Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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iMovie ’11 and its Critique of the Movie Trailer
Have you ever thought that most movie trailers, with their portentous title cards and triumphant musical scores, could have been stamped out by a computer? Well, Steve Jobs and his software designers at Apple certainly did. But rather than whine about Hollywood’s formulaic marketing techniques, they monetized their critique. Brand new today is iMovie ’11 with a clever and soon to be supremely irritating new feature: movie trailers. Check out this iMovie demo to see what it’s all about. So, get ready for every holiday card to now feel like a Jerry Bruckheimer promo, with your friends’ sons and daughters […]
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JULIA PONTECORVO REPORTS FROM POWER TO THE PIXEL
The annual Power to the Pixel conference wrapped in London last week. Participating was transmedia producer Julia Pontecorvo with her project, The Rodshire Archives. Below is her report on pitching at the event. I was very excited when I found out my transmedia project The Rodshire Archives was chosen by Power to the Pixel as one of the finalists in its second annual Pixel Pitch held in London this past week. What made this pitch competition distinct from others offering cash prizes is the one-on-one meetings they set up for all nine finalists. Liz Rosenthal and Tishna Molla, the forum’s […]
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JAMES FRANCO PLAYS ARTIST BRUCE NAUMAN
With all of his recent work — his Clocktower gallery show, optioning of The Adderall Diaries, performance in the great experimental short Solitary/Release, and, of course, his bravura turn in Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours — James Franco is becoming not just one of our best young actors but an important ambassador between the art and film worlds. Here, via Nowness, he is in Alison Chernick’s “remake” of artist Bruce Nauman’s 1967 video art piece, Art Make-Up. From Nowness: Recently there’s been something of a convergence between Franco’s artistic interests and his acting choices. While at work on a book of […]
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“THE CANAL STREET MADAM” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION
Last night’s Stranger Than Fiction, the weekly documentary series at the IFC Center, “completed a circle” for programmer Thom Powers. It was while Powers was judging applications for the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant, a grant given by the Full Frame Festival in honor of the talented filmmaker who passed away at the age of thirty-seven, that he first learned about Cameron Yates’ film, The Canal Street Madam. As part of their grant proposal, Cameron Yates and producer Mridu Chandra had submitted a ten-minute reel of highlights from their work-in-progress. The footage impressed Powers, and he selected them as one […]
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“WINTER’S BONE” LEADS NOMINEES FOR THIS YEAR’S GOTHAMS
Announced moments ago on UStream by Elvis Mitchell, the nominees for IFP’s 20th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards have been revealed. Known as the official kick off to the awards season, a total of 26 films were nominated across six categories for an event that gives recognition to this year’s top independent films. Listed below are the full list of nominees. Standouts include Debra Granik‘s Sundance Grand Prize winner Winter’s Bone, which received Best Feature, Breakthrough Actor (for lead Jennifer Lawrence) and Best Ensemble Performance; while Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right and Lena Dunam‘s Tiny Funrinture both received […]
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ELVIS MITCHELL TO HOST GOTHAMS ANNOUNCEMENT
Critic Elvis Mitchell will be livestreaming the 2010 Gotham Award nominations Monday, October 18th. Tune in and hear all the nominations, including the five films we picked for the Filmmaker-sponsored “Best Film Playing at a Theater Near You Award. More details from the press release: Signaling the official kick-off to the film awards season, the Gotham Independent Film Awards™ nominations will be announced at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. / PT to a global audience on UStream TV at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gotham-independent-film-awards-2010 There will also be a link from IFP’s website. Mitchell, currently host of the public radio show The Treatment, […]
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THE ANXIETIES OF “LET ME IN” AND “ENTER THE VOID”
Two new pieces up here at Filmmaker. In the latest “Into the Splice” from Nicholas Rombes, he goes to a lonely multiplex on a Monday night to see Let Me In, stewing on the way to the theater over the sacrilege of its production: I went to see Let Me In with low expectations. Like so many, I had seen and been awed by the original Swedish version, Let the Right One In (directed by Tomas Alfredson), whose quiet pacing and lonely stretches of relative silence only made the horror more horrible when it came. An American version, surely, would […]
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TODD SOLONDZ RIDES A “DARK HORSE”
In a press release today Ted Hope announced that Todd Solondz’s new film, Dark Horse, went into production on October 11. Hope is producing through his new Double Hope production company, and the cast includes Justin Bartha, Selma Blair, Mia Farrow, Jordan Gelber, Donna Murphy and Christopher Walken. Andrij Parekh (Blue Valentine) is shooting, Derrick Tseng is co-producing, and Goldcrest is handling international sales. From the press release: Mr. Solondz helms the tale of Abe (Jordan Gelber), a 30-something who lives with his parents, reluctantly works for his father (Christopher Walken), and avidly collects toys. When Abe isn’t playing backgammon […]
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A Movie is Like a Person: Enter the Void
“Then, too, there is always something other than content in the cinema to grab hold of, for those who want to analyze,” Susan Sontag wrote in her seminal essay Against Interpretation. “For the cinema, unlike the novel, possesses a vocabulary of forms — the explicit, complex, and discussable technology of camera movements, cutting, and composition of the frame that goes into the making of a film.” Toward the very end of the same essay, she advocated, “The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to […]
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JAMIE STUART’S “NYFF 48”
Jamie Stuart’s NYFF 48 is the latest in his annual cinematic trips to the New York Film Festival, “a 13-minute impressionistic juxtaposition of modern film’s evolution and man’s progress.” Turn your lights out, crank your speakers and watch. With appearances by David Fincher, Clint Eastwood, Olivier Assayas, Joe Dante, Charles Ferguson, Frederick Wiseman, and others. The 720p file can be downloaded here. Visit Jamie at Mutiny Company.
