Filmmaking

OSCAR DOC FEATURE SHORTLIST: WHICH TITLES SHOULD HAVE MADE THE CUT?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed today the 15 films that have made their shortlist for the Best Feature Documentary category in the 83rd Academy Awards. They include: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Alex Gibney, director (ES Productions LLC) Enemies of the People, Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, directors (Old Street Films) Exit through the Gift Shop, Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures) Gasland, Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC) Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors (White Pine Pictures) Inside Job, Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures) The […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Nov 18, 2010 Filmmaking
A SHORT TRIP TO CPH:DOX

Invited to deliver a master class seminar on doc/fiction hybrid films at the CPH:DOX Labs, I attended the festival for the first time this year. At the Labs, now in its second year, filmmakers from the Nordic countries and around the world were brought together in teams and charged with collaborating on a film. Because I was teaching the day-long seminar, which took place days before the well-attended Forum (a market for docs seeking financing) opened up, I missed the great majority of the festival’s programming as well as business activity. So, I can’t offer a detailed roundup of the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 18, 2010 Festivals & Events
New from CGI Genius Alex Roman

Remember The Third and the Seventh, that amazing piece of architectural CGI by Alex Roman that I blogged about in January? If you don’t, don’t worry — I’ve reposted it below. Just up is a new piece by Roman that’s a stunning one minute of slow-motion images that are pure CGI. Titled “Above Everything Else,” it’s a spot for kitchen countertop manufacturer Silestone. Writes Motiongrapher: Although this spot is 100% CG, the beauty of the shots distract the viewer from this amazing fact. Each composition is elegantly balanced: light counterweights dark, chaos challenges order. The sparse soundtrack creates a sense […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 17, 2010 Filmmaking
“12TH AND DELAWARE” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION

When I was in a high school in Tennessee, a classmate of mine started crying while discussing a short story about Vietnam. Through her tears, she explained that the soldiers battling for their lives reminded her of all the unborn babies who’d been killed that week. What those of us not on the frontlines of the abortion battle often forget is that for those who feel passionately on the subject, abortion is not just an issue, it’s the only issue. In 12th and Delaware, last night’s entry into the Stranger than Fiction canon, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady take […]

By Mary Anderson Casavant on Nov 17, 2010 Filmmaking
THE 2010 CARTHAGE FILM FESTIVAL

Famously defeated and laid waste by the Romans in the third century B.C., the ancient metropolis of Carthage has bequeathed its name to two notable features of modern Tunis. One is a swanky suburb where the villas of diplomats skirt the rudimentary but scenic ruins of the old imperial capital. The other is the biannual Carthage Film Festival, or Journées Cinematographiques de Carthage (Oct. 23-31, 2010), which bills itself as “the dean of all African and Arab” festivals. Founded in 1966, it is a capacious event, with an international purview that encompasses, say, the latest from Abbas Kiarostami and Woody […]

By Godfrey Cheshire on Nov 17, 2010 Filmmaking
“THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER” RELEASED ON CRITERION BLU-RAY

One of my favorite movies of all time, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, has been released on Blu-Ray and SD by Criterion today. Here’s a piece I wrote back in 2001 on the film in the context of a review of Simon Callow’s BFI monograph. François Truffaut queasily likened The Night of the Hunter, actor Charles Laughton’s 1955 directorial debut, to a “horrifying news item retold by small children.” Quoted in Simon Callow’s new British Film Institute monograph on the film, Truffaut goes on to offer a bit of middlebrow advice proving that the confluence of film criticism […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2010 Filmmaking
STANLEY TUCCI & PATRICIA CLARKSON WILL CO-HOST GOTHAM AWARDS

The IFP announced earlier today that two indie film stalwarts will be co-hosting this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards: Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson. Veterans of the stage and screen (both large and small), Clarkson is coming off a busy year where she received rave reviews for playing the lead in Cairo Time and starred in Hollywood projects Shutter Island and Easy A (which Tucci also starred in). Tucci, who received a Gotham Awards tribute last year, was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar last year for his performance in The Lovely Bones and will be seen next in Burlesque. […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Nov 15, 2010 Filmmaking
“HELENA FROM THE WEDDING”‘S JOE INFANTOLINO

A few characters and a house — it’s one of the most durable movie starting-points, especially for first-time filmmakers. The latest to use the economy and natural dramatic focus of this concept is producer-turned-director Joe Infantolino, whose Helena from the Wedding opens today. Newlyweds Alex and Alice invite another couple for a New Year’s party at their mountain cabin. But when the quite beautiful and very single Helena is added to the mix, relationship fissures ensue. Helena from the Wedding is a deftly directed and very well acted film, a modest yet rewarding debut from Infantolino, whose producer credits include […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 12, 2010 Filmmaking
SARAH JACOBSON GRANT APPLICATION DEADLINE NEXT WEEK

In the ’90s, Sarah Jacobson was a rising indie filmmaker. Beginning with her half-hour short film I Was A Teenage Serial Killer in 1993, she garnered enough underground critical success to make her feature debut, Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore, a coming-of-age tale about a teenage girl’s loss of virginity and her friends’ experiences with their first times. Jacobson was set to move on to bigger films, but she sadly passed away from endometrial cancer at age 32 in 2004. To carry on her life’s work and support for fellow filmmakers, Jacobson’s mother and film producer Ruth Jacobson and […]

By Melissa Silvestri on Nov 11, 2010 Filmmaking
AWEDITORIUM AND THE DESIGN OF DISCOVERY

I’ve been checking out a couple of new, much-buzzed about online apps and tools this week — RockMelt and Auditorium. I’ll post my thoughts on RockMelt after I play with it a bit more. As for Aweditorium,, which is free for the iPad, I need to spend more than 20 minutes with it. But my first reaction is that it is kind of cool and also noteworthy for trying to do something different in the music discovery space. In film, we talk a lot about discovery, but this mostly boils down to discussions of social network sharing, recommendation engines, etc. […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 11, 2010 Filmmaking

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