There’s a good conversation going on at the always excellent blog of Jon Taplin. Entitled “Who Will the Next Fool Be,” the short piece, which I’m taking the liberty of quoting in its entirety, critiques the recently announced deal in which India’s Reliance may be financing Dreamworks. Here’s Taplin’s post: The movie business reminds me of that old Charlie Rich Tune, “Who will the next fool be?”. The news that a unit of one of India’s largest Conglomerate, Reliance, is contemplating starting a new Dreamworks 2 in what the Times article hints could be horrible terms. OMG! When will the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2008All the industry news seems to break right when we are finishing an issue and don’t have the time to properly parse it. Fortunately, Scott Kirsner is on the case at his CinemaTech blog, beating everyone to the punch with his news of SnagFilms, an interesting new distribution application that will enable filmmakers to receive ad revenue from the internet streaming of their films. More: Snag isn’t going to try to create a destination site for film fans, but is building a video “widget” that can be placed on other sites: a filmmaker’s site, a blog run by an advocacy […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2008Filmmaker is hosting blogs from several of the participants of the various Sundance Labs this summer. Here’s part one of producer/director Deann Borshay Liem’s (Precious Objects of Desire) from the Sundance Documentary Edit and Storytelling Lab, which runs June 21 – 28. Sometimes I refer to myself as “she.” This is because I’m a character in my own film and I have to separate who I am in real life with who I am on screen. Fortunately I’m a Gemini so this splitting into two (or more) doesn’t seem that odd. Any other editor might think this was nuts, but […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 20, 2008Two pieces have been published online reporting on the current financial situation at THINKFilm, owned by David Bergstein, who purchased the company along with Capitol Films in 2006. In IndieWire, Anthony Kaufman details the efforts of some filmmakers to receive the overdue minimum advances they are owed by THINK. He also gets a quote on the issue from THINKFilm CEO Mark Urman. From the piece: A determined, but frustrated, Mark Urman told indieWIRE this week that he’s communicating with his filmmakers and making every effort to get people paid. “I feel terrible if people are hurt by our financial problems,” […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 20, 2008… if you want to do anything other than procrastinating what you are supposed to be doing right now. Actually, do not press here.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 18, 2008If you are a regular — like, hourly — reader of this blog, you know something about In Spring, the short Jamie Stuart piece which was posted on his own site and linked here only to be taken down shortly thereafter. Some (including, I’ll admit, me) wondered if Stuart had, in his continual skirmishing with the confines of publicity in the service of artmaking, crossed some kind of line with this piece, which incorporated a real interview with a misidentified Werner Herzog (who Stuart painted in 2005, shown here) in the THINKfilm office within a fictional mock documentary on the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 13, 2008Here’s writer/director John Magary’s (pictured here with Robert Redford and Vilmos Zsigmond) second dispatch from the Sundance Directors’ Lab: This is my first stab at blogging, okay? I’ve never been a self-starting chronicler, never had a personal essay phase, or a journal, or a sketchbook. I’m not wired that way. I don’t really know how to steal away time in bars or cafes, to reflect on my day in an endearingly scruffy little notebook—even a grocery list is a chore. Long story short, I’m finishing up my second week here, and I have no notes. It’s blurs on top of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 13, 2008If you are in Chicago this next month — or, perhaps, if you’ve got frequent flier miles or simple wanderlust — then I highly recommend checking out Enter Dream, a photo show by writer, photographer and critic Ray Pride, whose work is well known to readers of Filmmaker as well as those of his own Movie City Indie blog. Ray’s evocative photos are visually stunning and haunted by the idea of cinema — they contain potent traces of storytelling, whiffs of dramatic atmosphere, and suggestions of character. Here’s the official spam: The photographs in “Enter Dream” anatomize the geography of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 12, 2008Over at Stream, Eric Kohn has a good write-up of the “Where Film and Internet Collide” event we hosted at the IFC Center last week with the IFP and IndieGoGo. He does a great job of summarizing the interviews with the creators of the various works we screened. Another good report is by the Film Panel Notetaker. Click on the links and read — between the two of them you’ll feel like you were there.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 10, 2008FilmInFocus is running a four-part series on exhibition, from the ultra-small-scale screenings of the microcinema movement to the shape of things to come for blockbuster moviegoing. The first part, Ed Halter’s take on microcinema, is up now.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2008