Filmmaking

KILLING AN ARAB

I kinda wondered this myself when I read the story: Why is George Bush reading on his vacation in Crawford, Texas, an existentialist novel about a man who impulsively and without provocation kills an Arab? John Dickerson gives it some more thought over at Slate: Unhappy tales of East meets West are found in the papers every day, so presumably the president was looking for more, but his aides will not tell us what he made of the story of a remorseless killer of Arabs. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush “found it an interesting book and a quick […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 15, 2006 Filmmaking
DISTRUSTING DARK LORD

Screenwriter John August (Go, Big Fish) has been directing a movie, an indie and his first, and he’s been writing about it on his blog. This week he discusses the dilemma of working within the industry and still trying to audience-test your work: Last Monday was the first time I put The Movie in front of an audience: thirty friends and colleagues recruited to help figure out whether the film was appropriately funny, dramatic, and comprehensible. (Answers: Yes, Yes, and Not So Much. We’re working on that last part.) Screening a work-in-progress is just as nerve-wracking as it sounds. Going […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2006 Filmmaking
HOW MANY PRODUCERS…

… does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Does it have to be a lightbulb? Jokes aside, the topic of producer credits — who deserves them, who doesn’t, and whether or not they should be regulated — has been in the news this year due to producer and financier Bob Yari’s lawsuit against the Producers Guild of America and AMPAS regarding his credit on Crash. In the new Filmmaker, producer Kendall Morgan (Southland Tales) uses the Yari case as the jumping off point for a discussion of these issues, and her piece — which is not posted on […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2006 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

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