Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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DAVID GORDON GREEN ON “YOUR HIGHNESS”
“By making this movie, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride have done what all of us have dreamed of doing since we too fantasized about making movies as adolescents. They have used their current success to truly test the boundaries of what they can get away with, and they’ve done it at a time when the Hollywood industry is as timid and fearful and insecure as it has ever been (which is saying something). They have caged their inner scaredy cats and swung for the f**king fence to produce something on a grand scale that has no direct precedent (or […]
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MULTI-FACETED STORYTELLING
The IFP and Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media ForumNYC is coming up April 19, and, as it approaches, several of its participants will be blogging for Filmmaker. Today’s first post is from Mark Harris, who will be presenting his new project, The Lost Children, at the event. Click on the link above for more info and tickets. One of the things that excites me the most about “Cross-media,” “Transmedia” or whatever it is, is the idea of telling a story in many different ways. I know this may not fit into a lot of peoples’ definitions of these terms, but […]
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TRAILER WATCH: KIRSTEN DUNST IN LARS VON TRIER’S “MELANCHOLIA”
The trailer is both gorgeous and slightly perplexing — and after Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, seems to be continuing a trend of arthouse psychological planet movies. In truth, I can’t wait for this this new, presumably Cannes-bound pic from Lars Von Trier. Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo.
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Human, All Too Human
[Editor’s Note: Spoiler Alert – The ending of Source Code is mentioned in this piece.] “We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image — whose predestination to this phase-effect is sufficiently indicated by the use, in analytic theory, of the ancient term imago. This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infant stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary […]
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Meek’s Cutoff — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Meek’s Cutoff is being distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories. It opens theatrically at the Film Forum in NYC on Wednesday, April 8, 2011. Click on the links to learn more. ) As much as I approve of Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff in every single way, I’ve been finding it incredibly difficult to write a review of it. Not that I don’t have anything worthwhile to say. It’s just that everything I’ve come up with so far sounds like film school pretension. Though term papers could — and hopefully will — be written about how Reichardt revises and revitalizes the traditional Western […]
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OPEN SOURCE FILM TOUR – OR HOW I’M TRYING TO SPARK A POPULIST FILM MOVEMENT
“You have no idea what you’ve created, and how many people this will help” I was wrapped in warm embrace with a woman I had just barely met when she whispered this sentence into my ear. We were standing in the lobby of the Egyptian Theater in downtown Boise, Idaho where my film, JENS PULVER | DRIVEN, had just let out after a lengthy and fairly emotional Q&A with me and Jens Pulver, the subject of my film. This surprising interaction was the first of many that night, and one that came as quite a shock to both myself and Pulver. I […]
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LCD SOUNDSYSTEM LIVE FROM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
I just figured out I can embed this… Their last NYC show. Wish I was there… but running this through my PS3 to my TV is not bad. (If you don’t see the video, click the headline above.) UPDATE: Sorry I didn’t see the show live; it was amazing. The live stream was surprisingly good, though. Here’s a clip — Arcade Fire guesting on backing vocals for “North American Scum.” SECOND UPDATE: Here’s the whole show. Thank you, LCD Soundsystem and Pitchfork.
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REBECCA BLACK IN HELL
Although there are exceptions, I try to avoid pop-culture ephemera here on the ol’ Filmmaker blog. So there’s been no Rebecca Black, although I’ve been as bemused (and annoyed) as the rest of you. But this video appropriation is pretty wack. The band is Cynical Mass.
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APRIL VOD CALENDAR
Now up is our curated list of VOD titles for April. Some notables include Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere, the grindhouse Hobo with a Shotgun, the latest doc from Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker Kings of Pastry and James Gunn‘s Super, which is in theaters this weekend if you can’t wait for it on VOD on the 13th. And to find more films that have been released in previous months on VOD or streaming, go to our VOD home page.
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Le Quattro Volte — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Distributed by Lorber Films, Le Quattro Volte opens theatrically at the Film Forum on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Click on one of the previous links to learn more.) They’re called motion pictures, but in the case of Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte, that term isn’t quite accurate. Motion painting is more like it. Spiritual yet not overtly religious, playful yet dramatic, patient yet never ponderous, Frammartino’s extraordinary celebration of the cycle of life is as close to church as cinema can get. The beauty of this masterfully wrought docu-poem is that for all its superficial “art film” trappings, Le Quattro […]
