Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Todd Solondz on Independent Film, Then and Now
Here’s another clip from my conversation with Dark Horse writer/director Todd Solondz. I asked Solondz to reflect on independent film, then and now, and his own longevity as a purely independent director. In his answer, he discusses, the declining budgets of independent film, television and the seminal nature of The Blair Witch Project. Dark Horse is currently playing at the Angelika Theater in New York.
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HANNAH FIDELL AND “A TEACHER” AT US-IN-PROGRESS, PART ONE
Hello internet! My name is Hannah Fidell and I wrote and directed the film A Teacher. It’s screening in rough cut form at US-In-Progress which is being held at the first ever Champs-Élysées Film Festival in Paris this week. Three other American independent films were chosen to compete for various postproduction grants and all are screened for European distributors and sales agents. Being the first time I’ve ever participated in anything like this, the nice folks over at Filmmaker thought it would be a good idea for me to share my experiences. Enjoy! June 6, 2012 8:32pm – Dropped off at […]
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EVERYNONE WINS GRAND PRIZE AT VIMEO AWARDS
Last night at the NYU Skirball Center, the Vimeo Awards took place and one of the 25 New Faces from 2011, Everynone, were the big winners. For their excellent Symmetry, the video collective of Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadante and Julius Metoyer III took away both the prize in the Lyrical category and the Grand Prize, which came with an additional $25,000 in prize money. In my profile of Everynone for 25 New Faces last year, I wrote: If you listen to the radio, then you may have seen the short documentary essay films of the New York collaborative, Everynone. For the […]
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JAMES BENNETT, 1950 – 2012
Composer James Bennett, who brought musical wit and a lyrical touch to his work in film and theater, died in New York this week of a heart attack. He was classically trained on piano and later was a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, an innovative New York City program known for training composers, lyricists and librettists. His work in theater includes collaborations with Charles Horne on the scores for the Off-Broadway shows Eva Braun and Dogs. Though Jim composed music for only two feature films — Todd Haynes’ Poison and my film Swoon — he brought […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #122
Second #5734, 95:34 There is a look of pity on Detective Williams’s face as he delivers his warning to Jeffrey not to “blow it.” At this point, it’s not entirely clear whose side the Detective is on; is his Hollywood stock detective outfit for real, or is he—like the “well-dressed man”—wearing a disguise? His warning to Jeffrey, as he takes him by the arms and looks into his eyes, is like a secret communication, a signal to Jeffrey not to rush things, not dig too deeply because what he might find at the terrible, rotten core of things is not […]
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Todd Solondz on Career Longevity and Dark Horse
Todd Solondz just scored one of the best reviews of his career with A.O. Scott’s New York Times rave for Dark Horse, opening today. Favorably comparing it to Death of a Salesman (!), Scott writes: But Mr. Solondz brilliantly — triumphantly — turns this impression on its head, transforming what might have been an exercise in easy satirical cruelty into a tremendously moving argument for the necessity of compassion. Again and again — in the ’90s indie touchstones Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, and more recently in Life During Wartime — this director has blurred the boundary between misanthropy […]
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Ingmar Bergman Interviews Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman was not known for being a particularly lighthearted or funny fellow, but it turns out he was not always as dark and brooding as his movies may have lead us to believe. As part of the DVD release package of Summer with Monika, the Criterion Collection has included a translated conversation, first published in the Swedish publication Filmnyheter, in which Bergman interviews himself about his movie. And it’s really funny! You can check out the entire playful dialogue (or should it be monologue?) at the Criterion Current. What was it like making Monika? I didn’t make Monika. [Source novel […]
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“FINALLY, LILLIAN AND DAN” TONIGHT AT NO BUDGE
Mike Gibisser’s beautifully understated indie romance Finally, Lillian and Dan made a bit of an impact on the festival circuit a few years back, but never really got the attention it deserved. Karina Longworth, one of the most vocal champions of the film, said of it: It’s a find, a definite cousin of the work being made in the Bronstein household––as with Frownland, the mumbling here is so stylized and disturbed that it’s like a precision bomb against the twee subtleties explored by other contemporary filmmakers––it’s more like Tourettescore. But there’s also a tenderness here, and lofty aesthetic ambitions underpinned […]
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Writer/Director Todd Solondz on Dark Horse
“I want to want you,” says the cripplingly depressed Miranda (Selma Blair) to her suitor with excruciating honesty. The coddled, overweight Abe (Jordan Gelber), a compulsive collector who still lives at home with his parents (Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken), will take what he can get. “That’s enough for me,” he breathes. In Todd Solondz’s Dark Horse, the queasy tale of a 35-year-old man-child who decides to add a wife to his possessions, the writer-director’s dialogue is as sharp as ever, each line an arrow poisoned with sincerity. Known for colorful, stylized, cynical films including Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), […]
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MARIELLE HELLER AT THE SUNDANCE DIRECTORS LAB, PART ONE
Marielle Heller, a New York-based screenwriter, actor and playwright, is attending the June Sundance Directors Lab with her project, The Diary of a Teenage Girl. “In the haze of 1970’s San Francisco, a teenage artist with a brutally honest perspective tries to navigate her way through an affair with her mother’s boyfriend,” is its description, and the film is being adapted from the graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner. Here is Heller’s first blog post from the Sundance Resort in Utah. It’s the end of our first week of four at the Sundance Directors Lab. I feel as though I’ve been […]
