Authors — Scott Macaulay

DUTCH TREATS

I’ve still got most of my Sundance commentary to get up and I’m on my way to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where I’ll try to file some short reports on the fest and the concurrent Cinemart, which is a great financing conference that plans, this year, to begin a dialogue about how it can be reshaped for the future. (Full disclosure: I’m on the CineMart’s Advisory Board.) From the festival’s Tiger Daily: Eschewing conference and panel formats and instead deploying the tried and tested device of brainstorming towards a consensus, IFFR management and industry experts will sit down this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2008
CONSIDERING ALL THINGS JAMIE STUART

While Jamie Stuart has been here at Sundance shooting the goings on, NPR has been shooting him for a short video segment that’s now up on their website. We have no idea what Jamie will turn in this year, although we do know that it won’t be all shot in the Albertson’s parking lot.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2008
A GLIMPSE AT CHOKE

Here’s a short piece on Clark Gregg’s Choke, one of the few Sundance pics to have secured a deal mid-festival. (Hat tip: Hollywood Elsewhere.)
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2008
FROZEN RIVER TO SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Sharon Swart and Mike Jones in Variety are reporting that Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, a character-based thriller starring Melissa Leo which was the first film I saw at Sundance and one of the best, has sold to Sony PIctures Classics for a low-to-mid six-figure sum. I’ll try to get some further thoughts about this film up on the blog before the end of the festival.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 23, 2008
NEW CAMERAS, NEW FRONTIERS

Writer and d.p. David Leitner sent us this report about two new cameras that can be seen here at the Sundance Film Festival.Located in the basement of a small commercial mall on upper Main Street across from the Egyptian theater, the annual Sundance technology showcase known as New Frontier on Main is particularly worth a visit this year due to two product introductions poised to rock the world of low-budget HD indie production. Word is already out about Sony’s EX1, a Handycam-type camcorder bearing both XDCAM EX and CineAlta logos for a strikingly low $7,790 suggested retail price. In a nutshell, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 23, 2008
NICK DAWSON INTERVIEWS U2 3D DIRECTOR CATHERINE OWENS..

… over at the Filmmaker Director Interviews.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 23, 2008
HEATH LEDGER, R.I.P.

Sad, sad news about a great actor who meant so much to the film community. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2008
SUNDANCE BUSINESS AT THE MIDPOINT

It happened maybe a day later than last year, but the acquisitions floodgates have opened a bit at the Sundance Film Festival. But it wasn’t the typical first-weekend films that enthused distributors. In Variety, Ann Thompson is reporting that Focus Features has bought Andrew Fleming’s Hamlet 2, which debuted at the unsexy time of Monday at 5:30 in a deal she pegs at over $10 million for worldwide rights. The film stars Steve Coogan as an English teacher who writes a sequel to Shakespeare’s play in other to rescue the school’s theater department. Perhaps more significantly, the film is directed […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2008
SUNDANCE REVIEW: THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD

Sean McGinly’s debut feature The Great Buck Howard is a curious, small-scale relationship comedy/drama about an over-the-hill entertainer and his young, directionless-in-life assistant. Colin Hanks stars as the assistant, Troy, who signs up for the gig after impulsively bolting law school and the career track his dad, played by Hanks’s real-life dad Tom, is pushing him towards. A wiggy John Malkovich is the entertainer – specifically, a mentalist, whose claim to fame is having appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson 61 times (but never in the last ten years of the show, he ruefully admits as one point). […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2008
STONING BUSH

Michael Fleming has a surprising story up at Variety: Oliver Stone is set to make a feature about George W. Bush. Before the strike, if he can. Josh Brolin will play Bush. Here’s Stone discussing the project and the screenplay, which is written by Nixon co-scripter Stanley Weiser: “It’s a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to ‘Nixon,’ to give a sense of what it’s like to be in his skin,” Stone told Daily Variety. “But if ‘Nixon’ was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone. People have turned my political ideas into a cliche, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2008

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