Filmmaking

SCHAMUS AND SCOTT ON THE APARTMENT

I’m late catching up to some of the things that have been bouncing around the blogosphere, but here the New York Times‘ A.O. Scott has a nice video essay on Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, which is dubbed “a brilliant alternative to classic holiday films” and one that ends on New Year’s Eve. (I wish these great Times video pieces were embeddable — I get that they have to increase traffic, but I’d so love to post them.) The Apartment was also selected by producer, screenwriter and Focus Features CEO James Schamus as part of a series on the FilmInFocus site […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2008 Filmmaking
EBERT SINGS FOR SITA

Wow — check out Roger Ebert’s love letter to “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham winner Sita Sings the Blues on his blog this week. Here’s how he begins: It hardly ever happens this way. I get a DVD in the mail. I’m told it’s an animated film directed by “a girl from Urbana.” That’s my home town. It is titled Sita Sings the Blues. I know nothing about it, and the plot description on IMDb is not exactly a barn-burner: An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920’s jazz […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2008 Filmmaking
FILMMAKER YEAR IN REVIEW: MARY GLUCKSMAN

Now that our current issue has shipped to the printer, I’m finishing these blog entries from our writers, editors and contributors on the cinematic year that is coming to a close. Here’s Mary Glucksman, who contributes our “In Focus” column each issue as well as the year-end “Hits and Misses” piece. Real life intervened and I came up woefully short on exhaustive viewing of both foreign films and docs so can I just say my top ten would surely include two Cannes ’07 foreign titles that got their nominal U.S. theatrical release this year–XXY and Tell No One. Still waiting […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2008 Filmmaking
WHERE ARE THE VIEWERS?

In The New York Times, Michael Cieply reports on our declining box office. No, not this year, but over the last decade. The sobering conclusion of his piece is that less of us are going to see movies in theaters. Breathless box office coverage of records broken, The Dark Knight, and lines stretching around the block at midnight for Twilight are just more noise. Read his piece to discover that, when measured by the arbiter of tickets sold, Twister handily outsold Iron Man and that Sex in the City is no bigger than The First Wive’s Club. We are no […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 28, 2008 Filmmaking
ALL THE BLOGS YOU NEED

You might want to bookmark this and come back in mid-January, when he says he’ll have finished his tally, but Sujewa Ekanayake is compiling a comprehensive list of indie film blogs. And if you have a blog yourself, let Ekanayake know by posting in his comments section.

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 27, 2008 Filmmaking
HAROLD PINTER, R.I.P.

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 26, 2008 Filmmaking
HOW TO BLOG

Over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo has up a nice piece entitled “How to Blog.” After noting that the very clever editors of the Huffington Post has published a book, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, Manjoo asks some of his own colleagues for their advice on the medium. Here’s one useful tip: Don’t worry if your posts suck a little. Unless you’re Jeffrey Goldberg, your first blog post is unlikely to be perfect. Indeed, a lot of your posts aren’t going to be as great as they could be if you spent many hours on them—and that’s OK. Felix […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 26, 2008 Filmmaking
BILL LANDIS, R.I.P.

Bill Landis, a man who championed the world of underground exploitation moviemaking and exhibition, died this week of a heart attack at 49. With his wife Michelle Clifford he was the editor of Sleazoid Express, a zine that chronicled the films of the 42nd Street grindhouse scene, which he described in an interview at Nerve.com: Grind houses were opulent, old-style movie palaces with chandeliers, opera seats and huge screens. They seated several hundred people and played all kinds of films, across genres. A shoebox theater catered to the adult audience, seated eighty to 200, usually on one floor, and was […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 26, 2008 Filmmaking
FILMMAKER YEAR IN REVIEW: DAMON SMITH

Damon Smith, who has contributed several feature interviews as well as, under his Filmcatcher affiliation, produced various videos we’ve presented on the site, sends his thoughts, below. Top Ten The ClassParanoid ParkMan on WireHappy-Go-Lucky35 RhumsRepriseWaltz with BashirTulpanSugarMunyurangaboBallastEncounters at the End of the WorldMy Winnipeg In a year that brought a wealth of new work by established filmmakers such as Mike Leigh, Gus Van Sant, Guy Maddin, and Werner Herzog, as well as exquisite follow-up efforts by James Marsh, Laurent Cantet, and Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, it’s hard to be sanguine about lists. But three indelible, goose-bump-raising sequences will mark […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 24, 2008 Filmmaking
FILMMAKER YEAR IN REVIEW: BRIAN CHIRLS

Brian Chirls, who contributed the piece on Soderbergh’s RED camera post-production in the current issue, weighs in with some of his ’08 personal bests. Best Foreign Film About Food That I Saw at a European Festival Of Which No One I Know In the States Has Ever Heard:Estômago Best Film About Zombies in High SchoolDance of the Dead Best Film of the Year/Best American Film About FoodPoultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead Best Film About Pistachios That I Never Heard From After Its Sundance Premiere (Even Though It’s Not About Cannibalism)Anywhere, USA Best Film That I Never Actually Got Around […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 24, 2008 Filmmaking

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