Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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VIRTUE AND VICE AT THE 2011 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
Moral questions about science, war, justice, and ethics were at the forefront of some of the strongest international work at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “He’s really not judgmental of his characters at all, is he?” said one party-goer of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Between bites of warm peaches and pistachio ice cream at a reception for the filmmaker’s sleek, stylish new thriller, The Skin I Live In, party-goers discussed the dark, unsettling tale of a mad scientist (played with panache by Antonio Banderas) who develops a miraculous new variety of human skin and a fraught relationship with his sad, beautiful […]
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Introducing Our New Genre Column, Lady Vengeance
Today on the site we introduce Farihah Zaman’s new column devoted to genre cinema, “Lady Vengeance.” I’ve long wanted a place on this site dedicated to genre cinema and was happy when Farihah proposed tackling it. Some of you will know her byline from columns and articles posted at Reverse Shot and The Huffington Post. Here at Filmmaker she’ll be appearing every Friday covering genre films of all stripes and sizes, from the mega-blockbusters to the indie, micro and foreign-language titles that contain much of science fiction, fantasy and horror’s new energy. Her piece today, “Revenge of the Nerds,” is […]
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Lady Vengeance: Summer Box Office’s Revenge of the Nerds
Summer is a strange and wonderful time when many of the rules of regular conduct cease to apply, and this pertains not just to the frequency of ice cream consumption and the blessing of “summer Fridays.” Many people have an image of how genre films are usually consumed – by dedicated genre fans, in a quirky downtown arthouse theater, perhaps, or via DVDs shipped from Hong Kong while alone on the couch wearing a snuggie — but in the summer, the entire country seems to develop a taste for blood or kung fu. Independent genre features continue to be released, […]
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TRAILER WATCH: “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”
Bootleg or viral marketing? I assumed the former, but now there’s some chatter that it may be the latter. In any case I would have loved my first glimpse of David Fincher’s new film to be of a higher quality than this shot-off-the-screen Euro redband trailer. UPDATE: The redband trailer has been taken down. Here’s the greenband trailer. Oh, for more of star Rooney Mara, see my piece on her when we selected her as one of our “25 New Faces of 2009.”
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PRODUCTION DESIGNER JACK FISK ON WORKING WITH TERRENCE MALICK
Last year Alicia Van Couvering sat down with Jack Fisk, Terrence Malick’s longtime production designer. Here’s a brief excerpt, and the full piece is at the link. Terry and I have developed a relationship where we just go and look at locations together, for weeks, and that way we kind of get in sync on a picture. And then he says, “Whatever you do will be fine.” He’s so trusting, but I’ve worked so hard to fall in line with what he’s after. I think also over the years we’ve kind of developed similar tastes. Some of it came about […]
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A City Responds with a Viral Video
You may have seen this already — it’s the number 4 video on YouTube — but if you haven’t… After Newsweek dubbed the city of Grand Rapids, MI, “a dying city,” the city responded with a viral video. It’s a cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie,” and as both filmmaking and civic statement it’s astonishing.
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MATT PYKE AND FRIENDS @GAITE LYRIQUE
Sheffield-based Matt Pyke makes digital art that’s rooted in the physical. In his show Super-Computer-Romantics, organic processes (growth, decay), nature, or simply natural actions (walking, running) shape computer-generated ones. A series of people — dancers, actually — struggle against a digital windstorm that blows them, literally, to bytes. A mesmerizing life-size wall-projected walking man, his footsteps providing the drumbeat for a slab of noisy electro, is a constant mutation as his body shapeshifts from diamonds to fur to rainbow-hued electric hair. In an alcove, a series of winter-y trees find their limbs illuminated with electronic leaves when you step into […]
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KANYE, GONDRY AND JONZE IN CANNES
We didn’t catch much of the glamour of Cannes this year, so here’s Nowness with parties, performance and some nice interviews with Michel Gondry and Joachim Trier. (Click on the headline if you don’t see the video.) Diary of Cannes on Nowness.com.
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The Tree of Life — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The Tree of Life is distributed by Fox Searchlight. It opens in NYC and LA on Friday, May 27, 2010, and expands to many more cities in the subsequent six weeks, before opening nationwide on Friday, July 8. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) NOTE: While I’d venture to say this movie can’t be “spoiled” by a review, there is a lot of specific detail contained in this (perhaps too lengthy) reaction. For what it’s worth, I suggest that you experience the film having read as little as possible beforehand. It seems implausible to me that anyone would […]
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TAKING THE PULSE OF THE CANNES FILM MARKET
“The end of the recession in independent film has occurred,” agent-turned-producer Cassian Elwes proclaimed by Twitter during the Cannes awards ceremonies Sunday night. “Sundance signaled it and Cannes has confirmed it.” Indeed, most people I talked to at the Cannes Film Market this year confirmed that it was a good one. The German producing and sales company K5 (Get Low, The Visitor) came to Cannes with the fortuitously timed Vehicle 19, an action drama starring a car and Paul Walker, whose Fast 5 is burning up the box-office. “This was the best market of the past year,” Bauer told me. […]
