Authors — Scott Macaulay

THE "A"-WORD

While reading the New York Times this morning, I was struck by Manohla Dargis’s evocation of the “a”-word when reviewing David Lynch’s new Inland Empire: “…the extraordinary, savagely uncompromised Inland Empire, his first feature in five years, his first shot in video and one of the few films I’ve seen this year that deserves to be called art. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, the film is also as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse.” Yep, she called it Art. On the front-page of the Weekend section […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2006
PENNILESS

Larry Fine has a piece up at Reuters noting the dissolution of InDigEnt, the innovative low-budget film company created by Gary Winick and John Sloss that was behind pictures like Tadpole, Personal Velocity and Pieces of April (pictured). From the piece: “I kind of think we had our moment in time. Unfortunately there is no million-dollar film any more that actually gets in the market place and makes some money because the studios want the Capotes’ and the ‘Sideways‘ … they want the $8-million film to make a $100 million instead of the $1-million to make $10 (million). That’s the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2006
PARTY OF ONE

If you bookmark this blog and don’t regularly check out the main page, click over there for the first Filmmaker-sponsored podcast short, Jamie Stuart’s Corner Dweller, in which Stuart brings his now-patented hard-boiled persona to the pre-Gotham Awards nominees party. Here’s what David Hudson at GreenCine had to say about it: … in his latest, for Filmmaker, Corner-Dweller, set against the backdrop of the IFP Gotham Awards Nominee Reception, he’s gouged out his own niche and, even assuming Kaufmanesque self-referentiality as a given, staked out his own as-yet-uncharted ground.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2006
SUNDANCE WATCH: TEETH

I was planning to do one big post in which I conveyed what I know about the various films at Sundance this year, but perhaps I’m going to wind up taking a piecemeal approach… To start, then, here’s a link to the official website for the Dramatic Competition entry Teeth, which is directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, who, some years ago, starred in Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. From the website, this synopsis: High school student Dawn works hard at suppressing her budding sexuality by being the local chastity group’s most active participant. Her task is made even more difficult by […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2006
OUT OF CONTEXT

The world of arts and criticism used to be such that one critical work published in the correct publication would ensure one’s permanent place in the culture. For George S. Trow, who wrote numerous articles and plays and who died in Naples this week at 63, that work was a 1980 New Yorker essay entitled “Within the Context of No-Context.” Its thesis, that television and celebrity culture had destroyed contemporary discourse and altered our relationship to the rhythms of history, had its echoes in Adorno,, Marcuse, Baudrillard and many others, but Trow’s stark, aphoristic prose published in a weekly magazine […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2006
PROCEED TO CHECKOUT

Gotham Tribute recipients Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban (the latter a no-show at the Gothams the other night) may have created the most buzz in the blogosphere with their multi-platform release of Soderbergh’s Bubble, but another company with equally deep pockets is conducting a window-busting experiment this weekend. Clickstar, a joint venture between chip-maker Intel and actor Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment, has partnered with THINKfilm to release Brad Silberling’s 10 Items or Less in theaters; in two weeks, on December 15, the movie will be available for digital download. Over at the Cinematech blog, Scott Kirsner tells you what to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2006
ASK RYAN AND ANNA

If you’re wondering how filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden made a great first feature that has racked up a ton of awards, including last night’s Gotham win, well, ask them yourself. The Daily Reel has them in their “Ask the Expert” section. Click on the link for the email address to forward your own questions about independent production.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 30, 2006
IFP GOTHAM AWARDS

The Gotham Awards were handed out Wednesday night in a ceremony at the Chelsea Piers. The big winner was Half Nelson, which took the Best Feature, Breakthrough Director (for Ryan Fleck, pictured at left with producer and co-write Anna Boden) and Breakthrough Actor (Shareeka Epps, an award split with Babel‘s Rinko Kinkuchi). Steve Barron’s Choking Man won the “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Award,” sponsored by Filmmaker and MOMA. D.p. Ellen Kuras was awarded a tribute for her work shooting innumerable great independent films, and other Gothams went to Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, Kate Winslet, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 30, 2006
MEETING AT MOMA

Below Andre Salas gives you some details about the special screening series at MOMA this week of the films we selected for our “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Award. This is the second year of this award — last year we selected Caveh Zahedi’s I am a Sex Addict as the winner and Robinson Devor’s Police Beat as one of the nominees, and this year I think we picked films of similar quality. Indeed, it’s gratifying for all of us at Filmmaker to take such a concentrated look at worthy films that have really fallen […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 23, 2006
ALTMAN AT EMERGING PICTURES

Ira Deutchman emailed to tell me about the new blog for his company Emerging Pictures and a post he has up remembering Robert Altman. It’s great and long, a collection of Ira’s memories having worked with Altman on the distribution of a number of his films. When reading I had a hard time picking a section to excerpt. I was strongly tempted to lift the paragraph about Altman and Deutchman smoking a joint that had been found mashed in Altman’s shoe outside the Beekman on the opening day of The Player, but I’ll let you click to that and quote […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 23, 2006

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cfmrk_cic		Used by Cloudflare to route user traffic for this Site.
sparrow_id		Installed by Cloudflare. Used to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not store any personal identifiable information.

Cookie	Duration	Description
OAGEO		Installed by the Revive Ad Server. Used to cache geolocation (session, deleted when closing the browser)
OAID		Installed by the Revive Ad Server to distinguish users.