Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
MAGNOLIA NABS BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT’S “GOD BLESS AMERICA”
Deadline reports that Magnolia Pictures has bought the world-wide rights for Bobcat Goldthwait‘s latest dark satire, God Bless America. The film will be released through Magnolia’s genre label, Magnet, with a VOD premiere in 2012 followed by a theatrical release. Premiering at this year’s TIFF Midnight Madness section, the film follows a 45-year-old man (Joel Murray) and a teenage girl (Tara Lynne Barr) as they go on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque rampage after the country unites in the ridicule of a simpleminded contestant on a television singing competition. “I feel like the American Empire is starting to crumble, and we’re […]
-
IFP & FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER UNVEIL EMERGING VISIONS
The IFP and the Film Society of Lincoln Center have announced a collaborative program to take place during this year’s New York Film Festival called Emerging Visions. According to the press release, Emerging Visions will take place Oct. 3 at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center with 25 emerging filmmaking talents attending with a documentary or narrative feature that has been selected from IFP and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s talent pool. They will be paired with an established director or producer who will mentor them through the current filmmaking landscape, offering guidance and connections to filmmakers on both […]
-
TORONTO IS A PUZZLE
This is my first time at TIFF, and I have to admit, it is a puzzle. Look at this picture — that’s only the press and industry screenings! Notice the puzzlement and confusion of the professionals, even. I also find the transportation system puzzling, and spend a lot of time in taxis. Everyone likes to complain about traffic in Toronto and it is de rigeur to show up to a screening at the AMC Theatres panting and sweating. I had two films premiere this weekend (three cheers!!) and they were very well-received (three cheers!!) But mostly every buyer I meet […]
-
THOUGHTS ON “CONTAGION”
Steven Soderbergh has dubbed Contagion his “Irwin Allen movie,” but if his pandemic thriller shares something with the films of that great creator of ‘70s melodramatic spectacle, it has more to do with financing and star power than emotional content. In Allen’s films, Hollywood A-/B+ royalty were introduced in varying stages of personal turmoil — crises that earthquakes, burning buildings or capsized ocean liners resolved in assorted manners (including that ultimate resolution, death). Despite their carnage, Allen’s films were humanist at their core. Appropriately for our de-humanized, digital age, Soderbergh’s coolly professional film deploys real movie stars — you won’t […]
-
The Blue Velvet Project, #16
Second #752, 12:52 1. Jeffrey has just left the Williams’s, when their daughter Sandy appears slowly out of the shadows, to the swelling of music and the sound of wind moving through the tree branches, in one of the most remarkable entrances in cinema history, asking him, “Are you the one that found the ear?” 2. “How did you know?” Jeffrey says. “I just know. That’s all,” Sandy replies, in her pink dress, with no bra. The frame is overheated with information about light, and Sandy’s face, the way it is turned to Jeffrey, it’s as if she wants him […]
-
TORONTO: JOHN LYDON IS IN A BAD MOOD
John Lydon is in a bad mood. He’s hungover from partying after the premiere of the Norwegian coming-of-age drama, Sons Of Norway, here at the Toronto International Film Festival. My photographer Linda and I arrive at a stuffy, claustrophobic mezzanine at the posh Hazelton Hotel. The busy publicist warns us that Mr. Lydon is an “unpredictable” mood. Great, though I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, John Lydon is Johnny Rotten, the surly singer of The Sex Pistols and the 56-year-old godfather of punk. That’s how he’s credited in this film in a cameo appearance near the end though he’s credited […]
-
BAXTER BROTHERS AND CINEMAD PARTNER IN NEW DISTRIBUTION VENTURE
Micro independent distributors the Baxter Brothers and Cinemad (run by Filmmaker contributor Mike Plante) have teamed to co-release feature films in theatrical and non-theatrical venues. The partnership is expected to yield ten to 12 releases a year, and Baxter Brothers will work with some of the filmmakers on ancillary sales, including television, VOD, DVD and digital. The companies currently have the documentary Summer Pastures (a “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham nominee) in theaters, with Sundance 2011 premieres Jess + Moss and The Oregonian upcoming. From the press release: Baxter Brothers said “Most filmmakers don’t want […]
-
FOX SEARCHLIGHT BUYS MCQUEEN’S “SHAME”
Last night Fox Searchlight announced from Toronto it has bought the U.S. rights to Steve McQueen‘s latest, Shame. Starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, the drama, which is screening at the fest, follows New Yorker Brandon (Fassbender) who shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. However, when his wayward younger sister (Carey Mulligan) moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past, Brandon’s insular life spirals out of control. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and according to the release Searchlight plans to open Shame before the year ends. […]
-
TORONTO: THE PATRON SAINTS
The second shot of The Patron Saints is a slow pan across a wide swath of no-man’s land, the sad sound of a prairie wind reinforcing the impression of emptiness. Suddenly the camera stops moving at the sight of a building, several stories high, looking as if it were plunked down on Auntie Em’s farm in Oz after the tornado. There are no signs: This feels like the middle of nowhere. Thanks to five years of work by filmmakers Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, we are able to experience what is inside, meeting and observing the residents whose privacy, like […]
-
The Blue Velvet Project, #15
Second #705, 11:45 And so here you are, lost in a movie. “It must be great,” the young man says to the older man, referring to his job as a detective. The older man replies, “It’s horrible too.” And you think: this is how life is. Great. And horrible. The detective is at work eradicating evil all the time, even at home where he has not changed out of his detective outfit, because evil does not sleep. You think about the seriousness with which Blue Velvet treats evil in a secular age, and how the most that the detective can […]
