When 3D TVs were the rage, I was convinced it was just a cynical push by the electronics manufacturers to sell TVs and nothing else. To me, 3D was a fad that would be used for a few things, but was unlikely to become mainstream. I’d seen the future before; I saw Jaws 3D when it was first released. So when the manufacturers started talking up 4K cameras, with promises of 4K TV sets, I was convinced that this too was a push to sell new TV sets that wouldn’t amount to much. Sure filmmakers with a big budget will […]
We’re making a new movie called The Yes Men Are Revolting – and we’re crowdfunding it on Kickstarter. We hit our initial goal of $100,000, but now we’re trying to double that. Why the new goal? Because we’re enacting a super-ambitious transmedia distribution plan that will take advantage of everything we learned so far about filmmaking and making a difference. Releasing our last movie on a shoestring budget was such a monumental task that we swore we would never do it again. But now is never. We endured the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York, and now we have […]
In California Solo, the latest film from writer/director Marshall Lewy (Blue State), Robert Carlyle plays Lachlan MacAldonich, a former Britpop star, now an alcoholic working as a farmhand in California. After he is caught driving drunk one night, MacAldonich’s legal right to remain in the country is challenged, and he is forced to revisit his former life. Carlyle delivers a wonderful performance, quiet, thoughtful and an altogether different alcoholic than Begbie, the Trainspotting role that shot him to stardom. After premiering at Sundance, California Solo played festivals worldwide (including its European premiere, at Edinburgh where one audience member, and Carlyle […]
Early in Wagner & Me, a new documentary about the music and legacy of Richard Wagner, English actor and writer Stephen Fry says he’d like to time travel to the 19th century. Once there, Fry continues, he would start a letter-writing campaign, urging the composer to rethink his infamously anti-Semitic essay Jewishness in Music: “I say to him, ‘Listen, you’re on the brink of becoming the greatest artist of the 19th century, and future generations will forget that, simply because of this nasty little essay that you’re writing, and because of the effect it’ll have.” Wagner, of course, did not […]
In 1965, a rough-and-tumble band of rock ‘n’ roll upstarts called The Rolling Stones were just beginning to build their legend, when wily manager Andrew Loog Oldham engaged English documentarian Peter Whitehead to follow the band around for a couple of days during a short stint in Ireland. The result was Charlie Is My Darling, a cinéma vérité snapshot of an era when the cultural revolution was only just beginning to crack the façade of the Old World. We see the young Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts (who gives the film its title) brainstorming […]
At a recent panel at the Boston Book Festival, five authors debated the pros and cons of having your book adapted to the big screen. Moderated by Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris, the event featured Nick Flynn (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City/Being Flynn), Daniel Handler (A Series of Unfortunate Events), Buzz Bissinger (Friday Night Lights), Rachel Cohn (Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist), and Andre Dubus III (The House of Sand and Fog). The conversation ranged over a variety of topics and it was clear that there was a wide range of experiences, from the ‘Pollyanna’ experience of Rachel […]
Online video’s come a long way in the seven-and-a-half years since the launch of YouTube, but it’s no secret that the landscape’s still constantly changing for filmmakers, both independents and studios. The big question, still, is how to best monetize online viewing, as a few recent developments have illustrated. Karin Chien has a great piece in the current issue of Filmmaker (available for subscribers here) about how some YouTube stars have built up massive audiences that have, in turn, supported them financially and empowered them to deal with Hollywood on favorable terms. But we all know that going viral can […]
So, I am in Amsterdam, attending my first IDFA, a fest I’ve been dreaming of attending since I first started working in documentary. IFP has 11 films in the fest, and four works in progress in the Forum, so I’m here for moral support, promotion of IFP, and reconnaissance. What is happening in documentary in the rest of the world? In advance of my arrival, I was most anticipating being a part of the Forum, “IDFA’s international co-financing and production market, Europe’s most important breeding ground for new documentary work.” The Forum presents works in progress to the international funding […]
I couldn’t agree with more the top spot on Cahiers du Cinema’s naming of Leos Carax’s melancholy ode to cinematic decline and reinvention, Holy Motors as the best film of the year. At this point it’s #1 on my list too. But the other selections on their top ten…? Let’s just say it’s an eccentric list. David Cronenberg’s experiment in DeLillo adaptation, Cosmopolis, is in the second spot. Interestingly, the two films were compared to each other during Cannes as both are episodic works dealing with protagonists driven around in limousines. Number three is Francis Ford Coppola’s under-seen (including by […]
Following on from the Bay Area Boom article about the San Francisco Film Society’s Filmmaker360 program, we are profiling the 13 finalists for the SFFS’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking grant. The winners of this award will be announced on December 8. RYAN COOGLER, FRUITVALE Synopsis: Based on a true story, Fruitvale follows Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident, who crosses paths with friends, enemies, family, and strangers on New Year’s Eve 2008. Bio: Ryan Coogler is a 26-year-old filmmaker based in the Bay Area. He earned his MFA at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in 2011, where he made several short […]