Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
Hell and Back Again — A Hammer and Nail Review
(Hell and Back Again premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Its official theatrical run begins at the Film Forum on Wednesday, October 5th. As a selection in the DocuWeeks 2011 program, it opens theatrically in New York City at the IFC Center on Friday, August 19th, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 on Friday, Sept. 2nd. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) In recent years American war docs have largely moved away from exposés on corruption and bad government policy. Instead, the focus has shifted to small, largely apolitical stories about life in the military and the human cost of war. Hell and Back […]
-
“MIDNIGHT IN PARIS” SET TO EXPAND
What better way to celebrate the surprising success of Woody Allen‘s latest film, Midnight in Paris, but to take a victory lap. The 75-year-old filmmaker’s highest grossing film in the U.S. with $49.9 million ($83 million worldwide), is getting another go-around in theaters starting Aug. 26. Sony Pictures Classics announced yesterday that the film will play in an additional 500 to 600 theaters from the 400 it’s currently at now. The film opened May 20th. But this is most likely not the swan song for Allen’s nostalgic journey through Paris’ past, as Oscar talk on the film and its writer-director […]
-
KOO LAUNCHES “MAN-CHILD” KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN
As a Filmmaker reader, you undoubtedly know Koo from his appearance on our 2008 “25 New Faces” list. Included in the “25” with his partner on The West Side web series, Zack Lieberman, Koo was one of the first filmmakers whose initial medium was the web to be profiled in our round-up. Since The West Side, which remains one of the web’s best narrative series, Koo has developed other projects, including his longest running: NoFilmSchool.com, an invaluable website covering DSRLs, editing software, crowdsourcing, new media, and Web 2.0 in general. One of the site’s best features is the pop-up you […]
-
WHEN EVERYONE’S AN ARTIST
This past June I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Fritz Kiersch (Director of Children of the Corn) at the deadCENTER Film Festival in Oklahoma City following a screening of the film PressPausePlay. Our task was to discuss the questions posed in the film which is explores the digital revolution of the last decade and its influence on the creative culture. The film puts forth the notion, as described on the PressPausePlay site, that this “digital revolution has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, in turn unleashing unlimited creative opportunities,” and ponders these fundamental questions, “does democratized […]
-
NYFF ANNOUNCES CLOSING NIGHT FILM & MAIN SLATE
The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants (pictured) will be the closing night film for this year’s New York Film Festival. NYFF’s main slate was also unveiled and includes David Cronenberg‘s A Dangerous Method and Pedro Almodóvar‘s The Skin I Live In, which both will be screened as special gala presentations; Simon Curtis‘ My Week With Marilyn, which will have a centerpiece screening; and Roman Polanski‘s Carnage, which will open the fest. Read the complete lineup below. NYFF’s 49th edition will take place Sept. 30 – Oct. 16. General public tickets will become available […]
-
The Blue Velvet Project, #5
Second #235 What is this? Where are we? In a weird, dreamlike echo of the Amity Island billboard (defaced with the black shark fin) from Jaws, the Welcome to Lumberton billboard is a nest of contradictions. Instead of a shark fin, there should be a monster lurking in the background pine trees. The woman looks to be freeze-dried straight out of the Cold War, and brings to mind Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962). Could the awkward wave of her hand be any more artificial or uninviting? For a moment, we seem to have gone back […]
-
“25 NEW FACES” SERIES AT TACOMA’S GRAND CINEMA STARTS FRIDAY
Last year we were flattered when The Grand Cinema in Tacoma, Washington asked if they could put together a screening series of our 2010 25 New Faces of Independent Film. It was an amazing turnout with The Grand screening films from 22 of the 25 and 11 of the filmmakers making the trip to attend. Well, The Grand is doing it again! Beginning this Friday and running until the 25th, The Grand Cinema will screen 20 works from this year’s 25 and it sounds like they will once again have a bunch of the filmmakers on hand. If you live […]
-
The Blue Velvet Project, #4
Second #188 Jeffrey’s father has just suffered a stroke while watering his front yard, and has fallen to his back, writhing in pain, the hose that he still holds—in a sad and funny and helpless way—spraying water all around. That shot is followed by this one, as the camera pans slowly down, the background a blur, capturing the water in mid-air as Bobby Vinton sings “Blue Velvet,” which he had released in 1963, several months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The song, written by Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris, dates back to 1950. Wayne was a prolific composer, […]
-
TRAGIC POIGNANCY: THE TINIEST PLACE
Imagine a village of peasants in a mountainous jungle region of El Salvador that would be completely devastated by bombs during the Civil War (1980-92), and most of its inhabitants, including teenaged boys and girls, brutally murdered by the National Guard. Or better yet, let filmmaker Tatiana Huezo imagine it for us and update it in her unforgettable documentary, The Tiniest Place, one of the finest docs I’ve seen over the past year. The puebla is Cinquera, which was suspected by the government of being a hotbed of leftist guerrillas. Several families, many of which lost most of their children, […]
-
Alison Ellwood on Magic Trip
The saying goes that most documentary magic happens in the editing room. That’s an understatement for Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place, a found footage documentary assembled by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood. Magic Trip takes us back to the cross-country road trip taken by Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters in their psychedelically painted bus, interchangeably called “Further” or “Furthur.” The trip was immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s pioneering work of New Journalism, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Fresh off the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey took the book’s proceeds to […]
