Filmmaking

THE MAIN PURPOSE OF FICTION

Okay, it’s not film related, but… Blog of a Bookslut notes that the new Thomas Pynchon novel, Against the Day, is scheduled to be released by Penguin on December 6. Pynchon himself has penned the description on the book’s Amazon.com page: “Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2006 Filmmaking
RED DESERT

Chuck Tryon’s The Chutry Experiment points to an interesting and, if my own behavior is any indication, accurate article in The Wall Street Journal Online on how Netflix is changing people’s DVD viewing habits. Specifically, the article talks about how the service’s easy access to great movies encourages those movies to stay sealed in their little red envelopes unwatched for weeks and even months at a time. From the article: Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2006 Filmmaking
HEY LUKE!

Screenwriting inspiration can come from anywhere, even, if Donald Fagen and Walter Becker can be believed, from their Steely Dan song “Cousin Dupree.” In a letter on their website they ask Luke Wilson to do them a solid by speaking to his brother Owen about a matter that’s on their minds — the storyline of You, Me and Dupree, which they, with tongue partially in cheek (or at least I hope so, otherwise the bit at the end about the Russian bodyguard becomes not so funny), say seems inspired by their song. The lyrics in question: Well I’ve kicked around […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2006 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

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