Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“MEEK’S CUTOFF” TRAILER
Here’s the trailer for Kelly Reichardt’s new Meek’s Cutoff, which is the cover story of our Spring, 2011 issue.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 26, 2011 -
Robbo In Berlin For Yelling To The Sky
Filmmaker Victoria Mahoney premiered her first feature,Yelling to the Sky, in Competition at the Berlin Film Festival this month, and arriving in the city with her was British graffiti artist Robbo. And by the time of the film’s premiere, the city was the richer for a wall-sized mural of the film’s lead character, Sweetness (Zoe Kravitz). Below, Mahoney writes about the process of finding a home for Robbo’s work. Her story has an ironic coda given Robbo’s recent street rivalry with Banksy. Read on. I always knew I’d be mounting a graffiti piece in tandem with the premiere of Yelling […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 26, 2011 -
HARMONY KORINE SHOOTS URBAN OUTFITTERS CATALOG
Director Harmony Korine has shot the Spring, 2011 Urban Outfitters catalog. From The Fox is Back: “It’s a pretty crazy looking affair. Lots of analog photos that have been fucked up in some way or another. It seems to me like less of a fashion catalog and more of a collection of art, which I think is admirable for UO to be doing.” I can’t find these images on the Urban Outfitters site, but they appear to be all from a print-only piece that arrived in people’s mailboxes this week. Click on the link for scans of many of the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2011 -
TURN OUT: DARREN ARONOFSKY’S “BLACK SWAN”
This piece was originally printed in the Fall 2010 issue. Black Swan is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Darren Aronofsky), Best Actress (Natalie Portman), Best Cinematography (Matthew Libatique), Best Editing (Andrew Weisblum). Darren Aronofsky was developing a project based on Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1846 novella, The Double, when he happened to go to a production of another Russian work, Swan Lake, the 1875 ballet composed by Peter Tchaikovsky. Seeing the ballet’s White Swan and Black Swan played by the same ballerina, Aronofsky experienced what he called a “Eureka” moment, realizing that The Double’s themes of splintering identity and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2011 -
MIKE HEDGE’S SPECTACULAR YEAR
A couple of years ago filmmaker Mike Hedge did a great photo-compilation video out of SXSW and now he’s emailed his list with a new video that’s a diary of his 2010. I like this idea. Rather than my seldomly-updated journal something like this would actually make me want to revisit my own musings on the past. Watch “Every Day is Spectacular” here.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2011 -
JAMIE STUART AND THE CITY SYMPHONY
At the Chicago Sun-Times in a column entitled “The do-it-yourself auteurs,” Steven Boone writes about the city symphony film and ties it to Jamie Stuart’s recent Idiot with a Tripod. He puts Stuart in a category of “DDIY” (the extra “d” is for “digital”) filmmakers who are the “garage Kubricks” once prophesized by William Gibson. There’s also a video by Kevin B. Lee with text by Boone. Check it out below.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2011 -
WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS, 2/20/11
Here are a few things in my Instapaper this week. In GQ, Mark Harris looks back at “The Day the Movies Died” and the preeminence of easy marketing over original ideas. An excerpt: Such an unrelenting focus on the sell rather than the goods may be why so many of the dispiritingly awful movies that studios throw at us look as if they were planned from the poster backward rather than from the good idea forward. Marketers revere the idea of brands, because a brand means that somebody, somewhere, once bought the thing they’re now trying to sell. YouTube has […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 20, 2011 -
Kanye West Debuts Enter The Lights ( All Of The Void )
As followers of my Twitter feed know, for me Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was the defining album of 2010. A new video directed by Hype Williams has just dropped for “All of the Lights,” featuring Rihanna and Kid Cudi. I hope something — a check, case of Cristal, or maybe just an autographed poster — is winging its way to Mr. Gaspar Noe. (Or, on second thought, there are a bunch of songs left on the album without videos. “Monster” is already taken, but what about “Hell of a Life”? I’d love to see what the great […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 19, 2011 -
“PUTTY HILL,” “ZERO BRIDGE” OPEN IN NYC
Two of Filmmaker’s “25 New Faces” have excellent movies opening today that are worthy of your first weekend patronage. From Tariq Tapa, who made our list in 2008, is Zero Bridge. Here’s what I wrote about him back then: “Everything I used to make this movie, from soup to nuts, fit in one little backpack,” says Tariq Tapa, whose Zero Bridge, a neorealist tale of unexpected friendship and moral complication set in the Indian-occupied city of Srinagar, Kashmir, is set to explode on the festival circuit this year. Tapa, who not only directed this first feature but shot, edited and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 18, 2011 -
BUILDING AN ONLINE MARKETING PLAN
At the Los Angeles New Music Seminar yesterday Ian Rogers from the fulfillment service Topspin gave a talk titled “Getting Practical: a Step-by-Step Sales Plan to Building an Online Sales Plan That Works.” Topspin has posted the PowerPoint slides on its website. The specific plan is oriented towards musicians, but Topspin services filmmakers too, and there’s relevant info here for those looking to build an online business. It’s all about converting casual listeners to fans and followers, getting them to throw down for the swanky merch and not just the buck downloads, and there are recommendations here for maintaining a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 18, 2011
