Authors — Scott Macaulay
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WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FOCUS FEATURES FILM?
On its 10th anniversary year, Focus Features is running a poll on Facebook asking its viewers to select their 10 favorite Focus films. So far, the results are favoring Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain, but my list also includes Greenberg, Lust, Caution and The Constant Gardener. Head over to Facebook to vote for yourself.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 11, 2012 -
Luke Matheny Tells You How to Get an Agent
The auspiciously-titled National Film Society is, according to its YouTube page, “a new media studio co-founded by Los Angeles filmmakers Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco, who’ve decided to take their talents to YouTube. They produce original content, showcase amazing movies, interview talented creators and make fun of each other as much as possible.” The page has short films, interviews about acting and film school (as in, to go or not), and even a (nepotistic) awards show. Below is Academy Award-winning short filmmaker Luke Matheney on getting an agent.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2012 -
SEAN MCMANUS, JOSH WELSH PROMOTED TO FIND CO-PRESIDENTS
Congratulations to long-time staff members Sean McManus and Josh Welsh for their appointment today as Co-Presidents of Film Independent. Independent filmmakers know both men well as McManus has been serving as Senior Director and Welsh the Director of Artist Development. The two men replace Dawn Hudson, who left FIND to become the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The press release, issued today, follows: FILM INDEPENDENT APPOINTS SEAN MC MANUS & JOSH WELSH AS CO-PRESIDENTS LOS ANGELES (January 10, 2012) — Today, the Film Independent Board Chairman Bill Condon announced that Senior Director Sean Mc Manus […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2012 -
CPH:DOX Film Festival
Any great film festival needs to do two things. The first is establish an identity, a curatorial purpose that draws attendees by promising them something defined, different and necessary. And the second, far harder thing to do is to constantly upend that identity, throwing enough curveballs so that visitors know they’ll be challenged on every trip. Finishing it’s 9th year this past November, Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX does both these things brilliantly. Positioned just before the mammoth doc bellwether IDFA, CPH:DOX takes as its mission the challenging of staid notions of the documentary form itself. CPH:DOX director Tine Fischer told Sight and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2012 -
Rewind
One year ago in this spot I cautiously heralded “signs of life” in the independent film world, citing, among other things, all the independently financed features (Black Swan, Winter’s Bone, The Kids Are All Right) headed for the Oscars. A month after I wrote my piece, Sundance 2011 concluded with a record number of acquisitions, which included films like the tough, defiantly independent Martha Marcy May Marlene and the no-budget Another Earth by none other than Fox Searchlight. And while American independents didn’t sweep the Oscars, they did figure prominently, with a Best Actress win for Natalie Portman. But, as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2012 -
Let Me Out: Ti West on The Innkeepers
The problem with so many horror films today is that you feel like you’ve seen them before. I’m not talking about their plots or characters because ghosts, vampires and serial killers have been and will be dramatized again and again. No, I’m talking about the feeling of watching these films, the internal clock that prepares you for this jolt by minute three, that one by minute 10 and a final shocker just before, or after, the closing credits. Among the many excellent qualities of writer-director Ti West’s filmmaking is its refusal to be straitjacketed by the more programmatic notions of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2012 -
TRAN ANH HUNG TALKS ABOUT “NORWEGIAN WOOD”
For many Japanese readers — and readers around the world too, actually — Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood is one of those novels, a book read during youth that somehow defines, at least for a few years, your inner self. Like Catcher in the Rye, it’s a book readers feel they have an intimate relationship with, which makes it also a tough film adaptation. A filmmaker can always do the plot and the characters, but what about capturing that something else? With his adaptation of Murakami’s 1987 novel, director Tran Anh Hung (Cyclo, The Scent of the Green Papaya) has shaken […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2012 -
SUNDANCE TRAILER WATCH: “KEEP THE LIGHTS ON”
One of the films I’m most anticipating at Sundance 2012 is Keep the Lights On from writer/director Ira Sachs (The Delta, 40 Shades of Blue). The film essays art, autobiography, and New York gay culture in the 1980s, ’90s and early aughts, and even before its arrival it has spawned a rich website that riffs on all of those themes. Just posted at that site is the film’s teaser trailer, embedded below. Keep The Lights On — Trailer from KTLO Movie on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2012 -
JAY SCHEIB ON FASSBINDER’S “WORLD OF WIRES”
For many years Welt am Draht, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 three-and-a-half hour, made-for-TV science fiction opus was one of the late German directors’ most underscreened films. Dazzlingly stylish, and with narrative and thematic concerns anticipating the cyberpunk themes that would take root in science fiction more than a decade later, the film was only shown in America once in 1997 — that is, before it was restored and received a short run at MoMA in 2010. Fassbinder was quoted in MoMA’s catalogue as saying the film, translated as World on a Wire, is “a very beautiful story that depicts a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 7, 2012 -
CINEMA EYE AND FILMMAKER ANNOUNCE 2012 HETERODOX AWARD NOMINEES
Here’s the just issued press release announcing the nominees for the 2011 Heterodox Award, given by Cinema Eye Honors and sponsored by Filmmaker. New York – The Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking today announced the five nominees for its second annual Cinema Eye Heterodox Award, sponsored by Filmmaker Magazine. The 2012 Heterodox Award will be presented at the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking on January 11 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York. The Cinema Eye Heterodox Award honors a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production. These […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 3, 2012
