On the occasion of the Walter Reade’s 30th anniversary screening of Barry Lyndon (the last show is tonight at 7), Jamie Stuart contributes to The Reeler an interview with Kubrick actor and long-time associate Leon Vitali. Vitali, who most recently produced Todd Fields’s Little Children, is in town to intro tonight’s screening and he took a few moments to talk to Stuart, who also snapped the pic of the producer shown here. From the interview: Reeler: But other filmmakers I think of who have a great degree of control — modern filmmakers like say the Coen Brothers or somebody like […]
Director Chris Munch (The Hours and Times) sent the below comment in regarding Ted Hope’s post, below, on start-up online film distributor Jaman. While applauding the company’s goals and its economical price points, Munch wonders whether all the enthusiasm for digital film distribution means that we are being conditioned to accept lower image quality when it comes to viewing our favorite movies. Will the price ever rocket, though? Will producers and filmmakers benefit if it does? Jaman seems like a good idea at a good price point. I’m astonished how “content delivery trend predictors” have been proven wrong time and […]
Ted Hope sent the following thoughts on Jaman’s current trial offering of free online art-film rentals. Check out Hope’s comments and then, if you are so inclined, click over to Jaman to download the player and watch a movie. The absolute hostility, at best, neglect, generally speaking, that the American Film Industry displays towards adventuresome work, and particularly such work done in a non-english language, has some nice byproducts. When no market exists, salesman often resort to the time tested techniques of the drug pushers. Want to sample the product? Find nirvana for free? Here you go friend, feast away, […]
Over at his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner receives an email from Dovetail CEO Jason Holloway about the current debate over just how content creators should be compensated for the online viewing of their work. Holloway discusses the pros and cons of the paid subscription model, the pay-per-download model, and the ad-supported model, and provides an opinion as to which types of content are most appropriate for each model. I’m with Kirsner in believing that there is considerable untapped promise in the pay-per-download model (essentially, this is the model of the iTunes Store), but Holloway makes some points about the value […]
For those of you who, like me, didn’t make it to Cannes this year to see Harmony Korine’s new feature Mister Lonely, here’s a teaser: a couple of clips have popped up online on a site entitled Fest 21 and are embedded below:
Here’s U2 performing live on the red carpet of the Palais at Cannes to launch their new U23D concert film directed by Mark Pellington and Catherine Owens. (Hat tip to Variety‘s Dana Harris and GreenCine, which has more links.)
Producer Ted Hope sent in the below rumination on indie film and rock music for the blog. It was presumably prompted by two projects. Hope produced Hal Hartley’s latest, Fay Grim, which opened this weekend. As Hope notes, Hartley has made a “true rock gesture” in all of his films; he’s a director who seems to follow current music, incorporate it into his films, and, through his forays into music video, actively approach it on its own terms.. Also, this week Hope announced The Passenger an Iggy Pop bio-pic set to be directed by Nick Gomez and star Elijah Wood […]
Today Anthony Kaufman revives memories of Cannes past with the below clip of Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky being presented with prizes by Orson Welles: … which gives me an excuse to post an amazing Tarkovsky shot from The Mirror. And then this brilliant sequence from Bresson’s Pickpocket.
If you’re used to checking out this blog and not the main page, surf over there for Nick Dawson’s interview with Hal Hartley, whose Fay Grim opens today. An excerpt: I’m one of those people who doesn’t think the world has changed any at all since 9/11. It just seemed to be almost inevitable, something like that. That’s one of the reasons why the backstory of Fay Grim goes all the way back into the ’80s. I was trying to sketch out the continuity of all this hanky-panky between the security agencies of the world. I think you’re right in […]
As guitar player for the band Interpol, Carlos D must be prepping for the release of their third album, Our Love to Admire, in July. But, as Pitchfork reports, he is also seriously and quite publicly pursuing a career as a film composer. He’s got a separate site to promote his scoring skills where you can hear what he would have done had he scored The Devil Wears Prada and Ice Age 2. From the bio on the site: Carlos is an aspiring film and tv composer in addition to playing bass and keyboards in Interpol. His understanding of harmonic […]