Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
TRAILER WATCH: STEPHEN ELLIOTT’S “CHERRY”
Here’s the just-posted trailer for Stephen Elliott‘s Berlin-bound Cherry, the debut feature of the author (The Adderall Diaries, Happy Baby) and Rumpus website founder. It stars Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Lili Taylor, Jonny Weston, Dev Patel and Heather Graham. From the film’s website: Cherry is about Angelina (Ashley Hinshaw), an 18-year-old girl on the verge of finishing high school. Angelina’s family life is difficult. Her mother (Lili Taylor) is an alcoholic and her step-father is violent and unpredictable. One morning her boyfriend (Jonny Weston) suggests she take naked pictures for money. She balks at first but then does the photo […]
-
SUNDANCE VIDEO: MIKE BIRBIGLIA ON “SLEEPWALK WITH ME”
Yesterday I posted Ira Glass’s amazing rant about producing Mike Birbiglia’s debut feature, Sleepwalk with Me, premiering here at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Now, here’s Birbiglia himself discussing the medical condition that prompted the film, the challenges of transferring material from his comedic monologues to film, and pizza…
-
SLAMDANCE VIDEO: KEITH MILLER ON “WELCOME TO PINE HILL”
I was riveted by Keith Miller’s Welcome to Pine Hill when I first encountered it last year in the IFP’s Narrative Lab. The story of former drug dealer attempting to go straight while battling health challenges, it features a scene that is among the most gripping I’ve seen in any film recently. A man, played by Miller, walks his dog late at night and… well, I’ll let Miller explain. Here, Miller discusses the origins of that scene, working with the man he met that night, Shannon Harper, and the influences on the film, who include Andrei Tarkovsky. (I’d also throw […]
-
SUNDANCE CLIP ROUND-UP: “INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE,” “ARBITRAGE,” “THE COMEDY”
Those of us not in Park City this weeked will have to make due with the slow-trickle of “Exclusive Clips” that have begun floating around the internet. First up, Wired shares a sequence from Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky’s Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary about video-game programmers. In the above clip, Tommy Refenes, one of the film’s main subjects, nervously shares an unfinished version of his new game at a convention in Boston. Next, Deadline.com shares this tense clip from writer-director Nicholas Jarecki’s hedge-fund psychological thriller, Arbitrage. Featuring Richard Gere and Nate Parker, the clip hints at the film’s […]
-
SUNDANCE: THE “FUTURE NORMAL” OF NEW FRONTIER
Now in its sixth year, the New Frontiers section at Sundance premiered yesterday at its new home at The Yard, in an unassuming building across from a snow-cloaked cemetery. Presenting the year’s crop of new media, transmedia and experiential video art to a room of press, Sundance programmer Shari Frilot explained her curatorial criteria, though not before a number of the pieces had to turn off their sound (a booming heart beat coming through the wall of Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Cloud of Unknowing on her left, the Wagnerian glory coming from Marco Brambilla’s Evolution (Megaplex) to her right.) “What […]
-
Ira Glass On The Strange Life Of The Producer
When Mike Birbiglia asked This American Life‘s Ira Glass to produce his first feature, Sleepwalk with Me, premiering here at Sundance, Glass thought it sounded like it might be fun. “I’d read a couple of scripts, look at a couple of rough cuts,” he remembers thinking. Glass’s presumption was far from the truth… very far. In this short interview, shot before Sundance while Glass was in the sound studio with Birbiglia, he ponders — hilariously — the job of the producer.
-
PHOTO STREAM: DAY 1 AT SUNDANCE ’12
Filly Brown director Youssef Delara and his wife agreed to have their photo taken by me in the shuttle from Salt Lake to Park City…even after they had been traveling for the last 24-hours. They were complete champs and Youssef didn’t even seem all that tired. He kept up with all my annoying questions, and was excited and eager for Filly Brown‘s premiere today. Friday morning was the perfect mix of snowy but not too cold, and still quiet before the masses arrived in Park City for the 2012 festival. Sundance Channel Headquarters promotes tagging your message. Welcome to the New […]
-
13 FILMS PREMIERE DIGITALLY VIA SUNDANCE ARTIST SERVICES
Conflict-of-interest note: As most of you know, I produce films in addition to editing Filmmaker. Others on our team do as well. “By filmmakers, for filmmakers,” our marketing tagline has long been, and I like to think that our experience gives the magazine insight as well as strong bullshit detector. Being aware of my multiple hats, however, I generally exclude projects I produce from the magazine and site. That’s why you’ve never read about films like Off the Black, Saving Face and Raising Victor Vargas in Filmmaker. (Sorry, directors!) But when it comes to the following story of interest to […]
-
JAMIE STUART PROMOS CINELAN AND GE’S NEW FOCUS FORWARD
Sundance seems a little incomplete for me without Jamie Stuart, who is shooting this year for Cinelan and GE’s new Focus Forward initiative. Led by Cinelan co-founders Morgan Spurlock and Karol Martesko-Fenster (Filmmaker‘s founding publsiher), the program brings 30 new three-minute short films to festivals internationally. So, to get my Stuart Sundance fix I’ll post this piece he shot for the organization, which is premiering its first five films here at the festival. Jamie may be lensing for this new short-form doc producer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a photo gallery of snow-capped peaks, shuttle busses lumbering down Park, […]
-
The Blue Velvet Project, #69
Second #3243, 54:03 “It’s a strange world, Sandy.” *** “Frank is a . . . a very dangerous man.” *** “You saw a lot in one night.” *** “It is a strange world.” These lines from around the moment of this frame collapse into one meaning, one meaning obvious to Sandy: that Jeffrey has fallen in love with Dorothy. Outside the church, Sandy is about to deliver her “robins” monologue, a monologue that securely nails Blue Velvet to the wall of sincerity. The shot itself is full of menace and beauty: the night, the soft illumination of the car’s interior, […]
