Filmmaking

CURRY’S ROAD TO THE OSCARS

The Reeler has a good piece up on Marshall Curry, whose Street Fight opened today at New York’s IFC Center. From the piece: “While viewing Curry’s riveting film last week, it occurred to me that this could absolutely be the dark horse nominee come March 5. In chronicling Newark’s 2002 mayoral race between relative newcomer Cory Booker and Jersey’s reigning machine-politics king Sharpe James, Curry captures a system imploded by racism, corruption, lies and at least a few physical altercations. Perhaps more shockingly, Street Fight reflects the assured work of a first-time feature filmmaker–a guy who quit his job, bought […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 22, 2006 Filmmaking
WHO’S THE GENIUS?

I ran into a colleague on the street a few hours ago who caught me up on some depresing industry buzz that had been circulating in Berlin: that Genius, the parent company of theatrical distributor Wellspring which is majority-owned by the Weinstein Company, is effectively shuttering the classy specialty distributor that has released so many great foreign and independent films. And now, Eugene Hernandez has the details in Indiewire. Going forward, the Wellspring name will become a home-video brand, and the Weinstein Company says they’ll release Wellspring’s upcoming theatrical titles. About ten people in Wellspring’s theatrical division will lose their […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2006 Filmmaking
AN EX-PAT IN PARIS

Josh Horowitz has a good conversation with writer/director Whit Stillman up on his Better than Fudge blog. His transcribed phone call works as a solid “part two” to Anthony Kaufman’s piece in the current Filmmaker which discussed the making of Metropolitan on the release of the film’s new Criterion release. Here’s the end of the piece, but click on the link above to read the whole thing: “JH: What do you miss most about making films?WS: Number one, an income. Number two, director’s guild health insurance. Number three I just miss the extroverted production life, being around technicians and being […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2006 Filmmaking
SCRAMBLE SUITED

There’s a new trailer up for Richard Linklater’s Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly. It’s way better than the previous teaser as it highlights the film’s woozy humor as much as its panoptic paranoia. When I interviewed Rick for Filmmaker, the film was slated to come out this spring. It’s been pushed to summer, so this trailer will have to tide you over in the meantime…

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2006 Filmmaking
THE SILENCE IS OVER

Forgive us as we iron out the kinks on the new site design. We just learned that due to an improper setting comments from readers have been going into the ether as opposed to onto our website. We’ve just reinstated those formerly lost comments and have changed our settings so comments are posted immediately.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2006 Filmmaking
EARTHSHAKER

Chris Gardner in Variety reports today that producer Michael London has launched a new financing and production company, Groundswell Productions. Starting with a capitalization of $55 million, the company plans to raise a total of $100 million and produce five films a year with budgets under $20 million. From the piece: “Groundswell’s business strategy will be a mix of foreign pre-sales for projects with established stars or pure equity investments in filmmaker-driven projects. The company’s slate will mix films from established directors and emerging talent alongside comedies and genre films. London said with Groundswell he will be looking for projects […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2006 Filmmaking
GROUP BLOGGING

Green Cine notes that filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake, who posts on his Filmmaking for the Poor website, has launched a new blog: Indie Features 06. The site allows several filmmakers who are all finishing films this year and screening them in festivals or theaters to post in a “group blog” format their experiences. Filmmakers include Ekanayake, the four Texas-based directors behind the anthology film Deadroom, Chris Hansen (The Care and Feeding of an American Messiah, and filmmaker Rick Schmidt, whose Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices was one of the first no-budget film books ever published.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2006 Filmmaking
SHORTSVILLE APPEARS ON THE MAP

The folks who run Antville, the music site, have just launched Shortsville, a blog consisting solely of links to cool short films and commercial clips. Bookmark it now.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2006 Filmmaking
GOOGLE GOGGLED

With Google’s stock dropping 27% in the last ten days and Barron’s devoting their cover to “In the Drink,” a merciless dissection of the company’s growth prospects, true value and stock price (readable gratis this week as Barron’s offers a trial freebie to its pay site), I’m going to pile on to the search giant with this link to Cory Doctorow’s piece up at Boing Boing titled “Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?” In a great look at the digital rights management system Google has put in place to “secure” the downloadable media on its new […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 14, 2006 Filmmaking
DECADES PLUS TWO

Movie City Indie maestro (and occasional Filmmaker contributing editor) Ray Pride posts a series of short docs entitled 12×5 which he directed with Amy Cargill over at Movie City News. Check out Ray’s deftly edited ruminations on personal futures as remembered from the past.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 14, 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.