Filmmaker Videos
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Vimeo Introduces ‘Staff Pick’ Premieres as Year-Round Online Film Festival
Vimeo has announced it is extending its flagship Staff Pick channel into a year-long online film festival and has added new laurels honoring films selected as Best of the Month and Year, plus weekly premieres. “The Vimeo Staff Pick channel represents the most progressive and imaginative filmmaking direct from our community of world class filmmakers,” said Peter Gerard, General Manager, Vimeo. “The iconic Staff Pick laurel has helped launched the careers of many filmmakers coming up through the Vimeo platform and we’re excited to continue to honor and elevate our Staff Picked filmmakers with two new levels of prestige, while also […]
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Trailer Watch: A Twin Peaks Teaser of Sorts
Predictably, there’s no footage of the new Twin Peaks in the latest teaser released, but you do get Lynch’s longtime composer Angelo Badalamenti playing one of the show’s original themes solo over footage of the woods, a picture of Laura Palmer and the still-unchanged title logo.
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Trailer Watch: Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson Stars Adam Driver as a Poet/Bus Driver
Jim Jarmusch’s latest film, Paterson, premiered to acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in May and now, courtesy of Yahoo Movies, it’s gotten its first trailer (above). The film stars Adam Driver (Girls, The Force Awakens) as Paterson, a poet/bus driver who lives an uneventful life with his pregnant wife (Golshifteh Farahani) in Paterson, New Jersey. In a report from Cannes, Blake Williams wrote, “It’s a remarkably free form film —so affable and comfortable in its skin —that my registration of time (‘the fourth dimension’; ‘Hmm’) dropped away for much of the first hour; I would have been perfectly satisfied to see it continue, devoid […]
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Vidiots Launches the Video Store into the Next Era
Vidiots, the iconic Santa Monica movie rental store-turned film non-profit, has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo with the goal of raising $65,000 to keep the doors open and to fund new programs. Just last year, Vidiots was in danger of closing after 30 years in business. Not long after co-owners Cathy Tauber and Patty Polinger announced they were going to have to shutter, they got a last-minute donation from film producer Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures. But Vidiots needs to continue raising money in order to launch new programs and initiatives to preserve and provide access to their diverse and […]
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Trailer Watch: Ava DuVernay’s 13th
Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, will have its world premiere as the Opening Night selection of the 54th New York Film Festival. The first-ever nonfiction work to open the festival, 13th will debut on Netflix and open in a limited theatrical run on October 7. You can check out its first trailer above. The title of the film refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” The film chronicles the history of racial inequality and examines how the U.S. has produced […]
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Trailer Watch: TOWER
With campus shootings occurring at a frightening frequency, TOWER, the new documentary about the 1966 campus shooting at the University of Texas, is, sadly, timelier than ever. The SXSW Grand Jury and Audience Award winner combines archival footage with rotoscope animation of first-person testimonials to retell the tragedy where a sniper took the lives of 16 people. Directed by Keith Maitland and executive produced by Meredith Vieira and Luke Wilson, TOWER will get a limited theatrical release in October via Kino Lorber. Check out the film’s new trailer above and read an interview with Maitland out of SXSW here.
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Trailer Watch: Shrihari Sathe’s 1000 Rupee Note
Producer Shrihari Sathe makes his directorial debut with 1000 Rupee Note, premiering this weekend in New York at the Village East. Sathe, whose credits include Dukhtar, Buffalo Juggalos, It Felt Like Love (and, full disclosure, A Woman a Part, in partnership with me), developed this story based on a short by Shrikant Bojewar, the resident editor of Maharashtra Times, one of India’s major newspapers. Here’s a description: Budhi, a widow, lives in a small village in Maharashtra, India — and her only son has committed suicide. Though poor and left alone in the world, she leads a cheerful life and […]
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Trailer Watch: Mifune: The Last Samurai
“Mifune’s performance is layered, complex. He studied the movement of lions. He’s like a caged animal,” says Martin Scorsese in the (above) trailer for Mifune: The Last Samurai, the new documentary about Toshiro Mifune, the greatest actor from the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema. Directed by Academy Award-nominated director Steve Okazaki and narrated by Keanu Reeves, Mifune: The Last Samurai features rare archival footage and interviews with Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Koji Yakusho as well as Mifune co-stars Kyoto Kagawa, Haruo Nakajima and Yoshio Tsuchiya. Mifune appeared in nearly 170 films, including Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Red Bear. The film […]
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Watch: How the Coen Brothers Storyboarded Blood Simple
In advance of the release of Criterion’s 4K restoration of Blood Simple, photographer Grant Delin created a video essay which compares scenes from the finished film to the original storyboards. With commentary by the Coens, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, and actor Frances McDormand, this glimpse into their creative process highlights the meticulous planning and elaborate storyboards behind the film’s signature aesthetic. The restored version of the Coens’ 1984 debut feature will be available in both Blu-ray and DVD editions beginning on September 20. Find out more here. You can also watch the Coen Brothers’ pitch trailer for the low-budget classic here.
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Trailer Watch: Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal
For his first film since his directorial debut A Single Man in 2009, Tom Ford has adapted Austin Wright’s 1993 novel “Tony and Susan.” The resulting thriller, Nocturnal Animals stars Amy Adams as Susan, an L.A. art-gallery owner whose ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) writes a violent novel (called “Nocturnal Animals”) based on their former relationship. “I did something horrible to him,” Susan confesses in the (above) trailer for the film, which also stars Armie Hammer, Michael Shannon, Isla Fisher, Laura Linney, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. After winning the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and screening recently at the Toronto Film […]
