distributor Ava DuVernay of AFFRM has launched a new podcast series, “The Call-In,” featuring conversations with black filmmakers. If you’ve read her conversation with Ryan Coogler in this issue’s Filmmaker, you know that DuVernay conducts an excellent interview. Here, in this first episode, she talks with Andrew Dosumnu, whose Mother of George is in theaters now and is highly recommended. The conversation also delves into the director’s recent hiring on Focus Features’ planned Fela Kuti biopic.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 19, 2013 -
Roddy Bogawa Retrospective, If Films Could Smell, Opens at MoMA
Opening tonight through September 23 at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art is “Roddy Bogawa: If Films Could Smell,” a retrospective of the provocative L.A.-raised, New York-based Japanese American filmmaker. From Assistant Curator Sally Berger’s note in the program guide: Born and raised in Los Angeles, Japanese American artist Roddy Bogawa (b. 1962) studied art and sculpture and played in punk bands before turning to film. In his youth, Bogawa struggled with a desire to assimilate until the punk scene gave him a way to truly express himself, and the DIY punk aesthetic continues to influence his work. Other […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 18, 2013 -
David Cronenberg Introduces Body/Mind/Change
Filmmaker scooped the competition this Spring with Lance Weiler’s story about Body/Mind/Change, the West Coast start-up that licensed the IP of David Cronenberg to develop new biotech products. The main project discussed was POD, an implanted personalized consumer recommendation engine that’s also an actual living organism. When this story ran, some wondered whether Weiler’s account was some kind of spoof, but now Cronenberg himself has surfaced to endorse the project, even as other publications — and, um, the press release itself — question its authenticity. (Our friends at Motherboard dubbed Weiler’s piece a “faux profile,” or “fauxfile.”) Regardless, the project […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 13, 2013 -
Five Questions for 1982 Director Tommy Oliver
Premiering at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival is 1982, the directorial debut of noted independent producer Tommy Oliver (Kinyarwanda). Set in Philadelphia in the year of the film’s title, 1982 is the story of a father (an affecting Hill Harper) torn between his love for his wife, who has descended into crack addition, and his responsibilities to his young daughter. Set during the start of the crack epidemic, 1982 is an intimate film that returns us to a time, pre-The Wire and and all of the other drug dramas of the last three decades, when crack changed the character […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 12, 2013 -
Mark Peranson on his Apocalyptic The Last Movie Homage, La última película
Appearing in the Wavelengths section of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival is La última película, an experimental comedy about filmmaking and the apocalypse by two directors joined in collaboration by CPH:DOX’s DOX:LAB program. Filipino director Raya Martin (Independencia) collaborates with Canadian critic and filmmaker Mark Peranson on a crazily cinephilic conceit: remaking Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie as, literally, the last movie. The Color Wheel‘s Alex Ross Perry stars as a “disillusioned and delusional” filmmaker traveling to the Yucatan to make a psychedelic Western in the days leading up to the Mayan Apocalypse. Nicolás Pereda star Gabino Rodriguez plays […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 11, 2013 -
Liesl Copland on the “Analytic Black Holes” of Netflix, iTunes and Amazon
A filmmaker called me the other day, asking if I could think of some comps for his movie. You know, other movies whose marketplace performance would indicate that there is a paying audience for his demographically-similar picture. He named a title he really liked and said he was shocked to see via Box Office Mojo that it had done so poorly. Indeed, its reported box office was in the five figures. The very low five figures. “But that box-office figure is misleading,” I replied. “The film was bought by a company whose strategy is to release on VOD and digital […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 11, 2013 -
Writer/director John Ridley Talks about his Hendrix Pic, All is By My Side
With so many overstuffed biographical dramas barreling from cradle to grave, the creative possibilities of the intimate biopic, one focused on a formative and often little known period in a subject’s life, are often neglected by writers and directors. Thankfully, though, that’s the approach taken by screenwriter and second-time director John Ridley to one of the most iconic and fan-obsessed-over cultural figures of the 20th century, Jimi Hendrix. Starring André Benjamin (Outkast’s André 3000) as the iconic singer and guitarist, All Is By My Side focuses on a year or so in Hendrix’s life and how a song written for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2013
