Sheila Nevins thanks the subjects of her docs when receiving a Gotham Tribute. Breakthrough Actor… Melissa Leo.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2008Best Ensemble is a tie: Synechdoche, New York and Vicki Christina Barcelona.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2008Apologies for the typos… Live blogging is harder than it looks. Breakthrough Director, presented by Mickey Rourke and Patricia Clarkson, goes to…. Lance Hammer. Melvin Van Peebles now receiving his Tribute Award with a very cool speech.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2008The evening has just kicked off at Cipriani’s in Wall Street following cocktails at the perhaps appropriately named Museum of Finance across the street. Terrence Howard opened with a performance on acoustic guitar, Michelle Byrd gave her opening remarks and intro’d Aasif Mandvi, the host. (Culinary note: Our table was split on the identity of the opening course, with most calling it an omelette, some calling it a pizza, and others just saying it was pasta.) Mandvi quipped that Jon Stewart was originally asked to host but that he outsourced the gig to him. The first award is Filmmaker‘s award, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2008If you're not attending the Gothams tonight, in addition to the various online updates and Twitter feeds that Jason mentioned below, you can check back to this site where we'll be posting our updates live, as they say, from the heart of the U.S. financial crisis. (The Gothams are being held at Cipriani’s on Wall Street.)
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2008The first wave of Sundance selections has just been announced by the festival with this list of filmmakers who will appear in the fest’s New Frontier program. (Congrats to Filmmaker contributor Mike Plante, whose Lunchfilm series made the cut!) Said Sundance programmer Shari Frilot, “New Frontier is best understood both as a physical space and a metaphor for discovery. It is a convergence of art, film, and technology where creative alliances are formed around innovative methods of cinematic storytelling, and where audiences are drawn in to a story through visual, aural, and tactile stimuli.” This year’s films and filmmakers are […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 1, 2008A few weeks ago we blogged about Killer Film’s 50% equity sale to venture capital fund GC Corp., a deal that will see Killer developing and producing larger-budgeted properties. Today, Jones reports on one such project. From Variety: GC Corp. has bought rights to Israeli TV series “Danny Hollywood,” assigning it to the venture capital fund’s production unit, Killer Films. Story follows three time-traveling journalists investigating the mysterious death of a pop star. Killer will reset the skein in 1960s America.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 1, 2008“How couldn’t you be existentialist in space?” asks Mike Plante in his just-posted interview with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips about his feature, Christmas on Mars. From the piece: Indeed, the film has more existentialism on purpose than accidental ambience. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Coyne said with a laugh. “I think some kind of bleak isolation left over from my childhood in Oklahoma seeped into this. I don’t know if you are feeding off your subconscious, but there are things about making movies that you cannot justify or understand. I like stories and I like intense things, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 1, 2008Congratulations to Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore for receiving the inaugural Sydney Pollack Award at tonight’s tribute to Samuel L. Jackson presented by the American Cinematheque in L.A. Anne Thompson has the story at Variety. From Thompson’s piece: Cinematheque said the award honors “someone who has been of critical importance and continuing influence in nonprofit film exhibition, film preservation and/or independent film promotion and distribution –people whose work Sydney supported and found to be so valuable, who are not often recognized for their efforts.” Cinematheque director Barbara Smith wanted to honor the memory of the late producer-director, who as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 1, 2008Okay, one more music video posting. Via Kottke, who gets a hat tip: In a compilation of 64 videos all shown on the same page, one man recreates “Thriller” — the beats, the howling, the singing — all by himself. This is pretty awesome, like Christian Marclay on speed.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 1, 2008