Filmmaking

FAMILY VALUES

Doug Block’s doc 51 Birch Street opens this week at the Cinema Village in New York. Here’s what Paul Harrill at Self-Reliant Film had to say about it: The film is being billed, not incorrectly, as a documentary mystery: Just a few months after Doug’s mother dies, Doug’s father suddenly announces that he’s engaged to his former secretary. It’s not long before Doug finds himself at their wedding, awkwardly toasting the new couple. At the reception his father, the groom, is a different man. What’s the story? Was his father unfaithful? Was his parents’ seemingly happy marriage a sham? Doug […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 18, 2006 Filmmaking
RANDOM YOUTUBE VIDEO #1

An Andy Warhol Braniff Airlines commericial from the 1970s:

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2006 Filmmaking
BRITNEY SPEARS: "EXTREMELY EXPERIMENTAL AND WEIRD"

The latest configuration of the Cleveland rock band Pere Ubu has a new album out, Why I Hate Women, and here’s frontman David Thomas in this month’s The Wire on the real avant garde: “In the early 70s,” he says, “the evolution of rock was very, very, very obvious. Analogue synthesizers and concrete sound was entering into the music. Various people had various strategies, and it wasn’t one thing. It was stuido techniques and other things. All of it, to us, was coming to this juncture. And it was very obvious to us that this was what rock music was […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2006 Filmmaking
EARLY WARNING

Over at his blog Sit Down Man, You’re a Bloody Tragedy,, Owen Hatherley writes about Todd Haynes’s Safe and recognizes its foreshadowing of our contemporary urban situation: From it’s opening sex scene onwards- the grim treadmill behind the neon-lit Southern California cityscape of the generic erotic thriller- Todd Haynes’ Safe is a depiction of the most important city of the early 1990s. The edge of apocalypse you can hear in the synth whines of Dr Dre’s The Chronic, the fire and brimstone of Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, Mike Davis’ City of Quartz and of course the LA Riots: in all this […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2006 Filmmaking
DEAR DIARY

Nick Knight’s fantastic art/fashion/culture website SHOWstudio launched a new project today: a video diary by Asia Argento, updated three times daily. Titled “Don’t Bother to Knock,” the series is running with five entries so far in which the director and actress talks about travel (she is promoting a film), freaks (Todd Browning’s and others), burn care and more. From the site: As one of the Bal Masqué’s twelve muses –chosen by Maison Martin Margiela to model their silver flower dress at the grand event on the 24th October- controversial actress/director Asia Argento has kindly agreed to also lend her cinematic […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2006 Filmmaking
KINKED OUT

There’s a film festival this weekend taking place at a decadent playground where the idle rich enact scenes of ritual perversion. And for those who won’t be heading out to the Hamptons Film Festival, there’s Cinekink, which bills itself as the “true alternative film festival.” The fest opens tonight at Bacchus with a live performance by the Wet Spots and then bases itself at the Anthology Film Archives for its screenings and panels. Highlights include a panel discussion on Saturday, October 21st at 4:30pm entitled “The State of Smut,” which features NYC filmmakers Audacia Ray/Waking Vixen Productions, Tony Comstock/Comstock Films, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2006 Filmmaking
LYNCH IS MUTINIED

Over at The Mutiny Company, Jamie Stuart has posted the fourth installement of his video diary/short film/online reports covering the New York Film Festival. David Lynch makes an appearance on this one discussing his Inland Empire, which, reportedly, he will be self-releasing in the near future.

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 15, 2006 Filmmaking
MUTINY COMPANY NYFF EPISODE THREE

I wrote a little bit about Jamie Stuart’s New York Film Festival video diaries at The Daily Reel. Now, Stuart emails to say that Episode Three is available. Apted. Almodovar. Beatty. Cruz. Check it out.

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2006 Filmmaking
A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

In an email charmingly entitled “Movie Night with Gaspar Noe,” the IFC Center announces that the “French cinematic provocateur” will be hosting a double feature for the brave: Noe’s own I Stand Alone and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infrequently screened Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. (Salo, by the way, is not available on U.S. region DVD. Asealed copy of Criterion’s old disk goes for $566 on eBay, and there’s a brisk business going in Salo bootlegs.) Of I Stand Alone, the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has written: “Movies don’t get much darker than this, because few of them have as […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 3, 2006 Filmmaking
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

New York magazine is streaming five shorts screening at the New York Film Festival. Go to the above link to see Benoit Forgeard’s absurdist comedy, The Naked Race; Ariana Gerstein’s experimental documentary Alice Sees the Light; Tom Harper’s comedy about British hooliganism, Cubs (pictured); Faye Jackson’s female-centric horror film, Lump; and Elisabeth Subrin’s tale of intimate encounters, The Caretakers (the latter of which, I’ll admit in a full-disclosure moment, I exec-produced.)

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 3, 2006 Filmmaking

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