Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Being Reborn as a 16-Year-Old Girl: Nicholas Winding Refn on His Vampiric Assault on the Beauty Industry, The Neon Demon
Nicholas Winding Refn’s new The Neon Demon, premiering in Competition at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, is a nightmarish, outlandish fashion-world riff on A Star is Born in which vampiric models struggling to remain alluring in a swipe-to-the-next-one culture provide a ready-made metaphor for beauty industry soul-sucking. Elle Fanning is Jesse — blonde, beautiful, 16, and something of an empty vessel waiting to be anointed the next “It Girl.” Her journey through Angeleno nightclubs, booking agencies and photography studios is one of ribald psychological horror, as physical spaces twist and expand, friends become alien, and even her scuzzy, entirely unfashionable […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 19, 2016 -
Cannes, 2016: Five Questions for Tramontane Writer/Director Vatche Boulghourjian
Finding political resonance within the intimate story of a blind man, his past, and the Lebanese countryside, Tramontane is the debut feature of filmmaker Vatche Boulghourjian. Based in Beirut, Boulghourjian studied at NYU Film School, and his filmmaking draws upon the community he found in both his home and place of study. Premiering in Critics’ Week at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Tramontane also received early development support from the Venice Biennale College Cinema, where I was one of its mentors several years ago. At the time, I was struck by Boulghourjian’s intelligence, empathy and ability to articulate the larger […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2016 -
VR AXS Map Wins the Made in New York Media Center by IFP Demo Day
VR AXS Map, a platform using VR to help the disabled pre-visit and share information about accessible public spaces, was named the winner on Wednesday night of the Made In New York Media Center by IFP’s Demo Day. The curated audience of VCs, entrepreneurs, creative directors and brands voted the award after five teams of Media Center entrepreneurs pitched their projects to a panel moderated by Mashable’s Jason Abruzzese and consisting of Fran Hauser (Partner Rothenburg Ventures) and Matthew Hooper (VP, Open Innovation, Barclays; Head of Rise, NY). VR AXS Map stood out due to its obvious social utility and […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2016 -
Watch: Paul Thomas Anderson’s New Radiohead Video, Daydreaming
Auteur Paul Thomas Anderson, for whom Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood scored his There Will Be Blood, has directed the band’s new video, which has dropped just days after their stop-motion animated clip for debut single Burn the Witch. Check out Dreaming above.
by Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2016 -
Controversial Film Financier Steven Mnuchin Joins Trump Campaign as National Finance Chairman
Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs veteran and hedge fund manager who has executive produced a number of studio films, has joined the presidential campaign of Donald Trump as its National Finance Chairman. Through his Dune Capital, and later through a partnership between Dune and Ryan Kavanaugh’s now bankrupt Relativity Media, Mnuchin was involved with the financing of such films as Mad Max: Fury Road, Black Mass, Our Brand is Crisis and American Sniper. A partner in RatPac Dune Entertainment along with Brett Ratner and James Packer, Mnuchin has also been involved with the financing of many Fox and Warner films […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2016 -
Sundance Announces Eight First-Time Directors for its June Directors Lab
The Sundance Institute announced today the eight first-time feature directors selected to participate in its June Directors Lab. Over nearly a month at the Lab — a program that has mentored directors including Cary Fukunaga, Quentin Tarantino, Dee Rees and Marielle Heller — the directors will receive guidance and mentorship from an impressive list of advisors (director David Gordon Green, DP Bradford Young and editor Dylan Tichenor, to name a few), and will workshop scenes with actors and crew. This year’s filmmakers arrive in Utah with a diverse group of projects spanning topics from the Zambian space program, a mysterious […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Zachary Treitz and Kate Lyn Sheil’s Independent Civil War Drama, Men Go to Battle
Written by Zachary Treitz and Kate Lyn Sheil, and directed by Treitz, Men Go to Battle is an ambitious independent historical drama that tells the story of two quarreling brothers whose back-and-forth are interrupted by the Civil War. Here’s how the filmmakers synopsize the film, which stars Tim Morton, David Maloney and, from Spring Breakers, Rachel Korine: While most Americans predict that the Civil War will end by Christmas, Henry (Tim Morton) and Francis Mellon (David Maloney) are more concerned about braving another winter on their struggling rural Kentucky farm. The brothers have become suffocatingly close. Francis’ practical jokes become […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 3, 2016 -
Watch: Giacomo Cimini’s Science Fiction Short, The Nostalgist
Author Daniel H. Wilson, whose Roboapocalypse has been in the works for some time from Steven Spielberg, has the first adaptation of one his stories receive its online premiere today over at Wired. Embedded here, The Nostalgist is the adaptation of Wilson’s first published work of fiction, and it’s described thusly: In the futuristic city of Vanille, with properly tuned ImmerSyst Eyes & Ears the world can look and sound like a paradise. But the life of a father and his young son threatens to disintegrate when the father’s device begins to fail. Desperate to avoid facing his traumatic reality, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 3, 2016 -
Nine Years in Nine Minutes: The Guardian’s 6×9 VR Look at Solitary Confinement
One of the most powerful pieces at Tribeca’s Storyscapes program this year was a nine-minute evocation of the experience of solitary confinement produced by The Guardian. Now available for Google Cardboard or simply viewed as a web video on The Guardian‘s site, 6×9, directed by Lindsay Poulton and Francesca Panetta, is both a masterful exploration of VR’s promise as well as a penetrating look at the corrosive psychological effects of solitary confinement. Overused in the American prison system — to say nothing of being simply inhumane — solitary confinement becomes, as 6×9 succinctly demonstrates, a form of torture. On an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 29, 2016 -
Watch: Cannes Mounts Terrorism Training on the Palais’s Red Carpet
Adding an anxious frisson to the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter reports on the city of Cannes’ terror training exercises in advance of this year’s event. From the Hollywood Reporter: With the world’s biggest film festival only a few weeks away, Cannes made a very public show of force. Last Thursday, the city on the Cote d’Azur staged a dramatic, some would say chilling, test run of what might happen if terrorists target the stars, film industry execs and thousands of fans that descend on the Croisette every year. A video of the exercise, which featured masked gunmen […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2016
