Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: Too Many Cooks, An ’80s Apocalypse/Tribute in 11 Minutes
This is making the Internet rounds and will presumably swallow the entire world by midday at this rate, so why resist? Casper Kelly is a regular Adult Swim contributor, and this is his magnum opus. What begins as an extended parody of every single type of mediocre ’80s sitcom personage (the casting, finding the exact right face for every goofy dad, hectoring boss and bemused grandma, is really something) mutates into a series of other staples of the decade — G.I. Joe-esque animation, some kind of old-school Battlestar Galactica thing — before metastasizing into a self-reflexive slasher film, a hospital drama, […]
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Trailer Watch: Vanessa McDonnell’s John’s of 12th Street
Conversation, heaping plates and lots of red sauce — all should be found in Vanessa McDonnell’s documentary on the people behind East Village Italian landmark John’s. The film opens next Wednesday, November 12, at Brooklyn’s Spectacle for five screenings. Here’s the description: JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET is a portrait of a century-old Italian-American restaurant in New York City, one of the last of its kind in a rapidly changing East Village. This observational documentary loosely follows the rhythm of the restaurant’s day, which swings between boredom and frenzy as the old rooms empty and fill. No one who works at […]
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Watch: Jodie Mack’s Glistening Thrills
Now online is Glistening Thrills, a short from 25 New Face Jodie Mack, which was selected for this year’s Rotterdam and New York Film Festivals. Scored to the tones of Elliot Cole and shot on 16mm, Glistening Thrills is an textural interrogation of holographic foil, in all its mass produced, nostalgic glory. In an extensive overview of Mack’s oeuvre, Calum Marsh at Fandor writes “in aesthetic terms alone, Glistening Thrills ranks as perhaps her most exhilarating found-object work; its interplay of light and color, often totally hypnotic, produces an effect unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” Watch above.
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Seven Impressions of Viggo, a Short Film by Alix Lambert
In October, timed to the New York Film Festival U.S. premiere of his film, Jauja, Lisandro Alonso was the second director in residence at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The Film Society invited Filmmaker to report on Alonso’s various events — lectures, Q&As and sessions with students in both New York and Boston — and we asked filmmaker and contributor Alix Lambert. Jauja is produced by and stars Viggo Mortenson, who shares a tie with Lambert. He and David Cronenberg watched her The Mark of Cain film while researching Russian tattoos for Eastern Promises, and Mortensen’s Perceval Press published […]
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Watch: Five Tips for Shooting Outdoors
This Film Riot video (via No Film School) quickly runs down five basic tools you’ll need to have in order to shoot outside — wind socks or other protection for your mic, ND filters and so on — as well as suggesting cost-effective alternatives for especially cash-strapped productions. No money for a bounce board? No problem: pull a pillowcase over a cardboard box and you’re ready to go. While intended primarily for beginners, this video’s pointers can serve as a quick refresher crash course to bring everyone on your crew up to speed.
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Watch: Stitching Birdman Together in Post
If I was at all restless during Birdman, it had little to do with the stakes of the plot, and much more to do with deciphering Emmanuel Lubezki’s visual pyrotechnics. Apologies for the spoiler, but you’ve probably heard by now that Iñárritu’s latest is designed to look like one sweeping take, a nod to its theatrical subject matter and setting. The camera ducks in and out of darkness more than once, but surely the technicians in post found points for incision that are barely visible to the naked eye. In this video interview with Variety, the film’s digital intermediate colorist Steve Scott explains […]
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Five Questions for Drone Boning Drone Porn Creators Brandon LaGanke and John Carlucci
Drones. Porn. Directors Brandon LaGanke and John Carlucci of Ghost Cow Films have taken what might have been a cynical, viral video SEO-mashup and delivered something deeply weird and oddly hypnotic. While Drone Boning features couples having sex (so, yes, it’s adults-only and NSFW), the eerie glide of the drone and the camera’s distance from these writhing lovers make them more like elements in a video art piece than reflections of desire. Filmmaker previously featured the work of Ghost Cow when we curated LaGanke’s short film, Play House, for the Northside Film Festival. When he sent me this latest out-there […]
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Watch: A Montage of Heaven and Hell at the Movies (Mildly NSFW)
Opening with the decidedly non-canonical duo of Always and All Dogs Go to Heaven, this nifty eight-ish minute montage looks at the afterlife as rendered onscreen. Graphic matches and dialogue segues from one person protesting they don’t belong here to another are smoothly handled, and while it’s more for fun than study, there are some takeaways: i.e., that there’s very little difference in the degree of tackiness of the afterlife as rendered in What Dreams May Come and Little Nicky. Thanks to Press Play for the tip. (There is brief rear male nudity and a dude’s neck being torn apart, […]
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Watch: Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel Q&A
This post-SXSW screening Q&A for The Grand Budapest Hotel is a few cuts above average. For one thing, Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman and music supervisor Randall Poster get to have Richard Linklater as their moderator, which makes for a higher class of question and a more relaxed rapport between two sympatico filmmakers. Native Texans who’ve both worked with animation, Linklater and Anderson are equally ready to discuss the films of Max Ophuls and which Stefan Zweig books in particular they have or haven’t read. Other highlights: Poster talks about how they arranged to record with a full balalaika orchestra, Anderson […]
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Watch: How to Prepare a 70mm Interstellar Print for Projection
One of the more unexpected side effects of Interstellar‘s much-ballyhooed release in 35mm, 70mm and 70mm IMAX has been a wave of videos from local theaters showing their patrons exactly what it takes to prepare and project 70mm. My pick of the litter is this nicely shot two-minute video from the Willow Creek 12 Theater in Plymouth, Minnesota. Watch the process from start to finish as eight cans of film arrive, are unlocked, checked for damage, and then fed onto a platter for projection. An earlier video showed the theater testing its 70mm projector for its first 70mm engagement in 22 years. […]
