Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Five Questions with Teddy Bear Director Mads Matthiesen
Kim Kold, the six-foot-something, 300-plus pound star of Teddy Bear, is a striking, memorable screen presence. In the first feature from Danish writer-director Mads Matthiesen, Kold plays Dennis, a mama’s boy who decides to travel to Thailand in search of a wife. Dennis knows this will irk the heck out of his possessive mother Ingrid (Elsebeth Steentoft), so he lies, telling her he’s off to Germany to compete in a bodybuilding competition. This buys him time, but ultimately Dennis will have to sort out his feelings: Is his desire to forge a life of his own as powerful as the […]
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TRAILER WATCH: “BROOKLYN BROTHERS BEAT THE BEST”
On September 21, almost exactly a year after its premiere at Toronto, writer/director/star Ryan O’Nan’s IFP Lab project Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best will be released by Oscilloscope Pictures. The quirky, crowdpleasing musical comedy — which has a strong supporting cast featuring Michael Weston, Arielle Kebbel, Andrew McCarthy, Jason Ritter, Wilmer Valderrama, Christopher McDonald and Melissa Leo — now has a trailer, which you can check out below.
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Samein Priester, 1st &4Ever
I met the documentary filmmaker Samein Priester last spring while I was at The MacDowell Colony. He screened his documentary short 1st &4Ever, which elicited an emotional response from all of us who saw it, and it launched my friendship with Priester. We talked about film and life and he showed me footage from other projects. There is a quality to Priester that is also evident in his work: you want to listen to him. 1st&4Ever addresses the absence of the father figure and how one can learn to be an effective father if one has never had an example […]
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NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES SIDEBAR PROGRAMS
Following on from the announcement of its main slate, the New York Film Festival has unveiled the event’s sidebar programs, which includes a sneak preview of three episodes of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming Showtime series Untold History of the United States. For me, the most exciting strand of those just announced is Cinema Reflected, which has such titles as Room 237, Rodney Ascher’s obsessional examination of Kubrick’s The Shining; Marina Zenovich’s follow-up doc Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out; a bizarre concoction by Taxidermia director György Pàlfi called Final Cut — Ladies and Gentlemen which proclaims to be scenes from 450 of […]
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MUSIC VIDEO: “A FAKE HELLO”
Factory 25 maestro Matt Grady appears here in his other guise as music video director with this witty clip for the band Young Fresh Fellows. The video features director Onur Tukel and actress Jennifer Prediger and shows you how much mileage you can get from a simple prop — in this case, a smiley-face flat-screen TV.
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A PLUK DE NACHT PRIMER: AMSTERDAM’S ANSWER TO ROOFTOP FILMS
“Open-air cinema as a means to an end,” is how Caspar Sonnen, the driving force behind IDFA DocLab summed up the vision for the Open Air Film Festival Amsterdam (a.k.a. Pluk de Nacht), the summertime tradition he co-founded back in 2003, when I last chatted with him over coffee at Two For Joy in Frederiksplein. He went on to explain that all the film schools and Netflix DVDs in the world can’t capture the magic of cinema like a single collective movie experience can. “Our organizational structure is that of a block party,” he added. Interestingly, this indie movie evangelist […]
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WHERE IDEAS GO WHEN THEY DIE
The following blog post originally appeared at the IFP’s site and is cross-posted with permission. — Editor. May 15th, 2011. I am given a book by my favourite poet, Bob Hicok. In it there’s a poem about the 2007 Virginia Polytechnic Institute massacre – to date the deadliest shooting of innocent people by a single gunman in US history. This excerpt from the poem speaks for itself – People wrote, called, mostly e-mailed because they know I teach at Virginia Tech, to say, there’s nothing to say. Eventually I answered these messages: there’s nothing to say back except of course […]
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IN PRODUCTION: “THE F WORD,” “AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS,” “MALAVITA” and “MAD MAX: FURY ROAD”
“In Production” is a regular column which focuses on notable independent films that are currently shooting. Daniel Radcliffe is stuck in the friend zone in Michael Dowse’s The F Word. Resuming his post-Harry Potter career, Radcliffe stars alongside Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks) in this romantic comedy about a young man who meets the love of his life only to discover that she is already spoken for — not the most uncommon circumstance. The cast also includes Rafe Spall (Prometheus), Megan Park (ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager) and the terrific Adam Driver (HBO’s Girls). Written by Elan Mastai (The Samaritan), […]
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The Week in Cameras: Sony NEX-EA50 and Zacuto Shootout
New Large-Sensor Camera From Sony Sony has announced another new camera, the Sony NEX-EA50, which fits somewhere between the very consumer-ish NEX-VG20 and the semi-professional NEX-FS100. The common design element of NEX cameras is the use of Sony’s E-mount, which has a very shallow flange depth – the distance from the mount to the sensor – making it possible to use a variety of lens mounts with an appropriate adapter. The NEX-EA50 is clearly aimed at the event and documentary shooter. It has a new body shape with an integrated shoulder pad (which can be adjusted), XLR audio inputs, and comes […]
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FILM INVESTING FOR DUMMIES
Like most working independent film producers, I’ve pitched my projects to more potential financiers than I can remember. I’m always relieved when they’re seasoned film investors because then I can focus on the creative aspects of the project, the production and distribution plan, and the recoupment structure. When I pitch to someone who hasn’t invested in film before, most of my time is spent explaining how film investment works, the typical life cycle of a film, and the current industry landscape (often with historical context!). I genuinely love educating people about “how film works.” It’s great to shatter the US Weekly version of the […]
