Filmmaking

THE WGA AND THE MORAL (AND FINANCIAL) RIGHTS OF THE AUTHOR

It’s long, detailed and a must-read — Dennis McDougal’s piece in the L.A. Weekly, “Double Cross at the WGA,” on the guild’s collecting and non-payment of monies issued to member and non-member writers by foreign rights societies. The piece springboards off a class-action lawsuit filed by writer William Richert (Winter Kills) against the WGA as well as whistleblower activity by a now-terminated guild administrator into a discussion of American copyright law, studio business practices and the U.S.’s complicated relationship to the Berne Convention, the international copyright agreement spearheaded by author Victor Hugo. The upshot? If you wrote a screenplay for […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2007 Filmmaking
THE VAST RIGHT-WING BLOGOSPHERE

Via Talking Points Memo comes news of Qube, the right-wing answer to the lefty, politically correct, and conservative censoring website that is… YouTube? From their front page mission statement: Bit by bit the site is coming together. Building QubeTV in the public eye has been a both a joy and a challenge, a real chance to bring the American conservative movement together in one place – with all of you watching! Coming next: a continuation of the ongoing (and not always visible to the eye) tech improvements such as embeds and (duh!) categories, the simple basics we know you are […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2007 Filmmaking
TRIBECA WINNERS

Awards were handed out last night in Chinatown for the 6th annual Tribeca Film Festival. See list of winners below. The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature – My Father My Lord (Hofshat Kaits), directed by David Volach (Israel). Best New Narrative Filmmaker – Two Embraces (Dos Abrazos), directed by Enrique Begne (Mexico). Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film – Lofti Edbelli in Making Of (Akher film), directed by Nouri Bouzid (Tunisia, Morocco). Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film – Marina Hands in LadyChatterley, directed by Pascale Ferran (France, Belgium). Best Screenplay – Making Of (Akher film), written […]

By Jason Guerrasio on May 4, 2007 Filmmaking
DOCS @ TRIBECA

As the Tribeca Film Festival wraps up its 6th year this weekend its clear that as it expands throughout the city confusion mounts within the industry on what it actually is – a venue for high profile films or discovering new talent (I’ll go into greater detail about this in my Festival Wrap-Up in the Summer issue). But having attended every year there’s one thing I’m always impressed by: the documentaries. And this year is no exception. Two that I’ve enjoyed equally but are completely different in tone and style are Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side and Bruce […]

By Jason Guerrasio on May 1, 2007 Filmmaking
GOING MOBILE

If you’ve picked up our Spring issue you may have read the sidebar in our “Option Overload” Line Item (“Cell Capture”) where Dutch filmmaker Cyrus Frisch describes how he made his latest film Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad In Afghanistan with a cell phone. Which as far as we know is a first. It goes without saying that this is a shooting format that’s probably a decade before its time (at the least), but after seeing the film at the Tribeca Film Festival (it made its World Premiere at Rotterdam) the other day, this extremely […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Apr 28, 2007 Filmmaking
ORPHANS SCREENS IN MEMORY OF LILY WHEELWRIGHT

Sad news that arrived shortly after this year’s SXSW Film Festival was the sudden death of actress Lily Wheelwright, who starred in Ry Russo-Young’s Orphans. Wheelwright gave a tough and honest performance in the film, which won a Special Jury Prize at the fest. Here’s what writer/director Andrew Bujalski had to say about the movie: “A sensitive & peculiar pastoral, Orphans manages to derive as much compelling energy from its locations & spaces (of the wide open & claustrophobic variety alike) as from its two terrific lead actresses, a rarity these digital days. The film will receive a special screening […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2007 Filmmaking
HERE’S TALKING TO YOU

Over at The Street.com, Jonathan Blum goes to NAB to discover “the future of media.” He lists three developments. The first, that Apple with its Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio is turning amateur filmmakers into pro-quality producers, is not so new and interesting. The second, that local broadcast television will be feeding itself to your cell phone in about a year’s time, is a little bit more newsworthy. But the third, dealing with HD radio, told me something I didn’t know. He says to forget all the news about XM and Sirius and to concentrate on the untapped […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2007 Filmmaking
RE-SHOOTING THE BLADE RUNNER SHOOT-OUT

Merrick over at Aint It Cool News posted a very fun piece of geek-out film news: Ridley Scott has completed reshoots of the Joanna Cassidy replicant shootout scene for the upcoming DVD final “director’s cut” of Blade Runner. He links to Film Ick, which provides details: The shots are for the sequence in which Cassidy’s character Zhora is chased through the streets. In the original film, the chase shows Zhora in flat boots but previously we saw her put on heels – the reshoots feature heels; the control wires for the squib that released Zhora’s blood was previously visible – […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2007 Filmmaking
JOE SALEH, 1934 – 2007

I received this email of an obituary that Jackie Raynal wrote for Joe Saleh, who died at 73 last week of complications from a stroke in Paris. Saleh produced many Merchant-Ivory movies and also founded the Angelika movie theater. Joseph J.M. Saleh who produced many of the Ivory-Merchant movies, created and founded the famous Angelika movie theater multiplex in New York, died in Paris last wek. Saleh financed the documentary STREETWISE which received the 1985 Academy Awards Nomination. He was also resposible for the developing the first network election night forecasting system in 1964. He was born January 18th,1934 in […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2007 Filmmaking
JAMAN BRINGS TRIBECA TO YOUR DESKTOP

Adam Dawtrey in Variety has a piece up today noting that digital download service Jaman is offering for free download six films screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. From the piece: Under the pact with Tribeca, six films screening at this year’s fest, which opens Wednesday, will be offered simultaneously for free download by users anywhere in the world for a period of seven days. Deal is believed to mark the first time a major festival will have given online exposure to part of its full-length feature program at the same time the movies unspool at the fest…. The six […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2007 Filmmaking

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