Filmmaker and Filmmaker contributor Alix Lambert directed the new Shearwater video, which just went online. It’s from their new Animal Joy album, and, appropriately, there is animal imagery. I asked Alix about the origins of the video’s concept, and she emailed back: When I first listened to the song, I just wrote down the lyrics that most jumped out at me. The bloody nose became a thread that I wanted to go through the film. Jonathan wanted to include Nicholas Kahn’s wonderful costumes, which I was thrilled about and from there I felt like there should be some kind of […]
An anthology film with bizarre “rules” that was produced by Vice Films and Grolsch FilmWorks and directed a trio of international auteurs including Harmony Korine, The Fourth Dimension was always destined to be decidedly odd. But, on the evidence of this newly released trailer, it looks like it could be pretty great too. Korine’s contribution to the film features Val Kilmer as a motivational speaker (called Val Kilmer!) trying to get people to harness their “awesome secrets,” while the rest of the film is comprised of segments from Russian director Alexey Fedorchenko and Poland’s Jan Kwiecinski about a time travel-obsessed scientist […]
On Facebook, Hammer to Nail’s Michael Tully describes this as “The Trailer of the Century!” And certainly Penny Vozniak‘s Despite the Gods — a doc about Jennifer Lynch making her third feature, Hisss, in India — looks incredibly compelling and entertaining. Judge for yourself below! The movie premieres at Hot Docs at the end of next month, and I’m looking forward to hopefully catching up with it shortly afterward.
Second #4465, 74:25 1. Dorothy and Frank split their angles of vision; everyone is watching everyone. But it is Dorothy who suggests and defines the off-screen space, the space where Donny is kept behind a closed door. 2. Ben has just said, to one of the Party Girls, “Darling, could you bring some glasses, and we’ll have a beer with Frank. Please, sit down.” 3. Ben’s quiet formalism is not at all ironic. Rather, his decorum (which Frank calls “suave”) suggests that there is a proper and an improper way to conduct matters of evil in this world, and his […]
This past week I had the pleasure of working again with my long time friends and collaborators Damon Locks and Wayne Montana on a play that I am developing. Damon is a Chicago-based musician who is featured in a documentary currently in development, Parallax Sounds, which “explores the intimate connection between music and urban landscape in Chicago.” Directed by Augusto Contento, the film also features Steve Albini, Ken Vandermark, and Ian Williams, among others. Locks and Montana created original music for the soundtrack of my own film The Mark of Cain. Their ability to think cinematically and incorporate the sounds […]
Second #4418, 73:38 At Ben’s, at last. The woman, the doll, and the painting above them—framed by the green (velvet?) curtains—telegraph Frank’s entrance. They are a tightly composed grouping in an open frame, whose curtains anticipate the vaudeville show which is about to unfold, complete with Ben’s lip-synched performance of “In Dreams,” some stock violence, and a running gag that features Jeffrey as the butt of a joke he does not understand. Ben’s apartment is an anarchy of crossed signals and mental jump cuts. The year after Blue Velvet’s release, Robert Coover’s story collection A Night at the Movies, or, […]
This distribution case study of American: The Bill Hicks Story has been previously posted at Indiewire, and when it went up, I quickly scanned it and tweeted their link. But now I’ve actually had time to read it carefully, and it’s a very useful document that deserves its own place on the blog. A Powerpoint presentation prepared for a panel at this year’s SXSW moderated by Orly Ravid, the document walks you through the filmmaker’s DIY theatrical and various VOD and digital distribution deals. There are revenue numbers here, and not just for American, but also other movies released by […]
I just added several projects to Filmmaker‘s curated Kickstarter page. They include Galileo, a cool new device that adds remote control functionality to your iPhone; The Miracle Mile Paradox, an ARG (alternate reality game) set in both viritual space as well as L.A.’s museum strip; The Man’s Guide to Love, a fiction feature film developed from the filmmaker’s two-year old website containing short-form doc content on men in love; The First Hope, a UCLA film student’s short about a young boy’s romantic life beginning when he sees Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia kiss; Brendt Barbur’s The Commentator, a doc featuring […]
The JOBS (Jumpstart Our Small Businesses) Act, a collection of six bills intended to make it easy for small businesses to raise capital by relaxing various Securities and Exchange Commission requirements, including those related to crowdfunding, passed the Senate yesterday. It is now headed back to the House for reconciliation and could become law next week. While the House version of the bill passed swiftly with bipartisan backing, its passage through the Senate was rockier, with some Democrats and progressives warning that the bill would dilute necessary investor protections contained in the 2002, post-Enron Sarbanes Oxley Act. The bill exempts […]
In 2009, I attended the CineVegas Film Festival, where Doug Tirola’s documentary All In: The Poker Movie had its world premiere. While there, I briefly met the affable Tirola, and was pleased for him when, at the fest’s awards ceremony, the film was given the Best Documentary prize. However, a distribution deal — which seemed likely given the fact that poker’s popularity was at an all-time high in 2009 — did not materialize, and it has taken three years for All In to arrive in theaters, now released by Tirola’s company, 4th Row Films. When I saw All In on […]