Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, which opens this year’s Cannes Film Festival Directors Fortnight, has just premiered online. The film stars Vincent Gallo, newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, Y Tu Mama, Tambien’s Maribel Verdu, Carmen Maura and Klaus Maria Brandauer, and it is posted below.
by Scott Macaulay on May 3, 2009In our current issue there’s a piece on still cameras used to make movies, and now we’ve got motion picture cameras used to shoot stills. Of course, motion picture cameras have been able to shoot stills for a while, but you wouldn’t expect to see one on a magazine cover. This month, photographer Greg Williams has photographed Megan Fox for the cover of Esquire using the RED ONE camera. From the site: For the first time in Esquire‘s history (and, we imagine, magazine history in general), a cover image was shot as a video. Using the RedONE, a video camera […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2009I twittered this, but it deserves its own blog post: Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian discusses the rise of the exclamation mark in today’s email culture. As someone who was called out recently for excessive use of the exclamation mark in my emails — punctuation I rarely use in other writing — I found this article fascinating. (I’ve also been challenged by my editorial practice in Filmmaker of using exclamation marks to connote laughter rather than using (laughs). An excerpt: Shipley is comment editor of the New York Times, and Schwalbe, editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books. Those of you thinking that […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2009Linda Wissmath is the Equpment Supervisor, School of Film/Video, California Institute for the Arts, and she attended NAB this year and kindly offered to share her thoughts with Filmmaker readers. Wissmath’s take on several new cameras is a nice tie-in to Roberto Quezada-Dardon’s piece in the new Filmmaker on directors making movies with their new DSLR cameras. The big news in acquisition this year is the pressure being put on the video divisions of companies by their DSLR divisions. These divisions appear to stay very separate, and even though Canon had their DSLR cameras at NAB there seemed to be […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 29, 2009I received a warning email from a friend telling me that at least two cases of apartment rental fraud have been reported in the days leading up to the Cannes Film Festival. These involve fake rental agencies that are advertising on the ‘net, collecting 100% deposits, and then vanishing overnight. The Cannes Chamber of Commerce is on it, and there is info (in French) on their website. In short, if you are traveling to Cannes, book in either a hotel or through an agency or renter who you are sure is reliable. In fact, it might be worth a call […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2009The Sundance Institute has announced 12 projects for its annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, which take place at the Sundance Resort in Utah from June 2- 26. Congrats to all the directors and writers, including the two on the list — Benh Zeitlin and Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, who appeared on our 2008 “25 New Faces” list. From the press release: Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced the 12 projects selected for its annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, taking place at the Sundance Resort in Utah from June 2-26, 2009. Under the leadership of Michelle Satter, Director […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2009It was a really nice evening last night at the new Cooper Square Hotel where actress Katie Holmes hosted an IFP 30th Anniversary Spring Event. The event was co-chaired by producer Hunter Gray (Memorial Day, Zero Bridge, Momma’s Man, Half Nelson, pictured at right) and producer Anthony Bregman (Synecdoche, New York, Sleep Dealer, Friends with Money, and Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s upcoming The Extra Man, which stars Holmes, pictured at left). In his remarks, Bregman talked about Holmes’s long history with independent and specialty films, including roles in The Ice Storm, Go, Thank You for Smoking and Pieces […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2009The IFP is announcing today Envision, a two-day forum jointly produced by the IFP and the U.N. in which film and both live and virtual discussion will be used to address significant global issues. There will be 12 screenings, presentations and panel discussions, according to the press release, “rooted in the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.” The release goes on to say, “In our debut year, there will be a special focus on the MDG’s impact on women. The UN’s Millennium Development Goals are to: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2009In the current issue of Filmmaker we feature the last of Bomb It director Jon Reiss’s fantastic three-part series on DIY distribution. In part one he outlined an alternative vision of DIY theatrical distribution; in part two he discusses DIY DVD distribution; and in part three in the current issue he discusses DIY web marketing. This third part will most likely be Jon’s last in the series — he’s writing a book about all of this that should be out later in the year — and I’m curious what practical articles you, our readers, would like to read about next. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2009I’ve been meaning to blog about this interview with director Ti West by Karina Longworth over at Spout for a couple of days now. (I missed it when I first posted but caught up with it through Karina’s Twitter feed when she tweeted that after the interview director West was forbidden from doing press.) You should check out the piece, but, in a nutshell, West alleges that the version of his new The House of the Devil, screening this week at Tribeca, is “not my version,” and that the financiers, Dark Sky Films, excised a four-minute scene in order to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 25, 2009