Slavoj Zizek views Melancholia as a profoundly optimistic film. (I agree.)
In Sans Soleil, a cine-essay from 1983 that feels like it’s from 2083 (and remains the paragon of the form), the narrator speaks of an idea for a film. This imaginary film would be about a man on our planet, from the year 4001 AD, who comes back in time to our era and is moved by the realization that in our time, people are capable of forgetting. You see, this time-traveler comes from a future where forgetting is impossible, where humans have figured out how to condition the brain to remember everything. In this future society, memories hold none […]
“In Production” is a regular column which focuses on notable independent films that are currently shooting. Shooting from mid-July in Eastern Indiana, Scalene director Zack Parker’s Proxy is a suspense thriller about Esther (Alexia Rasmussen), a pregnant woman who joins a support group after being attacked one night and strikes up a dysfunctional relationship with a fellow victim (Alexa Havins). Parker’s last feature Scalene, which is set for release on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD on July 31st, received glowing reviews for its clever use of the fractured narrative – potentially one of the most over-used cinematic devices of the past three decades. Parker has […]
Second #6862, 114:22 Jeffrey, taking the gun from the Yellow Man’s jacket pocket, as Frank is in the bedroom, shooting. In addition to Jeffrey and the Yellow Man, there is the camera, or at least its presence, invisible in accordance with classical cinema’s codes, which, even after the deconstructive storms of postmodernism, are themselves invisible, having been absorbed into the very technologies that make film possible. In Blue Velvet, for the most part, the camera does not call attention to itself; most of its movement is motivated, aligned with, and justified by corresponding movements in the film’s narrative. And yet […]
A curious occurrence took place in the wake of the Aurora, CO, mass killing on the opening night screening of the latest Batman release, The Dark Knight Rises. Revenue from opening weekend ticket sales was $211.8 million, slightly less than the $222.2 million for The Dark Knight. This was the highest box office gross for a conventional 2D movie for 2012. While the large turnout for the movie can be linked to a response to the shootings as much as the appeal of the movie, the numbers hide a darker truth. The movie business is shrinking. Ticket sales and DVD […]
Terry Gilliam’s daughter Holly has created a blog, “Discovering Dad,” dedicated to the exploration of her father’s enormous and rich archive. Here’s her opening post: In October 2011 I took on the mamouth task of organising my father’s archive – all his work from pre-Python days, as a cartoonist, photojournalist & assistnat editor for Help! magazine, through all his original artwork and cut-outs for Python animation, posters, logos and generally everything Python, to his storyboards, designs and sketches for his feature films and other non-film related projects (including his opera of “Faust” and that infamous Nike commercial). Why!? Because I […]
NewFest, New York’s LGBT film festival, returns this year with bicoastal fortification, its programming taken over by the folks at L.A.’s Outfest, whose motive for the merge is to foster a national queer arts entity. But is the alliance holy? With Outfest having just wrapped its 30th anniversary, an 11-day event that boasted nearly 150 titles (including Ira Sachs’s Keep the Lights On, Jonathan Lisecki’s Gayby, and David France’s riveting ACT UP doc, How to Survive a Plague), NewFest has the not-so-faint whiff of an afterthought, its 18-feature lineup looking more like the subpar cache of a scavenger than a […]
The Canon EOS M Canon this week announced the Canon EOS M, a small camera that takes an APS-C sensor and stuffs it into a smaller body by doing away with the DSLR mirrorbox and using a new lens mount. The EOS M follows a trail blazed by Canon’s competitors — namely Panasonic and Sony. Sony has had a hit with their NEX- series cameras, and obviously Canon has been watching. What does it mean for video? Well for one thing, it does away with the mirrorbox, which for video shooters is a mostly useless piece of equipment. This shrinks […]
Second #6768, 112:48 Fragments: 1. Frank’s back to the camera. 2. Dorothy’s apartment stretched out in horizontal like a widescreen nightmare. 3. The vintage fridge, solid. 4. The black circle mirror above the bathroom pedestal sink. (If Roberto Bolaño had done the set design for Blue Velvet, the mirror would have been inscrutably evil.) 5. The silencer, attached. 6. The sconce on the wall above the couch, looking at first glance, in its isolated away, like the screaming mouth on Jeffrey’s wall. 7. The sadness of Dorothy’s husband’s dead paunch. 8. Frank’s death in under two minutes, uncertain at this […]
Ava DuVernay won the Best Director prize at Sundance for her second feature, the powerful, superbly acted Middle of Nowhere. The first trailer has just dropped; watch it below, and look for DuVernay’s interview with Spike Lee in our current print edition.