Filmmaking

WAITING FOR CHARLIE

Over at his blog, Jonathan Taplin calls “Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett” the “most creative video mash-up of the year.”

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2008 Filmmaking
THE BLOG NEXT DOOR

The FilmInFocus series “Behind the Blog” continues this week with a new entry: Matt Zoller Seitz and his “The House Next Door.” An excerpt: HOW HAS YOUR LIFE CHANGED BECAUSE OF YOUR BLOG? HAS IT GONE IN ANY NEW DIRECTIONS BECAUSE OF YOUR NEWFOUND PROMINENCE? Throughout my career, I always took my work seriously, but I also had a skeptical or even cynical attitude about it — that it was just something people read at breakfast or on the bus to kill time. But since I started the blog I’ve been contacted by a lot of people who have been […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2008 Filmmaking
SHAMBERG’S TURTLE ARRIVES IN NEW YORK

When Filmmaker last caught up with director and cultural impresario Michael Shamberg (pictured), he had just finished collecting the various New Order music videos he produced into a compilation. One of those videos, by Leos Carax, we wrote about separately and linked to not only the clip but also Shamberg’s Kinoteca website, which is now re-energized with several new pieces. All of this is to introduce Shamberg and his global artist “anarchic salon,” Turtle, which arrives in New York this weekend at The Tank. Running this Sunday, April 27, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., the event is described like […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2008 Filmmaking
MICHAEL TIMES FIVE

Over at Videogum, Gabe anticipates Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, which is Filmmaker‘s cover this issue, by rounding up his top five Michael Jackson impersonator clips. Here’s his intro: And now, I’m going to do the classic blogger trick of praising a movie and then completely missing the point (an introspective look into how people struggle with identity and the need for acceptance) by posting a superficially related Top 5 List of Michael Jackson Impersonators. I’ve posted below one of his top five, which he dubs “Midget Michael Jackson.”

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2008 Filmmaking
BENTEN ON WINGO

Benten Films has a splendid, newly redesigned website that has launched alongside its latest release — Todd Rohal’s wonderful Guatemalan Handshake. The release is top-shelf all the way — the two-disk set includes six of Rohal’s short films, an essay by David Gordon Green, and numerous other extras, like casting tapes and other behind-the-scenes material. Also on the Benten site: an interview with composer David Wingo, who has scored Green’s and Rohal’s films and who also plays in the band Ola Podrida. From the interview: How different is the creative process when lyrics are involved, such as your Ola Podrida […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2008 Filmmaking
BOXING HANNAH, PART TWO

Aided by a greater competence when it comes to grabbing and resizing web images (a competence I’ve appropriated here), Peter Martin at Cinematical links to my piece on the DVD box art of Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs and asks: I agree that Hannah Takes the Stairs deserves a wider audience, but I’m not sure the DVD cover will make people want to pick it up and take a chance on renting or buying it. What do you think? To be honest, I don’t know. As a producer, I’ve long been inured to the design indignity that occurs when […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2008 Filmmaking
TWILIGHT OF THE STARS

Jamie Stuart forwarded the screen cap pictured here from IMDb. It’s a grab from the “pro” version of the site’s Starmeter which, you’d think, would provide some sort of ranking of top movie stars. But no, the Starmeter is more a measure of transitory popularity. As the site notes about the rankings: Plain and simple, they represent what people are interested in, based not on small statistical samplings, but on the actual behavior of millions of IMDb users. Unlike the AFI 100TM or Academy AwardsTM, high rankings on STARmeterTM and MOVIEmeterTM do not necessarily mean that something is “good.” They […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2008 Filmmaking
SPRING ISSUE ONLINE

Over on the main page check select stories from the Spring issue. Peter Bowen chats with Errol Morris about Standard Operating Procedure, I have an in-depth discussion with Sangre de Mi Sangre (aka Padre Nuestro) writer-director Christopher Zalla, Lisa Y. Garibay interviews Tom Kalin about Savage Grace, Howard Feinstein explores the making of Tom McCarthy‘s The Visitor and Travis Crawford talks to Dario Argento about his final chapter in the “Three Mothers” trilogy, Mother of Tears. Plus, we take a look at the Red One camera, Anthony Kaufman reports on the struggle American filmmakers are having in the international marketplace […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Apr 21, 2008 Filmmaking
IRAQ AT 24 FRAMES A SECOND

Over at FilmInFocus, Anthony Kaufman takes a look at filmmaking in Iraq by talking to the leaders of the Baghdad Independent Film and Television College. Here’s the opening: Filmmaking requires perseverance, zeal, sometimes even a pathological commitment to see a project through. Now imagine making movies in Baghdad. Kidnappings, killings, suicide bombings and blackouts haven’t deterred a number of intrepid aspiring directors from pursuing their passion, whether Oday Rasheed and Mohamed Al-Daradji, the first two people to make feature films in the wake of the U.S. invasion in 2003 (respectively, Over Exposure and Ahlaam) or the roughly 80 young Iraqis […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 18, 2008 Filmmaking
EQAL-ITY

Over at his Cinematech, Scott Kirsner rounds up the news that EQAL, a “microstudio formed by the guys behind the lonelygirl15 series and KateModern” has raised $5 million in venture capital from Sparks Capital in Boston along with Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway. Here’s Rebecca Buckman from the Wall Street Journal: Producers of the Internet-video serial “lonelygirl15” — once thought to be an amateur project but later revealed to be the product of professionals — have raised $5 million from prominent technology investors to expand and introduce new online shows. The new funding for EQAL, the Los Angeles company behind […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 18, 2008 Filmmaking

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