Authors — Scott Macaulay

“AN IMPRESSIVE DEPTH OF FIELD”

Ann Hornaday has a long overdue mainstream media piece on the aesthetic virtues of short-form web video in The Washington Post. It’s a must read as she quite thoughtfully provides some words of wisdom — “Your limitions are your strength,” “You’ve made us laugh, you’ve made us link, now make us think” are two examples — for aspiring web filmmakers. And, among her examples, Jamie Stuart’s White Plastic Flower, his impressionistic reportage from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Here’s what she had to say about his podcast: But a foreshortened, small-box format doesn’t have to limit cinematographic ambition. In White […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2007
ONCE BOUGHT BY FOX SEARCHLIGHT

Ann Thompson is reporting that Fox Searchlight has bought Sundance audience fave Once. The no-budget Irish musical (it was made for a reported $100,000) features members of the band The Frames, which director John Carney played bass in in the early ’90s. From a Gregg Goldstein interview with Carney contained within Thompson’s piece: Carney, meanwhile, had music junkies in mind when he made his film Once. “I wanted to create a visual album, something you could watch over and over again,” he said. In the process, the filmmaker created one of the most unique musicals in recent memory, telling the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2007
THE ART OF FILM CRITICISM

One critic who you wont’ see linked on Rotten Tomatoes is Rick Trembles… and, at the least, that’s because his film reviews in the form of graphic art can’t be cut-and-web-pasted. Trembles is a filmmaker, writer and musician — his band, The American Devices, is called “Montreal’s longest-running post-punk band.” He maintains an oddball website that promotes his musical appearances, notes screenings of his short, Goopy Spasms (an “animated cartoon film ode to butt-play”), and runs bits of cultural news, like this memorial to Don Dohler, creator of the fanzine mascot Projunior. His site is also full of his funny, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2007
FRAME BY FRAME

Previously I linked to David Bordwell’s analysis of Scorsese’s The Departed, in which he traced the average shot length in the director’s films over the years. Now, Bordwell has posted even more fascinating piece on editing and shot length. In a post entitled “My Name is David and I’m a Frame Counter,” Bordwell discusses mathematical relationships within edited sequences: Directors have been counting frames for a long time. Experimental filmmakers like Brakhage did. Ozu had a special stopwatch built to register feet and frames during filming. Hitchcock cared about frame counting too. In Film Art’s chapter on editing (pp. 224-225 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2007
DOGGED OUT

In the wake of the controversy involving Hounddog, the Sundance premiere which featured a brief scene in which the character played by young actress Dakota Fanning is raped, a North Carolina politician is proposing that the state Senate review and approve screenplays for films receiving the state filming tax incentive. From an article by Mark Schreiner in the Wilmington Star: Citing the controversy surrounding the Dakota Fanning film Hounddog, the leader of the state Senate Republicans says he wants the government to review scripts before cameras start rolling in North Carolina. That system, said state Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, would […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 27, 2007
NO SUNSHINE FOR BONA FIDE

Over at her Risky Business blog, Ann Thompson writes about the Academy ruling that producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa of Bona Fide Films will not be eligible to accept the Oscar if their film Little Miss Sunshine wins Best Picture. This seems to deeply suck. They are the guys who developed the material early on, championed the directors and brought it to financiers Big Beach. But because of the Academy’s “rule of three,” they have been nixed from eligiblity in favor of Mark Turtletaub, David Friendly and Peter Saraf. I’m not saying that any of the other producers should […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 27, 2007
STARING DOWN THE SNAKE

Over at the Sundance 2007 main page, Bob Fisher talks with d.p. Amy Vincent about Black Snake Moan.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2007
RUMSFELD’S FAVORITE IN DRAMATIC COMPETITION?

As you can tell from my post below, I didn’t like the Sundacnce Competition film Grace is Gone. At the time, I thought I was in the minority but in the last few days a number of reviews and criticisms have come out faulting the film for its disingenuously “even-handed” use of the Iraq war to kickstart what is ultimately a conventional indie film road movie. The weird thing about the movie is that star John Cusack has been a vocal opponent of the war, and my guess is that its makers are also sensitive anti-war folk. (I don’t know […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2007
THE PLAN B’ERS

Two more interviews by James Ponsoldt up on our Sundance home page. David Kaplan talks about his animated The Year of the Fish. And: Chris Zalla discusses his Padre Nuestro.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2007
TEMPORARY INSANITY

Mike White’s comedy The Year of the Dog, which premiered in Sundance this week in the Premieres section, shares a premise with the similarly titled Joan Didion memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. That is, when one is grieving, one experiences a kind of insanity, the “magical thinking” of Didion’s title. One’s relationship to the rest of society as well as one’s self is occluded by the memory of the deceased. Of course, Didion’s departed was her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne. It’s typical of White’s unsettling wit that the protagonist of his film – a retiring and unmarried […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2007

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