The Silent History is a fascinating new publishing project that merges app distribution with geolocational storytelling. Launched by former McSweeney’s publisher Eli Horowitz and colleagues, the project will launch next month, downloading stories to readers’ iOS devices and then coaxing them out into the streets of nearly 400 cities for more. Here is the trailer featuring the voices of Miranda July and Ira Glass. Horowitz is interviewed by Reyhan Harmanci at Buzzfeed, and he speaks of the project’s inspirations: “I got to thinking about new storytelling experiences — what can these things do, what can these things lead to,” he […]
Second #6533, 108:53 1. Jeffrey’s reaction to the violence that has happened in Dorothy’s apartment shifts gradually in the moments that follow this shot from numbed horror to sorrow, as if what he sees before him (Dorothy’s husband and the Yellow Man, tortured and dead or dying) is in some sense the awful answer to his curiosity. 2. From Charles Musser’s The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907: Sex and violence figured prominently in American motion pictures from the outset. In fact, such subjects were consistent with the individualized, peephole nature of the viewing experience: they showed amusements […]
On Monday, July 9th, the New York Times published findings from the House’s Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus on how federal, state and local law enforcement agencies made approximately 1.3 million requests to wireless carriers for individual subscriber records in 2011. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), co-chair of the Caucus, released the report, noting, “We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers.” He added, “Law enforcement agencies are looking for a needle, but what are they doing with the haystack?” A wireless customer’s personal information provided to law enforcement […]
Those looking for a great example of a documentary-film concept successfully realized online should check out Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge’s Welcome to Pine Point, a powerfully melancholic about place, memory and the macro-economic forces that reshape both. The piece was developed in 2010, so I realize I’m quite late to the party on this one, but it’s quite extraordinary and worth your look. Music, Super-8 film clips, text on screen, and plenty of points of interaction allow you to explore the now-vanished Canadian town while feeling the creators’ ineffable nostalgia for it. From an interview with the creators on […]
One of the problems of both the physical and non-physical media economies has to do with proof of participation. You can support an artist by buying their DVD or download, but those items can also just sit on your shelves or hard drives, unwatched. Sure, the artist gets some coin but not the word-of-mouth that comes from your spreading the gospel about their work. One publisher tackled this problem in the world of literature by creating The Book that Can’t Wait, an anthology for new authors that literally erases itself if it hasn’t been read in 60 days. Combating the […]
Producer Tory Lenosky passed on this new music video directed by filmmaker Nik Fackler (Lovely Still) with his Icky Blossoms band members Derek Pressnall (Tilly and the Wall) and Sarah Bohling. Two gorgeous actors, lovely black-and-white photography, and one very trashed set. From Fackler and the band: “We were dealing with a 6 1/2 minute long song. We had to keep things interesting. So it made the most sense for us to direct a short film and approach the video as such. We wanted the quality of it to be that of any film you would see in theaters. Coming […]
Editor Alan Edward Bell began his career in the late ’80s, working first as an assistant editor (Heathers, Lord of the Flies, Misery, A Few Good Men) and then, a decade later, as editor on a string of both independent and studio films including Little Manhattan, The Story of Us, Water for Elephants and (500) Days of Summer. It was the latter film that connected Bell with director Marc Webb, and the two recently completed their second project together — The Amazing Spider-Man. Below I talk to Bell about cutting a blockbuster, 3D, the AVID, Final Cut Pro, how multiple […]
After the recent BAMcinemaFest screening that marked the first time Benh Zeitlin’s magical-realist Beasts of the Southern Wild screened alongside Bill and Turner Ross’s immersive New Orleans documentary Tchoupitoulas—both South Louisiana-shot pictures produced by members of the film collective Court 13—there were two celebrations on either side of BAM. At the beautiful dive-bar Frank’s, the Ross brothers and various doc and indie film bros were watching the NBA championships with loud exuberance and strong opinions. There was a rumor that there was a dance party across the street at the Fox Searchlight-hosted party for Beasts, which was flowing with delicious […]
Bart Layton’s excellent The Imposter, one of the most inventive and cinematic documentaries of recent years, opens theatrically today. The following interview was originally published on the eve of its Sundance Film Festival premiere. More and more often different mediums and genres of filmmaking are being meshed together and Bart Layton’s newest documentary The Imposter is no different. The film’s official synopsis declares, “Documentary meets Film Noir in this astonishing true story which has all the twists and turns of a great thriller.” But this is not just a hoax to get people into the theatre. Based on an extremely […]
Second #6486, 108:06 Inside Dorothy’s apartment Jeffrey surveys the carnage. The television set, its screen cracked. Detective Gordon, the Man in Yellow, somewhere in between dead and alive, and perhaps, at the outer edges of possibility, hooked up to the television. Lynch has talked about his desire to make a painting that “would really be able to move” as a motivation for making his first films, and during the apartment scene the screen does indeed become like a canvas, its objects staged and still, with occasional movement, some fevered dream of an automated wax-museum. Is Blue Velvet an avant-garde film? […]