Authors — Scott Macaulay
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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 -
The Future of Storytelling: Tom Perlmutter on the Evolution of Cinema
The Future of Storytelling has announced the date of its second annual summit — October 3, in New York City. In the interview below, the National Film Board of Canada’s Tom Perlmutter expounds on his belief that new forms of storytelling will change the world. For more, read the press release below and visit the Future of Storytelling website. The Future of StoryTelling (FoST) will host its second annual summit in New York City on Thursday, October 3rd. FoST gathers a community of storytellers across all disciplines—including film, TV, publishing, music, gaming, journalism, adverting, and more—to explore how technology is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2013 -
25 Picks for the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is overwhelming. Following the more rarefied Telluride and Venice Film Festivals, it’s a large, populist event that mixes red-carpet premieres with new filmmaker discovery and highlights from Cannes and other earlier events. As I usually do, I’ve concentrated on premieres and American independents for this preview, largely omitting films you’ve heard about because they’ve already been praised at other festivals (like, for example, Telluride hits 12 Years a Slave and Prisoners). Here, selected from the feature films, is what I’m hoping to catch at the festival this year. Beneath the Harvest Sky. The documentary team […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2013 -
Day 10 of 16: Chad Hartigan and This is Martin Bonner
In This is Martin Bonner, Chad Hartigan’s second fiction feature, Martin (the wonderful Australian-born, Seattle-based actor Paul Eenhoorn), is heading into life’s third act and attempting to make something of it. Post-divorce, he moves West to Reno, Nevada, where he takes a job as an outreach counselor, offering spiritual guidance to recently paroled ex-cons. Enter Travis (Richmond Arquette), who, rejoining civilian life after doing time for a hit and run, finds himself adrift, unable to fully assimilate and to connect with his now-grown daughter. In Martin he finds an awkward but needed companionship. This is Martin Bonner‘s narrative is a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 2, 2013
