Filmmaking

THE WORLD’S MOST BAFFLING MOVIE TRAILER

Thanks to Jamie Stuart for the heads up about the trailer for After Last Season, which is in the early stages of going viral by virtue of its genuine oddness. Michael Tully at his Indiewire blog writes, “It’s like Todd Haynes lost his mind after Safe and was hired to direct a series of cable access sci-fi infomercials,” while David Lowery writes, “I’ve watched the trailer about ten times now, and have yet to tire of it. It is so beyond logic in its construction that it essentially reinvents itself anew upon each viewing.” In addition to being featured on […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 27, 2009 Filmmaking
THE SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, DAY TWO

Here’s the second of our guest blogs from Sundance Lab-supported filmmaker Gayle Ferraro, who is blogging from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Day 2 The days keep getting better and I am feeling like I have known my fellow filmmakers and the Sundance folks for a long time. It is funny how that happens before you know it. We filmmakers all have code names, an affectionate shorthand, for the people we have all spoken with — the rat guy, the French guy with the cell phones, the water guys…. For the first part of the day I was […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 27, 2009 Filmmaking
THE SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, DAY ONE

Here’s the second of our guest blogs from Sundance Lab-supported filmmaker Gayle Ferraro, who is blogging from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Day 1The first day was amazing. Our opening Sundance filmmaker Meet and Greet session, which was more like a panel presentation, went very well; it was a great opportunity to learn about my fellow filmmakers and find out where their game is at. Sundance really picked a seasoned group of wonderful people with Joe Berlinger, who talked about Crude; Robert Kenner, who just premiered Food, Inc.; Greg Barker, who talked about his latest, Sergio; and Jon […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 26, 2009 Filmmaking
THE INVASION OF BAGHDAD, FIVE YEARS LATER…

We are still putting up our SXSW features, and the latest to go up on our SXSW page is Alicia Van Couvering’s interview with Kristian Fraga and Mike Scotti of the Iraq war doc Severe Clear. Fraga is the director and editor, and Scotti is both subject and cameraman as the film follows him and his fellow soldiers of the 1st Batallion, 4th Marines as the 2003 invasion of Baghdad begins. Writes Van Couvering: We first meet Mike and his unit in a desert camp, where they drink too much, curse too much, make gay jokes and fart jokes, shoot […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2009 Filmmaking
BLOGGING FROM THE 2009 SKOLL WORLD FORUM

Today at the Said Business School at Oxford University, England, the 2009 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship kicked off, and with this year’s edition comes a partnership between the Skoll Foundation and the Sundance Institute that sends four doc filmmakers to the forum. As the Skoll Foundation describes the conference, “Each year nearly 800 delegates from more than 60 countries convene for this premier gathering of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Prominent figures from the social, academic, finance, corporate and policy sectors engage for three days and nights in a series of debates, discussions and work sessions focused on […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2009 Filmmaking
WEILER, JOHNSON PREMIERE NEW "RADAR" SERIES ON BABELGUM

Premiering on Babelgum today is a new doc web series, “Radar,” created by a number of people familiar to readers of Filmmaker magazine. The Workbook Project’s Lance Weiler, whose “Culture Hacker” column will begin appearing in the next issue of Filmmaker, produces, Alex Johnson directs, and the d.p. is Tom Quinn, one of our “25 new Faces” for his feature The New Year’s Parade. The Workbook Projects Lab series looks at creators who are exploring new forms of storytelling in their work, and here’s what the series’ site says about the debut piece, “Next Door Neighbor”: We all have a […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2009 Filmmaking
SPIKE JONZE’S WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE FINALLY REVEALED

After too many months of rumors and studio-blogger back-and-forth, the trailer for Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are has broken online, and it looks absolutely wonderful. The story involves an angry young boy who runs away to a land populated by giant beasts. In the two minutes of the trailer, which will premiere this weekend before Monsters vs. Aliens, there are costumes, Arcade Fire, great graphics and an authentic feeling of being young. The script was co-written by Dave Eggers and both he and Jonze, according to this USA Today piece, regularly contacted Sendak for […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2009 Filmmaking
ONLIVE GAME CONSOLE ABOUT TO GO LIVE

I was editing the next edition of “Game Engine,” Heather Chaplin’s game column in Filmmaker, and I started wondering where I could play some of the really interesting indie games she has been writing about. Of course, they are available on PS3 or Xbox for download, but that brought up the question for me of why can’t there be a console intended for games that don’t exist as disks but as downloads or streams? Well, today, voila, just such a console was announced. At Variety, Marc Graser was the first to announce the new OnLive, created by WebTV founder Steve […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2009 Filmmaking
LOOKING BACK ON MOVIE CRITICS

Over at our SXSW coverage page we are posting in the next few days a few straggler reviews and pieces. First up is Alicia Van Couvering’s talk with Gerald Peary about his For the Love of Movies: The History of American Film Criticism. Van Couvering gets Peary to talk about a number of issues echoing across the blogosphere these days, including, well, the blogosphere, but also the pressure to write shorter, the huge number of ex-critics, and, of course, the rivalry between the Paulettes and the Sarris-ites. A question about which camp he adheres to (A: Sarris) leads to this […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2009 Filmmaking
GARAGE MOVIE

Amy Taubin (and Manohla Dargis, J. Hoberman and Scott Foundas), you have truly penetrated the popular culture when you are namechecked in a Funny or Die video — in this case, the channel’s take on indie film and the m-word. (Although I doubt the film in question would garner these quotes from any of you…) The Dirty Garage – watch more funny videos

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2009 Filmmaking

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