Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Klown Forever, Porky’s 2/Porky’s Revenge and Moving Violations: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
December is proving to be a strong month for comedies on home video, with one of the funniest films in recent years getting a top-notch Blu-ray release alongside a couple of worthy catalog titles. First up is the latest treasure from the good folks at Drafthouse Films, who have released last year’s Klown Forever in both a stand-alone edition and a spectacular boxed set that contains both Klown films and a collectible flash drive containing all six seasons of the TV series that inspired the movies. For the uninitiated, the Danish Klown films and series follow comedians Frank Hvam and […]
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2016: The Year in 10 Double Features
The double feature has been a moviewatching mainstay since at least the 1930s. Their appeal is obvious: What better way to cap off a film than to delay real life for a few hours more with another one? Few of us catch double bills at a theater anymore, but their allure remains strong at home. As sites like Mashable and Uproxx reported this year, Netflix users can access double-feature-friendly micro-genres with ease. These days, the work of curating a dual bill of “critically-acclaimed gritty independent crime dramas” is practically done for you. You can even start the next film without […]
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The Best Short Films on Television in 2016
At the start of this year, I opened an account with Letterboxd, a social platform that allows you to keep track of the films you watch. I work as a critic and edit a criticism website, so readers and subscribers often write me asking about what I have seen, especially when I do not publish my sentiments about a major film on any outlet. As of mid-December, I have listed about 200 movies (and a few limited series, including Netflix’s Easy and the ESPN sensation OJ: Made in America) as “watched” since I saw Darius Clark Monroe’s brilliant short film, […]
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“If You Put Up a Video Village You’re Going to Get 10% Less Material Every Day”: DP Giles Nuttgens on Hell or High Water
In Hell or High Water two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) embark on a spree of heists intended to fleece predatory Texas banks, with an about-to-retire Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) hot on their heels. The film is an elegy to a dying way of life – not only for family ranchers Pine and Foster, but also for lawman Bridges. Making the movie was an elegy of sorts as well for cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, a vocal celluloid proponent who ultimately opted to shoot with an Alexa Studio on the project. In the words of another great western requiem The Wild […]
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Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema Launch Women’s TV Pilot Contest
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) and Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema have launched a contest that will award two New York City screenwriters the development and production of their scripts as pilots to be aired on NYC Media. One of the two winners will see their pilot be developed into four further episodes. The scripts — which must be “by, for and about women” — will be selected by a panel of industry leaders, says the press release, and will be produced by graduates of the Feirstein School “under the mentorship of Jonathan Wacks and […]
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The Poignant, Romantic and Bleak Snowden: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendation
One of the best films of 2016 begins streaming this week, as Oliver Stone’s Snowden drops on iTunes and Amazon. Stone has long been one of our most versatile directors, having made horror flicks (Seizure, The Hand), a Vietnam trilogy (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven & Earth), a musical (The Doors), historical epics (Alexander, Nixon), a sports film (Any Given Sunday), a love story (World Trade Center), business movies (the two Wall Street movies), and three audacious and darkly funny crime pictures (Natural Born Killers, U-Turn, Savages). With Snowden, Stone synthesizes all of his strengths in one […]
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Moby Dick, Mad Max: Fury Road “Black and Chrome” Edition, and Moscow on the Hudson: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
A great American film finally gets a proper home video treatment on Twilight Time’s new Blu-ray of Moby Dick, John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s 1851 classic novel. It’s a film of many virtues, starting with the literary – Huston collaborated with Ray Bradbury on the screenplay, and their adaptation is a surprisingly successful distillation of Melville’s voice and themes. Huston’s memories of the production were not fond; he described it as the most difficult picture he ever made and said in his autobiography, “I lost so many battles during it that I even began to suspect that my […]
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“Made in NY Fellowships” Recipients Announced by Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in Partnership with IFP
In partnership with IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment has announced this year’s ten projects to be chosen for Made in NY Fellowships. The projects, which span documentary and narrative filmmaking as well as gaming, post-production, animation, VR and media/technology platforms, will receive yearlong incubator positions at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. Read the full press release below. NEW YORK, NY – Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) Commissioner Julie Menin and the Made in NY Media Center by IFP today announced the recipients of the second year of Made in NY Fellowships, […]
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How Do You Market a Madman? On the Trailers of Werner Herzog
“The sun dimmeth, the land sinketh, gusheth forth steam and gutting fire,” rasps Werner Herzog ominously, quoting Norse poetry from the Poetic Edda as bursts of lava erupt onto the screen in the trailer for his latest release, Into the Volcano (Netflix). The message is clear: the Underworld awaits. And your Teutonic guide is a veritable Stygian ferryman. So how do you market a madman? Or — more accurately — when? Herzog, the acclaimed septuagenarian director, first rose to prominence as part of the New German Cinema movement in the 1970s and quickly staked his claim in film’s firmament with […]
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Podcast: Alix Lambert Interviews Westworld Stunt Coordinator Mike Watson
In one of our occasional Filmmaker podcasts, director, artist and writer Alix Lambert interviews here stunt coordinator Mike Watson, whose work can be seen on HBO’s Westworld, which has its season finale tomorrow night. In addition to Westworld, Watson’s over 70 credits include films like Django Unchained, Hail Caesar!, Lost Highway, Rambo 3 and Silverardo. He was also the stunt coordinator for HBO’s Deadworld, which Lambert wrote for, and for the network’s subsequent David Milch series, John from Cincinnati, on which Lambert was an associate producer. In this wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss Watson’s background, what makes a good fight […]
