Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Ted Hope Announced as Head of Production for Amazon Original Movies Division
Independent producer Ted Hope, who recently left his position as CEO of Fandor, has been announced as the new Head of Production for Amazon Original Movies. As announced by Amazon today, the division, part of Amazon Studios, will produce and acquire up to 12 films a year for theatrical release and then early window play on Prime Instant Video four to eight weeks later. With producing credits such as The Ice Storm, 21 Grams, Super and Hope, of course, is well known to Filmmaker readers and, encouragingly, he has been tapped to bring “unique stories, voices, and characters from top […]
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There’s Still Hope for Cinema: Ted Hope in Toronto
On a chilly night earlier this week at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, Ted Hope addressed a capacity audience of filmmakers to wax about the future of film. For 90 minutes, the former CEO of Fandor and producer of indie classics 21 Grams, Happiness and In The Bedroom held a Socratic, existential discussion that (unsurprisingly) dismissed Hollywood’s traditional blockbuster-based mentality. “We’re stuck in a rut of legacy practices,” he declared. Hope urged new distribution and marketing models, yet failed to offer a framework in its place. Instead, Hope and SampoMedia’s Michael Gubbins engaged in an abstract dialogue that inspired many filmmakers in […]
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Out of Order: Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior
You’re ruining my birthday! You’re ruining my twenties! Let’s break up! Fine! The storm before the calm hits well into this film about a young Brooklyn woman in and (presumably) out of love. No spoiler this: In the first five minutes we learn that lovers Shirin (writer/director Desiree Akhavan), seen hastily packing, and Maxine (Rebecca Henderson) are going their separate ways. Desiree is going in the literal sense, to a less inviting apartment with two odd roommates attached in Bushwick; Maxine will remain in the love nest in tonier Park Slope that was already hers before they hooked […]
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39 Movies Released in 2014 Shot on 35mm
Last year, I posited that Boyhood‘s use of 35mm seemed to be a kind of special effect as much as anything: committing to film ensured an internally continuous look over 12 years of production whose uniqueness would survive despite a digital intermediate and no prints being struck for American release. This type of use of 35mm, separate from its ongoing viability as an exhibition format, was one common reason cited for its use in 39 2014 US releases originating in whole or substantial part from it. That’s a list that’s probably not complete: collating the release calendar against the technical specifications primarily quickly […]
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Soderbergh Posts His 110-Minute Recut and Rethink of Kubrick’s 2001
If you noticed that Steven Soderbergh watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 three times in 2014, here’s the reason why: he was working on his own recut. Just as he did with Raiders of the Lost Ark, Soderbergh has worked over Kubrick’s masterpiece and he’s posted his version over at his Extension 765 website. He sets the bar high for his adaptation: i’ve been watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY regularly for four decades, but it wasn’t until a few years ago i started thinking about touching it, and then over the holidays i decided to make my move. why now? I don’t […]
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Podcast Alert: Appropriate Behavior Director and Star Desiree Akhavan on Death, Sex and Money
Desiree Akhavan, a Filmmaker 25 New Face whose debut feature, Appropriate Behavior opens Friday, is the guest on the latest episode of Death, Sex and Money. I will be honest — as someone who interviews a lot of directors for a living, I often won’t listen to film directors interviewed elsewhere. But I make an exception when Anna Sale is the interviewer. She is expert at gently drawing out honest revelations from her interviewees about areas that most other interviewers (including me) won’t venture into. Here’s an exchange in which Akhavan talks with Sale about the pressure she feels as […]
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BitTorrent and Theatrical? David Cross to Self-Release Hits
BitTorrent has been flirting with creators for a little while now, releasing Thom Yorke’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes to the tune of $20 million in sales, as well as a free supplement to The Act of Killing, which was downloaded by 3.5 million in a month alone. Leave it to iconoclastic comedian David Cross then to push the envelope and digitally release his debut Hits for a pay what you wish pricetag. The film will also be available on iTunes, likely for the $14.99+ standard, but Cross is putting his stock in the erasure of the middleman, encouraging audiences to “decide how much tickets cost and…pay […]
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High Maintenance Director Katja Blichfeld Offers Advice to Young Filmmakers in First She Does Podcast
Episode One of She Does podcast features the talented Katja Blichfeld. Katja, along with her husband Ben Sinclair, writes, directs and produces High Maintenance, which recently became Vimeo’s first original series. We talked with Katja about her Danish roots, growing up in Southern California, aimlessly wandering through community college, finding a mentor, working with Tina Fey on 30 Rock as a casting director balancing work and life with her husband, and the pressure of being a first-time director. Below we have provided five takeaways from Katja. Trust your childhood instincts “I have a very distinct memory of 6th grade, producing […]
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Watch: What if Béla Tarr Made Polanski’s Repulsion?
“Inside every narrative film is a non-narrative film struggling to get out.” Here is a wonderfully distinctive video essay from critics Adrian Martin and Christina Álvarez López that reimagines Roman Polanski’s Repulsion as the work of Béla Tarr. Zeroing in on “the dank spaces and the dead moments, the images of food-as-object, the cycle of everyday activities, the endless, implacable passages of walking,” and other Tarr associated imagery, Martin and López explore filmmaking as elementary particles, tonally rearrangeable in line with a director’s vision and story. In a supplementary write-up at MUBI, the two cite Jonathan Rosenbaum’s review of The Tenant, wherein […]
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The Top 10 Movies, in Their Own Ways, of 2014
I’m not much for year-end listmaking — the release calendar variables for potential inclusion are pretty limited, so it feels like a pointless exercise in rearranging the same 20 pieces as everybody else, and I’ve probably written about the movies in question enough for the time being by year’s end. It is, nonetheless, the tail end of the season where people put out their lists and justifications, so I’ve laid out ten arbitrary categories that allow me to tout some titles, released in the US in 2014 unless otherwise noted. Best DTV Casualty Few people have reshaped the multiplex landscape as much in […]
