Filmmaking

IWO JIMA TOPS NBR

With the Gothams passed out last week and the National Board of Review giving their top nods last night, the award season is beginning to blossom. The NBR named Clint Eastwood‘s second film on World War II this year, Letters From Iwo Jima, its Best Film (scroll down for full list). Shot around Southern California in 33 days on a substantially lower budget than Flags of our Fathers, most believed Iwo Jima – which is in Japanese and its only actor familiar to American audiences is Ken Watanabe – was to play second fiddle to its star-studded predecessor. But when […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Dec 7, 2006 Filmmaking
4 MILLION AND COUNTING

Over at Wild Diner Films, Sujewa Ekanayake has a long interview up with Lance Weiler in which the filmmaker and frighteningly efficient self-distributor talks about his new movie, Head Trauma and the pleasures of releasing a film on one’s own. (Re the title of this post, apparently Head Trauma has grossed $4 million in distribution income.) An excerpt: Reality is setting in as more and more films are being made every year. The tools are accessible, which allows for a diversity of voices but the flood of work is putting a strangle hold on an already strained system. Self-distribution is […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2006 Filmmaking
THE "A"-WORD

While reading the New York Times this morning, I was struck by Manohla Dargis’s evocation of the “a”-word when reviewing David Lynch’s new Inland Empire: “…the extraordinary, savagely uncompromised Inland Empire, his first feature in five years, his first shot in video and one of the few films I’ve seen this year that deserves to be called art. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, the film is also as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse.” Yep, she called it Art. On the front-page of the Weekend section […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2006 Filmmaking
PENNILESS

Larry Fine has a piece up at Reuters noting the dissolution of InDigEnt, the innovative low-budget film company created by Gary Winick and John Sloss that was behind pictures like Tadpole, Personal Velocity and Pieces of April (pictured). From the piece: “I kind of think we had our moment in time. Unfortunately there is no million-dollar film any more that actually gets in the market place and makes some money because the studios want the Capotes’ and the ‘Sideways‘ … they want the $8-million film to make a $100 million instead of the $1-million to make $10 (million). That’s the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2006 Filmmaking
PARTY OF ONE

If you bookmark this blog and don’t regularly check out the main page, click over there for the first Filmmaker-sponsored podcast short, Jamie Stuart’s Corner Dweller, in which Stuart brings his now-patented hard-boiled persona to the pre-Gotham Awards nominees party. Here’s what David Hudson at GreenCine had to say about it: … in his latest, for Filmmaker, Corner-Dweller, set against the backdrop of the IFP Gotham Awards Nominee Reception, he’s gouged out his own niche and, even assuming Kaufmanesque self-referentiality as a given, staked out his own as-yet-uncharted ground.

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2006 Filmmaking
REPRIEVE FOR GIBSON?

Though many in Hollywood publicly (and privately) swore they’d never work with Mel Gibson or see his movies again, with his latest violent epic Apocalypto set to hit over 2,000 screens this weekend, can a good movie wipe the slate? Can positive reviews from Variety and Rolling Stone — with more sure to come and possibly Oscar buzz — erase Gibson’s hateful words? Sharon Waxman examines this question in The New York Times today. An excerpt: The problem posed by Mr. Gibson touches on an age-old question of whether an artist’s personal behavior ought to be a factor in judging […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Dec 5, 2006 Filmmaking
SUNDANCE WATCH: TEETH

I was planning to do one big post in which I conveyed what I know about the various films at Sundance this year, but perhaps I’m going to wind up taking a piecemeal approach… To start, then, here’s a link to the official website for the Dramatic Competition entry Teeth, which is directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, who, some years ago, starred in Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. From the website, this synopsis: High school student Dawn works hard at suppressing her budding sexuality by being the local chastity group’s most active participant. Her task is made even more difficult by […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2006 Filmmaking
OUT OF CONTEXT

The world of arts and criticism used to be such that one critical work published in the correct publication would ensure one’s permanent place in the culture. For George S. Trow, who wrote numerous articles and plays and who died in Naples this week at 63, that work was a 1980 New Yorker essay entitled “Within the Context of No-Context.” Its thesis, that television and celebrity culture had destroyed contemporary discourse and altered our relationship to the rhythms of history, had its echoes in Adorno,, Marcuse, Baudrillard and many others, but Trow’s stark, aphoristic prose published in a weekly magazine […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2006 Filmmaking
PROCEED TO CHECKOUT

Gotham Tribute recipients Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban (the latter a no-show at the Gothams the other night) may have created the most buzz in the blogosphere with their multi-platform release of Soderbergh’s Bubble, but another company with equally deep pockets is conducting a window-busting experiment this weekend. Clickstar, a joint venture between chip-maker Intel and actor Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment, has partnered with THINKfilm to release Brad Silberling’s 10 Items or Less in theaters; in two weeks, on December 15, the movie will be available for digital download. Over at the Cinematech blog, Scott Kirsner tells you what to […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2006 Filmmaking
SUNDANCE ANNOUNCES PREMIERES, SPECTRUM, MIDNIGHT AND NEW FRONTIERS LINEUPS

In the second day of lineup announcements for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, titles range from the the already announced opening night film, Brett Morgen‘s Chicago 10, to the closing night film Nelson George‘s Life Support. Other notables include, Craig Brewer‘s Black Snake Moan, Sarah Polley‘s Away from Her (which was already praised at Toronto), Mike White‘s Year of the Dog, and Gregg Araki‘s stoner comedy Smiley Face. Premieres AN AMERICAN CRIME/ USA, Director: Tommy O’Haver; Screenwriters: Tommy O’Haver, Irene TurnerA fictionalized account of the true story of a young girl’s torturous ordeal at the hands of a troubled mother […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Nov 30, 2006 Filmmaking

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