Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Interview Show Rambling On Now at Filmmaker
Rambling On, an independent film interview show, is landing at Filmmaker. Produced by filmmakers Russell Costanzo and Melissa B. Miller (The Tested), the show gathers, roundtable style, producers, directors and actors to discuss their working practices. Here’s an excerpt from the duo’s previous episode, a roundtable with producers Sophia Lin (Compliance), Josh Mond (Simon Killer), Riva Marker (What Maisie Knew), Jared Goldman (The Magic of Belle Isle), and Michelle Ann Small (Gun Hill Road). The moderator here is Matt Patches from Hollywood.com, and this clip addresses a skill every producer needs to learn how to master: How — and when […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Kick Me
Gary Huggins made our 25 New Faces list in 2006 on the basis of his excellent Sundance short, First Date. After a successful Kickstarter raise, he’s back now with his first feature, Kick Me. Here’s the synopsis, and the video is above. A fancy high school guidance counselor (Santiago Vasquez) ventures into unknown territory – Kansas City, Kansas – and learns crucial lessons about community, prejudice and brotherhood the hard way.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2013 -
House of Cards, the Netflix Algorithms and Me
As I learned from a piece by Andrew Leonard at Salon, at 12:22 AM last night a Netflix event was created in my household when I switched off Episode Four of the streaming video giant’s new series, House of Cards, and went to bed. Leonard’s event was caused when he stopped midway into the show’s first episode, but I watched the first two back to back before a digital datapoint was created. That event was triggered by me pausing the show to make dinner, a moment presumably reduced in significance by my subsequent reengagement with the series. If I do […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 3, 2013 -
My Bloody Valentine Crashes the Internet with New Album
Keeping true to founder Kevin Shields’ word a couple of days ago, the new, 22-years-in-the-making My Bloody Valentine album has dropped. Well, at least I think it has. After posting word on their Facebook page, the band’s website has gone dark, delivering a “403 — Forbidden: Access Denied” warning. We know the name of the album (MBV), the tracklist (below), and the price ($16 in multiple digital formats, including MP3 and .WAV.) Vinyl and CD versions will soon be available. Spoof reviews are already up on the Facebook page, with some posters claiming to be bewildered by the Christian rock, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2013 -
Filmmaker’s Winter Edition Now Available on the App Store
Filmmaker Magazine’s Winter edition, which premiered last week at Sundance, is now available on newsstands and, for the iPad, on Apple’s App Store. Download the Filmmaker app free, and the issue is only $2.99. And here’s what’s inside: — Straight from Sundance, our cover story on director Shane Carruth, who follows up his cult classic Primer with the mindblowing new feature, Upstream Color. It’s the first major interview with Carruth about his new film, which hits theaters April 5. He discusses his long gap between projects, his cinematography, and his reasons for self-distribution. He also unpacks the meaning of his […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 30, 2013 -
Letter From the Editor
Our worst Filmmaker cover was Spring 2003. We decided to break with our tradition of director or actor portraits in favor of an iconic image illustrating that issue’s major article, a piece by Anthony Kaufman on filmmakers embracing DIY distribution. It would be something like a New York Times Magazine cover, we thought — a stark shot that would act as an instantly recognizable visual metaphor for the serious journalism inside. That art, however, was a generic and uninteresting picture of a padlock. (Filmmakers are locked out of the system — get it?) As soon as we sent it to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2013 -
Big Boy Writer/Director Shireen Seno
Receiving its international premiere in Rotterdam, Big Boy is photographer and filmmaker Shireen Seno’s lovingly lo-fi, Super 8-shot tale of a young boy, pressured by his family to “grow” — not emotionally but physically. Set in the 1950s, Seno intriguingly remembers in Big Boy a childhood in the Philippines she did not experience. Taking her inspiration from family tales as well as the visual traces previous generations have left behind, Big Boy, in the words of the Rotterdam programmer, is about a Filipino past that is “not only nostalgic, but also about the violence often hidden just below the surface.” […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 28, 2013 -
Morning Star: Shane Carruth on Upstream Color
Nearly a decade after winning Sundance with his startlingly original Primer, SHANE CARRUTH returns with a haunting and powerful look at love and regeneration, Upstream Color.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2013 -
The Faces and Places of the Sundance Film Festival, Part One
“Sundance is our annual tradeshow,” a friend remarked to me at one of the very crowded parties this year. Indeed, it is a place to catch up, even if that short conversation is in line at a theater or at Starbucks instead of the kind of proper sit-down you’d have at Cannes or Berlin. Here are a few of the folks I bumped into at Sundance, beginning with, above, director Jehane Noujain, snapped on Heber Street just hours before the premiere of her latest documentary, The Square. I was knocked out by the film, which is a vivid and expertly […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2013 -
Five Questions for Towheads’ Shannon Plumb
Premiering in Rotterdam, the disarming and oddly delightful Towheads is the feature debut of artist and experimental filmmaker Shannon Plumb. Exploring and extending aspects of her short-form Super-8 work within a feature context, Towheads is, on the surface, a familiar story of a bored housewife whose creative aspirations are stifled by the pressures of domesticity and the disinterest of a work-obsessed husband. But these frustrations are just the catalyst for a charmingly playful series of episodes in which Plumb’s character adopts various guises — a drag king, a pole dancer and many more — in an attempt to explore alternative […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2013
