Authors — Scott Macaulay
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REPORTS FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE DSLR DEBATE
At Filmmaker, we’ve covered the new generation of DSLR cameras, like the Canon 5D and 7D and Nikon D90, quite a bit, and while there’s a huge amount of interest from the indie community about these cameras, there’s also criticism of them as substitutes for professional HD cameras. I came across this morning two blog posts that articulate both sides of the issue. On Philip Johnston’s HD Warrior blog, he’s penned a post titled, “Filming with an HD DSLR: The Things They Don’t Tell You.” Here is his intro: RED Digital Cinema are in the process of producing the worlds […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2010 -
SUNDANCE FROM A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
Over at Huffington Post, Stewart Nusbaumer previews the upcoming Sundance Film Festival from the point of view of its New York visitors. Thelma Adams, Meira Blaustein, Karina Longworth, Mike Maggiore and I all pick some upcoming pre-favorites from the Sundance selection. Here’s me on Josh and Benny Safdie’s Daddy Long Legs, which, it was announced today at indieWIRE, will be available on VOD right after the festival via Rainbow Media’s Sundance Selects (run by IFC). “One New York film I’m especially keen on is Josh and Benny Safdie’s Daddy Long Legs, which stars Frownland director Ronald Bronstein as a hopeless, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 7, 2010 -
BRANDON HARRIS’S MOST OVERLOOKED FILM OF THE YEAR
Over at his Cinema Echo Chamber, Brandon Harris extolls on Kim Gok’s Exhausted, a comically desolate whatzit of South Korean underground cinema. Minimalist and bleak but with a certain repetitive humor, Gok’s film had its U.S. premiere at the Syracuse International Film Festival and went on to play Pusan and Rotterdam, where Harris and I both saw it, but has played in few other places. It is not out in the States, can’t be streamed, as Harris notes, and I never remember seeing it at Kim’s before they closed. From Harris, the plot: An unnamed pimp and prostitute/girlfriend live and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 6, 2010 -
MICHAEL CERA’S ANTI-DRUG PSA…
… in the form of an Islands music video. Here’s Cera, who stars this week in Miguel Arteta’s Youth in Revolt, in the clip directed by Derrick Beckles.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 5, 2010 -
IS A-MINUS THE NEW CINEMATIC B-PLUS?
Over at his 401st Blow blog, producer Noah Harlan (who, one post below, reviews Sundance’s new iPhone app), gets all statistical on Anne Thompson’s post at indieWIRE on the Best Reviewed Films of the Decade. You’ll have to read his post to follow the math that details how the critics might have become softer as the last decade progressed, as evidenced by the average rating for the top 100 films on Rotten Tomatoes having risen from 76% to 90%. There’s a poll you can take to register your opinion as to why this is. I quickly voted for the “critics […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 4, 2010 -
AN EARLY REVIEW OF SUNDANCE’S iPHONE APP
I don’t have an iPhone. There, I’ve said it. I’m still holding onto my Blackberry. (Note to Apple: please let me upgrade to an iPod Touch by putting a camera in it and, while you’re at it, switch to Verizon.) So when Sundance kindly sent me their new Sundance Film Festival iPhone app, I sent it to the most knowledgeable person about apps I know, producer Noah Harlan, whose 2.1. Films has a division, Two Bulls, that makes apps which have included everything from a film footage calculator to an app for Victoria’s Secret. First, here’s the official word from […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 4, 2010 -
THE BEST WAY TO READ A SCREENPLAY ON A MACBOOK
I posted previously about a way to read a screenplay on a Macbook or other laptop by rotating the script page in a PDF reader and then turning the computer so it’s oriented vertically, not horizontally. John August had previously posted a little tutorial about this on his blog, and one day, for inexplicable reasons, that method stopped working on my computer. Whenever I’d advance the page the script would revert back to its normal orientation. I’m sure there’s a good reason for that, and if I spent longer playing around in Preferences I’d find it. (I’m sure there’s also […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 4, 2010 -
MEETING SPENCER SUSSER AND OTHER SUNDANCE FILMMAKERS
The Sundance Film Festival is posting a series of “Meet the Artists” videos on its YouTube page in which ’10 filmmakers discuss the films they’ll be premiering there in three weeks. Here’s Hesher director Mark Ruffalo and screenwriter Christopher Thornton. Others up include Davis Guggenheim and Diane Bell.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 4, 2010 -
The 25 Best American Independent Films of the Decade
Concluding a decade in which specialty film distribution boomed and busted, and in which the identity and composition of filmed entertainment itself was challenged, perhaps it’s not surprising that David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, the ultimate unstable cinematic text, wound up on top of Filmmaker Magazine’s Editor’s Poll of the Best American Independent Films of the ’00s. Begun as television pilot but finally assembled as a feature according to the unconscious urgings of its creator, Mulholland Drive is a dyspeptic musing on the cinematic dream machine, one that launched an actual movie star (Naomi Watts) while also serving notice that the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2009 -
AVATAR: THE MAKING OF THE BOOTLEG
Hollywood can compete, but the pirates are always fast on their heels….
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 29, 2009
