Authors — Scott Macaulay

THOUGHTS ON SUNDANCE: THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

A friend and I were talking about how, for those whose parents remained married, Noam Baumbach’s new film plays as a charming coming-of-age comedy. But for children of divorced parents, The Squid and the Whale seems to come off as a harrowing and painful relationship drama. I’m in the former camp, so I appreciated the excellent direction and acting (particularly by Jeff Daniels), the film’s balance between irony and affection, and its concise, purposeful pacing. It’s like an elegant novella extracted from a well-remembered life.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2005
THOUGHTS ON SUNDANCE: MAKING CENTS OF THE SPECTACLE

In today’s world of accelerated web journalism, normally I’d think I’m past the Sundance shelf date filing these final thoughts a couple of days after I returned from Rotterdam. But, despite all the columnists and websites, I notice that Sundance wrap-ups are still occurring and that a number of premiere films have yet to receive any press out of the festival at all. Like many others, I weighted my own attendance towards the festival’s first half (blame Rotterdam again) and will try to catch up on a number of films I missed on tape back here in New York. For […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2005
GET YOUR FREAK ON

Mary Kuryla sent an email saying that it’s the last weekend for her indie feature Freak Weather at New York’s Pioneer Theater — fans of transgressive feminist portrayals of what Village Voice critic C. Carr once dubbed “the unsocialized woman” should check out this hard-edged film. Here’s what Kuryla herself wrote about her pic: FREAK WEATHER seems to finally have come into its own. The film’s punk sensibilities and irreverent, self-destructive protagonist, PENNY, strikes a chord with viewers in their twenties, in particular. Penny seems to express their own ambivalence toward the responsibility of parenting and ownership. Her foolhardiness in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2005
WHERE’S THE LOVE FOR LUDLOW?

Love, Ludlow screenwriter and exec producer has created an honest and engaging blog detailing his experiences making the movie and going to Sundance. In today’s entry, he identifies a phenomenon — call it the “Package B” effect — that I had been sensing myself. Patterson writes: Apparently there’s a bit of grumbling from some of the smaller films shown at Sundance this year. Some feel there was a bit of “frontloading” to the schedule. This meant that the bigger films with bigger stars were shown in the first week of the festival, while the smaller one’s premiered near the end. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2005
YARI DISTRIBUTES?

Anne Thompson, whose “Risky Business” ran in Filmmaker for the past year, recently moved over to The Hollywood Reporter where her identifiable and accessible brand of smart industry reporting has already garnered a number of scoops and interesting pieces. Her latest is an intriguing piece on indie mogul Bob Yari, which implies that the producer is holding off on a deal for Mike Mills’ well-reviewed Sundance entry Thumbsucker so he can self-distribute it through a new distribution venture. Writes Thompson: Yari isn’t thrilled by how his films have performed so far. Most distributors, he finds, use the domestic release as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2005
THE QUIET OF A KIDNAPPING

Ted Hope (who penned the Highsmithian title above) forwarded this email from director Barbet Schroeder regarding the disappearance of a friend of his in Iraq: Dear friends, Sorry to bother you with my own home made spam but it is unfortunately the only thing I can do for now. My close friend Florence Aubenas has disappeared in Bagdad a month ago. No news whatsoever since then. She was doing her job as a journalist for the daily paper “Liberation”. Everybody in France knows about it but I see nothing in the English speaking press. The only protection I can provide […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2005
KUDOS FOR SEX ADDICT

I’ll have some stuff to say in the next day or so about Rotterdam and also, belatedly, Sundance, but while it’s still up and free I’m linking to this rave review in Screen International for Caveh Zahedi’s I Am a Sex Addict, which, unfortunately, premiered at Rotterdam before I got there. But from the sounds of it, there will plenty of opportunities to see it at festivals and, hopefully, in the theaters in the future.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 3, 2005
AT SUNDANCE: RECURRING REFRAINS

Cinema is full of failed literary adaptations, attempts by famous directors to translate the work of their favorite novelists into images and screen action. Most of these films crash, however, by the sheer weight of their ambition. Tackling a writer’s best known book, they invariably disappoint his or her hardcore partisans when what’s particularly riveting about the work becomes less interesting when it’s visualized. Japanese director Jun Ichikawa avoided all of the Great Author-to-Film pitfalls with his Tony Takitani, an adaptation of a story by the great Haruki Murakami. Not so much a film as a celluloid ode to Murakami […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 27, 2005
AT SUNDANCE: SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCIES

Saw back to back screenings in the Sundance “experimental” Frontier section to kick off my festival moviewatching this year. Frequently ignored by most industry, the Frontier section always contains a few real discoveries by filmmakers the fest tags as “experimental” but who will go on to make the mark in the indie scene. A few years ago J.T. Petty debuted his chillingly simple near-silent ghost story Soft for Digging in the section and last year Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation screened there as well. This year the Frontier “filmmaker to watch” may be Kyle Henry, whose Room is an excellently directed and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 27, 2005
SOCIAL ACTIVITY ACCOUNTS

For years, the only op-ed conservative voice I’ve enjoyed has been William Safire’s at the New York Times, and this is despite the fact that I disagree with many of his positions. So, I took note of the columnist’s four-piece departure in the Paper of Record this past Monday and recommend, while it’s still free, this final column and thoughtful discussion of the need for perpetual personal change. Writes Safire: Combine those two bits of counsel – never retire, but plan to change your career to keep your synapses snapping – and you can see the path I’m now taking. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 26, 2005

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