Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Blue Velvet Project, #41
Second #1927, 32:07 Jeffrey and Sandy have agreed on four honks of the car horn: this will warn Jeffrey to leave Dorothy’s apartment. Sandy waits in the car outside, in the night, in her own cocoon of nervous electricity. This is when Blue Velvet begins to go very, very dark, as Jeffrey makes his way through the India Ink of the screen into ever deeper and deeper blackness in what are perhaps the most psychologically violent moments in the film. Where has Blue Velvet taken you? When he woke up he thought he’d dreamed about a movie he’d seen the […]
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Karen Mintz and Simon Egleton on Their Frank Bender Doc
Karen Mintz has just finished shooting her documentary, The Recomposer of The Decomposed, about the forensic artist Frank Bender, who died recently. She is about to move into the post-production phase. I had the opportunity to meet with her and her producer Simon Egleton and talk about her film, the pros and cons of no-budget filmmaking, and the friend that she made, and also lost, during the process. Filmmaker: Can you start by telling me a little about how you became a filmmaker and what your background is? Mintz: I started working in production 15 years ago. I just kind […]
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TWO CLIPS FROM SUNDANCE HIT “PARIAH”
Over at the Shadow and Act blog Tambay Obenson has post two clips from one of the favorites from this past Sundance, Dee Rees‘ Pariah. Opening Dec. 28 through Focus Features, the film highlights the impressive talents — and relentlessness — of its writer-director (who along with being a 25 New Faces alum is nominated for Breakthrough Director at this year’s Gotham Awards) and star Adepero Oduye; as you’ll see in the clips and the trailer below. If you’re a reader of this site you already know a lot about Pariah. One of my favorite pieces on the film is […]
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TIM AND ERIC’S NEW VIRAL DYSTOPIAN GAME SHOW
Leave it to Adult Swim absurdists Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim to push the possibilities of viral video marketing to sick new extremes. The pair recently posted a demented new thirteen-minute advertisement for upcoming Xbox videogame Saint’s Row 3 to YouTube. The ad, which takes the form of a vaguely futuristic, dystopian game show, is hosted by a sadistic psychopath in a pink suit played by standup comic Greg Turkington. On the show, contestants (or are they prisoners?) compete in challenges such as “Replicate a Building Using Rotten Chicken” and “Eat Yourself”, all under the watchful gaze of Genki, a […]
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Buck — A Hammer to Nail Review
On its simplest level Cindy Meehl’s documentary Buck tells the story of the cowboy Buck Brannaman, a horseman who travels the United States conducting clinics for “horses with people problems.” First-time director Cindy Meehl met Buck at one of his clinics, and wanted to share his wisdom with a wider circle than the ardent fans he’s built among “horse people.” A wise cowboy, eh? It doesn’t help that the film opens with iconographic Western shots: a cattle herd, a yellow sun, and galloping cowboys, all underlined by David Robbins’ thrumming score. I admit I was a bit skeptical. The census […]
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OLIVER PLATT & EDIE FALCO NAMED CO-HOSTS OF GOTHAM AWARDS AND AUDIENCE AWARD NOMINEES ANNOUNCED
In a release sent out today, the IFP has announced that actors Oliver Platt and Edie Falco will serve as co-hosts for this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards, which take place this year on Nov. 28 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. This is the second straight year two actors known for their work in indie films will be hosting the event. Last year Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson did the honors. Also announced today are the five finalists for this year’s Gotham Independent Film Audience Award. Comprising 29 audience award winners from the top 50 US and […]
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Director Matt Osterman on Ghost From the Machine
When Matt Osterman attended the IFP Narrative Lab a few years ago, his $25,000, science fiction/supernatural thriller, about a grief-stricken man who builds a machine to communicate with the dead, was titled Phasma ex Machina. But when the film was finished and released this summer on DVD and, later, iTunes and Netflix by Screen Media, it went under the less obscure title of Ghost from the Machine. Now, however, another name change is in the works. This August Universal Pictures acquired the remake rights, attaching Gary Shore and Nathan Parker to write and direct. The new film will be called […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #40: A Plea For Less
Second #1880, 31:20 A PLEA FOR LESS [This version of the Blue Velvet Project is published on the occasion of Blue Velvet‘s release on Blu-ray with deleted scenes on November 8th.] There are probably many more good and sound reasons to make available Blue Velvet’s deleted scenes than not—I’ll concede that right from the beginning. For one thing, Lynch thankfully decided not to re-cut the film with the new scenes; this is not a “director’s cut.” Since Lynch was under contract to deliver a two-hour cut in 1986, it would make sense that the scenes (part of a longer, nearly […]
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PORTENTS OF GREEK CRISIS IN IMAGES FROM THESSALONIKI DOC FEST
I’m covering the Thessaloniki International Film Festival for Filmmaker right now, and some images from the March documentary event seem prescient in the light of the hour-by-hour unfolding of events in Greece, where the fall of a government could affect all of Europe, the world economy, and by extension, filmmaking everywhere. Here are some of my photos. Thessaloniki is a palimpsest, a city written upon other cities, incarnation atop incarnation. The history of this far northern Greek city since first dredged from the sea by Alexander the Great has been one of fall and rise, of fire and […]
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FIRST LOOK AT CRONENBERG’S “COSMOPOLIS”
It’s not often we can talk about an upcoming David Cronenberg film before his current one is in theaters, but that’s the case with his adaptation of Cosmopolis. Today over at The Playlist they have new photos from the movie which stars Robert Pattinson in the lead. According to The Playlist, “Cosmopolis follows the story of Pattinson’s Eric Packer, a 28-year-old multi-billionaire finance guru…. Set within a 24-hour period, most of the novel takes place in his limousine and we assume the film will do the same. During his day, Packer loses millions of dollars for his clients by telling […]
