Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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RYAN GOSLING BREAKS UP EAST VILLAGE FIGHT
Forgive my brief step into celebrity stalkerville, but via my favorite neighborhood blog, EV Grieve, comes this video showing, apparently, Ryan Gosling stepping into some rather low-key fisticuffs at Astor Place in the East Village. What’s great here is the soundtrack as the shooter slowly realizes that she’s got a celeb in her iPhone sights. (“That’s the guy from the movie!”)
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GUS VAN SANT RETROSPECTIVE AT MUSEUM OF MOVING IMAGE
With his 14th feature, Restless, slated for release on Sept. 16, the Museum of the Moving Image in NYC has announced a retrospective of Gus Van Sant‘s work running Sept. 9-30 with the director on hand for a screening of Restless on Sept. 14. Everything from his debut feature, Mala Noche, to his experimental “Death Trilogy” (Gerry, Elephant and Last Days) to his more commercial successes like Good Will Hunting and Milk (even his less successful shot-for-shot remake of Psycho) will be screened. This is certainly a can’t miss for Van Sant fans and film lovers alike. Most screenings are […]
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JACK FERVER PRESENTS FASSBINDER’S “BITTER TEARS…”
Because Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant is one of my favorites by the late German director, I’m reprinting here this email from Ira Sachs, whose IFC Center Queer/Art/Film series is screening the film tonight at 8:00 PM. It’s being presented by choreographer Jack Ferver, who has written a fantastic intro to the film. Dear Friends of Queer/Art/Film, “That little girl’s finger is worth more than the lot of you.” For this month’s August screening, we’re thrilled to finally be able to present a film by the visionary gay German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, especially one […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #7
Second #329 Jeffrey’s father is in the hospital, from a scene whose unstable tone is a microcosm of the movie itself. On one level, this moment is almost painfully tender. Jeffrey’s father struggles to speak with him as Jeffrey looks on, helpless. Yet on another level, the scene feels almost like a parody of an As The World Turns hospital scene*, with the overdetermined nurse and doctor, who ushers Jeffrey into the room by the elbow. It’s as if Lynch stuffed every hospital-like contraption into the frame; Jeffrey’s father seems beset by many illnesses. Lynch holds the shot of the […]
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THE POSTER AS STREET ART
Okay, I’m weird — I’ll stop and notice a movie poster when I have no idea what it’s advertising. Like this wall of one sheets in Manhattan’s East Village for Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, that makes street art out of giant QR codes. By the way, this controlled and eerie film, which boasts a riveting performance by Elizabeth Olsen, is highly recommended. It comes out October 21 from Fox Searchlight. (If you blow this picture up on your desktop you can scan the codes and go to trailers and clips of the film.) (Post amended after the perceptive […]
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THE KINDS OF WRITERS WE ARE LOOKING FOR
About a year ago I posted a call for new writers, a post that led to amazing folks like Zack Wigon and Nicholas Rombes showing up in these pages. So, as we continue to build out and add content to the website, I thought I’d let any journalists out there know our current needs. I continue to look for people who can write with knowledge and authority about the business side of independent film. And I’m also looking for people who know something about filmmaking itself and are genuinely interested in the below-the-line and production worlds (i.e., film sets and […]
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ON GATEKEEPERS AND “MALKOVICH’S MAIL”
Each week I write an original newsletter that I usually don’t repost to the blog. Here’s this week’s, about a favorite documentary I just found on YouTube. To receive future newsletters, you can sign up for free here. If I ever teach a course in the film business, there’s a documentary I’m going to make required viewing. My guess is that you probably haven’t seen it because it was made for AMC a few years ago as part of a short-lived strand of docs about film. It’s called Malkovich’s Mail, and it was directed by the independent filmmakers Keith Fulton […]
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Raul Ruiz Remembered By James Schamus
The great Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz passed away today in Paris. Through his feature The Golden Boat, which was James Schamus’s first as a producer, Raul gave a group of us in New York’s nascent ’80s independent scene (including myself and Robin O’Hara) a wonderful and nearly indescribable introduction to filmmaking. So, I’m grateful here to James for this piece remembering Ruiz and those thrilling and formative days. — Scott Macaulay Raul Ruiz: First Thoughts Raul Ruiz passed away today, age 70, in Paris. He’ll be remembered as one of the truly great, idiosyncratic and visionary voices of world cinema. […]
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ENDING CHANGE FOR LATEST “WEST MEMPHIS 3” DOC
In news that developed Thursday night, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin, also known as the “West Memphis 3,” could be freed later today after spending over 18 years in prison for the charge of murdering three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993, though strong evidence over the years has pointed to their innocence. UPDATE: “West Memphis 3” have been set free. The subjects of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky‘s landmark Paradise Lost documentaries, the filmmaker’s latest, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, will premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and as its synopsis on the […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #6
Second # 282 An establishing shot of downtown Lumberton/Wilmington, showing the courthouse (from the back) in the mid foreground. In the previous shot, we have just seen Jeffrey for the first time as he walks through the field, wearing black. He stops, picks up a stone, and throws it as some junk. He then keeps walking, his back to the camera. At this point, we don’t know who he is or where he’s going. That shot is followed by this, at second #282, a static shot that lasts three seconds. When I began this project I wondered how frequently frames […]
