Telling the origin story of the creature that terrified us in Alien over three decades ago, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is one of this summer’s most hotly anticipated films. But somewhat surprisingly, the origins of the screenplay came as much from a screenwriter’s general meeting as the story material developed for that original movie. At a meeting in the offices of Scott’s production company, Scott Free, screenwriter Jon Spaihts was asked to riff on the possibilities of a film that would revisit the Alien universe. What resulted is Prometheus, with a script credited to Spaihts and Damon Lindelof. Below I ask […]
Second #5640, 94:00 The space behind Detective Williams — his accusatory gaze upon Sandy moments after Jeffrey has left — is unexplored in the film. He stands with his back to the darkness, his hand against the wall. There is the possibility of a fist. In a 2003 interview, filmmaker Chris Marker said that DVD technology is obviously superb, but it isn’t always cinema. Godard nailed it once and for all: at the cinema, you raise your eyes to the screen; in front of the television, you lower them. Then there is the role of the shutter. Out of the […]
Over on the Sundance website, Liz Holm — Kickstarter’s Film Program Director, as well as being a film producer in her own right — has a piece up about The Canyons, the collaboration between director Paul Schrader and novelist Bret Easton Ellis. The project is arguably the most high-profile film to turn to Kickstarter for funding and, understandably given the talent involved, it has already surpassed it’s fundraising goal of $100,000. (As I write this, it’s $40,000+ over its target, with 8 days still to go.) What I think is most interesting about Holm’s piece is not so much her […]
Harmony Korine takes the Black Keys to his Trash Humpers universe with the music video for the band’s new “Gold on the Ceiling.” Here it is — glitches, drop-outs and all.
Prescreen, the independent film discovery and distribution platform, has suspended operations, reports Rip Empson for Techcrunch. Beginning as a kind of film-of-the-day online distributor and developing into a marketing and discovery platform integrated with Facebook Open Graph, Prescreen both rented films and offered audience data to filmmakers developing their marketing plans. In his piece, Empson talked with Prescreen founder Shawn Bercuson: While Prescreen saw interest both from users and filmmakers (and the co-founder added that some of its investors were willing to re-up), timing is crucial. The space is hot, and Bercuson believes that it’s inevitable that a platform like […]
Lucy Mulloy’s Una Noche, a big winner at Tribeca last month, has been acquired by Sundance Selects for distribution in North America. The film netted the young director an award for Best New Narrative Director at Tribeca Film Festival in April, as well as accolades for cinematography and acting. Mulloy wrote the screenplay, a story of three disillusioned Cuban teenagers who undertake the tense 90-mile journey from Cuba to Miami. Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects and IFC Films, issued a statement calling Mulloy’s debut feature “a remarkable first film that vividly takes us into the lives of 3 teenagers […]
When it comes to Edinburgh, I’m no festival virgin. However, this is the first festival in the 15 years I’ve been attending either as staff, filmmaker or delegate, when I will be seven-and-a-half months pregnant. I will be waddling, Marge Gunderson style, from cinema to cinema, hopefully securing seats on the end of the row (leaving me with the perfect excuse to pop out early). I will NOT be quaffing vats of dry white wine, or even whiskey (sob) but that means I will hopefully remember the names of everyone I meet and won’t be dozing off during the more […]
This blog is a result of a comment I posted on Scott’s article, 15 Steps to Take After You Finish Your Script. People have always discouraged “readings” for investors, and I know why. They are usually boring for a number of reasons. Now I’ll lay out how my producing partners and I successfully raised money for our first film by staging readings. First, here’s a little backstory on what led us to this idea that everyone tells you not to do. Our journey started in 1998 when my writing partner Ralph Stein and I first wrote the script for When […]
Sean Pecknold originally came to prominence a few years back on the strength of the beautiful stop-motion music videos he created for the retro folk outfit Fleet Foxes, a group fronted by Sean’s brother, Robin Pecknold. He subsequently went on to make promos for other buzz bands such as Beach House and Grizzly Bear, whose music also has a transcendent quality that meshes with his dazzlingly inventive hand-crafted visions. More recently, Pecknold has complemented his animated work with live-action music videos, like Here We Go Magic’s “How Do I Know?”, and is currently in postproduction on a live-action narrative feature […]
Second #5593, 93:13 Blue Velvet nears its final act, and still the relationship between Jeffrey and Sandy remains obscured in mystery. “Is Friday still on?” he asks her, loudly enough for her father to hear, in an effort to keep up the façade that their relationship is as innocent as something out of the Andy Hardy films. There are the facts of Sandy, and the beauty of her hands and fingers and knuckles, and her exposed ear (“I hear things…”), and the force of her father Detective Williams invisible for now, but present in the off-screen space implied on this […]