Manohla Dargis notes the passing of film historian, critic and filmmaker Paul Arthur in the New York Times. An excerpt: He was first published in the early 1970s, and over the next few decades he wrote fluidly and accessibly on a range of topics, notably avant-garde cinema but also film noir and documentary. His work appeared in publications including Artforum, Film Comment, Cineaste, The Village Voice and USA Today magazine. For several years starting in the mid-1980s he served on the board for two venerable avant-garde film institutions in New York: the Collective for Living Cinema, an adventurous screening space, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2008Here’s a roundup of some stuff that caught my eye in the blogosphere this weekend. There’s a lively discussion going on over at Indiewire regarding the Tribeca Film Festival’s “embargo” rule that attempts to prohibit press from writing about pre-screened films until after their Tribeca premiere. Of course, in the world of mainstream journalism, embargos happen all the time; what irks a pretty passionate group of responding posters is the TFF’s attempt to be strict with this rule when it comes to the online journalists who can often positively motivate a fan base leading up to a film’s fest premiere. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2008With Austin’s SXSW 2008 now a memory, perhaps it’s appropriate that Spencer Parsons’ essay on the changing topography of the city itself has just gone up at the FilmInFocus site. The critic, professor and filmmaker (his feature I’ll Come Running, starring Melonie Diaz, should appear on the festival circuit this year) pens an ode to the places the city has lost since Rick Linklater’s Slacker memorialized a whole stretch of its countercultural topography. And despite the inherent whiff of nostalgia, Parsons finds much to like in Austin today while writing more broadly about the ways artists appropriate and create from […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 26, 2008Sometimes people approach us at Filmmaker who need, simply, a filmmaker — someone to do for-hire work documenting some aspect of their life. For all of these folks and as a public service we pass on the following video, linked to at Boing Boing and which there is an extended discussion about here.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2008Over at his Esotika Erotica Psychotica blog, Mike explains why he’s been slacking on posting and watching Lost instead. His explanation contains a great passage from Raul Ruiz’s Poetics of Cinema that makes me want to dust off my copy. But, I do occasionally “watch TV” via DVD rentals, streaming episodes, and online downloads. For some reason, at the beginning of February, something convinced me to start watching Lost. And then, since February 9th, I’ve watched the entire first three seasons, plus the five episodes of season four that have aired so far. This amounts to 76 45 minute episodes. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2008Scott Timberg’s L.A. Times profile of Bret Easton Ellis — in a piquantly titled column called “Reassessments” — is worth a read. It’s got this strong section on contemporary storytelling’s fixation on defined, understandable characters, which includes quotes by A.O. Scott and Jonatham Lethem: Of all the things the literary world holds against Ellis, his lack of interest in characters with recognizable psychological depth may be the most unforgivable. His players are impassive to the point of opaque. They resemble each other so completely they almost cease to exist. In “Psycho” and “Glamorama” people are often mistaken for each other: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2008Over at his Cinema Echo Chamber, Brandon Harris interviews Tom Quinn, writer/director of the excellent indie feature The New Year Parade, which screens tonight at the IFC Center. The film won the Grand Prize at Slamdance this year and is also a graduate of the IFP Rough Cuts Lab, which is where I originally encountered it. Harris originally wrote about the film here on the Filmmaker blog, and in the intro to the interview at Cinema Echo Chamber he dubs the film a “naturalistic, emotionally resonant look at the year long dissolution and repair of a South Philadelphia Irish family, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2008Screen Daily today runs a must-read edited excerpt of financier Ben Waisbren’s recent remarks in Berlin about film financing, the credit markets, slate deals, and the movie business overall. Here’s how they intro his piece: “In a prescient speech more than a month ago in Berlin, financier Ben Waisbren talked of impending calamity for the US wave of slate financing – banks won’t touch such mega-deals again until there is more transparency and a better alignment of investor and studio interests.”
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2008Asia Argento — the writer, director and actor — has been justly celebrated this week by Nathan Lee in the Village Voice on the occasion of her starring role in Olivier Assayas’s latest thriller, Boarding Gate. Lee calls her “not only the most fearless actor of her generation, but also one of the most intelligent and commanding,” an assessment with which I concur. His piece is hard to excerpt, so I suggest you simply go to the link and read the whole thing. Also look for Travis Crawford’s piece on Mother of Tears, her father Dario’s latest feature in which […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 20, 2008In her Deadline Hollywood Daily, Nikki Finke links to and comments on a Bloomberg.com report that states that the Sundance Channel is for sale and that Cablevision, which already owns the IFC, may be a potential buyer. From Andy Fixmer’s Bloomberg report: The Sundance Channel, the cable network built around Robert Redford’s annual film festival, is for sale and Cablevision Systems Corp. may be the eventual buyer, according to Pali Research. Owners General Electric Co., CBS Corp. and Redford are seeking $400 million to $500 million for the channel, which has 26 million subscribers, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 20, 2008