Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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25 NEW FACE FILMMAKER JOHN MARINGOUIN NEEDS OUR SUPPORT
Back when we selected filmmaker John Maringouin for our 25 New Faces list in 2006, we knew he had crazy, gonzo talent. His father-son reunion pic, Running Scared is, as I wrote at the time, “a true epic in the fucked-up family doc genre.” Three years after Running Scared, Maringouin made an even bigger impact with Big River Man, a hilarious and heartfelt tale of adventure and human endurance. But now, as I sadly learned in an email from filmmaker Stephen Kijak, Maringouin is fighting his own medical battle and he needs our support. I’ll let Kijak explain: My friend, […]
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THOU SHALT NOT WORSHIP FALSE GODS BEFORE ME: ISRAELIS, CHILDREN, AND THE 2012 JERUSALEM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
We learnt from Abraham that when it comes to the hierarchy between our children and God, God comes first…but this story, with all its profound meaning, has been lost and denied—for many understandable reasons-by contemporary Israeli culture…a fact that can be seen in two films I recently viewed at the 2012 Jerusalem International Film Festival. Dover Kosashvili’s new feature, Single Plus (above), tracks the story of a woman and her 35-year-old single daughter. The mother is so distraught by the fact that her daughter has not yet reproduced that she comes up with an outrageous ruse. The mother lies to […]
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IN PRODUCTION: “AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS,” “TO SURVIVE,” “PARANOIA” and “ALL THE WRONG REASONS”
“In Production” is a regular column which focuses on notable independent films that are currently shooting. Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and Ben Foster (Here) are among the impressive cast members assembled for newcomer David Lowery’s second feature, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. Currently shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, the drama-thriller has been described as a modern day Bonnie and Clyde. Coming off the success of his short film Pioneer (which got him on Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” list in 2011), Lowery developed Ain’t Them Bodies Saints at the Sundance […]
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TRAILER WATCH: KATHRYN BIGELOW’S “ZERO DARK THIRTY”
There’s really not a lot of actual footage or dialogue in this teaser trailer for director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal’s follow-up to their Best Picture Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker — instead what we have here is suggestive, and very much style over content. The film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden — which comes out on December 19 — is not set to play fall fests and is still in postproduction, and it seems from this teaser that Columbia Pictures wants to keep as much of the material under wraps as possible, at least for now. […]
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LOCARNO CRITICS NOTEBOOK #1
The Locarno Film Festival has carved out a role for itself since Olivier Père took over three years ago, in which it offers the best of all festival worlds. Acting as perhaps the best cross-section of contemporary cinema—or something very close to it—available on the festival circuit, it has often been described as one of the true “cinephilic” fests. Additionally, in order to make this possible, Locarno still needs to be something of a hotspot, and the “glamor” that makes such a reputation possible is also a key component. However, Locarno manages to avoid being an industry-driven media frenzy like […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #147
Second #6909, 115:09 Detective Williams arrives, too late. Everyone dead is dead. Jeffrey is alive, but not because of the Law. Sandy, behind her father, behind the gun, swoons, electrified and ready to be taken by Jeffrey. This post is as good a post as any to suggest that, just beneath its surface, Blue Velvet is a “trash” film. It’s so overloaded with references to Hollywood’s traditions that always threatens to implode in on itself, perhaps nowhere else more poignantly than in this frame, which evokes everything from noir to the “woman’s picture” to the classic crime film. In Avant-Garde […]
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An Independent Filmmaker Confronts Piracy
Producer Matt Compton says he knew the feature he produced — a “thinking man’s horror film,” Midnight Son, directed by Scott Leberecht — would eventually be pirated. “I always knew the film would end up on the torrent sites,” he writes in an email, “and that there would be nothing I could do about it. If the major studios can’t stop piracy, surely an indie producer such as myself can do nothing.” But he wasn’t prepared for his film to show up three weeks before the film was commercially available, when whatever word-of-mouth to be gained by the filesharing couldn’t […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #146
Second #6862, 114:22 In an unnervingly comic touch Frank approaches the closet where Jeffrey hides loaded up with his props, which include Dorothy’s blue velvet gown and his gas mask. He is the exterminator now, inhaling his chemicals, approaching Jeffrey and, ominously, the camera. For Frank has seen us, now. The invisible camera has been called out, hailed, interpolated. Frank stares back at us, returning our gaze, just as the bandit, gun in hand, did in Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 film The Great Train Robbery: Out of the shadows he comes, Dorothy’s tortured, neck and wrist bound husband at his […]
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The Cult Appeal of the Creative Capital Retreat
“Creative Capital is a cult,” said Phillip Andrew Lewis at the end of his presentation at the art funder’s semi-annual retreat this past weekend at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. “But it’s a good cult.” Lewis’s was both a good line and an appropriate capper to his presentation, which shocked right from the outset. The installation artist began his talk by saying he had been held captive as a child for two years within a radical drug treatment program sponsored by the U.S. government. “I consider my work a form of deprogramming,” he told the stunned audience. For the record, […]
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HEAR BOB DYLAN’S NEW SONG… COURTESY OF CINEMAX
A musician’s gotta monetize himself… Bob Dylan’s new album comes out September 11, but he’s just released a song from it — as score for a Cinemax promo for its new series, Strike Back. Hear it below. (Hat tip: Talking Points Memo.)
