Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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HITLER RESPONDS TO THE iPAD
The extension of the Downfall meme to the iPad was inevitable, but, still, nearly a million views in two days?
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HOW THE iPAD WILL AFFECT FILMMAKERS
I posted a vaguely impressed impression of the iPad yesterday just after the Apple press conference was over. Of course, 24 hours later, I’m thinking about the details, good and bad. The big downer is Apple’s reintroduction of the 4:3 format (1024×768). That means that watching a 16:9 movie on your iPad will give you big black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Obviously, Apple had to make a choice regarding screen dimensions and they went with one that trades off in film and TV what it will gain with other forms of content. Nonetheless, it’s not […]
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FOCUS LOCKS DOWN THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
According to Mike Fleming at Deadline Hollywood and The Hollywood Reporter, Lisa Cholodenko‘s much buzzed about The Kids Are All Right has been nabbed by Focus Features. Quiet at Park City after acquiring Hamlet 2 in ’08, Focus paid under $5 million for Cholodenko’s (Laurel Canyon) portrait of a modern family starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo, beating out Summit Entertainment, Fox Searchlight, Sony Pictures Classics and The Weinstein Company. Read more about the backstage deal making at the Los Angeles Times blog.
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Banksy Revealed? Parsing a Sundance Mystery
Sundance documentaries have developed a strong track record. Hits out of recent festivals include Man on Wire, The Cove and We Live in Public, each of which captures an element of society and finds the human connection within. This year, however, the human connection in some of the more talked about nonfiction entries is highly suspect. At the center it all: Banksy. Exit Through the Gift Shop, the alleged directorial debut of the anonymous street British street artist, wound up with a surprise slot in the Spectrum section of the festival. Banksy’s enigmatic career and life beyond the film world […]
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HOPE AND VACHON LEAD PRODUCING TALK AT SUNDANCE
From Sundance’s YouTube page: Recently, Sundance Film Festival brought a group of independent film producers together for an informal discussion. This is what they talked about. Join Christine Vachon, Ted Hope, Thomas Woodrow, Liz Watts, and Jonathan Schwartz.
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APPLE ANNOUNCES ITS "iPAD" TABLET
I took a break from Sundance coverage to follow the Apple iPad announcement on Twitter and to check out Engadget’s live stream. For all the talk about the iPad (which some consider to be an unfortunate name…) saving old media and print, the focus of Steve Jobs’s presentation was solidly on the device as a large-screen multi-media device. Games from Electronic Arts were unveiled, a YouTube HD native app was demo’d and new versions of iTunes and IWorks showed scaled-up, enhanced versions of those apps. (Filmmakers, take note of all of this…) And, yes, in the middle of the presentation […]
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SEEKING THE ANSWERS WITH THE NEW BREED IN PARK CITY
If you’ve been following the videos we’ve posted here in the New Breed series by Sabi Pictures, you’ve by now recognized that a rhetorical storyline around the issue of alternative distribution is being constructed. Here’s the latest, entitled “Seeking the Answers, Part 2.” Scroll back through the previous posts for the others in the series. The official word: SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah move away from identifying the questions toward some possible answers that may, in fact, lead to the solutions we seek. Insights from Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards), Jon Reiss and Brian Newman are fleshed out […]
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SUNDANCE FILMMAKERS LINAS PHILLIPS AND HABIB AZAR JOIN THE NEW BREED
Here’s the third of our New Breed videos on new distribution ideas and paradigms at the Sundance Film Festival. The intro: SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah move away from identifying the questions toward some possible answers that may, in fact, lead to the solutions we seek. Insights from Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards), Habib Azar (Armless), Dan Mirvish, and Brian Newman are fleshed out with more thoughts from the pre-Filmmaker Summit roundtable. NEW BREED PARK CITY – Seeking the Answers, Part 1 from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo. Watch all the New Breed videos.
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SUNDANCE, VARIETY’S PAYWALL, AND ME
As a magazine editor I am not unsympathetic to the need to generate paid online readership. I will also admit that I didn’t get it together to work out a Variety sub before Sundance now that the site has gone paywall. Yes, I need Variety for business, our parent organization subscribes so it comes to the office, and I will arrange to get it online, but I will also say that I am irritated by the initial promise of content one sees when clicking the site that’s then followed by a black screen of death. (“Just Control-C when the screen […]
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PRODUCER RON SIMONS ON SUNDANCE PRESS HIGHS AND LOWS
Here is Night Catches Us producer Ron Simons’ fourth post from Sundance. January 24th was a good day. I finally got to have in-person conversations with two of the powerhouses of the Sundance Institute: Michelle Satter and Anne Lai (both of whom have been crucial in making this film come into being). They’d both fielded worried, stressed, beseeching calls from Sean, Tanya and myself. They were ever supportive with sage advice administered with calming tones and gracious patience. I also got to meet a number of other filmmakers at the Producer’s Brunch. The key note speaker was Lynette Howell, who […]
