Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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AMERICANA THE BEAUTIFUL: EULOGIZING “FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS”
And we’re back with my fourth and final post in a series looking at some of the year’s best TV. In previous weeks I’ve sung the praises of FX’s Louie, HBO’s Game of Thrones, and AMC’s Breaking Bad. This week I’ll be gushing about NBC and DIRECTV’s dearly departed football drama Friday Night Lights. One Wednesday night this past February I sat on the floor for an hour at a loud sports bar just east of Union Square in Manhattan. Three-hundred-and-sixty-four days out of the year, this place would not have not been my scene. But tonight, they were screening […]
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ALL THAT ELEVEN ALLOWS
I plead guilty. I’ve committed the writer’s sin of entitling this article with a heavily loaded pun that threatens to undermine what follows. Referencing a 65-year-old recognized masterwork of classic Hollywood melodrama — one by Douglas Sirk, no less — that has stood the test of time, then segueing into more of the best-of-this-and-that-from-2011 litanies that every film journo is tossing into the blogosphere right now, stacks the deck against the most recent productions. A few will be remembered, but All That Heaven Allows stays with us. Out of all possibilities, this is the one Todd Haynes chose as a […]
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DEE REES ON HER DEBUT “PARIAH”
After winning the Breakthrough Director award at this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards, Dee Rees sat down with us for a brief chat about her highly anticipated debut, Pariah. Which opens this week. If you’re an avid reader our site (or the magazine), you already know a bit about Rees. She was one of our 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2008 and already this year you’ve seen her in our video pieces from Sundance and the NYC taxi cab spots we produced. But that’s not all. Later this week you’ll see another video with Rees from Sundance, which […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #58
Second #2726, 45:26 1. The danger of the close-up, bringing the viewer ever nearer to the rage of Frank’s face. It’s almost clinical: a portrait of a madman and of an actor playing a madman. Reaching out to part Dorothy’s robe, Frank’s hand occupies nearly as much screen space as his face. And almost half the screen is in darkness, as if leaking in from some extra dimension. 2. Sergei Eisenstein, in his 1944 essay “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today,” wrote: We know from whence the cinema appeared first as a world-wide phenomenon. We know the inseparable link between […]
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DP David Kruta and the Red Epic
Dave Kruta grew up drawing and painting, but fell into cinematography in an unusual way. Working as a web designer, a job for a friend led to a video project. This eventually led to working as a DIT – he is a member of Local 600 DIT – but he says his passion is cinematography. He’s been doing more d.p. work this past year, perhaps helped by the fact that he bought his own Red Epic system earlier in the year. In this interview he talks about using the Epic and Alexa, the M and X versions of the Epic, […]
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TRAGEDY IN SLOW MOTION: AMC’S BREAKING BAD
Here we are again, with part three in a series highlighting some of 2011’s most daring, innovative television. This week, I’ll be singing the praises of AMC’s consistently shocking and always riveting Breaking Bad. Indeed, there is no show on TV more unrelenting in its exploration of human misery than Breaking Bad. Created by former X-Files writer Vince Gilligan, the show stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who, after being diagnosed with cancer, begins cooking and distributing meth with the help of a burnout ex-student (Aaron Paul). If that premise sounds a bit too high-concept […]
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MEDIA CURRENT: YOU SHOULD BE PARANOID
Sometimes paranoids are right to worry. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) recently exposed a common practice long hidden by wireless carriers: they track your every keystroke and movement through software known as Carrier IQ (CIQ). As Franken warned, “The average user of any device equipped with Carrier IQ software has no way of knowing that this software is running, what information it is getting, and who it is giving it to—and that’s a problem.” Carrier IQ, located in Mountain View, CA, was founded in 2005 and is backed by a group of VCs. Its software is installed on about 150 million […]
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TOP 11 FESTIVAL FILMS 2011
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam marked the 11th film festival (across two continents and five countries) that I covered in 2011. Which means that not only do I probably deserve an Independent Spirit Award for journalistic insanity, but also that I’ve been under a rock when it comes to what’s been playing in actual art-houses and multiplexes for the past 12 months. So with this in mind I’ve compiled a list of my personal greatest fest hits (arranged by festival of discovery, though in no particular order, complete with quotes from previous posts) – from those that have played […]
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TEN GREAT SONGS FROM 2011 THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
As Filmmaker’s contributors offer up summations of the year’s greatest achievements in film, I wanted to share some of the best new music I discovered in 2011. I tried to make picks that highlight musicians still flying under the radar (even by independent standards), or, in certain cases, artists tracking huge success through a unique, idiosyncratic, and independent mindset. Here are my picks in alpha order, along with Soundcloud streams and (where available) music videos: Air France – “It Feels Good to Be Around You” Following in the tradition of The Avalanches, Sweden’s Air France have made a name for […]
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KICKSTARTER: KEITH MILLER’S “WELCOME TO PINE HILL”
On the heels of this week’s Slamdance lineup announcement, Welcome to Pine Hill, one of the films premiering in competition, has launched a new Kickstarter campaign. A verite, doc-narrative blend (and an alum of the 2011 IFP Narrative Labs), Pine Hill follows Shannon Harper, a former drug dealer who reexamines his past after receiving some life-altering news. Director Keith Miller has crafted an intimate, stirring, and emotionally authentic first feature; one that’s sure to have quite a life on the 2012 festival circuit. For now though, Miller and his team need your help. Per their Kickstarter page: Keith Miller and […]
