Filmmaking

OPENING NIGHT

Variety has a hotly anticipated review up on their main (subscription only) page. No, it’s not The Da Vinci Code, although that’s up there too. (“A stodgy, grim thing,” declares Todd McCarthy.) It’s William Triplett’s review of Tony Snow at the White House, the government’s new skein starring ex-Fox News commentator Tony Snow. Here’s Triplett’s lede: In the often surreal world of the televised press briefing, the media don’t stand a chance against a nice guy, and judging by his first performance, new White House press secretary Tony Snow may be mercilessly nice. Armed with a dapper suit and winning […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2006 Filmmaking
I AM A BIRD NOW

Cam Archer emails to tell us about a new video he’s made for the band Zero 7. Writes Archer, “I decided to make the video about a middle-aged woman who wants nothing more than to make herself into a bird and escape her dreary life of routine and bad furniture.” And if you haven’t already, check out the site for Archer’s totally genius Sundance feature, Wild Tigers I Have Known.

By Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2006 Filmmaking
THE DARK SIDE

I went to see the Al Gore doc, An Inconvenient Truth, the other night (it’s great — kind of old fashioned in its “man and a slide projector” style, but in a good way; it has real respect for the audience and is compelling without being overblown and pessimistically alarmist) but misread the press invite and showed up at the Broadway Screening Room instead of the Paramount Screening Room on Broadway. I wasn’t the only one who made the mistake — there were a few other confused people there as well. “What’s screening here?” I asked the publicist who was […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2006 Filmmaking
ROLAND EMMERICH, CALL HOME

Ain’t It Cool News has uncovered a bit of movie marketing surrealism — the first ever trailer to hit the ‘net for Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center is dubbed in German by distributor UIP.

By Scott Macaulay on May 15, 2006 Filmmaking
HURRY UP AND WAIT

The Guardian has a good piece up written by director Whit Stillman in which he discusses his eight-year absence from the director’s chair. It’s a fascinating and all too recognizable tale of stillborn projects, grand plans, and moments of serendipity. Stillman is headed to Cannes this week at which he’ll pitch a new project, but before we meet him there, he wants us to know what he’s been doing the last decade. In doing so, he offers some wisdom that should not be forgotten as we scan the trades this week: Silence is one of the greatest and least used […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 15, 2006 Filmmaking
GREENWALD v. WAL-MART, LIEBERMAN

Ray Pride scopes out Marc Lee’s piece on activist director Robert Greenwald and his WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price in U.K.’s The Telegraph. Here’s the excerpt Pride quoted: And it is not a model to make money. We had 750,000 people at 8,000 screenings, but they didn’t pay nine or 10 dollars each to see the film: a church bought one copy and showed it to 300 people, a student dorm bought one copy and had 50 people see it. However, from the point of view of reaching people, it is absolutely great. Would I have preferred to […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 15, 2006 Filmmaking
A TIME BEFORE SWAG

Over at Zoom In Online, Reid Rosefelt remembers an earlier, more innocent time in New York indie film when budding publicists were intimidated by the cool of “downtown super-dudes” like budding director Jim Jarmusch. In the context of remembering his experiences working on the marketing of Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise, he jots a snapshot of the early ’80s downtown film scene, tracing quick backstories to players like Jarmusch, Sara Driver, John Lurie, Richard Edson, Eszter Balint and others. At the end of the piece, he describes taking the film’s three stars out to lunch to discuss some of his and […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 15, 2006 Filmmaking
GIULIANI REVISITED

Newsweek has a good interview up with director Kevin Keating, whose documentary Giuliani Time opens in theaters this week. I saw the doc in Rotterdam a couple of years ago, and it’s a straightforward and worthwhile pic that tries to throw some balance on the public’s reckoning of Rudy Giuliani. Before 9/11, Giuliani was suffering a severe case of second-term lethargy, forgoing any sense of mayoral ambition and instead initiating regressive policies targeting welfare recipients and the homeless, among others. (For those who wonder how Giuliani cleaned up N.Y.’s “homeless problem,” this film tells you how, and it’s not pretty.) […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 13, 2006 Filmmaking
A TECHNOLOGICAL BUBBLE?

Boing Boing transcribes an interview science-fiction author William Gibson gave to Open Source Radio about the current NSA wiretapping scandal. Here’s the entirety of their quote: I can’t explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future had been a little more evenly distributed. Now we’ve all got some… The interesting thing about meta-projects in the sense in which I used them [in the NYT editorial] is that I don’t think species know what they’re about. I don’t think humanity knows why […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 13, 2006 Filmmaking
DATE NUMBER ONE PREMIERE

Sujewa Ekanayake, who blogs over at his DIY Filmmaker site, is a regular commenter at these and other blogs, and this Saturday he’s premiering his new movie in Washington, D.C. A comedy about several first dates, Date Number One will screen at the Goethe Institute, 812 Seventh St., N.W., at 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. in a benefit for We are Family. This screening is the kick-off to a series of DIY screenings he’ll have over the next year. For more info on the film see Wilddiner.com.

By Scott Macaulay on May 9, 2006 Filmmaking

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