Authors — Scott Macaulay
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ARCADE FIRE’S ELEVATOR MUSIC
From the very cool folks at Coolhunting comes this posting about a great online music archive. The French website La Blogotheque is posting a series of “take away shows” which feature musicians doing impromptu gigs on streets, in parks, or, in the case of Arcade Fire, in an elevator. Here’s Coolhunting: (Take-Away Shows) are a collection of live, unedited videos of musicians playing in unusual settings. The artists’ unpredictable interaction with the environment and the reactions of often clueless bystanders result in a genius blend of music video and reality TV. With a sharp eye for incorporating improvised performances into […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2007 -
NOW IT’S DARK…
MOMA this week offers U.S. viewers’ a rare chance to see Sophie Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, starring Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek. From the film’s site: THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA offers an introduction into some of Zizek’s most exciting ideas on fantasy, reality, sexuality, subjectivity, desire, materiality and cinematic form. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA applies Zizek’s ideas to the cinematic canon, in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2007 -
FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES REMEMBER JIM LYONS
Indiewire has created a tribute page to Jim Lyons with contributions from John Cameron MItchell, Tom Gilroy, Esther Robinson, Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente, Amy Taubin and Marcus Hu. Please click over there and read these very personal and heartfelt remembrances of Jim.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2007 -
James Lyons, 1960 – 2007
Jim Lyons died on Thursday in New York. If you didn’t know Jim personally and just recognize his name from movie credits, then you most probably remember him as an editor. His credits include four films by Todd Haynes – Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine and Far from Heaven – as well as Spring Forward, The Virgin Suicides, and Silver Lake Life. Most recently, he was the co-editor of A Walk into the Sea: The Danny Williams Story. The latter, a documentary by Esther Robinson about her uncle’s relationship with Andy Warhol and The Factory, won the Teddy at Berlin this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 15, 2007 -
IFP ROUGH CUT LAB DEADLINE APPROACHING
A couple of years ago I worked on a new program with the Independent Feature Project: the Rough Cut Labs. The idea came, in part, from my realization that much of maintaining a filmmaking career involves making a series of mistakes and then remembering not to make them on the next film you do. But if you’re making your first film, what if somebody could tell you beforehand what mistakes you might be likely to make? Or, forget mistakes, what if people who have been through the trenches could let you know what to expect as your film moves from […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 15, 2007 -
WE ARE FEEDING YOU MORE
We’ve added two new RSS feeds to the site. One feed brings you our various web exclusives which, right now, include a rough-cut scene from John Sayles’s Honeydripper and Ray Pride’s feature on Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, and the other feed brings you Nick Dawson’s weekly “Director Interviews,” which this week features Year of the Dog‘s Mike White. Click on the RSS symbols, search for them, or cut and paste the code above into your feed reader.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 13, 2007 -
YOU DON’T KNOW JACK
In the issue of Filmmaker we just sent to the printer today (which explains the slacking on the blog), Steve Gallagher interviews Mary Jordan, director of Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis. The doc portrait of artist and filmmaker Jack Smith opens in New York tomorrow at the Film Forum, and I highly recommend it. Here’s an excerpt from Steve’s piece: Filmmaker: Were you surprised to discover that Jack Smith’s work is so political? Jordan: I’m a human rights person. I was a social activist myself before I got interested in Jack. So, for me, this documentary is a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2007 -
RAY TAKES DISTRIBUTION POST AT SIDNEY KIMMEL
Dave McNary reports in Variety the exciting news that Bingham Ray, former head of October Films and United Artists, will head up a new theatrical distribution arm at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. The piece is short on details, but the coupling of Ray, the distributor behind the U.S. releases of films by Mike Leigh, Todd Solondz and Lars von Trier, among others, with the production company behind such films as United 93 is very promising right off the bat. More to follow…
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2007 -
ASPEN SHORTSFEST REPORT
Brandon Harris, who blogs at Cinema Echo Chamber, covered the Aspen ShortsFest for us and contributes here a round-up in advance of his more detailed coverage in the Summer issue: One of the premier showcases for emerging directorial talent in North America, the Aspen ShortsFest concluded its 16th addition this past weekend. The Academy Award qualifying festival looks abroad for a majority of its programming, with over seventy-five percent of its fifty-nine competition films originating from outside the United States. With crowds made up largely of local film fans, zero sales activity and industry involvement at a minimum, this quaint […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2007 -
LITTLE BODIES
There’s an eccentric tale of gentrification, “Revenge of the Mouse Coffins,” in this week’s Village Voice involving… Michel Gondry’s apartment. Here’s the lede: Filmmaker Michel Gondry—director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep—has taken over my old East Village apartment. I’m talking about the large, run-down Avenue B loft we got kicked out of last year after a long, expensive legal battle. The one my husband and his brother took turns living in for 15 years. The one we mistakenly believed was rent-stabilized, that we’d live in forever. The piece, by Sari Botton, edges towards […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 4, 2007
