Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Biggest Challenge, Best Lesson: Five Nights in Maine Writer/Director Maris Curran
When I first speak to filmmaker Maris Curran on the phone, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of my parked car about two months after breaking both my arms in a bicycle accident. The accident occurred as I was pulling my bike over to the side of the road in order to phone the editor of this publication to discuss some column ideas I had about the business of filmmaking. I missed that meeting, of course, and since the accident, my mind has been almost singularly focused on the psychological impact of tragic accidents. Since that can get a bit […]
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Red Giant Universe Effects Package Review
There are a number of things that are different about Red Giant’s effects package Universe. It’s offered as a subscription, but you can get access to a sizeable number of effects without paying a thing. Members of the Universe community get to vote on effects that are being added to the set. Universe is cross-platform, works with a variety of software applications and supports GPU acceleration. You can even try out the premium effects for free with your first month of use. The effects and transitions of Universe support a variety of environments: Adobe After Effects (CS5.5 and higher) and […]
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What Revised U.S.-Cuba Relations Could Mean for Film
My knowledge of Cuban cinema is limited to a handful of films — one or two native productions and works by foreigners like Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club and Michael Rubbo’s Waiting for Fidel. So my interest was aroused when President Obama announced his administration’s change in policy regarding Cuba. The political ramifications of the President’s policies are, of course, extremely personal for Cuban-Americans, and discussions about the politics of the announcement and human-rights issues in Cuba are occurring across the nation(s). While not disregarding these discussions, I wanted to take a moment to look at the possibilities normalized relations might create […]
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Watch Burst, Celine Tran’s Bid to Become an Action Star
It’s fascinating to watch how DIY production possibilities are changing the nature of the resume and showreel. A couple of months ago we posted this video by Lawrence Rebeiro about how he was able to use a small crew to pre-viz a fight scene. Now, via James Marsh at Twitch comes this impressive fight scene produced by French/Vietnamese performer Celine Tran (formerly the adult actress Katsuni and featured in Gaspar Noe’s episode of Destricted) showcasing her knife-fighting and martial arts abilities. It’s just one of several videos created as standalones showcasing assorted fighting styles and intended to launch her as […]
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Drive, He Said: A Most Violent Year
The guy’s a tease. Up until the end of Margin Call (2011), the debut feature of A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor (All is Lost), our moral compass in the story of a New York investment firm at the onset of the 2008 financial crash is brainy risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). The young MIT graduate is so upright that he not only disentangles the masked electronic numbers signaling impending doom for those who can least afford it but also allies himself with the mid-level powers who prefer to forestall than cash in. In the penultimate sequence, once […]
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Watch: What Makes a Video Essay Great?
As our attention spans grow increasingly shorter in the age of information, there appears to be a growing audience for a form of film criticism beyond the written word. More precisely, for the video essay. Kevin B. Lee, the video essayist at Fandor, provides a nice inquiry into the state of the video essay today in his year-end recap, spotlighting the efforts of Tony Zhou and ::kogonada, while musing on what viewers respond to in their works: decisive analysis, politics, or the occasional cinephile fetishism. Further, Lee considers how even a narration-less supercut can adhere to its maker’s perspective based […]
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2014: The Year of 4K
At the end of 2013 I wrote: 2013 wasn’t so much the year of 4K, as the year of “do we need 4K?” For most of the year I was a skeptic, but now I’m starting to think that 2014 will bethe year of 4K. And here we are at the end of 2014 and I look back and think, “I really hit that one out of the park!” Not that it took a lot of genius to read the tea leaves or see the writing on the wall: 2014 was definitely the year of 4K. Whether it was the F5/F55 […]
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A Best Cinematography of 2014 Supercut
Here’s an elegant and understated supercut from Jacob T. Swinney, scored with a meditative cue by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Alongside some of the big Hollywood titles — Interstellar, Godzilla — are a number of indies and foreign films like Blue Ruin, Ida and White Bird in a Blizzard. Check it out.
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The Reel Distribution Politik of The Interview
The year’s most fascinating entertainment story gets even more so today, as the Seth Rogen/James Franco North Korea-baiting The Interview becomes available for online rental and purchase via YouTube, Google Play and Sony’s own site, with a limited theatrical release occurring tomorrow. (As I post this, Sony’s site just reveals the film’s poster art.) Only days after issuing a statement saying the studio “had no plans” to release the film, it has suddenly become the poster child for the day-and-date exhibition of a studio release — a distribution strategy the theater chains have been balking at for years. From Todd […]
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Ten Oscar-Worthy 2014 Documentary Favorites
Serving as the director of programming for this year’s Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival meant I watched way too many nonfiction films in 2014, some filled with stunning artistry, others with cringe-worthy talking heads. And since the Academy doc committee’s shortlist had me both cheering (Last Days in Vietnam! Tales of the Grim Sleeper!) and scratching my head (Citizen Koch? Really?) I thought I’d compile my own wish-it-were-this list for Oscar 2015. So here, in alphabetical order, are my 10 Doc Picks — only two of which overlap with the Oscar documentary shortlist — from the 134 submitted for Oscar […]
