Filmmaking

VIDEO MISCELLANIA

Some video links for your weekend viewing pleasure. Here’s a link to a rejected (for being too weird) series of jeans commercials by Jean-Luc Godard commissioned by Marithé + François Girbaud’s Closed Jeans. From the amazing Ubu Web comes a a new page devoted to the “Cinema of Transgression,” an underground film movement that flourished in New York during the ’80s. Along with Nick Zedd’s Cinema of Transgression Manifesto you’ll find free downloads and streams of films by Richard Kern, Beth B, Kembra Pfahler, Jon Moritsugu, Tessa Hughes-Freeland and others. (The above two links courtesy of Dennis Cooper’s blog.) A […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 22, 2006 Filmmaking
CUNNINGHAM/MORTON HORROR SHOW

It’s great when one of your favorite directors releases something starring one of your favorite actresses… and you had no idea that it was even in the works! James Ponsoldt just emailed me to tell me about this new Chris Cunningham music video, his first in seven years, which features Samantha Morton. The band is The Horrors, the song is “Sheena is a Parasite,” and, according to Director File (linked above): …the 1.5-minute clip, narrated by lead singer Faris Badwan, stars Samantha Morton as the song’s manic, transmogrifying subject who whips around like a banshee and spews her intestines at […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 21, 2006 Filmmaking
BLOGGING LEBANON

For those wanting to cut through the MSM filters to read first-hand experience about life in Lebanon at the moment, The Huffington Post has linked to this blogger map on Truth Laid Bear that identifies all the blogs being posted from Lebanon right now by location.

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 21, 2006 Filmmaking
HOLLYWOOD AND 2257

Brooks Boliek in The Hollywood Reporter reports on a bill being voted on by the Senate that extends the reach of the Justice Department’s 2257 regulations, which we’ve blogged about often, to Hollywood films. Bizarrely dubbed “the Adam Walsh Act” — after the murdered son of America’s Most Wanted‘s John Walsh (what does his death have to do with simulated sex scenes in mainstream films?) — the bill seems to have been severely scaled back from its original drafting. From the piece: The bill potentially reaching the Senate today has been significantly altered to address the concerns of the motion […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 20, 2006 Filmmaking
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

Reuters has an article up announcing the official and long-expected shutdown of Section 8, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s production company, and Clooney’s formation of a new company, Smoke House, which will be based at Warner’s. As always, Clooney is great with a quote: The shutting down of Section Eight came about partly because the business aspect of the company was starting to weigh down the filmmakers. “We decided that three years ago, the minute it becomes a business we’re going to get out,” Clooney said in January. “It doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to make films, it doesn’t […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 20, 2006 Filmmaking
THE ATROCITY RETURNS

Several years ago I selected for our annual “25 New Faces” feature filmmaker Jonathan Weiss, who had just finished a many-years-in-the-making adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s great novel The Atrocity Exhibition. The film is full of amazing sequences, has a truly unique and disquieting tone, and embodies a keen understanding of the ideas that course through Ballard’s most radical novel. (Yes, more radical than Crash.) I spoke to Weiss a few weeks ago and it seems like he’s looking for a U.S. video deal for the film. I hope he’s secured one by now, but in the meantime, here’s Tim Lucas […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 19, 2006 Filmmaking
THE JEDDAH VISUAL SHOW FESTIVAL

Via Netribution, “The first Saudi Arabian film festival opened in the Red Sea city of Jeddah this week, in an ultra-conservative country where the silver screen is so controversial that the word ‘cinema’ does not even get a mention in the title. ‘The Jeddah Visual Show Festival’ started on Wednesday night screening two hours of home-grown short films.” The article goes on to talk about the slow birth of cinema in Saudi Arabia — namely, cartoons and the short films shown at this festival. From the piece: Public screenings of movies are taboo in Saudi Arabia, where religious scholars believe […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2006 Filmmaking
Head Trip

Co-director Keith Fulton reveals how to create an unlikely filmic Frankenstein like Brothers of the Head, welding a bizarre story of conjoined rock stars onto a fake-documentary framework. HARRY TREADAWAY AND LUKE TREADAWAY IN KEITH FULTON AND LOUIS PEPE’S BROTHERS OF THE HEAD. Ever heard of Tom and Barry Howe, conjoined twin frontmen from seminal seventies punk rock band Bang Bang? Remember “Two Way Romeo,” their signature live hit, when Barry would pull up his shirt and display the shared flesh-band that forever connected them at the midsection? No recollection? Then what about the British band “Spinal Tap,” with the […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jul 16, 2006 Directing
24 (MINUTES)

Rick Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is the best screen capturing of the vibe and ideas of one of my all-time favorite writers, Philip K. Dick. If any of you are on the fence about seeing the movie, the folks over at Film Force have posted the first 24 minutes of the movie. Click over to the site and check it out. Elsewhere on Film Force, A Scanner Darkly producer Tommy Palotta talks about the team’s desire to do Dick right: When we initially approached the estate, we told them that we wanted to do a really faithful adaptation. You know, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2006 Filmmaking
BACKSTAGE

The guys over at Other Music have noted the DVD re-release of Ron Dorfman and Peter Nevard’s 1970 documentary, Groupies. A rarely seen cult film on the ’60s rock scene, Groupies is now out from Cherry Red Records and is described by their catalog like this: A classic sixties documentary, “Groupies”, finally gets its release on DVD. “Groupies” is the ultimate expose of back-stage shenanigans. At times hilarious, at times almost tragic, the documentary follows the fortunes and dilemmas of various real life groupies, a supremely hedonistic bunch of rock fans, on their relentless search for a new kind of […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2006 Filmmaking

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