As we pass the half-way point, I want to thank all of our guest bloggers — Pamela, M. Dot, Alicia, and Brandon — who’ve been covering the IFP Filmmaker Conference. But as GreenCine pointed out today, there are other places to get your vicarious Conference fix. The Film Panel Notetaker has several long and detailed accounts of the various panel discussions. And Scott Kirsner has several long posts as well on his CinemaTech blog. In one, while listening to THINKfilm’s Mark Urman discuss the challenge of publicizing a film in the internet age, Kirsner goes web-surfing to the THINKfilm site […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2007The IFP Filmmaker’s Conference is this week at the Puck Building (I’m moderating a talk with Crackel’s Tony Lisano in about an hour) and you’ll see some new and other familiar faces on the blog this week. Several filmmakers and journalists will be reporting in everthing from the various panels and events to their own experience navigating the Conference with their projects. So, check back often this week…
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 17, 2007Over at his Variety blog, “The Circuit,” Mike Jones writes in his Toronto wrap-up about an encounter with one of the Canada/U.S. border crossing officials: The border agent at the Toronto airport held me at the desk, studying my business card. He was trying to think up the title of a film he’d seen long ago. He’d scoured the internet for it and come up empty. As the line grew behind me, he described it as a story of a man abused by his wife. It involved drinking, a child, poverty, and more drinking. He leaned forward, pointing his pen, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2007Over at his blog, Anthony Kaufman posts a letter from Ted Hope saluting Mike Ryan, who was named one of Variety‘s 10 Producers to Watch. He begins: Despite — or maybe because of — working in the film business, it is rare that I encounter the individual that is clearly driven by passion for film, knowledgable on a wide range of subjects, has a cultivated and constantly evolving aesthetic, and lives and breathes in accordance with principals and politics that they have fully thought out and committed to; to me all those things should be up on the PGA website […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2007Alfonso Cuaron’s latest film is playing at the Toronto Film Festival, but you can see it now, for free, online, below… It’s his collaboration with Jonas Cuaron and author Naomi Klein that accompanies Klein’s latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing summarizes the book’s thesis thusly: …present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. After a disaster (war, tsunami, terrorist attack), you can push your agenda for worsening labor conditions, looser regulation, and pocket-lining exercises (Enron, Halliburton) while the reeling, disaster-struck population of the world has its attention […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 9, 2007A week ago on Indiewire, Agnes Varun posted a “Doc Filmmakers Guide to the IFP Market,” which is full of solid advice from Market vets to help you navigate the upcoming conference (Sept. 16 – 19). Today, on the Renew Media blog, she posts a follow-up: the entirety of a 1,200 word piece by Tracy Heather Strain, a seven-year Market vet. It’s full of practical advice that anyone attending the Market should read.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2007In what Gregg Goldstein of The Hollywood Reporter proclaims a “seismic shift of power in the independent film community,” CAA agent Bart Walker, previously the head of their NYC film office and rep to such directors as Sofia Coppola, Julie Taymor and Julian Schnabel, has left the agency to join Cinetic Media. THR reports that Cinetic’s John Sloss and Walker will form a new division, Cinetic Management. From the joint statement Sloss and Walker released: We see Cinetic as a new kind of service company, one that will create innovative structures that benefit filmmakers as well as financiers so that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2007Ronnie Bronstein’s film, co-hosted by Lodge Kerrigan… a rare screening, tonight, IFC Center/New York, 7:30…. see you there.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2007Perhaps because Gross doesn’t write for a daily outlet but more likely because the erudition of his criticism is genuinely thrilling, the occasional essays on film by screenwriter Larry Gross pack a punch within our metacritic’d, tomato-splattered blogosphere. Here he is with an early appreciation of Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There that’s just gone online at Film Comment. “How can a work not give us politics and yet be so political?” he asks in a piece that opens by quoting Jean-Godard, and Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari and ends by considering how Haynes’s film fits into a moment signified by […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 4, 2007Okay, here’s a link to an Ain’t It Cool News report that links to the trailer of a film I’m really excited about seeing in Toronto: Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears, the conclusion of the trilogy that began with the brilliant Suspira and Inferno. The early word on the film, which stars Asia Argento, Udo Kier, Daria Nicolodi, among others, is good. For those who don’t know the first film in the series (and since the Mother of Tears trailer is not able to be embedded), here, below, is the charmingly old school U.S. trailer for
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 2, 2007