Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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LIFE IS FUNNY, BUT NOT REALLY: FX’S LOUIE
Welcome to part one of a series in which I’ll be highlighting some of 2011’s boldest, most inventive television. Each of the shows that I’ll be writing about are helping to redefine the artistic possibilities of television as a medium. And where better to start than with FX’s Louie, the most consistently surprising half-hour on TV. Twenty years ago Seinfeld built a reputation on the claim that it was a “show about nothing.” Whereas other sitcoms of the era defined themselves through high-concept premises, outrageous characters, and cheap, saccharine “will-they-or-won’t-they” tactics, Seinfeld followed four unlikable, unremarkable friends through the tiresome travails of everyday […]
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WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS, 12/4/11
I haven’t done one of these in a while — a roundup of a few things I’ve stored in my Instapaper for weekend readings. As the year goes on, Melancholia is emerging as my favorite film of 2011. Part of the reason, I think, is that the discourse about it is becoming more and more interesting. Whereas Von Trier’s Cannes comments dominated the dialogue following its opening, now not just critics but viewers are grappling with the film’s meanings. From the Occupied Territories Tumblr comes “Depression, Melancholia, and Me: Lars Von Trier’s Politics of Displeasure,” an extraordinary essay in which […]
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Director Bram Van Paesschen on Empire of Dust
The vast wilderness of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a world away from the urban centers of China. Yet it is there that greater numbers of Chinese engineers are doing business. In the documentary Empire of Dust, featured in the “Panorama” section of this year’s International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), director Bram Van Paesschen explores the fraught relationship between the Congolese and the Chinese, as shown through their efforts to build a road between two major cities in the DRC. In 2007, China and Congo signed a massive resources-for-infrastructure deal with projected revenues of $40-$120 billion. China endeavors […]
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The ARRI Alexa: Bridging Past and Future
Originally published in the Fall 2010 issue. The time frame needed to produce an independent feature these days can seem longer than the lifespan of its underlying technology. Cheap HDSLRs challenge high-end camcorders that cost 50 times more. Even RED One, whose revolutionary bona fides were golden two years ago, suddenly feels status quo. And lurking around the corner — due at year’s end — is a vanguard of new, inexpensive large-sensor camcorders from all the usual suspects. It’s been said that the geek shall inherit the earth, but this is getting ridiculous. How’s a producer to make sense of […]
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MUSIC VIDEO: “THE VIEW, LOU REED/METALLICA DIR. BY DARREN ARONOFSKY
Because we are Darren Aronofsky completists here at Filmmaker, I present to you “The View,” the video he’s done for a track off of the Loutallica collab. Aronofsky is quoted in the press release as saying of the album, “”I had never heard anything like it. I couldn’t stop listening to it. Lou’s crushing lyrics, and the band’s incredible licks. It’s so original and that’s why I wanted to work on it.”
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SOPA PIRACY BILL LAMPOONED ON COLBERT REPORT
The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy) Bill currently being debated in Congress was looked at by Stephen Colbert. He promptly got to one of the scary/silly aspects of the bill: The Colbert ReportGet More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive For more, check out this video made by Filmmaker mag 25 New Face Kirby Ferguson.
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GREGORY BAYNE IN FINAL KICKSTARTER HOURS
Gregory Bayne, who has contributed some of the best, most rabble-rousing recent posts to this site — including the analytics-busting “When Should You Call Bulls@&T” — is in the final hours of a Kickstarter campaign for his documentary Bloodsworth, An Innocent Man. With less than 72 hours to go, he’s about 15K shy of his 25K goal. Tough numbers, but I’ve seen other campaigns pull it out. Bayne is a tough and passionate filmmaker who has the goods, as you’ll see from this demo video. Please check it out and if it interests you, consider helping by supporting his campaign. […]
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“KINYARWANDA” OPENS, SCORES 4-STAR EBERT REVIEW
25 New Face filmmaker Alrick Brown’s Kinyarwanda, a project of the IFP Narrative Lab, opens today via the AFFRM and Visigoth Pictures, and I urge you all to see it. Brown has made an extraordinary and ambitious independent film that tackles one of the gravest subjects of the 20th century: the Rwandan genocide. He does so with an intimate, character-based approach, evoking details that add up to full, human picture of the conflict. Writes Roger Ebert, who gave the film four stars I thought I knew something about Rwanda, but I didn’t really know very much. I was moved by […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #49
Second #2303, 38:23 In Roberto Bolaño newly published story “The Colonel’s Son,” the narrator describes a zombie movie he’s recently seen on TV. In fact, the entire story is a sordid summary of the movie, introduced like this: I swear it was the most democratic, the most revolutionary film I’d seen in ages, and I don’t say that because the film in itself revolutionized anything; not at all, it was pathetic really, full of clichés and tired devices, yet every frame was infused with and gave off a revolutionary atmosphere . . . At the moment of this frame, second […]
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SWANBERG’S LATEST AT reRUN TONIGHT
Continuing an extraordinarily prolific phase that has also encompassed his year-long subscription service, Joe Swanberg premieres his latest film, Caitlin Plays Herself, tonight at Brooklyn’s reRun theater. His new star is Caitlin Stainken, a member of the Neo-Futurists Theater Ensemble. Here’s the description and a clip. Making its North American debut, CAITLIN PLAYS HERSELF is the last in a trio of provocative, self-reflexive new dramas premiering at reRun this season from acclaimed auteur Joe Swanberg (SILVER BULLETS, ART HISTORY). Inspired by Eric Rohmer’s THE GREEN RAY and the life of lead actress Caitlin Stainken (a member of the “Neo-Futurists” experimental […]
