Authors — Scott Macaulay
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The Shameless Satire of Lana Del Rey
“The cleverest piece of cultural criticism” to appear in 2012 is from none other than media-made pop singer Lana Del Rey, argues n+1‘s Christopher Glazek in the year-end edition of Artforum. Indeed, Rey’s two recent videos, which have an outsized, ’80s ambition to them, are fascinating jaw-droppers. Here, Glazek gets at why: Men hardly ever speak in Del Rey’s videos. Their silence also permeates Ride. This more recent video follows the life of a streetwalking saloon singer in Big Sky Country who spends her days and nights among the motorcycle-gang members she picks up and services on the road. Although […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2012 -
Larry Clark is a Vegan
Here’s Larry Clark on Nowness talking about his career, his new film Marfa Girl, crooks in the movie business, the MPAA and becoming a vegan. “Life begins at 69,” says the 69-year-old Clark. “And I’m not talking about the sex act.”
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 30, 2012 -
Moonrise Kingdom Takes Best Picture at the IFP Gotham Awards; Beasts’ Zeitlin Wins Two
Wes Anderson’s ’60s-set ode to childhood imagination and romance, Moonrise Kingdom, picked up the Best Picture Award at the IFP Gotham Awards Monday night at Cipriani’s in New York. Winning two awards was Beasts of the Southern Wild director Benh Zeitlin, who won both the Breakthrough Director Award as well as a newly inaugurated Bingham Ray Award, for “filmmakers who bring a distinctive vision to the world.” The latter award came with $10,000 and $60,000 worth of equipment rental from Panavision. The Breakthrough Actor award went to Emayatzy Corinealdi for her portrayal of a convict’s faithful wife in Ava DuVernay’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 26, 2012 -
Memories of Mexico
Filmmaker Iva Radivojevic keeps a wonderful Tumblr where she posts short films derived from her world travels and couples them with broader musings on cinema, art and politics. Last year, Radivojevic made fantastic documentary shorts shot during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Now, just uploaded, is a very different kind of short that uses cut-out animation to both isolate the sounds and sights of a small Mexican town as well as function as a kind of representation of memory. Here’s how she introduces it: In April I took a little trip down the Mexico. I purposely left the camera at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 21, 2012 -
Cahiers du Cinema names Holy Motors the Best Film of 2012
I couldn’t agree with more the top spot on Cahiers du Cinema’s naming of Leos Carax’s melancholy ode to cinematic decline and reinvention, Holy Motors as the best film of the year. At this point it’s #1 on my list too. But the other selections on their top ten…? Let’s just say it’s an eccentric list. David Cronenberg’s experiment in DeLillo adaptation, Cosmopolis, is in the second spot. Interestingly, the two films were compared to each other during Cannes as both are episodic works dealing with protagonists driven around in limousines. Number three is Francis Ford Coppola’s under-seen (including by […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 21, 2012 -
The Blue Velvet Project Goes to Mar Del Plata
Some of the best writing we’ve ever published has been Nicholas Rombes’ Blue Velvet Project, a year-long survey of David Lynch’s classic, done solely through the examination of single frames spaced at 47 second intervals. The series wrapped up a couple of months ago, and I’ve been missing it. The Project carries on, however, landing this week at the 27th Mar Del Plata Festival in Argentina. Each year, the festival publishes one book about cinema, and this year’s is, you guessed it, El Proyecto Terciopelo Azul. In the photo above, Rombes signs copies for festival attendees. I’m excited for him […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2012 -
Larry Clark’s Marfa Girl Gets Exclusive Streaming Release
“This is the future and the future is now,” declares director Larry Clark on the website for his new film, the Rome Grand Prize-winning Marfa Girl. And when Clark says “now,” he means now — the film will stream today, at 6:00 PM Eastern time, for 24 hours, and that may be the only time you’ll ever get a chance to see it. From the site: I will put the film on my first and only website, larryclark.com, which is the only place one will ever be able to see the film…. It will stream for $5.99 for access to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2012 -
Buy a Relationship with James Franco for $6,000
A couple of weeks ago we selected Stephen Elliott’s Happy Baby for our curated Kickstarter page, and since then he’s been adding a number of provocative awards to the campaign. The most interesting was added today: for $6,000, Elliott will transfer to you his relationship with the actor and director James Franco, who starred in his feature About Cherry and owns the rights to his novel The Adderall Diaries. Muses Elliott, “What does that mean?” “I’m not really sure,” he continues. “I can’t promise anything from James, but I’ll send you a notarized document transferring full ownership.” Memorializing and transferring […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 19, 2012 -
“Best Film Not Playing…” Nominees Screen at MOMA
If you’re in New York this weekend head over to the Museum of Modern Art for the museum and Filmmaker‘s annual screenings of the nominees for our “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Award. Playing are Terence Nance’s wildly inventive doc/fiction relationship deconstruction, An Oversimplification of her Beauty (pictured); Amy Seimetz’s psycho-noir romance, Sun Don’t Shine; Alex Karpovsky’s real-life filmmaker comedy, Red Flag; the Zellner Brothers darkly humorous metaphysical exploration, Kid-Thing; and Frank V. Ross’s subtle and affecting relationship drama, Tiger Tail in Blue. I’ll be joining Nick Dawson, Alicia Van Couvering, MoMA’s Josh Siegel and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2012 -
Debating the Future of Hybrid Films at CPH:DOX
“Let’s start before we kill the term,” joked Jakob Hogel during the opening moments of “The Future of Hybrid Films,” a panel that took place last week at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX. Preempting musty debate about the so-called hybrid genre, where various forms — usually documentary and fiction — are combined in single works, Hogel said, “We should be beyond the point of whether hybrid films exist, are dubious or morally wrong. They exist and who cares?” Hogel’s dismissal of hybrid handwringing doesn’t mean that the issues posed by such films aren’t being debated in the film industry. It’s just these debates […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 15, 2012
