Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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CANNES AT 60
The Cannes official selection (i.e., Competition and Un Certain Regard) line-up has been announced and as always there’s a lot to salivate over. (Here it is at Indiewire.) Wong Kar Wai’s Blueberry Nights (pictured) is the Opening Night, and the fest includes films by some of my other favorite directors, including Fatih Akin, Carlos Reygados, Joel and Ethan Coen, Gus Van Sant, Olivier Assayas, Abel Ferrara, Bela Tarr, Mark Pellington, Barbet Schroeder and Harmony Korine (whose Mister Lonely is pictured below), to name a few. The Competition: “My Blueberry Nights,” directed by Wong Kar-Wai “Auf Der Anderen Siete,” directed by […]
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ARCADE FIRE’S ELEVATOR MUSIC
From the very cool folks at Coolhunting comes this posting about a great online music archive. The French website La Blogotheque is posting a series of “take away shows” which feature musicians doing impromptu gigs on streets, in parks, or, in the case of Arcade Fire, in an elevator. Here’s Coolhunting: (Take-Away Shows) are a collection of live, unedited videos of musicians playing in unusual settings. The artists’ unpredictable interaction with the environment and the reactions of often clueless bystanders result in a genius blend of music video and reality TV. With a sharp eye for incorporating improvised performances into […]
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NOW IT’S DARK…
MOMA this week offers U.S. viewers’ a rare chance to see Sophie Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, starring Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek. From the film’s site: THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA offers an introduction into some of Zizek’s most exciting ideas on fantasy, reality, sexuality, subjectivity, desire, materiality and cinematic form. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA applies Zizek’s ideas to the cinematic canon, in […]
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FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES REMEMBER JIM LYONS
Indiewire has created a tribute page to Jim Lyons with contributions from John Cameron MItchell, Tom Gilroy, Esther Robinson, Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente, Amy Taubin and Marcus Hu. Please click over there and read these very personal and heartfelt remembrances of Jim.
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James Lyons, 1960 – 2007
Jim Lyons died on Thursday in New York. If you didn’t know Jim personally and just recognize his name from movie credits, then you most probably remember him as an editor. His credits include four films by Todd Haynes – Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine and Far from Heaven – as well as Spring Forward, The Virgin Suicides, and Silver Lake Life. Most recently, he was the co-editor of A Walk into the Sea: The Danny Williams Story. The latter, a documentary by Esther Robinson about her uncle’s relationship with Andy Warhol and The Factory, won the Teddy at Berlin this […]
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IFP ROUGH CUT LAB DEADLINE APPROACHING
A couple of years ago I worked on a new program with the Independent Feature Project: the Rough Cut Labs. The idea came, in part, from my realization that much of maintaining a filmmaking career involves making a series of mistakes and then remembering not to make them on the next film you do. But if you’re making your first film, what if somebody could tell you beforehand what mistakes you might be likely to make? Or, forget mistakes, what if people who have been through the trenches could let you know what to expect as your film moves from […]
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WE ARE FEEDING YOU MORE
We’ve added two new RSS feeds to the site. One feed brings you our various web exclusives which, right now, include a rough-cut scene from John Sayles’s Honeydripper and Ray Pride’s feature on Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, and the other feed brings you Nick Dawson’s weekly “Director Interviews,” which this week features Year of the Dog‘s Mike White. Click on the RSS symbols, search for them, or cut and paste the code above into your feed reader.
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JOHN SAYLES’ HONEYDRIPPER
For those who bookmark this blog, check out an exclusive clip from John Sayles’ upcoming film Honeydripper now on our main page. The film stars Danny Glover as the owner of a failing juke joint in 1950s Alabama who hires a young electric guitarist in hopes to keep from closing down.
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Andrea Arnold on Red Road
Andrea Arnold’s beautifully crafted first feature, Red Road, the follow-up to her Oscar-winning short film, Wasp, was shot on digital video and exploits a fresh, bold palette in telling the story of Jackie (Kate Dickie), an alienated Glasgow policewoman whose job is to watch Glasgow’s banks on surveillance monitors. One day, she notices a man behaving unusually and, becoming fixated on him, crosses a line. Stepping out from behind her monitors, she follows him towards the dangerous housing project called Red Road… Why is she so obsessed with this figure, a man she first glimpses as a shadow, almost a […]
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YOU DON’T KNOW JACK
In the issue of Filmmaker we just sent to the printer today (which explains the slacking on the blog), Steve Gallagher interviews Mary Jordan, director of Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis. The doc portrait of artist and filmmaker Jack Smith opens in New York tomorrow at the Film Forum, and I highly recommend it. Here’s an excerpt from Steve’s piece: Filmmaker: Were you surprised to discover that Jack Smith’s work is so political? Jordan: I’m a human rights person. I was a social activist myself before I got interested in Jack. So, for me, this documentary is a […]
