We’re pleased to host the online launch of the trailer for Ricky D’Ambrose’s first feature film, Notes On An Appearance. D’Ambrose was one of our 25 New Faces of Film last year; writing about his film—a tersely evocative look at a young man’s sudden disappearance, and its effect (or lack thereof) on his friends—at this year’s New Directors/New Films, I noted that “consistently clipped editing keeps the tone fluid: humor is in the cuts, and the film is never needlessly dour, deliberately refusing to dutifully find its way to a neatly summarizable Statement About The Zeitgeist.” The film begins a theatrical […]
In the last few days, previously unbroadcast raw footage of a visit to the post-production facilities of The Shining has popped up online. It totals 84 minutes, although the YouTube uploader has helpfully provided a full chapter breakdown. For a tour of the studio sound stages, skip to 12:16; for a tour of Kubrick’s equipment room, skip to 27″20, and for a telephone interview with Kubrick (where he offers an interpretation of the ending of 2001!), skip to 45:24. Hat-tip to MUBI for the catch.
New York independent filmmaker Onur Tukel, whose work we have covered quite a bit at Filmmaker, has directed a music video of a song by the anti-folk singer Jamie Block. It’s a small-scale city symphony that speaks to our compulsion to distract ourselves when in the most public of spaces. Block’s new record comes out tomorrow, and, as a preview, the folks at sonaBLAST! Records have sent it along with this press statement: Jamie Block is a New York City based singer-songwriter who is known for his ramshackle, genre bending music. In the 1990’s, he busked, skylarked, and chain smoked […]
For once the words “visionary director” on a trailer are not a misnomer. From Panos Cosmatos, who made our 25 New Faces list back in 2011, comes the first trailer for his ’80s-set revenge drama Mandy, starring Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough. I can’t overemphasize how much I love this film. There are scenes in it that are beautifully, meaningfully lodged in my memory. Just watch now.
When I was thirteen years old I spent a good deal of my free time posting on an online message board dedicated to Wes Craven’s Scream film series. I was a nerdy, creative kid stuck in suburbia, and I’d stay up late on my parents’ basement desktop computer writing long, elaborate, I’m-sure-illegible fan fiction stories to post on the message board. This was a subculture on the forum: users would regularly post their own fictional horror stories (some inspired by the Scream movies, some original). The stories would often feature the characters from Scream mixed with new characters inspired by […]
I have written before about the remarkably shoddy aesthetics of the videos put out by Team Trump, and I’m not the only one to have noticed: last year, over at The Outline, Tolulope Edionwe wrote a sharp post about “the iMovie president.” The whole post is worth reading, but this assessment rings particularly true: “This has become a pattern for Trump: poorly-edited digital content in which serious and significant subjects are given bad color treatments, low resolution, and carelessly incorrect accoutrements.” In the Ernest Goes to Pyongyang reality which we are on course to enter shortly, our lawfully elected president (or whatever) […]
There are two types of filmmakers: those who will stand on a street corner wearing a sandwich board to promote their movies, and those who will not. Dan Mirvish is fearlessly in the former category, as evidenced by this video, which finds the Bernard and Huey writer, director and Slamdance co-founder outside the Laemmle Monica hustling passersby to come and see his movie this weekend (and also be passersby in a video about promoting via a sandwich board). Writes Mirvish in an email about promoting via sandwich board: It has some historical context: 22 years ago, I wore a similar […]
Back in 2002, Filmmaker covered Nigeria’s “Nollywood” film scene, which producer Jeremy Nathan wrote, could be compared to the American no-budget movement of the ’80s and ’90s with its inventive, low-cost non-industry production models. Nollywood would go on to receive much international press over the years, with articles describing the interplay between Hollywood hits and the Nigerian variants they would inspire. The latest noteworthy example is actually not a movie or TV show but a music video. Nigerian rapper Falz the Bad Guy, a former lawyer, has released a riff on Childish Gambino’s This is America, in which the song […]
We’re pleased to be hosting the online launch of Charlie Lyne’s new short Personal Truth, which premiered last year at IDFA. The Field of Vision short builds on the digressive, zig-zag first-person narrative style of Lyne’s earlier short Copycat, this time looking into Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory involving John Podesta running a child sex ring out of a DC pizza parlor. Whether he likes it or not, Lyne sees a bit of himself in Maddison Welch, the man who shot up Comet Ping Pong in an attempt to liberate the kidnapped children he was sure were being held there. Before he was cos-playing […]
A slightly belated posting here to recognize 25 New Face filmmaker Kyle Henry’s latest feature, the Chicago-set relationship drama Rogers Park, which is extended at Cinema Village through this coming Thursday, May 10. After theatrical openings in New York and L.A., the film has cemented a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Glenn Kenny writing in the New York Times, “The superb actors, given opportunities to go for broke, make each one count, and make the movie worth watching.” Henry has been in the independent trenches for nearly two decades, with features including the superb psychological drama Room and […]