Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“I Wanted to Do for Adam What Demme Did for David Byrne [in Stop Making Sense]”: Steven Brill Talks About Directing Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh
Adam Sandler may have chosen to title his Netflix stand-up special Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh as an impudent jab at the critics who consistently trash his comedies, but it’s garnering the actor some of the best reviews of his career. (As I write this, it’s not quite 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes — just an impressive 92%.) That’s deservedly so, given that the special contains Sandler’s funniest and most wide-ranging material in years. The act, written by Sandler with an assist from Paul Sado and Dan Bulla, veers back and forth between razor-sharp observational material, unapologetically juvenile (and hilarious) obscenity, […]
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Watch: Tim Burton’s Dumbo gets a trailer
Tim Burton’s a good choice for a live-action (plus) CGI remake of Dumbo, the latest Disney animated classic to get the reboot treatment. Though he’s only made one circus movie prior — 2003’s Big Fish, though Batman Returns does feature, as semi-sympathetic villains, rejected carnival staffers — his whole CV is crammed with paeans to society’s oddballs and rejects, who he knows how to treat as entertainment for the masses. Judging from its new trailer, his Dumbo will be even more of a weepie than the 1941 original, about a young elephant with giant ears who can theoretically (and sometimes […]
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Outside the Box (Or, New York Is Not the Place to Be for Filmmakers Anymore): Jamie Stuart on His Move to LA.
Filmmaker Jamie Stuart has contributed to this publication since the mid-aughts. When he told me he that after completing his NY-set one-man independent feature A Motion Selfie that he’d be moving to L.A., I asked if he’d want to contribute a final Gotham piece in the “Goodbye to All That” genre. Below, he writes about not just his move but the changing independent film culture in New York over the past decade-plus. — SM The day before the move was literally the worst day of my entire life. Popping half tabs of Valium every five hours, I spent 7:00 AM […]
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SFFILM and Dolby Institute Launch A Fellowship, Which Will Go to Michael Tyburski and Ben Nabors’ Film Palimpsest
Sound, sadly, is not an area of filmmaking most people think of first, if at all. A new program may change that. SFFILM and the Dolby Institute have teamed up to create a fellowship that will help filmmakers all the way from development through post-production. The help will come in many ways, from providing artistic and industry guidance to negotiating introductions to key independent film players. Because Dolby is involved, it will also provide a cash grant that allows them to speak with sound designers as early as the screenwriting phase, on top of post-production support that includes a Dolby […]
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“This Was the Aesthetic I’d Been into Since I’d Started Making Films”: Cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi on Lensing Cam
Alice (Madeline Brewer), the star of Cam, sustains herself as a full-time webcam model at the top of the “FreeGirls.Live” leaderboards. She aspires to break Top 50, but to do so she’ll have to descend deeper into her on-screen persona and farther from her off-screen principles. The system of rewards in this cyber cranny conditions her to betray her standards; the more Alice caters to her audience’s desires the more her fan base grows and the bigger her tips get. When she’s pushed to go beyond her comfort zone, a digital doppelganger of Alice, named Lola, manifests and assumes control […]
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“We Found That Securing Institutions And Private Funders Was More Viable After We Could Share The Breadth Of The Film In A Meaningful Way”: Hunter Robert Baker And Jordan Fein On Their DOC NYC-Premiering The Blessing
The Blessing, the latest from the Emmy Award-winning team of Hunter Robert Baker and Jordan Fein, is the story of a Navajo coal miner and single dad as well as his teenage daughter, who navigate life on their reservation in northern Arizona. Other than Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside’s stealthy stunner América, I can’t think of another documentary I’ve seen this year in which the simplest of premises yields such an emotional powder keg. The film’s a nearly Shakespearean drama, one in which a deeply religious father is forced to choose between sacrilege (taking part in the destruction of his […]
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Five Picks For The Ninth Edition Of DOC NYC
As a documentary addict who probably attends more nonfiction festivals than can be considered sane, I’m always on the lookout for reasons why I shouldn’t wait for Netflix. And this year’s 9th edition of DOC NYC (November 8th – 15th) is chockfull of one-of-a-kind events. With that in mind, here are just five of my picks for getting off the couch and into the theater. Documentary Now! Presents Original Cast Album: Co-op Not only are creators Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas two of the big names expected to attend this Centerpiece Presentation, it’s a world premiere. You’ll be able to […]
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How Halloween Production Designer Richard Wright Shot the Film’s Opening Credits with a Few Hundred Dollars, an Old Bolex and a Fridge Full of Rotting Pumpkins
While the new Halloween ignores the plots of the many sequels that followed John Carpenter’s 1978 original, it doesn’t spurn the movies themselves. The film is crammed with loving homages to the franchise — even the Michael Myers-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch gets a brief shout-out. The latest Halloween installment establishes its fondness for its predecessors in the opening credits, which pay tribute to Carpenter’s progenitor with a slow push-in to a rotting pumpkin that magically restores itself to health as the camera creeps closer. Though the sequel’s production budget was a reported $10 million, only a few […]
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“Let Logic Steer the Ship”: Michael Simmonds on Shooting Halloween (2018)
In his book Making Movies, Sidney Lumet wrote that he once asked fellow director Akira Kurosawa why he’d framed a shot in his period epic Ran in a particular way. Kurosawa replied that if he’d panned the camera an inch to the left he would’ve seen a Sony factory. Panning an inch to the right would’ve revealed an airport. I don’t know if Halloween cinematographer Michael Simmonds has read Lumet’s book, but after chatting with him I’m confident he would appreciate that anecdote. Simmonds, whose diverse credits range from the horror sequel Paranormal Activity 2 to the acclaimed documentary Project […]
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Bad Ronald, Trilogy of Terror and More: Jim Hemphill’s Halloween Blu-ray Picks
Two of the best films from the golden age of made-for-TV horror are newly available on Blu-ray just in time for Halloween: Buzz Kulik’s creepy 1974 gem Bad Ronald and Dan Curtis’ 1975 anthology movie Trilogy of Terror. Bad Ronald has long been a word-of-mouth favorite among genre fans for its flawless execution of a genuinely unsettling premise: a teenage sociopath hidden away by his mother is left living within the walls of his home after she dies, only to resurface and terrorize the teenage daughters of the new family that moves into the house. Adapting a novel by John […]
