I was walking down St. Mark’s Place the other day and saw that a CBBG fashion store is going in at the site of the old Fillmore East. And, Hilly’s been talking about moving the legendary but now shuttered rock club to Las Vegas. So, I guess now is a good time to link to Braden King’s new Sonic Youth video, “Do You Believe in Rapture.” It’s his loving elegy to the club in all of its grimy, decaying, sticker-over-stickered, disgusting bathroom-ed glory, and it contains Super 8 footage from Jem Cohen. Also: Claire Denis’s sensuously jittery video for another […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2006Over at his blog, Doug Block responds to a comment I made about his interview (linked below) with Sujewa Ekanayake about the Truly Indie release of his 51 Birch Street. Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker was a tad disappointed that I didn’t do more hardcore number crunching, but there’s a reason for that. When we signed the deal, Truly Indie asked me not to (largely because they’re considering raising their fees at some point). Personally, I think that’s a bit silly, since if filmmakers knew how relatively low the cost is, they’d be flocking to Truly Indie’s door. But TI’s Kelly […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2006Because it was in the “Small Business” section, some of you may have missed this piece in the New York Times on the future of film. An excerpt: A WEDDING, as the saying goes, is the beginning of a new life. But for Paul and Kristine Korver, it was also the start of a novel business. Soon after they married, they founded Fifty Foot Films, a Hollywood-based company that is dedicated to fixing major life events on film — a medium that many videographers regard as too risky, sensitive and pricey to be profitable. In the last four years, the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 15, 2006I received the following press release about a foundation formed in the memory of director and actress Adrienne Shelly. The Adrienne Shelly Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the memory of Writer/Director/Actress Adrienne Shelly, is being founded by her husband, Andy Ostroy. Plans include a Womens’ Filmmaking Scholarship Fund, with a particular emphasis on awarding film school scholarships and helping women make the transition from acting to directing. “I know what Adrienne would want most would be to help women get a chance to pursue their dream,” says Ostroy. More initiatives from the foundation will be announced at a later […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2006Via Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical is this YouTube link to Francesco Vezzoli’s Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula. Starring Karen Black, Milla Jovovich, Courtney Love, Gore Vidal, and Oscar-bound Helen Mirren, the short film, which was exhibited at both the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial, campily critiques the periodic influx of fashion designers and promoters into the art world. And, from the link on both Cinematical and GreenCine, I learned a new abbreviation — NSFW. As in, “not safe for work.”
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2006Back in 1995 producer Ted Hope wrote a seminal piece for Filmmaker entitled “Indie Film is Dead,” in which he listed quite a few reasons why independent filmmaking was getting tougher and tougher. Go back and look at the piece and you’ll see that many of Hope’s industry criticisms hold true today. Here’s one: “The film industry, like all others, mystifies by design. All industries create their own vernacular, keeping the have-nots clouded in confusion. Variety takes this talent to an art form. The neophyte needs a class in how to read the trades, let alone understand them. Where is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2006Last year director and d.p. Patryk Rebisz wrote in Filmmaker about making his short film Between You and Me entirely with a still camera in burst mode. He just emailed about his next project, a lovely music video for the band Plus/Minus in which he uses the same way of shooting and 170 burning Polaroids to capture the emotions of a crumbling relationship. Here’s the rough cut of “Let’s Build a Fire.”
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 12, 2006Click here for the press conference in with Robert Redford announced a new partnership between the Sundance Institute and the GSM Association to commission six filmmakers to create short films for the mobile platform. From a piece by James Allan Miller in Smart Phone Today: Six filmmakers have been commissioned by the GSM Association and the Sundance Institute to create five short short films just for mobile handsets. The purpose of what’s called the Sundance Film Festival: Global Short Film Project is to extend independent filmmaking to what the institute’s president and founder Robert Redford refers to as “the ‘fourth […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 11, 2006Via Defamer, the following report sent it by one of its readers: “David Lynch RIGHT NOW is sitting on the corner of Hollywood and La Brea with a cow on a leash and a picture of Laura Dern that says For Your Consideration. He also has a sign that says “without cows there would be no cheese in the Inland Empire”. This is one of those things that a person needs to see. I wish I wasn’t chained to a desk.” And here, via YouTube, is a live view from video bloggers. Nate and Matt:
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 10, 2006If you link to this blog and bypass the main page, I just want to point you to Peter Bowen’s excellent interview with director Steve Shainberg, whose Fur opens today. An excerpt: Filmmaker: You didn’t want to make the film look like Arbus’s work, but you also cast Nicole Kidman, who doesn’t look like Arbus. Why Kidman? Shainberg: Whenever I see a biopic, no matter how much the person looks like the person they are playing, it just looks like a bad high school play to me. There is no way that Will Smith is going to look like Muhammad […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 10, 2006