Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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DP’s Discuss The Canon C300
The Canon C300 had a coming out party in Boston last week where Larry Thorpe of Canon presented the camera at an evening event hosted by Rule Boston Camera. A large crowd turned out to hear Larry speak about the camera, and to play with the four demo units that were present. When the camera was first announced I asked some local DPs for their reaction to it, and I took advantage of this opportunity to get their reactions after seeing the camera in person: Jeremy Traub is a DP based in Boston who is very familiar with RED […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #64
Second #3008, 50:08 Dorothy’s face fills the screen, leaving no room for thought. At this moment, there is no possibility of anything outside the frame. This may seem an odd moment, an odd frame, to re-introduce the power of ideology, for there seems to be nothing overtly “political” about this frame. And yet, Dorothy’s suffering here—rendered in a fashion-photography aesthetic—is utterly reactionary and in tune with a certain mid-1980s, Ronald Reagan wave of nostalgia. In their toxic, neural pathway altering chapter from Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) entitled “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (an essay which remains the ultimate […]
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TRAN ANH HUNG TALKS ABOUT “NORWEGIAN WOOD”
For many Japanese readers — and readers around the world too, actually — Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood is one of those novels, a book read during youth that somehow defines, at least for a few years, your inner self. Like Catcher in the Rye, it’s a book readers feel they have an intimate relationship with, which makes it also a tough film adaptation. A filmmaker can always do the plot and the characters, but what about capturing that something else? With his adaptation of Murakami’s 1987 novel, director Tran Anh Hung (Cyclo, The Scent of the Green Papaya) has shaken […]
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SUNDANCE TRAILER WATCH: “KEEP THE LIGHTS ON”
One of the films I’m most anticipating at Sundance 2012 is Keep the Lights On from writer/director Ira Sachs (The Delta, 40 Shades of Blue). The film essays art, autobiography, and New York gay culture in the 1980s, ’90s and early aughts, and even before its arrival it has spawned a rich website that riffs on all of those themes. Just posted at that site is the film’s teaser trailer, embedded below. Keep The Lights On — Trailer from KTLO Movie on Vimeo.
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JAY SCHEIB ON FASSBINDER’S “WORLD OF WIRES”
For many years Welt am Draht, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 three-and-a-half hour, made-for-TV science fiction opus was one of the late German directors’ most underscreened films. Dazzlingly stylish, and with narrative and thematic concerns anticipating the cyberpunk themes that would take root in science fiction more than a decade later, the film was only shown in America once in 1997 — that is, before it was restored and received a short run at MoMA in 2010. Fassbinder was quoted in MoMA’s catalogue as saying the film, translated as World on a Wire, is “a very beautiful story that depicts a […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #63
Second #2961, 49:21 “Do you like me?” Dorothy asks. “Yes,” says Jeffrey. “Do you like the way I feel?” These are simple, almost childlike questions and answers, tender, quiet exchanges of whispered words as if to replace the previous horrors with a new hope. In John Banville’s 1997 novel The Untouchable, Victor Maskell narrates the story of his transformation into and life as a double agent for the Soviet Union during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s in England: We were latter-day Gnostics, keepers of a secret knowledge, for whom the world of appearances was only a gross manifestation of an […]
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FAVORITE FILM FESTIVAL EVENT 2011: MEET THE MAKERS WITH STEVE JAMES
One of the best things about the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, which took place November 16th–27th, is how community-inclusive the fest is, with most activities, from interactive exhibitions to informal master classes, open to the public free of charge. (Indeed, it’s possible to get your cinephile fix on a daily basis without ever buying a movie ticket.) And one of this year’s truly informative events was a Meet the Makers discussion at the Escape Club on Rembrandtplein hosted by Canadian documentarian Peter Wintonick. IDFA guest Steve James, who was honored with a retrospective, was there that Saturday morning to […]
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THIS IS WHAT THE (OBSCURE) MOVIES DID TO ME IN 2011
They moved me. Often deeply, in ways I failed to articulate to myself until much later. That is, of course, the whole reason I go to the movies, to have some sort of visceral, emotional (or intellectual) response, be it laughter or sadness or pain or empathy or disgust or profound understanding. Why else do it? Nothing, beside having those emotions, meets the criteria of entertainment, at least for me. See, I’m one of those lucky few that gets to travel the world just to see films. Crazy, I know, especially in this era of not so cheap oil, but it’s […]
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Codependent Lesbian Alien Seeks Same — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same world-premiered in the “Park City At Midnight” section at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It opens for a one-week theatrical run at the reRun Gastropub in New York City on Friday, January 6, 2012. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) “I have to make it clear that I hate all dramas,” Madeleine Olnek told me in an interview the other day. “I think making dramas is immoral, if you are capable of making a comedy.” Olnek is a New Yorker who writes and directs comedy films. Plays too. As she’s predominantly worked […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #62
Second #2914, 48:34 1. In the aftermath of the assault, Dorothy calls Jeffrey Don, her kidnapped husband’s name. Jeffrey tenderly corrects her. “No,” he says. She doesn’t seem to hear him: “Oh Don. Hold me.” Frank, Jeffrey, and Don, the three men circulating in Dorothy’s imagination. Don. Donny. “Little” Donny. The largely off-camera presence of the Donnys governs the logic of the film. 2. In David Mamet’s 1994 play The Cryptogram, Donny (“a woman in her late thirties”) has this exchange with Del (“a man of the same age”), in which she tells him that sometimes she wishes she was […]
