Filmmaking

DREAM MACHINE

Via Movie City Indie, this link to Michel Gondry’s collaboration with website Meme which enables the circulation of videos about dreams. It’s all, of course, part of the build-up to the release of his new feature, The Science of Sleep.

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2006 Filmmaking
MARY, MARY

The Reeler notes that IFC Films has picked up Abel Ferrara’s Mary. I’m happy about that — it’s Ferrara’s best film in years, and its story of a fucked-up, megalomaniacal film director making a religious epic is nothing if not timely… Check out the trailer on MySpace.

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 8, 2006 Filmmaking
FURNITURE AND FILM

The furniture and home furnishings store Design within Reach is presenting in its stores The Eames Film Festival. Consisting of seven short films by modernist designers Ray and Charles Eames, the series will be presented at DWR studios across the country and includes their classic 1977 film Powers of Ten, which is described like this: Starting at a one meter square image of a picnic, the camera moves ten times further away every ten seconds, reaching to the edge of the universe; then the journey is reversed, going ten times closer each ten seconds, ultimately reaching the interior of an […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2006 Filmmaking
ESSAYING "TALLADEGA NIGHTS"

I was up at the Creative Capital retreat this weekend where I saw a lot of great work by the organization’s ’04 and ’05 grantees. But if I was in town I probably would have been, along with $47 million of you, at the opening weekend of Talledega Nights. It reunites the Anchorman team of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, and that’s enough for me. James Ponsoldt, who directed Off the Black (which I produced and which is coming out December 1 from Think Film) has just launched a MySpace page and he’s already got several blog entries up, including […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2006 Filmmaking
STEPPING UP

Filmmaker Joe Swanberg has got his short films streaming on iTunes, his web series Young American Bodies running on Nerve.com, and now he’s shooting a new movie with a great marketing hook. In Hannah Takes the Stairs, he’s cast folks like Mark Duplass, Andrew Bujalski, Todd Rohal, and Ry Russo-Young who are known for their own indie films (The Puffy Chair, Mutual Appreciation, The Guatemalan Handshake, and Orphans, respectively) as actors. The film has a MySpace site and on it’s own website, Swanberg is running a production journal/photo blog. On the site, he summarizes the film like this: “Hannah is […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 5, 2006 Filmmaking
GRINDHOUSE POSTERS ONLINE

Over at Ain’t It Cool News there are three posters up for Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s double-bill homage to 60s and 70s era exploitation films. From what I understand, Rodriguez’s is some kind of zombie movie and Tarantino’s is a riff on Death Race 2000. Having been a big fan of Kill Bill, I am really looking forward to this… and all three posters are great. Here’s my favorite, which features Rose McGowan.

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2006 Filmmaking
GRAINY PICTURES, PART TWO

I woke up this morning wondering if I was too harsh on the look of Miami Vice, so I’m going to kick up these comments from Jamie Stuart that are posted below. Stuart disagrees with my pan of the film’s visuals and finds its rough-hewn textures compelling, and he makes the point that by choosing to shoot the film on a Viper instead of a camera like Panavision’s Genesis, they were deliberately striving for the look they got. (He also makes some comments about my quotation of internet movie reviewer Chuck O’Leary, but I wasn’t holding him out as any […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 31, 2006 Filmmaking
FINAL CALL FOR IFP ROUGH CUT LAB

Last year I ran a new program from the IFP called the Rough Cut Lab. Over a three-day seminar held during the IFP Market, I lectured along with a group of industry consultants on the process of finishing a feature film and bringing it to market or a festival. The lab covered everything from locking picture with a solid cut of a film, negotiating affordable music rights, festival strategy, creating publicity and marketing materials, selling a movie, and delivering a film to a distributor. Folks like music supervisor Tracy McKnight, composer George S. Clinton, BMI’s Doreeen Ringer-Ross, editor Alan Oxman, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 31, 2006 Filmmaking
THE GRAIN OVER MIAMI

I just got back from Miami Vice, and as a huge fan of Michael Mann’s work (including the show on which the movie was based), I was pretty disappointed. The first thirty minutes is fairly strong as Mann throws you smack into the middle of an undercover operation and shoots the various night-time clashes and assignations with a purposefully grainy and quite bold visual style — rooftop meetings against purple night skies, outrageous wheel mounts hovering inches above the Miami causeways, and the grain signifying a dirty reality miles removed from the TV show’s pastel-hued romantic nihilism. And indeed, while […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 30, 2006 Filmmaking
THE BEST LAST MOVIE MINUTES

The folks over at Filmcritic.com have compiled a highly debatable but still fun list: The Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time. Of course, it’s a calvacade of spoilers, but if you’re reasonably film literate you’ll have seen most of these and can see if your take on movie clilmaxes syncs up with the site’s editors. Here’s one I very much agree with (although Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant might have made my list too): King of New York (1990) – After facing the last (and oldest) cop of the four that stalked him, crime lord Christopher Walken sits in a cab, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 29, 2006 Filmmaking

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cfmrk_cic		Used by Cloudflare to route user traffic for this Site.
sparrow_id		Installed by Cloudflare. Used to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not store any personal identifiable information.

Cookie	Duration	Description
OAGEO		Installed by the Revive Ad Server. Used to cache geolocation (session, deleted when closing the browser)
OAID		Installed by the Revive Ad Server to distinguish users.