Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Shit Year Director Cam Archer at Cannes
It is both accurate and reductive to call Cam Archer’s Shit Year, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section, the story of a retiring actress grappling with the emotions produced by her move away from the Hollywood spotlight. Of course, on narrative terms, that is what it’s about. Ellen Barkin plays the actress, who has just given her final talk-show interview, moved to a cabin in the woods, and now spends her days avoiding her neighbors and flashing back to a brief affair she had with a younger actor (Luke Grimes) on the set […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 2, 2010 -
STEVE JOBS ON THE TV INDUSTRY
From today’s D8 conference, a comment by Apple’s Steve Jobs that resonates with the recent conversation here on the blog about internet TV. Q: Hi, I’m from Hillcrest Labs… do you think it’s time to throw out the interface for TV? When will Apple do something there? Jobs: The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go to market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us… ask Google in a few months. So all […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 2, 2010 -
REMEMBERING FLORENT
Director (The Look) and producer (the upcoming Valerie Plame story pic, Fair Game) David Sigal has made a documentary about Florent, the legendary and now shuttered New York meatpacking district restaurant. Scheduled to premiere at the New York Food Film Festival in June, Florent: Queen of the Meat Market is previewed at Nowness, which writes: Until its closure in June 2008, New York bistro Florent was that rare place where you could simultaneously eat a burger, catch a drag act and—if you were lucky—glimpse Calvin Klein. Named after its owner, the indefatigably flamboyant Florent Morellet, during its 23-year existence the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 1, 2010 -
TIFFANY SHLAIN ON LIFE, DEATH, CHANGE AND CONNECTION
Filmmaker and Webby Founder Tiffany Shlain gave this year’s UC Berkeley commencement address in front of 11,500 people at the Haas Pavilion. Her speech mixes a tale of her personal journey with a call to make the most of the connected world the Internet has offered us. The speech ends with a short film and then Shlain dispatched her film crews to interview graduates about their hopes for the future. “I believe if you can name it, you are that much closer to making it happen,” she said. Her speech is below.
by Scott Macaulay on May 30, 2010 -
M.I.A., “BORN FREE”
As the conversation regarding M.I.A. shifts to a debate over who ordered the truffle fries, I thought I should post her latest video, “Born Free,” directed by Romain Gavras, in case you haven’t seen it. M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on May 30, 2010 -
DENNIS HOPPER, R.I.P.
Actor and director Dennis Hopper died today at 74. When I heard the news I started searching on YouTube for some of my favorite Hopper moments — not just Blue Velvet, Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now but also that scene from True Romance, his supporting work in Rebel without a Cause and Giant, the experimental abandon of his underrated The Last Movie, his haunted addition to River’s Edge, and the incredible, Linda Manz-starring Out of the Blue. But then I came across this video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz which is an excellent flashback to not only many of Hopper’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 29, 2010 -
STRATEGIZING YOUR CROWDSOURCING CAMPAIGN
I discovered a couple of excellent posts at the Coffee and Celluloid blog that will help you if you are contemplating or in the process of a crowdsourced funding campaign through a site like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Written by Joey Daoud, the posts chronicle his experience researching and enacting a campaign to raise $9,000 for his documentary on high-school combat robots, Bots High. The campaign was successful — he raised $9,100 — but, as always, the devil is in the details. In the first post, “How to Figure the True Cost of a Kickstarter Project,” he breaks down not only […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 23, 2010 -
@CANNES: “MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER” DIRECTOR DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL
One of the discoveries of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival was a film that actually premiered at SXSW: David Robert Mitchell’s Myth of the American Sleepover. Receiving its international premiere in the Critics Week section, Myth of the American Sleepover is a dreamy, romantic, and wistful take on the amorous longings of our teenage years. It’s set during one night in which Mitchell’s various teen characters crisscross their Michigan town between several sleepovers, all-night slumber parties, and general hang outs. Without stooping to farfetched plot elements or melodramatic contrivances, the film compels our viewing by nailing just the right tone […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 22, 2010 -
THINKING ABOUT GOOGLE TV
At Google’s IO Conference this week, the search giant announced several new products and platforms, including the latest Android operating system, Froyo (named after “frozen yogurt”), and, perhaps most significantly for filmmakers, Google TV. At the heart of Google TV is a simple notion: right now we watch a lot of TV after it is broadcast on our computer simply because a) its creators have placed it there and b) it’s easy to find what we want to watch through internet search. But, if we could watch it on our TV screens? Wouldn’t we rather view it there? At his […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 22, 2010 -
JOSH AND BENNY SAFDIE EXIST!!!
Jamie Stuart and I visited Josh and Benny Safdie at their Red Bucket Films studio on Tuesday to talk about their new film Daddy Longlegs, guerrilla marketing, and other things. He shot and edited, I interviewed, and this is our conversation. Click here to download through Jamie’s site.
by Scott Macaulay on May 14, 2010
