Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: Werner Herzog’s Lo and Behold
He’s taken on cave paintings, Siberian fur trappers, and an ill-fated bear enthusiast. Now, with his latest film, Werner Herzog tackles the internet. “The explosion of information technology on the internet has led to some of its greatest glories,” intones Werner Herzog in his signature Werner Herzog voiceover in the trailer for Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (above). The film, which premiered earlier this year at The Sundance Film Festival, examines the past, present and evolving future of the internet by interviewing cyberspace pioneers and prophets such as PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, Internet protocol inventor Bob Kahn, […]
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Watch: Brian De Palma Shot by Shot
Metrograph begins their month-long Brian De Palma retrospective today, showing 28 of his films until June 30. TIFF is set to start their own slightly smaller De Palma retrospective, Split/Screen: The Cinema of Brian De Palma, on June 18, running until September 3. Now that his work is once again coming to the big screen, watch this shot-by-shot scene breakdown of the Union Station scene in The Untouchables, created by Antonios Papantoniou. Each shot is annotated with lens choice, running time, camera position et al.
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Crime and Punishment on the L.A. Freeways: John Cassavetes Drives
Here’s a trippy short video found via the Vintage Los Angeles Facebook page, an excerpt from the 1968 French documentary, Cineaste de notre temps (1968). Shot three years earlier, it’s just John Cassavetes driving home as a French interviewer peppers him with questions he mostly nonchalantly (and most likely post-synced) answers. Not enough people in L.A. — “living by appointment,” he says. He also announces a project: Crime and Punishment as a musical. The Beach Boys play on the soundtrack.
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Watch: Spike Lee’s ESPN Documentary 2 Fists Up, On Protests at University of Missouri
The Undefeated, ESPN’s new platform focusing on the intersection of race and sports, premiered the new season of the TV miniseries Spike Lee’s Lil’ Joints with the release of 2 Fists Up, directed by Lee himself. The film takes a look at the protests on the campus of the University of Missouri last November, which included a boycott by the school’s football players. This documentary emphasizes the women organizers behind the protests rather than the football team, a welcome surprise from an ESPN production. 2 Fists Up initially premiered on the university campus in early April with the announcement that […]
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Mentorless Returns from Cannes with Advice on Pitching Projects at a Major Festival
One of the best filmmaking video blogs going right now is at the Mentorless site, where filmmaker Nathalie Sejean is posting weekly about her goal of making her first feature film, In Five Years. Both Sejean and her producer, Muge Ozen, attended the Producers Network this month and returned with enough info to fill up two entries. Among the advice offered here is what online filmmakers should make sure to do to get accredited to the Cannes market, when to submit — and not submit — scripts to buyers, and how to consider whether you should even try to tackle […]
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Watch: How to Shoot Super 8 in the 21st Century
This video from DSLRguide covers the very rudimentary basics of shooting Super 8 — over- vs. under-exposure, things to look for when buying a camera, etc. Test footage is included.
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Watch: The First and Last Appearance of Quentin Tarantino Characters
This one’s pretty self-explanatory: director Albert Gómez presents the first and last appearance of every major character in Quentin Tarantino’s movies in splitscreen. It does, of course, get bloody.
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Trailer Watch: Todd Solondz’s Wiener-Dog
Seventeen years after director Todd Solondz introduced us to Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), the downtrodden pre-teen star of the darkly comic Welcome to the Dollhouse, the character, now all grown up (and played by Greta Gerwig), returns in the quasi-sequel, Wiener-Dog. Dawn is just one of several characters featured in Wiener-Dog, which tells a variety of stories, all revolving around a particular dachshund. Featuring Kieran Culkin, Tracy Letts, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, and Zosia Mamet, the film premiered earlier this year at The Sundance Film Festival and is scheduled to be released on June 24 by Amazon Studios and IFC Films. You can check out the […]
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Watch: Albatross, A Short Film by Theodore Collatos
Yesterday we premiered Christopher Jason Bell’s short film One Times One; today, we’re following up with the premiere of his colleague/interlocutor Theodore Collatos’ short Albatross. It’s the story of a young girl being raised by her uncle, only to have their relationship disrupted by the unexpected return of her father. As Collatos told Bell in their conversation (which we published Tuesday), “I really wanted to continue to build a fictional story within the context of Matt Shaw’s actual life. Elements of real story beats with real people in a poetic and seasonal time structure. Seasons pass, family changes and the mysteries of life go […]
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Watch: The Video Essay to End All Video Essays, On “Excellent Themes” in Pleasantville
If you’ve seen a lot of video essays purportedly analyzing the themes, visual motifs etc. of various films, you’ll know that they are, by and large, not very good, simply latching on to famous film titles for an easy traffic layup. Enter Kentucker Audley: director and actor, proprietor of No Budge and the Movies brand. In this inaugural video essay, Audley takes an analytical look at Pleasantville. “It’s a really cool movie, as you probably remember,” he explains, “with cutting-edge cinematography and excellent themes,” nailing the fatuous tone of many an online underperformer. Bonus points for blithely naming the director as […]
