Filmmaking

ROTTERDAM: ABLE DANGER

Given that he’s just made his debut feature about the mysteries, speculations, half-truths and flights of fancy that comprise the 9/11 Truth Movement, I guess it makes sense that filmmaker Paul Krik is accustomed to finding conspiracy wherever he goes. He’s travelled from Brooklyn to Rotterdam to premiere Able Danger, but when I ask him to shoot me an email about why he chose to make a movie about 9/11 conspiracy theorists, he responds by noting some suspicious activities having to do with Dutch bicycle renting: “Indruk de en Brooklyn fietser in Rotterdam” True Conspiracy #1; It is illegal to […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2008 Filmmaking
HALF-LIFE LOVED IN THE BLOGOSPHERE

Jennifer Phang’s Sundance Frontier entry Half-Life received something of a critical honor recently when producer Mike Ryan, whose thoughtful and passionate reviews can be found at the new Hammer To Nail, cited the film as his favorite of the 34 he saw at this year’s festival. An excerpt: We often see an art film that may leap around in perspective, mostly for rhetorical or comic effect, but it is truly rare to be carried emotionally through a film that tells a multi-perspective story through a seamless integration of naturalistic action, animation and self consciously artificial CGI compositing. Half-Life exists on […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 31, 2008 Filmmaking
FIENNES WINS ROTTERDAM’S CINEMART COMPETITION

On the 25th anniversary of the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Cinemart, the prize for the “best project” has gone to Sophie Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, a follow-up to her The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema which also features philosopher Slajov Zizek. The award comes with a cash prize of 10,000 euros, which one guest at the party tonight quipped would be about equal to the film’s first clip license. Here’s Variety’s wrap-up of the event, and below is a clip from Fiennes’s previous collaboration with Zizek.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 30, 2008 Filmmaking
RAY CARNEY ON QUIET CITY

If you just bookmark this blog page and don’t check the main site, head over there so as not to miss professor and critic Ray Carney’s essay on Aaron Katz’s Quiet City, which hits DVD stores this week.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2008 Filmmaking
ARIN CRUMLEY WAS ROBBED!!!

The Four Eyed Monsters filmmaker is offering a handshake and a hug to the perpetrator if his stuff is returned.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2008 Filmmaking
THE THREE FACES OF INDIE

Over at her Thompson on Hollywood blog, Ann Thompson posts an email she received from indie producer and former distributor Jonathan Dana about “the surfeit of Sundance acquisition titles, many of which remain unsold at fest’s end.” He breaks the indie sphere down into three sections, from the studio specialty titles down to the out-of-nowhere surprises, and concentrates his commentary on the middle sphere, the professionally produced films with name actors that are financed by new money largely based on their presumed marketability. It’s worth a read.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2008 Filmmaking
Trumping Trump

The following essay by Ray Carney on Aaron Katz’s Quiet City accompanies a 2-disc DVD release from Benten Films out this week of Quiet City and Katz’s first film, Dance Party, USA. Mainstream film is so much an art of the maximum – the biggest, the flashiest, the fastest, the most exaggerated – that it is easy to forget that the great films all go in the opposite direction. They are, almost without exception, triumphs of minimalism. They rely on subtlety, understatement, indirection, and simplification. In Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch sets long sections […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008 Filmmaking
Hear My Song

Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Ray Pride interviewed Once writer-director John Carney and lead Glen Hansard for the Spring ’07 issue. Once is nominated for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly” (Music and Lyric by Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova). When Baz Luhrmann was promoting his musical phantasmagoria Moulin Rouge, I asked him how far you could go in the other direction — could a film musical consist simply of a couple coming together and moving […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008 Directing
CRAIG GILLESPIE, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL By Nick Dawson

RYAN GOSLING DINES WITH PAUL SCHNEIDER, EMILY MORTIMER AND “BIANCA” IN CRAIG GILLESPIE’S LARS AND THE REAL GIRL. COURTESY MGM. Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Lars and the Real Girl is nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Nancy Oliver). In one of the more unusual coincidences on this year’s movie release schedule, Craig Gillespie has seen his first […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008 Filmmaking
My Super Sweet 16

Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Lisa Y. Garibay interviewed Juno director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody for the Fall ’07 issue. Juno is nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing (Jason Reitman), Best Lead Actress (Ellen Page) and Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody). The pairing of writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman was one of complete chance, like one of those cop-buddy movies where the grizzled vet is set up with a renegade newbie and […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008 Directing

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