Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Making Rent in Bed-Stuy at the Metrograph
Brandon Harris — whose insightful, politically sagacious and ruefully funny blend of memoir and criticism has graced the pages of the New Yorker, n+1 and Filmmaker, where you’ll recognize him as a Contributing Editor — has just released his debut book, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, a cultural memoir on neighborhoods, race, millennial culture and filmmaking. Appropriately, he has also programmed a series of relevant films this weekend at New York’s Metrograph Theater. Running through the 12th, the films include Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (next to Do the Right Thing my favorite 40 Acres joint, actually), Jay-Z: Fade to Black, and Sebastián Silva’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Watch: All of David Lynch’s Bizarre and Beautiful TV Commercials
With his new Twin Peaks: The Return scrambling our minds every Sunday, we at Filmmaker are experiencing a collective case of the feels for David Lynch these days. Giving us our fix until Episode Six streams this weekend is this video of Lynch’s television commercials compiled by Jeff Keeling. As with many directors, Lynch directed many of his best short TV spots for overseas brands, so look for work here like a Twin Peaks tie-in spot for Japan’s Georgia coffee that I, at least, have never seen before. A complete list of commercials included is below. (I venture to say […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Explosive Memories: Five Questions for Dawson City: Frozen Time Director Bill Morrison
The poetics of decomposition are the haunting, thrilling and, in the case of his latest feature, Dawson City: Frozen Time, historically revelatory stuff of the cinema of Bill Morrison. In varying degrees and across films like The Miner’s Hymn, The Great Flood and Decasia — the latter dubbed “the best film ever made” by Errol Morris — Morrison has made the excavation of lost cinematic images both an informative and sensory-impactful experience. In the new Dawson City: Frozen Time, Morrison both dramatizes and draws upon the discovery of over 500 silent era films found iced and buried in a swimming […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Watch: Steve James on How and Why Nashville Influenced his Filmmaking
Here’s a great video from Criterion in which documentary filmmaker Steve James (The Keeper, Stevie, Hoop Dreams) discusses how he was influenced by Robert Altman’s Nashville. He begins by noting that your most influential films are the ones you see when you’re young and falling in love with cinema, and he then goes on to say that he wasn’t interested in documentary filmmaking when he encountered Altman’s work. But there were aspects of Nashville that impressed him — including, yes, the zooms! — as well as notions of structure that wound up rippling into films like The Interruptors.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 6, 2017 -
Watch: Shaka King Erases “Racial Glaucoma” in Short Film LaZercism
Newlyweeds writer/director Shaka King, who last appeared on the site with his excellent Sundance short Mulligans, is back with another imaginatively executed, of-the-moment short. LaZercism is his riff on “racial glauccoma,” a disease affecting white people that prevents them from seeing the contributions of — or just seeing at all — people of color. The comedy short, which stars Keith Stanfield (Short Term 12, Atlanta) and Robert Longstreet (I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore), proposes an easy, outpatient procedure to correct the affliction.
by Scott Macaulay on May 31, 2017 -
DP Sean Price Williams on Shooting 2-Perf 35mm for the Cannes Competition Film Good Time
“Hey, it’s me,” said Sean Price Williams as he walked up to me at the after-party for Josh and Benny Safdie’s simply fantastic Good Time in Cannes last week. It did take me a second to recognize Williams — cleanly shaven, in a spiffy tux and strolling around a Dior-sponsored event for a film in the Main Competition of the Cannes Film Festival. If Williams seemed like a bit of a happy anomaly there, it’s because, like Good Time itself, the DP has ascended to cinema’s most revered platform with work that’s wholly of a piece with the raw, street-level […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 30, 2017 -
At Cannes 2017, The Square Wins Palme d’Or; Coppola Best Director; and Lynne Ramsay’s Latest Wins Two
Here, as they are announced, are the winners of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Palme d’Or: The Square, Ruben Östlund. Special Prize for the 70th Anniversary: Nicole Kidman Grand Prix: 120 Beats Per Minute, directed by Robin Campillo Jury Prize: Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev Best Actress: Diane Kruger, In the Fade Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here Best Director: Sofia Coppola, The Beguiled Best Screenplay: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lathimos and Efthymis Filippou) and Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) The Camera d’Or (given to best first film): Jeunne Femme/Montparnasse Bienvenue, directed by Leonor […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 28, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: Josh and Benny Safdie’s Good Time, Starring Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie
One of my most anticipated films of the summer is Josh and Benny Safdie’s Good Time, which premieres in a few days in the Main Competition of the Cannes Film Festival. The first trailer has just dropped from A24, and it shows Robert Pattinson as a bank robber trying to get his accomplice — his brother, played by Benny Safdie — sprung from Rikers Island. Jennifer Jason Leigh appears as well as Buddy Duress, who co-starred in the Safdies’ previous Heaven Knows What. It’s a heartbreaker of a trailer scored to an original song by Oneohtrix Point Never and Iggy […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2017 -
IFP Announces 10 Films Chosen for its 2017 Narrative Lab
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Filmmaker’s publisher, announced today the projects selected for the 2017 edition of its Narrative Labs. A program designed for first-time filmmakers currently in post-production on narrative films, it provides resources and mentorship on all the activities that go into finishing a film and taking it out into the world, from work with music and sound, to locking picture, to festival and distribution strategies. The program begins today and runs through May 12 at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP located in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Commented IFP Executive Director Joana Vicente in a press release, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 9, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: Woodshock, Written and Directed by Kate Mulleavy and Laura Mulleavy
There was a mini-boomlet a few years ago in cinematic fashion films, and Kate Mulleavy and Laura Mulleavy, the two sisters who are the designers for the fashion label Rodarte, were behind several of the best. Working with the director Todd Cole, the films were stunningly beautiful, fitfully mysterious and emotionally ambiguous. Now, the sisters have directed their own first film, out this September from A24. The trailer, posted above, is an absolute knockout — my favorite trailer posted in the last two days. Here’s the press release copy: The exquisite feature film debut of visionary fashion designers Kate and […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 9, 2017
