Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Call Me By Your Name, Strong Island, Get Out Top 2017 IFP Gotham Awards
Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name and Yance Ford’s Strong Island topped the 2017 IFP Gotham Awards, winning Best Feature and Best Documentary last night at a ceremony held at downtown New York’s Cipriani. And Jordan Peele’s Get Out made a very strong showing, winning the Audience Award, the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award and the Best Screenplay. The Gotham Awards, presented by Filmmaker‘s parent organization, IFP, is the first awards show of the Oscar season, and in the past it’s been a harbinger of future success for its awarded films. (Previous Gotham Best Pictures include the last three […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 28, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: Jason Kohl’s New Money, Starring Louisa Krause
I’m a fan of Jason Kohl’s SXSW-premiering short film, The Slaughter, which he wrote about here for Filmmaker. And I also took note of his thoughtful filmmaking how-to, Film School: A Practical Guide to an Impractical Decision. Today, Kohl’s debut feature, New Money, is having its world premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Starring the great Louisa Krause (King Kelly, The Girlfriend Experience, The Flick), it’s described as a “sharp-witted true crime drama” inspired by a story Kohl heard about two stepchildren, worried about their inheritance, who kidnapped their stepdad to insure that they’d get their cut of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 27, 2017 -
In Partnership with Westridge Foundation, SFFILM Announces New Grant Program for Narrative Filmmakers
There’s long been an imbalance between grants available to fiction filmmakers as opposed to documentarians, and today SFFILM, the Bay Area-based nonprofit, has announced in partnership with the Westridge Foundation new biannual grants and other resources for narrative filmmakers based across the U.S. Four to five grants of $20,000 – $25,000 will be given each spring and fall, and applications are now open for the first cycle, which runs through February, 2018. From the press release: The SFFILM / Westridge program is designed specifically to support the screenwriting and development phases of narrative feature projects whose stories focus on the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2017 -
Exclusive Clip: Chanelle Aponte Pearson and Rae Leone Allen’s 195 Lewis
195 Lewis, a web series directed by Chanelle Aponte Pearson and created by Rae Leone Allen, premieres tomorrow night at 8:00 PM at the show’s website. Last year, when the series was in production, we interviewed Pearson, and she discussed her own motivation for joining the project: At the time of joining the project as director, I used to watch The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and The Couple, so I largely understood the format to work best for comedies with episodes ranging from two to five minutes. Despite knowing this, I still entered the writing process not focusing on […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 15, 2017 -
Premiering Docs within the New World Order: Thom Powers on DOC NYC 2017
The increasingly robust DOC NYC opens today through November 16, with over 100 documentary features unspooling in three locations in downtown New York and Chelsea. Among the 23 world and 23 U.S. premieres are new films from Barbara Kopple, Sam Pollard and Julia Bacha, whose Naila and the Uprising, about the woman of First Intifada, won the festival’s first pitch competition in 2016. Films unspool across 16 sections, including the new New World Order, focused on pictures with global news importance, and Metropolis, the competitive section featuring films from and about New York City. The DOC NYC Pro section is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 9, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: A Prayer Before Dawn
Director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire, whose 2008 debut feature, Johnny Mad Dog, was a thrillingly immersive journey into the world of African child soldiers, makes his long-awaited return to theaters with another picture — A Prayer Before Dawn — set within a violent community: Thai kickboxers in the country’s infamous Bang Kwang Central Prison. Wrote Guy Lodge at Variety upon the film’s Cannes premiere: Competition is stiff for the title of cinema’s most violently harrowing prison drama, and tougher still for the all-time most pummeling boxing movie. Gutsily, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s A Prayer Before Dawn”comes out fighting for both, landing a number of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 30, 2017 -
Recovering Family Memories through The Polaroid Job
I love this short — The Polaroid Job — now up on the New York Times Op Doc page by producer, director and Sundance shorts programmer Mike Plante. A trip home to visit his parents leads to Plante sifting through stacks of their old Polaroids, photos that not only document family moments but also a family business. For a short time, while Plante was 11, his parents had “the Polaroid job,” a gig that involved taking a large-format Polaroid camera to various events — a store opening, a haunted house, etc. — and taking pictures of attendees posing with various […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 26, 2017 -
Why Old School Blockbuster VHS Video Cover Art Beats Netflix Thumbnails
Those who remember the days of the neighborhood video store — whether that was, for you, Kim’s Video or Blockbuster — may attribute their fondness for ineffably sleazy horror film VHS cover art to simple nostalgia, but, proposes Entertain the Elk, there’s more to it than that. In this short video he argues that the videobox designers of the day were using the AIDA marketing methods to draw movie fans’s eyeballs to images of bloody knives, hair shaped into a noose and monsters emerging from the toilet. Of note are the piece’s final moments, when he decries the Get Out […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 25, 2017 -
Pink Kittens, Aphex Twin and the Moment of Impact: Thinking about Road Safety
Two things the internet loves — kittens and Aphex Twin — combine in this arresting texting-while-driving PSA scored with a sinewy remix of the classic “Windowlicker” track. Over 100 pink kittens appear in this beautifully art-directed spot, but, in the end, only one really matters….
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 25, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread
“There is an air of quiet death in this house.” In the 1950s London of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature, Phantom Thread, Daniel Day-Lewis is an exacting dress maker and Vicky Krieps is his latest muse. In these two minutes, their relationship is marked by a guarded formality but there’s just enough here to suggest something more than a stately period romance of sorts. We’ll have to wait until Christmas — or the next trailer — to find out more….
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 23, 2017
